I would say my strongest stance on anything is that of (police, and by extension) prison abolition. To me, that is the ultimate goal, at which point it will be immensely clear that the proletariat is free - the state cannot restrict your basic freedoms.

The threads I've seen when searching tell me that there is disagreement on this in this subreddit. I am less interested in debating this issue, as my stance is pretty firm.

I would like to know who I can read that has talked about this historically? Could someone suggest me some prison abolitionist readings made by communists? I've read Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis, but that's about it. I'm still ony a babe at the breast.

Thank you

I definitely like notes and analysis. It would be nice to find ones on the Communist Manifest, or maybe Capital? I'm not super familiar yet but would like to jump in.

english is not my first language so please forgive any mistakes and correct me if you can. also please correct me if i am wrong about any history notion

when the bourgeois revolution happened in france, i bet they were also expecting that the world would finally be fair and egalitarian, and it indeed was, but only for their class. then, the proletariat started existing as a class and they began to be oppressed, just like the bourgeois was, but by different means. what guarantees that when we reach equality and fairness for the proletariat, there won't emerge another class that will be oppressed just like we are now, even if by different means?

also, the bourgeois revolution didn't stop racism, sexism, homophobia and ableism even within their class, let alone the world. what guarantees a communist revolution will?

I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for books about Historians, and maybe the humanities more generally. From schooling to research to teaching. I’m more looking for how the system worked from and internal prospective rather then outward criticism.

Something pro or at least sympathetic to the Soviet Union would be preferred

I was wondering if anyone had good books on Che Guevara but they’re written from the perspective of fellow comrades (of course). I am reading books written by him, but I’m interested some analysis done by others on his philosophy and life. Thank you!

I knew that Deng was inspired by Bukharin's economic thesis and NEP period but I realized that I didn't know the history behind these two historical periods very well. So, I'd like to hear some opinions on the matter.

Or what many regard to be punk, ie fighting the system. I like punk rock music personally and a lot of the themes it deals with through this artform resonate with my Marxist ideals.

What do you think comrades?

Also I came across this tumblr post that caused me to re-read it, in case I was seeing things. Very odd sentiment

https://www.tumblr.com/infanteriesauvage/829658688981762048?source=share

I’m looking for book recommendations about China’s current government and economy and how it’s developed over the years. I’m interested in how the CCP actually runs the country, how government and private sector interact and what China’s goals are for socialism in the long term (plan to achieve socialism). I’d also like to learn about how the economy has changed since Mao.

You probably saw the military defeats that CPI(Maoist) suffered at the hands of the genocidal forces of Indian state. But beyond the complete destruction and displacement of the populations, what led to this setback?

There are two possible explanations that we can find.

The objective factor: In short development of capitalism happened and Indian mode of production evolved beyond the semi-feudalism, semi-colonialism and bureaucratic character of its economy. This led to a bourgeois resolution of rural/nation question which was the center of Maoist strategy. This is what can be found in the open letter of the treacherous split. The problem is obviously any analysis of Indian economy that led to see the questions of foreign investments, tribal politics, lanlords, etc.

The subjective factor: This is what can be found in the reports of the CPI North Coordination Center (the only faction of CPI that communicates in English, and seems to be solid). In short, the party, even at the time of its creation, was not a coherent Leninist organization, did not use centralization, did not combine militarization with coherent lines struggle, not an ideological struggle against the new waves of anti-Marxism, etc. This is interesting but this doesn’t explain what should be done.

What is the most coherent explanation for these defeats that are major, because they will inevitably permit Eurocommunism to take even stronger roots (reminder that the Eurocommunists of India too Participated in the genocide)

In Marxism and Humanism, Althusser seems to state that ideology is eternal, or at least something that is intrinsic to human beings as a prerequisite for living in society:

But, we must go further and ask what becomes of ideology in a society in which classes have disappeared. What we have just said allows us to answer this question. If the whole social function of ideology could be summed up cynically as a myth (such as Plato’s ‘beautiful lies’ or the techniques of modern advertising) fabricated and manipulated from the outside by the ruling class to fool those it is exploiting, then ideology would disappear with classes. But as we have seen that even in the case of a class society ideology is active on the ruling class itself and contributes to its moulding, to the modification of its attitudes to adapt it to its real conditions of existence (for example, legal freedom) – it is clear that ideology (as a system of mass representations) is indispensable in any society if men are to be formed, transformed and equipped to respond to the demands of their conditions of existence. If, as Marx said, history is a perpetual transformation of men’s conditions of existence, and if this is equally true of a socialist society, then men must be ceaselessly transformed so as to adapt them to these conditions; if this ‘adaptation’ cannot be left to spontaneity but must be constantly assumed, dominated and controlled, it is in ideology that this demand is expressed, that this distance is measured, that this contradiction is lived and that its resolution is ‘activated’. It is in ideology that the classless society lives the inadequacy/adequacy of the relation between it and the world, it is in it and by it that it transforms men’s ‘consciousness’, that is, their attitudes and behaviour so as to raise them to the level of their tasks and the conditions of their existence.

In a class society ideology is the relay whereby, and the element in which, the relation between men and their conditions of existence is settled to the profit of the ruling class. In a classless society ideology is the relay whereby, and the element in which, the relation between men and their conditions of existence is lived to the profit of all men.

My own emphases above. When we are discussing ideology in this subreddit and the sister subreddit, are we usually talking about bourgeois ideology? When you call someone ideological, is it just a shorthand for saying that they are being ideological from the perspective of bourgeois ideology? The way I view it is that he is saying that without mass representations one has nothing to serve as an "anchor" to society (which would result in psychosis), but I have to admit that I am still a little confused since my previous conception of ideology was that it was a product of class society that would be dissolved alongside it. Please let me know if my concepts are wrong and if I missed any key details.

Hello, Im relatively new to communksm. Tho for years I have been very left leaning and "socialist" I never informed myself about communism. For a bit now Ive been consuming contenr, got reading Das Kapital, fot the Manifesto and keep finding more and more that could be worth learning about. It is so much! I want to know it all and understand, see the bigger picture but in todays times it feels like it is too late to learn and time to take action instead but how am I supposed to do that if I dont know everything about what to take action for.

Are there videos or collections of condensed writing on communism from all over? I want to know about Cuba, Stalin, Mao and the rest having already gotten into Lenin and Marx.

I want to know why so many are seen highly in communism but all I hear is "but Mao/Stalin/"this governemnt" was responsible for so much suffering" etc.

So much to learn, so overwhelmed.

Settler municipal goverments in mass are begining to ban the use of public funds for ALPR and other self contained network surveillance systems. This tech has existed for a while.

It seems like there have been a few high profile cases of pigs using them to rape and murder women and generally facilitate gender oppression. But that's nothing new. The settler bourgeoisie is usually happy to accommodate the mass surveillance of their internal colonies. What changed?

Across various Marxist works, the proletarian revolution sometimes seems to be presented as a historical inevitability, and sometimes seemingly as an outcome that communists have a moral duty to work towards and achieve. For instance, Marx and Engels say in The Communist Manifesto that

The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

On the other hand, in A Great Beginning, Lenin says:

We must carefully study the feeble new shoots, we must devote the greatest attention to them, do everything to promote their growth and "nurse” them. Some of them will inevitably perish. We cannot vouch that precisely the "communist subbotniks” will play a particularly important role. But that is not the point. The point is to foster each and every shoot of the new; and life will select the most viable.

I get that these two views aren't contradictory. In fact this quote from The Eighteenth Brumaire explains quite succinctly why developments are brought about by a mix of conscious and unconscious forces, on a societal level:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

What I'm confused by is whether this view is applicable on an individual level. To what extent do individuals have "free will" (meaning a capacity to make choices that is somewhat independent from their material conditions)? Given that individuals are just an "ensemble of the social relations" (Theses on Feuerbach), it seems like they have no free will at all, but in that case I don't understand why Marx, Engels, and Lenin would appeal to the proletariat on the basis of "duty", which seems to suggest some degree of free will (such as regarding the choice whether to do their duty). Alternatively, a better question might be: how should I understand the concept of "free will"? Recommendations for authors or texts would also be highly appreciated.

Side note: I find it interesting to consider Althusser's Contradiction and Overdetermination, where he speaks of "the relative autonomy of the superstructures", in relation to this. But once again I'm unsure as to whether the concept can be applied on an individual level.

Edit: I did look through both this sub and r/communism for posts on free will, but for the most part people just provided the same quote from The Eighteenth Brumaire that I have included here and did not really explain further. To reiterate, my confusion is regarding why communists appeal to the proletariat on the basis of duty, which seems to presume the existence of individuals with some amount of free will, if ultimately these things do not exist or are just illusions.

I am Brazilian, and it is practically certain that the son of the fascist, Flávio Bolsonaro, will become the new president. I recognize that Social Democracy is the gateway to fascism, and it's impossible for there to be real change in labor relations as long as we depend on these bourgeois elections within this capitalist system.

I consider myself a Maoist and I admire Gonzalo and the Peruvian people's war from the bottom of my heart, as well as the current Indian and Filipino guerrilla movements. But I'm very confused about how to deal with the elections in my country.

It seems that not voting is seen as disregarding the small benefits that the working class enjoys under this Social Democratic government. The rise of a fascist government, a direct lackey of Yankee imperialism, would extinguish any remaining breath of fresh air we have. I understand that with or without Lula in power, any imperialist power can invade our country, but I really don't know what to think about the contradictions of voting.

Is it sheer hypocrisy for a Maoist to "support" these revisionists/opportunists? I know there's no real change within this bourgeois system, but I keep thinking about the millions who were able to have food to eat, free medical care, free housing, and the opportunity to study because of these programs made by such revisionists.

I want to emphasize that I detest this filth called the left, but I truly have family and friends who are only alive because of their support. Am I a disgrace? Should I be boycotting? I feel like a disoriented child, with no one to confide in.

P.S.: One thing that bothered me quite a bit about the supposed Maoists who follow a certain independent newspaper is their transphobic and punitive rhetoric, almost on a Nazi level. Statements like "the people deserve fascism," "I hope they suffer a lot," etc.

I wonder what Presidents Mao and Gonzalo would think of these statements from their supposed supporters, wishing the worst for their class.

So ive been a Marxist-Leninist for a long time now and one if the things I keep coming back to the purges of the late 30's. I find the whole Stalin evil paradigm to be false. However the entirety of the purges to be a polarizing time in Soviet society as it seems the entirety of Soviet society was imploding from paranoia over the encroaching Fascist wave and in some aspects suffering from a lack of bureaucratic oversight. One thing that never sat well with me was the historical narrative that Stalin personally sent Ramón Mercader to assassinate Leon Trotsky in an exta-legal fashion. When in all reality the anto-Soviet bloc that Trotsky was apart of could have been grounds for him to legally execute Trotsky. That never made any sense to me. I could fully see the NKDV acting without oversight approving an assassination of Trotsky seeing how out-of-hand that iteration of Checkists was.

What is the objective narrative around this? Sources required.

In my country (Canada) for example, there are 3 active communist parties. All of them subscribe to the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and uphold the vanguard party as the necessary vehicle for revolutionary change. Despite sharing all of the same goals, they all remain separate parties.

The Marxist Leninist party split from the original communist party in the 70’s because they thought they had become revisionist for supporting Khrushchev. Neither party denounces Stalin or Mao, and both view the Soviet Union as an example of actually existing socialism, yet neither have made any attempt to reconcile in the last 50 years.

The Revolutionary Communist Party is another group that seems to advocate for the exact same overarching ideas and policies, but differs from the other two in that it rejects “Socialism in One Country” and the legacy of Stalin and Mao, in favour of Trotsky and his theory of “Permanent Revolution.” Why does it matter whether or not you like Stalin or Trotsky, or think the Soviet Union should have embraced X policy or not over 100 years ago. None of these things seem to have any bearing to me on the implementation of socialism today, let alone in a country these things have nothing to do about.

Am I missing something?

(I am based in the global south, in case this context matters down the line)

I am not new to Marxism-Leninism, but ever since I split from the mainstream Dengist line I've been more and more considering to reassess many of the established beliefs I have had since I got class and political consciousness. The issue is that I genuinely don't know if a particular principle is correct or needs reassessment, namely the gender question, specifically the right approach to combating the patriarchal tendencies in the system without delving into liberal identity politics.

The thing I really want to hear more about is your suggested approach to this issue.

I don't want to make false claims unintentionally, so I won't assume some of the things I've heard many radical feminists say online are the norm or not.

Gender oppression is real, and it's systemic, but does that mean gender takes an equal level of focus as class in our struggle?

If we take Lenin's and Mao's approaches then we could say gender (and other identities) is very important to struggle for, but not at the cost of working class solidarity. But a smaller resistant line says that Lenin and Mao spoke for their own contemporary social standards and norms and that it's justified to divide the working class into identity-based categories in order to ensure all other struggles aside from class are dealt with properly. Is this correct or not?

I have done research inside this subreddit to find if this was answered before, but I couldn't find an answer to my exact confusion (Perhaps I missed it so I apologize in that case). The most recurring past answers are very old (when this place was possibly more broad than it is today) and they fluctuate between pro-identity politics and full on what some people consider class reductionism. But since this place underwent a structural and principled change in recent years, I wanna hear a clearer opinion.

In Settlers Chapter 1, Sakai says, "Afrikans were the landless, propertyless, permanent workers of the U.S. Empire. They were not just slaves — the Afrikan nation as a whole served as a proletariat for the Euro-Amerikan oppressor nation."

This description of Afrikan slaves as a proletariat is puzzling me. My understanding of the proletariat is that it has to sell its labor-power as a commodity to survive. This is not something that Afrikan slaves were able to do, as they themselves were bought and sold as commodities, and did not have the right to sell their own labor-power (this right was exercised by slaveowners, as detailed elsewhere in the chapter). On the other hand, I can see a proletarian character in their labor, since it was used by capitalists in the production of commodities, rather than immediate use-values. With this in mind, it seems Afrikan slaves could be characterized as semi-proletarian at most.

What am I missing here? What makes Sakai so confident in his assertion that Afrikan slaves constitute a proletariat?

Hey, so I was just thinking, and I wanted to get some perspectives. I'm not the most "theory-educated" person in the world -- I struggle to focus enough to read anything that hasn't been assigned for a class, and it's hard even if it was -- so I don't really have an answer to this question. The French Revolution of 1789 was (to my understanding) largely proletarian against the wealthy French nobility. Yet, it didn't really have anything resembling a vanguard leading it, and Napoleon was able to take over it by the end of the decade. So, this raises my question: was the French Revolution of 1789 proto-Marxist or not?

Engels wrote in his critique of the Erfurt program:

One can conceive that the old society may develop peacefully into the new one in countries where the representatives of the people concentrate all power in their hands, where, if one has the support of the majority of the people, one can do as one sees fit in a constitutional way: in democratic republics such as France and the U.S.A., in monarchies such as Britain, where the imminent abdication of the dynasty in return for financial compensation is discussed in the press daily and where this dynasty is powerless against the people.

I'm aware that in The State and Revolution, Lenin's commentary on this is that Engels had merely used the word 'conceive'. Regarding Marx's claim (in a letter to Kugelmann on April 12, 1871) that

[Smashing the bureaucratic-military machine] is the precondition for every real people's revolution on the Continent.

Lenin also comments that

It is interesting to note [that Marx] restricts his conclusion to the Continent. This was understandable in 1871, when Britain was still the model of a purely capitalist country, but without a militarist clique and, to a considerable degree, without a bureaucracy. Marx therefore excluded Britain, where a revolution, even a people's revolution, then seemed possible, and indeed was possible, without the precondition of destroying "readymade state machinery".

I'm pretty unfamiliar with British history and the particular contemporary context (I only know that Britain only had a voluntary army and instead relied heavily on the Royal Navy), so I'm struggling to understand why Marx and Engels thought the socialist revolution would proceed differently in Britain as opposed to most of continental Europe. As such, my questions are:

1. Why is it that Britain had significantly less of a bureaucratic-military machine than the rest of continental Europe?
2. Why would this mean that a socialist revolution might proceed differently in Britain? How exactly would it have proceeded?

Recommended readings in lieu of a direct explanation are also welcome.

In many debates, especially in countries like mine, this work is often cited to justify communist participation in bourgeois elections. The argument is that Lenin defended participation in parliaments as a necessary tactic while the revolutionary conditions are not yet present, and therefore communists today should also engage electorally.

However, I have the impression that this argument may be somewhat anachronistic or selectively interpreted. Lenin was writing in a very specific historical context, addressing concrete conditions in early 20th-century Europe, where communist parties were still forming and mass revolutionary movements were emerging. His defense of parliamentary participation seems to be strictly tactical, subordinated to a broader revolutionary strategy, not a general or permanent principle.

My question is whether it is theoretically correct to apply Lenin’s argument directly to the 21st century, especially in contexts where electoral participation often becomes a central or even dominant strategy rather than a subordinate tactic. Can “Left-Wing” Communism legitimately be used to justify long-term electoralism, or does that represent a distortion of Lenin’s position?

I would appreciate perspectives on whether this interpretation aligns with Lenin’s actual theoretical framework, or if it reflects a revisionist or opportunist reading of his work.

AFAIK MLs tend to regard Khrushchev and Deng as revisionists who did serious damage to revolution. I'm trying to understand three things:

Firstly erm, what mechanisms were in place in the USSR and PRC that were supposed to prevent revisionists from taking power? Second, Why did those mechanisms fail in these two cases? And, third, what do MLs today believe could be put in place preemptively to stop this from happening again?

I'm particularly interested in institutional or legal safeguards, as opposed to relying on the masses to overthrow a revisionist leadership after the fact. Reading recommendations are welcome. I haven't found much at a surface level.

Edit: The closest answer I've found is the 1964 CPC polemic On Khrushchov's Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World. It blames Stalin's premature declaration that antagonistic classes were gone, and credits Lenin's measures (Paris Commune wage principle, mass participation in government, purging bureaucrats) as the safeguards that eroded. Its remedy is a multi generational political and ideological struggle. My follow up: did MLs ever propose institutional or legal mechanisms, such as term limits, wage caps written into law, or recall powers, rather than campaigns of mass struggle? And how do current ML organizations answer this after the Cultural Revolution also failed to stop Deng?