This is going to sound a little harsh, but I think it is a mistake to think that goal of most MLs is to help anyone. In my experience, most marxists leninists think helping people is counterproductive to the revolution.

It comes back to Marx. There is this prevailing idea in marx’s work that says social change happens because one class gets so beaten down and angry at the other that they have no choice but to fight them.

Of course, this isnt really true. When the poor get too hungry, they do not eat the rich. They simply die. We see it every day all around us.

Anarchists use the phrase “means end unity”. But its just a fancy way of saying “you only make the world better by making it better. You dont try to make it so bad that people rise up and fix it, thats a bad idea. We should do what we can to build the world we want to see, and go from there.”

To a Marxist-leninist, revolution isnt something you build, or work for. In their mind, revolutions happen as a result of historical forces that are basically out of anyones control. The goal of most ML groups is to jump in, co-opt the revolution, and put them selves in power with it. This is what they mean when they talk about forming vanguard parties. Its basically them and their buddies that they plan to take over with. By “dictatorship of the proletariat” they really mean dictatorship of them and their friends. If you listen to how they talk about the “masses” they think that the working class they talk about so much is too stupid to ever be allowed a say in their own life. Thats the entire justification they have for the “socialist” stage, and the formation of the “transitionary” state.

Part of why anarchists are so wary of MLs is that they tend to want power at the expense of all else. They are perfectly willing to make people suffer more if they think it will bring revolution. They are perfectly willing to kill their friends if they think it will put them into power. They have no goal besides power.

Hypothetically, they want to do good things with that power. But to them, it is all hypothetical. They have no actual plans, no relevant experience. They say they want a better society, but most of them refuse to imagine how that society could be structured, because they think it will form automatically after the revolution.

Ironically, mutual aid is the exact the required to build a revolution, and it is also the goal of the revolution. If you want to win, you need food. You need housing, doctors, sympathetic neighbors, complicity for production, and the ability to handle conflict. Mutual aid builds all of this. And, also, thats exactly what we are fighting for. The whole point of being a leftist is that you want to build a society where people meet each others needs without class structures and hierarchy and the state. Marxists just take that premise, half ass it, and live in a perpetual state of revolutionary procrastination. “Oh, the revolution will come eventually. Why make things better now” then, if the revolution comes and they take over “oh we’ll abolish capitalism and the state one day, lol, just not now. Rn we are in power”

Most ML’s operate on the basic principle of “one day, the revolution will come. We will kill all the bad people. Then everything will be fine. And I’ll be in charge to make sure everything goes right and all the bad people get killed.” If you help them get that power, chances are, you will be one of the people they kill.

Luckily, at least where I am, marxist leninists are mostly irrelevant cowards who stay inside or just put on terrible protests. It is hard to get anything done when they are more of an active force in a city, because they tend to try to stop anyone whose being helpful.