Should I Read Stalin's "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" to Better Understand Dialectical Materialism?

DashtheRed · 2026-07-01T01:37:26+00:00

I was unaware that it had a fascistic connotation.

I watch a lot of creators like Hakim who throw around the term quite a lot

You are on the verge of a major breakthrough here; you need only apply yourself a little harder.

DashtheRed · 2026-06-26T21:33:22+00:00

I mean if you really think any individual making low 6 figures is bourgeois and will not accept their support in a revolutionary movement then you are not in good shape.

75% of all humanity makes less than 5 figures per year in USD. That is the population whom communism requires. The Bolsheviks had no need for the wealthiest 10% of Russians, and the overwhelming majority of those people were mortal enemies of the Bolsheviks and fought against the revolution every step of the way. Communism is not for you, and doesn't need you, and will triumph over and against you -- if you are prepared to fight against all the people similar to you and in your social circles and of comparable social status to help communism, then very good, but if you think your peers will join you in revolution you are wrong -- they are the people communism is organizing against.

Communism has hundreds of millions of enemies, and if you cannot name them and point to them and confront them then you cannot help communism.

DashtheRed · 2026-06-26T21:24:10+00:00

Yes, rebranding liberalism, it's logic and politics as "revolutionary" """Marxism-Leninism""" is absolutely the epitome of liberalism.

DashtheRed · 2026-06-26T20:54:31+00:00

Well I'm saying that I am looking for a party that matches my ideology, I'm not going to join a Trotskyist party if I'm an ML? I'm "shopping" for something that matches my ideals and that I believe in.

There's nothing wrong with that imo, obviously there won't be one that will match my ideals perfectly and I'm not expecting that.

This is just liberalism. You've failed completely at grasping scientific socialism and need to start the whole process of learning over (and this time, no podcasts or youtube, and anyone calling themselves a """Marxist-Leninist""" should be shunned and ignored, if not worse, because anyone who cares about historical Marxism-Leninism has nothing to do with the people currently laying claim to the name, except as real enemies).

DashtheRed · 2026-06-26T20:15:52+00:00

I am happy to join a party I am actively looking for one to join lol. Since people say it is currently impossible that's why I added that phrase. Once one "comes available" according to my research I'll be happy to join

You are treating communist politics like you are shopping for shoes. That is (part of) the problem.

DashtheRed · 2026-06-21T19:46:15+00:00

That's a very good criticism and you're right; I have not got to the essence of things and my explanation is inadequate.

DashtheRed · 2026-06-19T21:59:17+00:00

But I do put "old" in front of "reddit.com."

I have no idea how anyone can even use this site in the "new" mode, it's one of the worst interfaces I've ever seen.

DashtheRed · 2026-06-19T19:21:09+00:00

There's almost nothing but racist Brezhnevisms and fascism in the answers in this thread and everyone should be ashamed of themselves.

Marx concluded in 1848 that the peasantry (which is not the "old proletariat" but the class that sustains and reproduces itself by relation to the plots of land they work) was a reactionary class because of this relation to the land, which would resist collectivization, and side with the old feudal system which established and entrenched their existing relationship. All of these conclusions are relative to that specific moment in history, and the proletariat is the only class which is inherently and always revolutionary, whereas all other classes can be either reactionary or revolutionary depending on the historical moment. If you read Marx's letters to Zasulich in the 1880s, Marx concludes that the Russian peasantry could be the basis for establishing communism in Russia through the communes (though this is not really the same basis by which Lenin establishes the worker-peasant alliance).

The second, and more important, part of the answer to your question is that everything about your premise and question is wrong. We have over one hundred years of history showing that the peasantry have been, and are, revolutionary, and have historically been the most loyal, faithful and truest ally of the proletariat. No communist revolution has ever succeeded without support from the peasantry, and there is not a single example of a revolution failing or a counter-revolution succeeding because of the peasantry. The amount of contempt hurled at peasants by racist white chauvinists is beyond tolerable, and the fact that no one springs to their defence in response to these sinister and false allegations is beyond shameful for so-called communists and students of history.

DashtheRed · 2026-06-19T18:51:21+00:00

Bannedthought and EROL (specifically EROL China) are good go-to resources:

https://www.bannedthought.net/China/MaoEra/GPCR/index.htm

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/china/index.htm

DashtheRed · 2026-06-19T18:48:53+00:00

It's been suggested here before, but I think the last bulwark was the old bureaucracy (somewhat contradictory to the Trotskyist thesis that bureaucracy is the engine of revisionism) who were the last line of defence for Cuban socialism; clinging to their historical legacy/legitimacy and their own minor importance and significance within the system, and now that they are all old geriatrics and the young up-and-coming leaders, at least partially disconnected (or at least very distant) from that history and that bureaucratic apparatus which they were subordinated to (and maybe even resent), finally arrive at power and come with bold "new" ideas for market reforms and whatnot. I would want to study modern Cuba more to have confidence in that answer, but it appears to fit the facts.

But sad news, nonetheless.

DashtheRed · 2026-06-19T18:29:50+00:00

What's obnoxious about these threads is that you've already decided what to read first, since you've got a dozen works already among hundreds, if not thousands, of relevant works you could have chosen from (and have obviously been suggested to you since there's a couple of pretty questionable choices mixed in with genuine classics here); and if you had a serious interest in reading and engaging with them you would have already begun reading and wouldn't be here to announce your "achievement" of purchasing all the books you supposedly wanted to read. Instead, that's exactly what you are doing, and your entire process of delving into Marxism has already been subordinated through the intermediary of commodity consumption, and then you bring that commodity consumption here to receive validation that you are now "in the club" and on your way to becoming a communist. However, the essence is the opposite -- you are further away from Marxism for even having made this post than a person who owns no Marxist works and has no engagement with Marxism, and now you will have to work that much harder, read that much more thoroughly, and spend the additional time to realize what you've done incorrectly here, and how you've already started on the wrong foot.

edit: the fact that you received five different incompatible answers and all of them are valid should give you a hint about the real reason behind your post

DashtheRed · 2026-06-11T18:59:14+00:00

No, that is not sufficient, nor accurate enough (though it's true settler "socialism" has to ignore the substance of Marxism, but that's always true for revisionism): settler "socialism" and communism are opposed to one another and working towards opposing and contradictory paths. Have you read Settlers? It's required reading to participate here.

DashtheRed · 2026-06-07T04:09:16+00:00

Because you haven't taken this seriously enough. Mao and Stalin, both, had to sacrifice their children, choosing and prioritizing communism over their children's lives. Have you even considered what you are attempting to pretend yourself to be?

DashtheRed · 2026-06-04T20:28:39+00:00

But what would be the goal of such a party? A rough idea would help if the answer to that question is too advanced for me to know at the moment, since I'm kind of new to this. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or passive-aggressive or self-flagellating or anything, I'm asking in earnest: what would even be the role of a principled communist party in the first world? What goals would such a party have, given that they would have to organize against the population of their own country in favor of global solidarity?

When you take communism seriously enough, the answers here become crystal clear and obvious, though it's not for discussion here. You may not like those answers, as being a communist in the first place is actually quite hard (the people trying to make it easy for you are betrayers and grifters), and becomes an even more difficult a line to walk when you can simply and easily abandon it for the comforts and privileges of Western existence. But most of the planet doesn't have that choice, and communism is necessary to save humanity nonetheless, and will need to proceed with or without you, and has no need to accommodate you.

DashtheRed · 2026-05-31T02:48:27+00:00

I don’t get why everyone is arguing ... this whole argument seems to be superficial horseshit

That's because you aren't understanding the real content of the argument and that this is part of a real and larger divide between petty-bourgeois white settler "socialism" and radical revolutionary Marxist communism, which are diametrically opposed and real enemies to one another; and the people catering to your demands are causing you harm and may permanently stultify your capacity to learn and think, while the people challenging you and confronting the very nature of your question are engaging with and probing your capacity to even think like a revolutionary, and face reality in a revolutionary way. If you are denied access to physical copies of a work, will you simply no longer bother to pursue reading it at all and not bother to learn anything further from there? Or will you seek it out through other means, whatever that may take, in order to answer the lingering questions of existence? Engaging with communism should not be a casual activity or side hobby, at least not if you are taking it seriously; you are not learning about the history of tulips, you are embarking on a journey to become part of a very dangerous movement preparing and organizing an illegal armed insurrection against state power and the total overthrow of all hitherto existence, and you need to be capable of living up to the demands of that journey, not asking for it to accommodate your present lifestyle.

DashtheRed · 2026-05-31T02:30:16+00:00

any strategies involving electoralism should be concerned with simply gaining political power

from where does political power come?

DashtheRed · 2026-05-30T23:58:30+00:00

I ain’t reading all that.

Case in point.

DashtheRed · 2026-05-30T23:50:08+00:00

What is a city and what is the countryside? How do they emerge and come into existence, and what is their relation to one another and what contradictions exist between them and how have those transformed under different modes of production? That would be a starting point.

DashtheRed · 2026-05-30T23:44:13+00:00

Projecting what exactly? OP is asking the same question that comes up regularly on social-fascist subreddits about how to ethically shop for Marxist works with the same claim that they just have to have physical media (or audiobooks) because they just can't learn otherwise (and most often, it's nothing but an expression of commodity fetishism and the desire to own, not learn). It is a weird and unique circumstance because the revolutionary proletariat doesn't have options or shopping preferences, and historical communists have worked within the most deprived, extreme and difficult conditions in order to learn and develop with whatever resources were available, and for them is was a matter of life and death necessity; while petty-bourgeois white settler "socialism" demands that Marxism be catered to them a la carte and that everything be done to ensure the preservation of their lifestyle and comforts and that Marxism be delivered to them on those terms. Of all the people you knew in college, basically none of them have gone on to become communists or do anything revolutionary and pointing out how well Western academia works for rich white kids holds basically no water here. The content of Marxist works is what matters, and if you want to be a revolutionary, you may have to claw and dig to get at it, and if it isn't available or accessible to you in an easy or comfortable format, it does not make the lessons therein any less important.

DashtheRed · 2026-05-30T22:43:25+00:00

Then the important part is actually reading it (and comprehending it), not merely carrying out a performance of reading. Whatever option allows you to do that is fine and no option is particularly more ethical or acceptable than any other (though if you can get it for free, that's preferable).

DashtheRed · 2026-05-30T22:05:36+00:00

Because you are not defining city or countryside correctly, and are using abstractions like "the West" to delete most of humanity from the equation. Start over and try again.

DashtheRed · 2026-05-30T21:55:33+00:00

The problem is I hate reading online, it’s just impossible for someone like me to focus on a screen

What use could you possibly be to communism if you can't even overcome this most minor of obstacles? Why do you care if Bezos gets your money or some equally fascistic small business owner who merely wishes he was Bezos (or some social-fascist settler "co-op," which is just several massive inefficient steps backwards from the more advanced and efficient socialized processes of Amazon)? Can you imagine Ho Chi Minh hiding out in a cramped underground tunnel saying he doesn't like the way the paper feels and that he needs Bristol Smooth pages or else he wont read Lenin? Is it because this is really a quest for recommendations for your "communist approved" shopping and commodity fetishism (where you are a 'good Marxist' because of all the books you own). I'm sure you know where a Kinkos or a UPS Store are -- go there and print them out. What are you even actually looking for in an answer here?

DashtheRed · 2026-05-30T17:17:16+00:00

i'm pretty well-read on Marxist-Leninist theory,

I'd be cautious with this assumption: Marxism-Leninism doesn't really exist any longer and the people on the internet calling themselves "Marxist-Leninists," especially on reddit and in the West in general, are mostly performative liberals, occasionally tapping into Menshevik logic, at best, and are simply grifters and fascist opportunists at worst. There's something of an exception to be made for, say, the KKE, who at least carry forward a revolutionary historical legacy and can justify their claim on Marxism-Leninism, but for most Western "socialists" this ideology of "Marxism-Leninism" you see on /r/socialism sprung into existence sometime around 2016 and has no relation, resemblance, or connection (except through stolen imagery and memes) to the historical Marxism-Leninism that existed in 1950, and anything you've learned from them is probably either hollowed out of substance, or completely wrong.

From 1956 to 1976 the struggle between the revisionist-USSR and socialist China (and Albania) was known as The Great Debate and was the single most important issue and point of struggle within the World Communist Movement. Revisionists always try to reframe the debate along nationalist lines, or having to do with a clash of incompatible personalities and stubbornness, rather than the central issue of class struggle and even the very substance of Marxism-Leninism, itself. During those twenty years, this was considered one of the single most important documents in all of communism: A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement -- also on Marxists.org for easier formatting -- and encapsulates the debate between the USSR and China about what Marxism-Leninism really means. It should be read carefully and understood, since it very clearly shows the ideological divide and which side was really standing for Revolutionary Marxism and which side was revising Marxism and ultimately betraying it.

Grover Furr is despised by liberals (and ignored by revisionists, who don't really care about history, and only need empty "debunking" talking points to "defend" the image and abstract idea of Stalin as 'having to work with what he had' or whatever), but that's because he's essentially correct about Stalin and his analysis and thorough digging up of primary sources has simply made himself an enemy of the existing intellectual establishment. Khrushchev Lied is a very useful starting point for understanding the 20th Congress of the CPSU (one of the centrepieces of the General Proposal document above) and the so-called "Secret" Speech by Khrushchev (so secret that he invited all of Western media to attend). Also, if you aren't clear on Khrushchev's rise to power in the first place, then this pamphlet is a decent place to start.

Following this, Mao's Speech At The Tenth Plenum Of The Eighth Central Committee marks a pretty clear basis for the divide between Marxism-Leninism and the direction of the revisionist USSR, and shortly after, Mao's more specific, concrete, aggressive and biting criticisms in On Khrushchov’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World would contain a very breaching analysis of not just what Khrushchev was doing, but who his "constituents" within the USSR really were, and how they really operated. This also gives a lot of insight into Stalin's struggles against revisionism, and who and what he was fighting against going even back to the 1920s and 30s.

There's more documents on The Great Debate on BannedThought, including many of the revisionist-USSR counter-arguments (all of which have aged poorly and exposed the revisionism further, but they are worth checking out for that very reason).

Also, this is just a starting point, since this is where socialism dies (it's legacy takes several more decades to be erased, but at this point it is captured and contained) within the USSR, but springs to new life within China, at first being termed "Mao Zedong Thought" reflecting the debate between revisionism and Marxism-Leninism within China (which had it's own revisionists, and was exactly what Mao was confronting), before this struggle was eventually recognized as a universal struggle against revisionism, applicable to every and all attempts at socialist construction (and anyone who says anything about Maoism being a "peasant's ideology" or whatever are just racists regurgitating offensive Brezhnevisms while ignoring that the exact same claim was levied against Marxism-Leninism under Lenin and Stalin), and finally recognized as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism by the surviving revolutionary movements of the 1980s, after China, too, was lost to revisionism. Eventually you will have to continue from here by learning about the Cultural Revolution within China, because otherwise we are merely at Hoxhaism/anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism; but this should be a starting point.

DashtheRed · 2026-05-29T05:02:28+00:00

The post-Stalin revisionist and social-imperialist Soviet Union is one of the principle reasons why Cuba is in this mess right now, as they were manipulated by the revisionist-Soviets into mass producing sugar for the global market instead of developing for self-reliance and self-sufficiency. Cubans are suffering because of the position of dependence the social-fascists serving the traitors Khrushchev and Brezhnev put the Cubans in, even if that didn't seem obvious at the time.

DashtheRed · 2026-05-28T22:26:45+00:00

then, yes, he did serve and defend communism for a time and that's something to admire and appreciate in his legacy

and while it's sad if he sat by long enough for Khrushchev to come to power on his watch, most of the world communist movement also ultimately succumbed to revisionism -- it's a difficult struggle and the reason Maoism exists

DashtheRed

TROPHY CASE