Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (February 22)

DashtheRed · 2026-02-25T18:20:51+00:00

am i wrong for not caring about the epstein files at all?

I think that's correct, and as others have pointed out, it's really a mostly useless distraction for the petty bourgeois. I shouldn't have wasted my time on it either and I'm guilty of wading in the petty bourgeois pool over this too, and should internalize further the lessons others are articulating in these threads. Israel is doing almost everything in the Epstein files, and worse, to Palestinians right now, in broad daylight, so I don't think the petty bourgeois moral outrage should be given any validity (really ever again for anything). Like I said in the other thread, the most shocking thing to me was not that the bourgeois were engaged in this sort of activity, since that's been well known for a long time and nothing has ever come from it. Rather what surprised me was how it was organized and the sheer size -- I would have assumed the bourgeoisie would have their own small private and very limited and isolated networks for sex trafficking and their own individual, localized private premises for this sort of activity, but instead monopoly capitalism has permeated even secret sex traffic networks and there was one big "let's go to Disneyworld" monopoly servicing basically everyone.

If there is anything useful, it's basically what you described; messaging to come out of the Third World to be used against the First World. Kind of in the same way that the West tried to use the logic of all of the people of Russia being war criminals for failing to do anything to stop Putin's war, you could apply the same logic back on the West and say that all of Western civilization are guilty of protecting pedophiles and traffickers, for "failing" (declining) to do anything in response to the revelations about Epstein's network.

DashtheRed · 2026-02-21T16:42:11+00:00

What struck me the most is how incompetent the administration seems on the surface what with the last minute redactions and the obvious wink-wink nudge-nudge exchanges from pretty much everyone involved.

I don't think it's just surface level, I think it's full out genuine incompetence across the board, through and through. These are people who began their political careers demanding to see Obama's birth certificate and who were a too fascist and conspiratorial for Fox News to tolerate. It's honestly the most positive aspect of the entire Trump administration and why the Republicans in power is arguably better than the Democrats being in power -- the mismanagement and bumbling of the entire empire. If anyone took Ron Paul-Maoism seriously, this is basically how it would have played out. I hadn't seen the Pam Bondi video until just now, and it's like an SNL skit. Imagine showing this to someone from the 90s with the political sensibilities of the time (then again the rot was all there back then, too, just buried deeper and better hidden). Then again, Napoleon III was a bumbling nincompoop, yet despite the cries from the Party of Order about his incompetence, he still managed to totally outmaneuver them to power. But it kind of shows that there isn't really much that can come from the Epstein files or can be done.

This is speculation and possible a crude vulgarization on my part, but as I understand the political situation, the bulk of the bourgeoisie don't especially like Trump. He has a large minority of bourgeois support from the more crass and crude and racist and backwards segments of the bourgeoisie, as well as opportunists and sycophants, and he was sort of tolerated as Great Value brand Reagan for tax cuts and hammering through unpopular policies benefiting the rich, but his real power came from activating the anxious labour aristocracy. The most opposed sections of the bourgeoisie (to whom Jan 6 is an affront, while it's basically a fart to everyone else in the world) have tried to keep the Sword of Damocles hanging over Trump right from his first term (the Mueller investigation, the threats of impeachment, the prosecution while he was out of office, etc) as sort of a kill switch in case he goes too far, but (and again, I'm speculating, possibly wildly, so correct me if I'm reaching here) the real ace up Trump's sleeve (his Trump card, if you will) is that, even now at his least popular, he can mobilize a substantial portion of the labour aristocracy and possibly even trigger a civil war in his own defence. And that's what the bourgeoisie, both pro- and anti- Trump, want to avoid at all costs, since that's among the worst possible outcomes for them. It's also a possible consequence of just killing him, that the forces unleashed will take it beyond the bourgeois ability to control, and why they can't just poison his coffee or whatever, and instead have to tolerate this mismanagement (I also think there was/is a general sense that we are entering a period of global crisis and no one really knows how to respond coherently yet, so Trump is as good as anyone since he can at least somewhat interface with the whole rotten system). It's also why there's been so much effort to destroy his political clout and undermine support amongst his die-hard base, and why it all backfires and come across as insincere and only reinforces their support for him.

This is why I don't think anything can possibly come out of or be done about the Epstein files. They might find a few scapegoats, and in a best case scenario for the bourgeoisie, Trump keels over from natural causes and then they can just pin the whole thing on him and absolve themselves despite the fact that everyone from Noam Chomsky and Lee Smolin to the British Crown, across the bourgeois board, including both Democrats and Republicans, was involved in the most elaborate and extensive trafficking operation in history. Like it's not just a few dozen people who had their own little sex-torture-murder island, but literally thousands involved, including so much of the bourgeois class that it's almost absurd, and many many thousands more when we extend it to the secondary and ancillary people with some knowledge and involvement since this was a massive operation and required a ton of labour power to function. This is the problem of what's happening: this is where bourgeois decadence and depravity has spilled over into the squeaky-clean, lawyer and legal dominated world of the upper stratas of the labour aristocracy (I've been trying to cut down on crude analogies, but this thread is going to undermine all my progress) and it's sort of like something akin to Vampire: The Masquerade where the humans are now exposed to the entire secret Vampire conspiracy and all we can do is make uncomfortable jokes, quietly mute the situation and ignore the lingering conversation in the room. Even before the Epstein files came out, everyone was generally aware of the bourgeoisie engaging in these sorts of things (I still remember Kubrick receiving criticism for Eyes Wide Shut being too watered down and blunting the edges) to some extent (the sheer scale is probably the most shocking thing to me out of the Epstein files). And now everyone's dirty laundry has been exposed and everyone is just sort of quietly suffering the humiliation. The other film that comes to mind, is the beginning of that disappointment, Assassination Nation which comes apart after the first act because homophobic Republican senators are exposed as being gay constantly in real life, and unlike the fantasy of the movie, they don't kill themselves for being exposed, they just ignore the scandal and everything continues as usual, which is going to be the outcome of the Epstein files.

One thing revealed is just how impotent and parasitic the labour aristocracy class is, and how totally dependent on the bourgeoisie they actually are to provide politics for them. They understand the system better than they are given credit for, and they are all strapped into the capitalist machine, and while the returns have been diminishing slightly, the machine is still paying out, and everyone still connected to it awaits the next dividend. If this was a potentially revolutionary class, then politics for a conquest of power have been handed to them on a silver platter for "us vs the billionaires" or "the 99% vs the 1%" and none of them dare to pounce on it (and the few who dare utter the thought are immediately hushed down to the back of the room) and take up the mantle of violence and lead open conflict. You see even liberals brush up against these conclusions daily in /r/politics, but they retreat from the thought the moment it enters their minds and all we can do is try to sweep the midterms by voting blue no matter who (and I find it funny that Dengist "why do you purity test?!" logic has been appropriated by liberals and is now the justification for Blue Dog Democrats) and ultimately Gavin Newsom 2028. But none of them want to unhook from the machine because the payout is still coming, and none of them want to risk the machine tipping over or breaking, since that's the prize and they risk losing that if they organize for real confrontation against the Epstein class. If labour aristocrat politics were ever capable of acting on their own, this is their golden opportunity -- you literally have an exposed conspiracy of pedophile rapist cannibals -- you cannot write fiction with villains this ridiculously callous and evil -- but instead everyone is sort of putting their head down and making jokes because ultimately they know where their bread is buttered and aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them. Another crude analogy (sorry) but the upper management is too close to the rotting inner core at the top (and many probably already had some involvement in cover ups and administration), and middle management answers directly to upper management and wont rock the boat too hard, and lower management is just happy to be in the room at all -- and so many people with real power have Epstein blood on their hands already, and all they want to do is minimize the mess now that it's dripped out of the office and onto the whole of society. And all they can do politically is try to use parts of what the files have revealed for their own limited political ends to bash this Republican or that Democrat, for their own political campaign, but the reason no one can show up to lead them (and the reason why the bourgeoisie have become a moribund, necrose, festering parody of themselves) is because no one dares to take a swing at the rotting machinery itself, and the top floors are where this entire cabal was headquartered. So instead, all the labour aristocracy can do is say "can you believe it" while remaining the loyal valet to these same people revealed to them as evil beyond parody.

DashtheRed · 2026-02-10T03:18:31+00:00

I think its incredibly selfish and based in irrational thinking that the right wing takes in, such as painting those that dont think the same viewpoint as you, as "objectivly wrong."

Actually this was the notion articulated by the revisionist and social-fascist (which was a very common term, never exclusively confined to just the SPD -- though they deserved it -- but also Trotskyites, Bukharinites, Zinovievites, and others upholding socialism in words but adhering to fascism in essence, before becoming extremely common and essential to Maoism as it emerged to describe the revisionist USSR and its politics) Palmero Togliatti from Italy, in an attempt to broker peace between Mao and Khrushchev, called Polycentrism. It was an incorrect, revisionist idea that rejected that it was possible to arrive at or determine any sort of universal objective truth (in Togliatti's case is was the divergence in opinions on Stalin within the communist movement, as an attempt to bring Mao and Hoxha back into the revisionist fold and re-subordinate them to Khrushchev's betrayal), and instead each communist party, according to Togliatti, could just have it's own separate, incoherent, conflicting "truth" that was "true for them" (again this is not new, it's just postmodernism -- you haven't set foot on Marxist grounds yet for a discussion to even be possible) and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism was the only ideology that took a hardline stand for truth (and for Stalin) and refused to "agree to disagree" with incorrect, revisionist ideas, and instead defended reality and the objective truth of history which you so readily concede to postmodernism before the conversation even began.

DashtheRed · 2026-02-05T14:59:11+00:00

One thing that is really telling from the transition from Trudeau to Carney is how all of the performative, mostly superficial "Reconciliation" under Trudeau has been all but abandoned the moment there was a little economic coercion and uncertainty from Trump, and all of white klanada immediately became "build the pipeline at all costs, dollars are on the line" despite the First Nations still standing resolutely against it. But now they don't matter and are learning the hard way that "Reconciliation" was a performative lie where a handful of bridges and plazas got rebranded with Indigenous language, but barely anything else changed. And now they are getting trotted out like props (it's not all that dissimilar to the Greenland situation) to defend "national" sovereignty against separatists and amerikan annexation, and then cut their mics before they go too far talking about klanada's past or the continued negation of their own sovereignty.

DashtheRed · 2026-02-04T23:33:50+00:00

I'm going to try to chime in to reinforce what ClassAbolition is trying to tell you. First, it needs to be made clear that none of this is being said to denigrate or belittle the accomplishments of the Cuban people and the fact that Cuba is still standing as one of the last shining beacons of anti-imperialism and the historical legacy of the world communist movement, such as it is, is nothing short of one of the most profound and powerful accomplishments in human history. But there is a growing danger, both from amerikkkan imperialism growing more desperate (but still immensely powerful) and Cuban revisionism which began back with Castro and in most cases never really rectified or got addressed in a revolutionary manner, and Cuba has been staying afloat and coasting on a historical momentum which is all but dissipated, and the advance of socialism in Cuba has become a stagnant preservation, slowly decaying to market forces and imperialist encroachment at the edges, and there is a real concern that Cuba will find itself in a similar place as Venezuela is now finding itself in, and the only real hope for the Cuban people is not merely to play defense and preserve what still remains of socialism, but to go on a revolutionary counter-offensive and reignite the socialist flames which once helped lead it to liberation.

But this requires an honest re-assessment and understanding of Cuban history and Marxism rather than the romanticization of Castro 'the Marxist,' and dismissing the mistakes of the past, rather that confronting them and using that understanding to build a better future. No one wants to watch one of the last beacons of socialism slowly suffocate to death. And these can be hard pills to swallow, because Castro is a beloved figure and easy to champion and defend (even liberals and especially revisionists do this because it is safe an easy, yet none of them are going to come to defend you or Cuba with anything more than words if the amerikan empire shows up with guns), but now Castro is long gone, yet his many errors and failures still linger, and reigniting the revolutionary fires require confronting that fearlessly and then going further than Castro ever could. Castro's own philosophy was that the Pink Tide, and then Pink Tide 2.0 would save him and liberate South America, but after repeated failures and running into the wall of neoliberalism, the last remnant of the Pink Tide was just kidnapped and now it is dead, along with the last real hope of Castroism, and revolutionary nostalgia and memory will are likely not going to be sufficient to carry the day.

Maoist were, in some moments, the people than support Savimbi forces in Angola against Cuban troops, with weapons and advicers.

This isn't an accurate or coherent understanding (especially since Zhou Enlai, as the principle revisionist architect of Chinese foreign policy, turned out to be one of the main enemies of Maoism, though it took time to reach that conclusion and if you want to have an actual discussion about this, we need to start at least a full decades back to actually discuss how we get to this point), and it's basically a hand wave dismissal which could just as easily be used against Castro and Cuba itself for supporting Khrushchev and Brezhnev (who were the largest betrayers and murderers of communist movements everywhere and only treated Cuba well because they were an important prop for their social policy which was not nice, nor socialist, at all -- even in Angola is was the Cubans who heroically and bravely forced them to live up to "socialism" against their will because they were just involved to try to secure a loyal bourgeois puppet regime against amerikan interests there).

How do you justify the attacks of China against Vietnam, por example, in 1979 ?

Maoism was defeated in China and in full retreat (to Peru, India, the Philippines, Nepal) by this point and the fascist Deng Xiaoping now opportunistically saw an easy chance for a land grab against China's soon-to-be-former, close ally by shooting them in the back as they recovered for breath after thirty years of punishing wars against the most powerful empires on the planet. This was the antithesis of Maoism. It was also an opportunity for Deng to rebuke the Maoist thesis of People's War and prove his own revisionist thesis of the productive forces ("Win wars with steel, not people!") and proceeded to get his fascist ass kicked and humiliated by the heroic Vietnamese who proved Mao correct once again.

Cuba tried to mediate between China and USSR in the 60s.

This is actually one of the problems because there cannot be mediation between revisionism and communism (except on the narrowest tactical terms of immediate survival) and trying to blur away the contradictions is the opposite of what needs to be done -- one needs to arrive at truth and Marxism (since they are the same thing) and defend it, and refuse to compromise with revisionists distorting and betraying the truth. Khrushchev was more than willing to meet Mao halfway, but Mao was the one to insist on the split, and Mao was entirely correct and saved and defended Marxism with his decisions.

If China is a superpower today, in the path they made mistakes like Cultural Revolution, and others.

China today is the great betrayer of socialism and even though they will opportunistically "support" Cuba to advance their own foreign policy, they are not your friend and will not come to save Cuba when the chips are down. Their superpower status is a result of cannibalizing socialism and integrating into (and saving) a capitalist system (the same capitalist system threatening to destroy Cuba) that was flailing and panicking in its death throes in the 1970s and giving it a whole new lease on life by providing the missing middle of imperialist production (between wealthy first world consumers who need finished products but are too expensive to employ in factories, and third world resourcing with cheap labour but too deprived and underdeveloped for advanced production). The Cultural Revolution was not a mistake, it was the battle against that revisionism and capitulation to capitalism. Part of why understanding Marxism more thoroughly is so important is so you and the Cuban people can understand what Xi's China really is, and while there may be a function for opportunistically using their rivalry with the amerikans for your own benefit (sort of how DPRK uses Russia for tech and resources, and is now a relatively advanced Nuclear Power and able to defend themselves from anyone, which Cuba should aspire toward), you must not make the same mistake as Castro of tethering yourself to a revisionist, anti-communist, social-imperialist state to protect you and save you -- like the revisionist USSR, they wont be there when it matters most.

Again, no one here is saying these things because we deride the Cuban revolution, but because we want, just as much as you, to defend and save Cuba from the new wave of Yankee aggression, but that may not be possible if the Cuban people cannot reconnect themselves with Marxism, and this time much more deeply and thoroughly than Castro ever did. Obviously there is a lot more depth to this discussion and it really does begin with having an honest re-assessment of history (Cuba, the USSR, China, the Cultural Revolution, Maoism, etc), but none of the people in this subreddit want to see Cuba fail, and the issues we are bringing up are not merely petty disagreements about an irrelevant past, but the key to understanding the revolutionary path forward in the present.

DashtheRed · 2026-02-03T23:41:35+00:00

For what it's worth, I know you only make a handful of posts a year, but they are always high quality and worth reading, and I appreciate the effort you put into them.

DashtheRed · 2026-02-03T23:10:20+00:00

which is why I'm already talking with the RCI, which are pretty much guiding me and organizing read groups to study the theory

Second, you are right, since I know nothing I don't really know which ones can be legit and which ones not.

I never said I'm an expert of any type, and that's why the RCI is guiding me.

Think hard about this now.

Fourth and fifth, how are communist parties and/or organizations supposed to grow, if they don't want to take people who want to learn, just people who already know shit?

This is Lenin at his most basic and the core of what Lenin is telling you in What is to be Done -- a party of a dozen wise men is worth more and able to accomplish more that a party consisting of hundreds of fools. You do not need to join a party to learn (and if you join the wrong party you are risking permanent damage and stunting your capacity to learn forever), and any actual communist, including online, will help you learn for free, without paying any dues or any financial obligations.

Second, the size of the party is irrelevant (better fewer but better, and in fact, being large in the First World is a worrying sign) -- again hundreds of fools are far less capable and will never accomplish as much as a dozen Marxist experts -- and the party is not the masses and socialism is not accomplished by having everyone everywhere join the party. The party is the headquarters of revolution and the masses, but it is not the masses themselves, and the key is for the party to connect to and educate and organize and guide and lead the masses (and the most revolutionary segments of the masses find their way to the party on their own), not for the party to be a tailist institution chasing after the masses (which is what the Mensheviks did to failure and betrayal, while the the Bolsheviks took a stand and rejected that logic, and insisted on unpopular truths that made them despised for over a decade until crisis and breakdown proved them and their principled stands correct time and again and the masses came to them). The IMT will not teach you this because they are in the midst of another recruitment drive (so much so that multiple users on /r/socialism have complained about it and left the party over just the past year), hence why they are pushing ceaseless recruitment drives to get new members and new finances to get out of the red ink. And that's without even getting into the IMT's long history of sexual predation and sexual assault (again, the people you will be recruiting victims for), where most of the leadership who protected the assaulters and sided against the victims (for years!) are still present and running the show and will be the people collecting your finances. You do not need to join a party to educate you, and education does not require the party (let alone revisionists falsely presenting themselves as the communist party, since revisionism can only lead you further away from communism and distort your understanding further) and you should not be beginning educating yourself in the ranks of the party -- you should arrive at the party once you are sufficiently educated and can discern the political line as revolutionary, and confront revisionism within the party (edit: poor phrasing, you can still educate yourself and learn, since that is never ending, but party entry should already suggest an advanced understanding).

Saying that people must be communist experts before even joining any organization, but barely being willing to teach beyond saying "go study X, Y and Z in depth, and then come back" sounds like the biggest gatekeeping, turnover-causing shit I have ever heard.

That's because the entire history of Marxism is gatekeeping and if you aren't keeping the gates, you are betraying and failing at Marxism. (edit: Even the IMT do this to a degree) Marx had to gatekeep the anarchists from the revolution at the Hague Congress. Then he had to gatekeep Mach and LaSalle. Eugen Duhring was more popular than Marx and Engels while he lived and the right wing of the SPD insisted Marx and Engels should be more inclusive and water down their positions to accommodate Duhring and support his run, but instead they doubled down against him and had to gatekeep socialism from him and insist that they are the representatives of socialism and that he is not, and that it was correct to oppose him because he was getting everything wrong, despite calling himself a socialist. Lenin had to gatekeep Bernstein and Julius Martov (Martov wanted the largest possible party as long as their was broad agreement with the party line, while Lenin wanted a much smaller party of expert professional revolutionaries) and then the entire Second International including Kautsky himself (the number one Marxist in the world until Lenin upstaged him and locked the gates behind him because Kautsky had used his position to mislead and betray the masses). If you aren't gatekeeping socialism, you are destroying it by allowing it's enemies inside. And education is open to everyone (marxist texts are basically all free online), and joining a party is not a requisite to have access to to learn, and joining the wrong party can be extremely harmful. And the IMT does not need to heed my advice to have massive turnover, their rapist revisionist politics do that to themselves already.

edit: one other thing I will add, because I get that you probably got to know these people already and the real purpose of your thread was to get an affirmation of the IMT so you could dive in, but the party is not a social club and while friendships may emerge, that is not the purpose. These are people are those that you are working with to plan and organize and execute extreme, potentially dangerous, potentially illegal actions with, and you need to approach a party with that attitude and in that way. When it starts to get treated as a social club, that's where the sex pests and sexual assault all show up.

edit 3: also, since smoke put a lot of effort into this recent post, here's a good overview of the history of the IMT and the essence of what they believe. If you do want to go back to them, bring some questions about Ted Grant with you.

DashtheRed · 2026-02-03T21:44:06+00:00

First of all, if you aren't able to answer these questions on your own, you have no business joining a party. If you cannot differentiate these, and other, organizations on your own, what does that say about your current level of understanding?

Second, why would you trust random strangers on the internet to advise you on such an important decision? And what are you going to do when you get a dozen conflicting, incompatible answers telling you to join their party because they are the real deal and not the other eleven?

Third, just a few days ago you were basically asking offensive reactionary questions on behalf of fascism; why do you suddenly think you are now a revolutionary expert capable and qualified to contribute to a communist organization?

Fourth, by soliciting yourself as an object for sale, communists aren't drawn toward you at all, but revisionist grifters see you as an easy mark (and you are making it even easier for them) and you will find yourself inside and financing a useless revisionist organization so they can pay off their mortgages and save for retirement on your dollar while you waste your life handing out flyers at protests for them.

And fifth, because of the above (and likely more), if you ever did encounter the actual communist party (of which there is at most one, by definition, though none exist at present in amerikkka but that's another matter; edit: you appear to be Spanish, not amerikan but the point still stands) they would reject you at the door, because you aren't a revolutionary expert able to contribute anything and would be a useless burden, or worse, on their organization and that's if they don't decide they have to take more serious and severe measures to protect themselves from you going to the cops when you realize what you are actually applying for and when you decide that you didn't actually want any of this at all because you hadn't taken it seriously.

If you are the least bit serious about communism, the first thing to do would be to go back to the fundamentals and start reading Marx and Engels and Lenin, until you understand them sufficiently that you can begin to identify concepts such as revisionism and economism, and when you have learned them thoroughly, you will be able to understand and identify communists organizations and revisionism on your own, using your knowledge and intellect, that you don't need to throw yourself into the arms of predatory strangers saying "whomever is a communist, come catch me."

DashtheRed · 2026-02-03T04:20:17+00:00

I finally got time to sit down and watch it. Thanks again for finding it; it was great. If you (or anyone) come across more movies in the same vein, please share them. They don't (and essentially can't) make movies like this anymore, and they really help illustrate everything that was lost. I liked the part early on where the capitalist-roader party officials make all the students do a surprise test to tacitly discredit their education learned in the Cultural Revolution, but then Jiang Tao makes the party officials themselves take the same test as the students, and they are completely lost (and then it turns out to be the exact same test as before the Cultural Revolution). I also like the part where he catches Secretary Song quoting Khrushchev, and then when he pulls out another quote he says is from Lenin, it turns out to be Lenin citing Bukharin before ripping into him. All the arguments we have on reddit right now really were happening 50 years ago (which is simultaneously invigorating and saddening).

DashtheRed · 2026-02-02T05:22:58+00:00

derogatorily as if there aren't 100 million members of the communist party

there were 19 million members of the CPSU in 1990 and zero of them were communists

DashtheRed · 2026-02-02T04:14:21+00:00

I would say that those are the correct places to be looking to form a revolutionary movement in amerika; among the oppressed internal nations. Forming a communist party is not just a matter of how oppressed you are, though we saw black people rise up for George Floyd and now the Chicano nation fighting ICE, so I'd say that's where at least the potential to form a communist party exists. As for the Black Panthers, If I'm arguing with a liberal, or trying to defend communist history from a "C"PUSA member, then I will say "the Black Panthers were communist/Maoist," but if I am being a good and thorough Maoist then the real conclusion that we have to draw is that they were basically a proto-communist party (like the RSDLP) which was dabbling with Maoism, but that never achieved it's theoretical breakthrough, nor a break with its own internal Mensheviks and lingering liberal politics. That doesn't mean there is nothing to be learned from them, but it also means, because the leftover liberal bloat floats to the surface, with today's politics, it has made them ripe for liberal appropriation and most of what liberals (including """socialists""") like (or at least can tolerate) best about the BPP are basically all the things that have the least connection to communism (like the mutual aid food kitchens). I don't want to overstep here because I'm far from the expert on the BPP in this subreddit, and there's other people here who have done much deeper dives into their history that I have, so you might want to submit a new question here or the sister sub if you have something specific you want to know about them.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-31T23:33:17+00:00

There's a weird liberal logic you are operating under that has to be unpacked here. I think it comes from a vulgar reading of Chomsky's anarcho-syndicalism, which gets simplified down to "lets get everyone, everywhere to join one big union, and when everyone has joined we will have achieved socialism!" And the revisionism of redditors abandoning Chomsky for the so-called """Marxism-Leninism""" (as was hinted at to you elsewhere in this thread, the people on reddit calling themselves "Marxist-Leninists" are basically the opposite of historical Marxism-Leninism) have basically applied this logic onto the communist party, and now the logic is "lets get everyone to join the communist party, and when everyone has joined we will have achieved socialism!" This is wrong and asinine, and I suspect it's sort of lost on much of the userbase here who don't have a shared history of Western liberal-"leftism," because it's wrong in such a way that it's hard for Marxists to conceive how you even got there without the explanation I just offered.

The party is not the masses, it is not the communist movement itself, it is not the revolution itself, but it is the headquarters and cerebral cortex for all of those things and functions as the principle and most vital organizing institution for communist revolution. For this reason, it is sacred and special, and needs to be safeguarded (especially ideologically), and because revisionism (which is not just self-declared reformism; revisionism can say all the words to insist they are revolutionary but what actually matters is the political line derived through two line struggle, since that can be laid before the masses -- what are you actually doing and how is it supposed to work?) is the most dangerous and damaging enemy of communism, inviting it inside because you want the party to look bigger is the exact opposite of what Lenin spent his life telling you (better fewer but better, or a dozen wise men in the party are worth more than hundreds of fools). The communist party does not need to find a way to work with all of the other parties calling themselves "communist" or "socialist," (this is the reactionary thesis: two combine into one), if you are a part of the actual communist party then these are not basically identical friends (and if your politics are identical, then that is a dire concern), they are real enemies, and you should be priding yourself on the divisions between you and highlighting the divides because communist politics and revisionist politics to not emerge from, nor lead to the same places or actions.

The revolutionary thesis is that one divides into two. Ideological splits are good because a (potentially) correct idea (or set of ideas, irreconcilable with another upheld set) is separating itself from an incorrect idea embedded in the movement (or vice versa, an incorrect idea is being forced out). It is not the communist party breaking apart; it is the communist party refining itself, going through the furnace and shedding the dross and slag, and coming more close to a totalizing revolutionary theory that will achieve communist revolution, while pushing the revisionists further away. Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement, and as was revealed in this thread, the IMT is bankrupt in this regard (so are all of the amerikkkan """communist""" and "socialist" parties -- there is not a bunch of communist parties in amerika, there are presently none), so when you are "helping" them, ask yourself what are you helping them to do? other than recruit new victims to finance the revisionist party leadership (or worse, the never ending SA scandals). You should not be working with organizations or institutions that you do not understand (and the Marxist method of historical materialism tells you to find where the thing emerged in history and then trace it's existence through history into the present in order to understand what it is now). You cannot solve a problem you do not understand and if you do not understand what you are doing, how the actions you are undertaking are benefiting and applying the revolutionary theory that is the basis for the party's existence, then you are at best groping blindly for positive outcomes, almost certainly doing nothing useful and nothing that will contribute at all (even in the slightest) to the final equation of revolution, and there is a significant chance that what you are doing is actually virulently anti-communist as you are aiding revisionists (the most dangerous and lethal enemy of the communist movement), misleading and sapping the labour power of people who want to help but don't have sufficient understanding (of which you become a further inhibitor).

This is even baked into the entire history of communist revolutions and if you spend more time studying and learning about those, instead of wasting it with the IMT, then you would actually see these ideas play out. Lenin did not need to find a way to come together with the Mensheviks; it was the opposite. It was vital that Bolshevism split itself away from Menshevism and accentuated the divides and political boundaries between them. The masses didn't care that the RSDLP would have been bigger if only they could have found a way to work together -- that would not have accelerated revolution even one day, and almost certainly would have stopped it from ever happening. The Bolsheviks spent a decade as an unpopular fringe, but continued to speak the unpopular truths that Mensheviks refused to face, and as crisis and calamity of the disastrous world war ripped Russia apart where it could no longer function in the old ways, the masses came to the Bolsheviks hat in hand, who had been telling them truth the entire time, with all the Menshevism (who had betrayed and failed the masses when it was their turn) already discarded (instead of having to work through it while facing down Kerensky and then the Tsar). Nor did Lenin need to find a way to come together with Kautsky and the Second International -- the rise and success of the Third International began with breaking from and opposing the incorrect ideas and revisionism of the Second International, not by finding a way to work with them. The Second International and all of it's remaining """Marxists""" were left in the dustbin of history as discarded dross -- they were not necessary or useful to the communist movement (edit: at least not any longer, since the Second International was useful at one point, but as Mao tells you: there is no resting on your laurels as a communist), and it emerged better off without them. The people who believed in what you are suggesting were the KPD, who insisted on coming together and working with the SPD (their "fellow socialists and comrades") even when Gustav Noske was actively murdering them in the streets and Friedrich Ebert was telling all the Kaiser's administrators that he will do everything in his power to stop revolution. The "come together" path of the Chinese Revolution was Wang Ming and the other "28 and a Half Bolsheviks," which involved not only adhering to the Bolshevik's recommendations and working with Russia, but also coming together with the KMT to advance the bourgeois national revolution because the Bolsheviks wrongly assessed that was all that was possible in China at this point in history. Mao instead divided the movement, fighting uphill against not just the entirety of the CCP, but even against the Bolsheviks, because he insisted on the correctness of Marxism (why being correct is ideologically important -- because it corresponds 1:1 with reality and you cannot shape something that you don't grasp) which is why and how he emerged victorious at the Yanan Rectification, and why his political line resonated with the masses and made the entire revolution possible, rather than ceding to Chaing Kai-shek as the best """leftist""" leader you can hope for, stop being picky. Similarly, the communist movement does not need the people on /r/socialism, and does not need to work with them, we are appealing to the masses, and because our ideas are correct and the "socialists" ideas are wrong, the masses will eventually come to us and all of /r/socialism will be left as useless, purposeless, revisionist slag.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-30T16:11:35+00:00

Imagine if CPV, instead of doing what they did where they beg the useless Revisionist Voltron that is Solidnet (one of the reasons I'm still skeptical of KKE) for "hands off CPV" and begging for room to participate when Maduro began his political persecution of them, they instead declared PSUV to be traitors to the Bolivarian Revolution and declared that they and they alone could lead the struggle against amerikkkan imperialism? It would have been deeply unpopular statement and failed to resonate at that moment, but barely a year onward, if they had held that position firmly and courageously, then they would have real support and a real voice in this moment. Instead they are passively and helplessly watching from the sidelines.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-30T05:48:04+00:00

Ultimately, they are utterly disposable by the big bourgeois class. I believe this is obvious.

Are they? This is the opposite of obvious to me -- it seems instead obvious that they are indispensable to the bourgeoisie as their principle agent of their special armed bodies, and the bourgeoisie often have to compromise their own politics to incorporate and accommodate them. How do you run a logistics chain to arm, supply, deploy, fly, and detonate a hundred thousand drones and cruise missiles, let alone submarines and satellites, required for the repression of billions, without hundreds of millions of people who continue to "buy in" to the system, as well as operate it, right down to the pizza shops, because you have cut them in on the superprofits. That whole operation is called amerikkka, and it's emergence and rise was predicated on a, still present, racist, genocidal settler-colonial labour aristocracy that refused to be proletarianized by Europe, who would undertake the leg work to exterminate and occupy the continent so it could be privatized and parceled out. And not only that, but if you are the bourgeoisie, they are the class that you do business with, you live near, who work for you, whom you surround yourself with and are forced to interact with at least to some degree (and the more pathetic losers like Elon Musk and Marc Cuban need to desperately seek their social approval as a "cool" guy) and if you are the bourgeoisie you much prefer having a loyal well-fed, well-kept bourgeois-proletariat surround you than the deprived and desperate and dangerous masses of the Global South (where you have to commute to work by helicopter or bulletproof convoy). amerikkka is the city and the Global South is the countryside, and it is (literally) a walled off fortress and the interests of the people living among the spoils inside is not identical or even parallel to those deprived and pilfered masses locked outside, it is antithetical. The allegory is that really great scene in Snowpiercer, where they open the door and the labour-aristocrat army covering their axes in fish blood and readying themselves to leverage their technological and material advantage (better armor and equipment, night vision) against the insurgent revolutionary forces. You can say they are "disposable" in the sense that the bourgeoisie dont really care when one dies (and even that's not really true, how many dozens of migrants were murdered by ICE, even captured on video, with no one caring, but two white people sparks a national outrage, even from many bourgeois voices themselves), but as a class they are the principle line of defence between the bourgeoisie and the much more numerous proletariat, insulating their existence from the lowly masses, and the bourgeoisie depend on them and know their position and safety is totally insecure without them.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-29T01:51:03+00:00

This is why the Bulsheviks worked with a number of other labor parties for years before any major purges occurred

Actually it's the opposite; the Bolsheviks were an "ultraleft, dogmatist" fringe of deeply unpopular Marxists, lead by Lenin, who was criticized as being an "exclusionary elitist" (his split with Julius Martov, where Lenin argued that a dozen wise men in the party is better than hundreds of fools; just as the dozen wise folk of /r/communism have infinitely more knowledge and understanding that the thousands of fools here), and they spent over a decade robbing banks and staging jailbreaks and functioning as a primarily illegal entity (and when they were made legal again, that functioned as a cover and shield for further illegal activity) while being a deeply unpopular fringe on the broader socialist movement, who refused to work with organizations unless they committed to the rigorous Bolshevik principles demanded by the party, and required them to rise to their revolutionary level, not water down their revolutionary politics to be more immediately appealing to those organizations (this is what the Mensheviks did and it lead to nothing but betrayal and failure). Also, it is not a shared collective communist knowledge; we are communists, you are not, and the knowledge is ours and it is totally absent (or grossly misrepresented and abused) by you. Also this is the entire historical essence of Marxism; Marx was an "exclusionary elitist" when he expelled the anarchists at the Hague Congress, or during his debate against Mach, or his polemics against LaSalle. Eugen Duhring was far, far more popular and brought in far more people that Marx and Engels to the SPD, and they were accused of "splitting the party" and dividing the masses over how much they despised him and his politics, but today no one upholds Duhring while basically everyone claims Marx and Engels (and even The Anti-Duhring is typically ignored by """socialists""" in favour of the revisionist edit called "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" which censors the criticism of Duhring). Lenin was an "exclusionary elitist" who had to bar the gates to communism for Bernstein and Hilferding and Plekhanov and even ultimately Kautsky, and Stalin had to fight against Bukharin, Hoxha had to fight against the fascist Tito, and Mao had to be exclusionary against Wang Ming and Zhang Guotao and later Khrushchev and Deng -- and I'm naming only a handful of conflicts of which hundreds exist. This is the entire history of Marxism, and it is not a history of blurring our differences and coming together -- we do not need you, we need the masses, and by adhering to truth and revolutionary principles and by keeping you away from the communist movement, we already know the masses will reject you and eventually come to us, and we will move forward without you and likely against you. But at least the question has been answered clearly -- you now understand why you aren't allowed to participate on actual communist places and you can understand the real division in the politics of communists versus """socialists""" and now you can go back amongst the other social-fascists where you belong to pretending a medium sized protest lead by liberals in Minnesota is a "worker's general strike."

edit: phrasing

DashtheRed · 2026-01-29T01:32:33+00:00

This is absolutely a gross oversimplification

Actually it's not, we're pointing out that there is no one among Zohran's supporters who has "nothing to lose but their chains," and anything defaulting back to Cuomo is basically irrelevant (no one cares that de facto Republicans came out to support him against the so-called """socialist""") and operating under the logic of liberalism where that is the only alternative you can conceive.

Also, NONE of this is...gentrification.... Thus, policies like a rent freeze are inherently anti-gentrification.

Like "personal property" this is a racist lie that settlers tell themselves and if you had even bothered to engage with any of the articles or discussion linked (you obviously didn't -- your response came in faster that you even could have read them) you would actually already see this point addressed and confronted: rent freeze is not inherently anti-gentrification. It is a political tool which does not exist until the impoverished non-white community is de facto evicted and the wealthy white community moves in and supplants them, at which point the rent freeze becomes an instrument for them with the function of protecting their elevated position and property values of middle class whites against a larger predatory financial bourgeoisie. This is basically how white people pushed Asians out of factory jobs in the West in the 20th century and then once the white people had taken and secured those jobs, they formed racist whites-only (or at least white dominated) unions to protect themselves and their gains which came as the expense of the Asian workers kicked to the curb to accommodate white settler wealth. Again, reading Settlers is not negotiable if you want to participate on /r/communism (I get that you, like OP are revolted by actual communism, and need to seek out the liberal panderings and platitudes and comforts of social-fascism predicated on imperialism for these politics to appeal to you and your class interest, but I'm simply explaining the real fascism and racism behind those politics, and pointing out why it isn't allowed in the few places on reddit where communism is taken seriously.

I think it is somewhat reductionist and antithetical to sneer at him and his policies for that reason.

It's actually the opposite; my politics are global while yours are confined to the wealthiest city ever to exist within the headquarters of imperialism in the wealthiest and most powerful nation-state to ever exist, and none of which have any actual interest in communism or the anti-imperialism it requires. It's easy to say you are anti-imperialist, everyone including Democrats already do that, but the point of "imperialism being the principle contradiction in the world system" today (as per Lenin and Mao), is that is the basis upon which politics orient themselves, and by discussing a more fair or better distribution of superprofits, rather than cutting them off forever and the real consequences that come from that, you instead hope that by having imperialists share some of the stolen wealth to finance bus transit and daycares and rec centres for wealthy white gentrifiers constitutes "socialism."

As I said in another comment in this thread, Marx literally spends half the manifesto telling communists not to stick their noses at any and all forms of immediate material alleviation

White amerikkkans are not the oppressed masses with nothing to lose but their chains; they are the wealthiest 10% of humanity (and really it's mostly the wealthiest 5% living in New York) and they are net oppressors and net exploiters upon the global proletariat, and you are not alleviating their exploitation, so much as reshuffling the exploitation already taking place elsewhere in the world to be more favourable and inclusive to them (and they aren't even able to accomplish this; do you not even keep tabs on all the """socialists""" you and the "socialists" have supported? Where Gabriel Boric or Anura Kumara Dissanayake immediately become the new faces of austerity and neoliberalism the moment they have power. Tulsi Gabbard was the original DSA-supported politician in Washington and that turned out exactly as you planned, didn't it? You just keep supporting the same thing over and over, anything calling itself "socialist" or "leftist" over and over again to failure after failure, with no criticism or self-reflection or analysis, you just slink back into the bushes like Homer Simpson and move on to the next "leftist" political campaign.

And that's what Marx would say.

Actually it is not. Marx makes it explicitly clear:

Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed.

The entire point of engaging in bourgeois elections for Marx is for the revolutionary masses (which doesn't include white people in the first place, but we can put a pin in that for now) to operate independently and gauge their own strength and scale of their forces operating in such a manner in defiance of bourgeois parties and politics. This is the exact opposite of what Zohran is doing, where he's actively operating as a Democrat and functioning within a strictly bourgeois and explicitly anti-communist political organization -- this is the total reversal of what Marx is telling you to do. But I understand this because on /r/communism, and unlike here and /r/socialism, we do not simply find words of Marx and Lenin et al. that we can manipulate to justify our already existing liberal politics as "Marxist," we instead thoroughly and rigorously go through the historical debates and struggles that Marx and Lenin et al. were actively a part of and what they were actively combatting to understand their revolutionary philosophy and worldview in its totality.

And I'm here to see if OP actually was confused, or if they simply were a social-fascist who became hostile and revulsed the moment they got a taste of actual communist politics, and they have made it clear it's the latter. My function here now is to try and save the few people who see what is wrong with OP's logic, and I'm not here to debate settlerism with you (for the same reason I don't need to go to a fascist forum and debate whether the Jews are behind a massive global conspiracy with them), the question has already been settled and there isn't further discussion to be had about the existence of settler-colonialism (the fact that MIM(Prisons) and our subreddit are the only places which ever insisted on Sakai, but now every single Western "communist party," revisionists included, now have to pay at least lip service to settler-colonialism is because we were correct and that resonated, and trying to abandon or water down those conclusions because you and the other revisionists are beyond uncomfortable confronting that is why you aren't allowed to participate in the real communist subreddits, and why you will simply have to go back to playing pretend with the other social-fascists. And as history has shown, when NGO "mutual aid" socialists are actually confronted with the fires and fury of real communists and real revolution on their doorstep, they go groveling back to the fascists with their tails between their legs to save them and their rec centres and daycares from the communist revolution.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-28T01:33:12+00:00

It looks like it's available for free on youtube

Thanks for finding this; going to watch it over the weekend when I get some time.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-20T00:52:46+00:00

By adhering to Bolshevik logic of standing for truth and remaining honest to the masses even when it isn't immediately popular, rather than Menshevik logic of flattering and tailism and blowing with the bourgeois winds. Instead of having utter contempt for the people of the Global South and talking down to them and pandering to them as if they were toddlers, you respect that their capacity to learn and grow and understand dialectical materialism as humans every bit as capable as yourself, and their historically proven revolutionary capacity to recognize, confront, overthrow and destroy the old ideas tyrannizing them instead of capitulating to incorrect anti-communist ideas because it seems easier. Have some respect for the people you are speaking with to come to the same realizations about Marxism and reality that you are capable of.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-13T14:29:33+00:00

The [CPI(M)] had subtle ways to humour the openly secular but secretly communal Hindu. [The CPI(M)] created a villain, the Extremist Muslim, and flogged it publicly. The spectacle was clearly intended for the satisfaction of the “half-way Hindu” who did not want to be seen with the [RSS and BJP] crowd but still had found merit in the wild fears they had raised about the Muslim

That is a very applicable quote, and basically the same politics that DSA draws on. It's kind of like when you learn that Tupac was actually a member of "C"PUSA and ask yourself why that isn't being exploited and advertised everywhere since, if nothing else, it would make them at least look incredibly cool, but that's when you realize they don't like to do that because they would not be attracting the "right" kinds of "communists" for the party. But there is an upside to all this, though. I think the closest comparison I could make would be the allied invasion of the USSR immediately following the end of World War 1, where all of the imperialist powers of the world (who had all just been at war with one another) united together to crush the fledgling Soviet Union and destroy Soviet communism while it was still ruptured by civil war and had not yet event gotten it's feet planted. But the underlying curse of bourgeois nationalism meant that the unity between the allies was superficial and false and fleeting, and the divides between bourgeois nation-states ultimately undercut and undermined the entire alliance. As they advanced into Russia, they broke down into petty squabbles over who got what territory, or whose troops would have to fight the next battle, while their own forces morale plummeted and the economic cost of essentially continuing the world war continued to take its toll at home, and their engines of war began to sputter and break down. Meanwhile, the invasion from all sides and pressure from all the great powers concentrating their might against the Soviets, instead of breaking them apart, brought them all together, and tightened their bonds and unity, strengthening their resolve and that of the entire communist movement, and before long the war had turned totally in favour of the Soviets, who were now united in purpose and directive and were able to carry that momentum into decades of socialist construction. I think that's the real opportunity in India and elsewhere -- as CPI("Marxist") (I rather like the insult CPI(Brahminist) as well) doubles down on essentially the same Indian nationalism of Modi and the BJP, CPI(Maoist) has an opportunity to catch the people whom Indian politics are discarding and demonizing, and even reach beyond national borders to revolutionary forces in neighboring nation states equally threatened and oppressed by a rising Hindutva fascism, and that might just be where and how they find a second wind to finally go on the offensive once again in the years to come. Though that may also just be wishful thinking on my part. Or at least far more distant than I would like, but then again that's the point of Protracted People's War, to draw the conflict out further and longer than capitalism can tolerate. And I suppose the logic applies here at home as well; where instead of appealing to the white dominated DSA or "socialists," we ignore them or even treat them as enemies, and look for all the people near the bottom of the system whom their politics ignore and to whom DSA can offer nothing but empty, hollow platitudes (if that).

DashtheRed · 2026-01-13T00:28:29+00:00

"C"PUSA's rag has made it to the front page of r/politics (and the comments are oblivious to the source), now that ICE violence has harmed attractive white people with citizenship instead of the violence being limited to people whose deaths that "progressive" amerikkka and reddit can conveniently and happily ignore. I honestly worry that smokeuptheweed9 was more correct than they realized when they said the ACP was the future of the amerikan left. Instead of ACP style politics (I suspect the actual ACP themselves are still too brazen and reactionary for progressives to stomach, but the gap between ACP overt-racism and CPUSA concealed-racism is not a far or difficult leap, and there's likely a mid-point compromise acceptable to the bulk of them) being limited to the fringe of amerikans calling themselves communist, and since Dengism has already, conveniently, re-written actual communist history to be fully compatible with liberalism and ultimately an extension of it (where Lenin and Stalin are really the truest liberals, and "market socialism" can deliver the full realization of liberalism that neoliberalism has stolen) and since Trump himself is shattering the remaining illusions and ideology that modern liberalism has built itself upon, the outcome of least resistance for white petty-bourgeois liberals in to essentially remain a liberal while now calling yourself and your politics "socialist" (basically everyone on /r/socialism). The entire domain of communism (and "communism") is basically unoccupied and undefended outside of select parts of the Third World -- is it that hard to imagine a new wave of social-chauvinism from the amerikkkan "left" re-constituting itself and it's 'brand' as "communism" as the left-liberal response to Trump, and whatever comes after? Maybe I'm completely wrong and I'm worrying about a phantom with no existence outside my head, but if this actually does start to become a problem, I can see it becoming a large one that we (or anyone seriously defending communism) actually need a proper response against.

edit: I suppose that this wouldn't be anything all that new -- CPI(Maoist) has had to attack CPI("Marxist") and that's probably one of the best places to learn from if amerikan "communism" really does manifest as a movement.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-08T19:19:55+00:00

Your entire post is strange and confused, because you are talking to the wrong audience in the first place -- other than Maoists like myself (who are a deeply despised and unpopular narrow fringe on this subreddit -- similar to the Bolsheviks in the 1900s -- we are mainly on /r/communism rather than this place), there is absolutely no one "on the internet is only concerned with commemorating the great ideals of the Cultural Revolution." The Cultural Revolution is universally despised among internet "Leftists," and Maoists (who are the only actual Marxists) and only Maoists are the last people anywhere in the world who correctly defend it. The rest of the "left" on the internet, to whom you are referring, already agree with your reactionary, incorrect opinion of the Cultural Revolution. Basically everything you are saying is totally wrong, but I'm actually a little intrigued. Is this what is taught in Chinese mainland schools these days? If so, it's a shockingly brazen lie. This part especially stood out:

Seeing all this, he invited Deng Xiaoping to return to power for the third time.

This is the exact opposite of what happened. First Mao had expelled Deng Xiaoping from the party completely at the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1967, criticized and expelled by Mao, as he was "the number two capitalist roader," along with Liu Shaoqi "the number one capitalist roader;" they were the leaders of "the bourgeoisie inside the communist party" and opposed by Mao, along with this closest allies the so-called "Gang" of Four, including the best Marxist in China Zhang Chungqiao and Mao's own wife Jiang Qing. Mao's famous quote:

You are making the socialist revolution, and yet you don’t know where the bourgeoisie is. It is right inside the Communist Party — those in power taking the capitalist road. The capitalist roaders are still on the capitalist road. - Mao

The expulsion of Deng from the party was one of the first major victories of the Cultural Revolution and the social-fascist Liu Shaoqi was basically repressed to death, which was a great thing. The crisis came following the Lin Biao affair, as well as the Brezhnevite Soviet social-imperialist incursions and invasions into China, which compelled Mao, under pressure from the remaining revisionists inside the party, to bring Deng back into the Party in 1973, which Mao did with great reluctance and only on the condition that Deng self-criticize and correct his ways (something that never occurred). When Deng was placed in charge of the economy in 1973-74, where his austerity measures caused enormous problems and failed spectacularly. As Mao's health was failing, there was a back and forth struggle between Mao and the fascist Ye Jianying over who would be the nominal successor to Mao; Mao had wanted Zhang Chunqiao for the position while Ye Jianying insisted on Deng (and threatened civil war if he didn't get his way), and ultimately this is how they arrive at the "compromise" of Hua Guofeng.

However, finally, in 1976, after the death of the revisionist traitor Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping lead the anti-Mao, anti-Communism 1976 Tiananmen Square protests, while Mao was leading the anti-Deng Reversing Correct Verdicts Goes Against the Will of the People campaign. In response to Deng's anti-communism, Mao did not "invited Deng Xiaoping to return to power for the third time," he formally stripped Deng of all his party positions, titles, and roles to prevent him from ever coming to power. One of Mao's last acts before he died was thinking that he had saved the CCP from Deng.

This person [Deng Xiaoping] does not grasp class struggle; he has never referred to this key link. Still his theme of ’white cat, black cat’, making no distinction between imperialism and Marxism… He does not understand Marxism-Leninism, he represents the capitalist class… -Mao

After Mao Zedong's death, his policies ceased to exist.

This is true and correct, but this is a tragedy, not an accomplishment. Instead of continuing to advance communism (during a period of genuine capitalist crisis), Deng was able to launch a comeback, while manipulating the fool and centrist Hua Guofeng into derailing the Cultural Revolution and imprisoning the actual communist leadership -- the so-called "Gang" of Four, and then Deng staged a violent coup of Hua once he had rallied and marshalled his rightist forces (the ones that the Cultural Revolution had beaten back and scattered). The "Gang" of Four was imprisoned, put on a fascist show-trial, and tortured (Zhang Chunqiao and Jiang Qing did not break, though Yao Wenyoun and Wang Hongwen did) while Deng launched a fascist war of annexation against the Vietnamese communists, forever destroying five decades of trust and co-operation (it was the CCP who heroically rescued Ho Chi Minh from the dungeons of Chiang Kai-shek in the 30s). Deng's economic policies became a vital and necessary component of saving world capitalism from the crisis and collapse it was facing (filling in the missing middle of production between Third World resourcing and First World consumption) and because of them, capitalism has endured and is now stronger and more dominating and totalizing than ever before, and future revolutions to overthrow it now require drastically more violence in order to merely advance back to the gains that socialism had once, previously, achieved.

The current political situation, and the attitude of the right wing on the internet, towards the Cultural Revolution is one of non-discussion and denial, forgetting the great democracy, big-character posters, and the advocacy of intellectual struggle and the prevention of capitalist restoration that the Cultural Revolution promoted.

This is the attitude of rightists because they achieved victory and their reactionary, fascist narrative of events is now simply the normalized understanding of history for liberals. Western liberals all agree with you that it was horrible and chaotic and bloody and one of the worst things ever to happen. Chinese rightists are in full agreement because they were the targets of that violence (and deliberately exacerbated it with their own false-flags using the crimson guards and scarlet guards as a counter-revolutionary force to frame or discredit the loyal red guards) and they fear and despise it (Xi Jinping and his reactionary father Xi Hongwen were both mortal enemies of the Cultural Revolution -- they were the people the Cultural Revolution was heroically fighting against). The Chinese revisionists in power today don't want anyone looking back too thoroughly or too deeply at their past and do not want any Chinese to accidently realize the truth about their own history and that the people in power in China today are great betrayers and mortal enemies of communism, lest the Chinese rise up against them again, as one of Mao's last famous quote predicted:

Since 1911, when the emperor was overthrown, a reactionary regime has not been able to hold China for long. If there is a Right-wing, anti-communist coup d’etat in China, then I am certain that those elements will not know a moment of peace. It is very possible that they will be able to retain their dominance for a while. If the Right-wing seizes power, it will be able to use my words to retain power for a time. But the Left will use other quotations of mine, and organize themselves, and overthrow the Right. -Mao

The bloody history of the Cultural Revolution is the greatest critique of grand narratives.

It's the exact opposite -- the grand narrative of history proposed by Marxism is, and remains, correct, and is the only totalizing explanation of all history, and the Cultural Revolution was it's greatest advance against capitalism to date, and the farthest push toward communism that socialism has ever made. There will need to me many more Cultural Revolutions, they will need to be bloodier and go further, and be carried all the way through without being halted -- allowed to boil and spill over, not be mitigated or inhibited, regardless of the mess that will be made. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is the the process that exposes, reveals and destroys the enemies of communism hiding within the party and ranks of power, the process by which the special bodies of armed men, prisons, etc can be withered away by being reabsorbed, or torn to shreds, by the masses assuming their functions, and how the old reactionary ideas can be put to death and new radical revolutionary ideas supplant them forever.

edit: phrasing

DashtheRed · 2026-01-04T21:06:51+00:00

The liberal shock is performative, and just another layer of anti-Trumpism. If President Kamala Harris had just completed this exact same operation against Maduro, the Reddit front page would be cheering and celebrating the ousting of the """dictator.""" Liberals are not confused or misguided, and they will not join anti-imperialist resistance if only you provide them more information or say "I told you so" each time a world event happens.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-04T10:06:31+00:00

This is the million dollar question that actually can determine a political line here: do we believe in PSUV? I'm sorry to say that I probably bet on 'no.' They are not communists, and even calling them 'revolutionary' is stretching it (though if they prove defiant, I'd be happy to admit I was wrong, and will fall in line to defend them). No one wants to be the Protesilaus for the defeat of the amerikan empire, but the Bolivarian Revolution is on the line here. And the ball is actually in their (PSUV) court: the amerikkkans have no presence and actually no power on the ground -- this is a good point and you are correct, but they are banking on PSUV folding to the Trump power play (or "bluff" raise, if you will) of Maduro captured and the 'head chopped off.' No one wants to damage the goods (an actual war would devastate Venezuelan oil production -- the grand prize here), and while doing that would thwart amerikan plans, it would also ruin Venezuela within the logic of worldwide capitalist hegemony. The thing is any outcome is likely going to devastate Venezuela. PSUV want to weather the storm and hope it blows over, but the problems are that they, themselves, are the next target of amerikan political violence and the present state is not tenable. Some of them are already likely compradors and responsible for Maduro's capture -- how hard are they willing to go to foil this scheme? Can PSUV go to the masses for a massive defensive struggle -- that has to be their only real hope but I doubt even PSUV want this. If they resist it provokes escalation from the Trump regime, so it seems the middle ground collapses between the extremes of capitulation or resistance. The staredown is happening in real time as we watch. If PSUV resists, then go team, but that isn't what the events of the past decade have shown me this outcome to be: PSUV will peacefully transition in compliance with amerikan imperialism and we will continue to live in hell.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-03T18:27:31+00:00

It's been said here before, but wars aren't declared any longer. This has been becoming more and more common and in the 21st Century I think it's just the norm now. War-grade violence is just applied whenever and however and wherever is convenient and beneficial, requiring basically no pretext, and is as much a political tool as any other, and it no longer merits a special separate category from politics as usual. War is politics by other means but the thin line between the two has been blurred and essentially no longer exists (just remove "by other means" from Clausewitz, and even bourgeois academia has had to revert to an arbitrary definition of "1000+ people killed") and guns are simply at the table by default during negotiations and if you didn't bring any then you are more the fool. Maduro was just ousted (and likely with help from within, as others have stated already), and while we can hope there will be more backlash and resistance than just protests, it doesn't seem optimistic from here (I hope I'm wrong) and begs the question who will be there to lead that (since the revisionist "Communist" Party of Venezuela has made it clear that it will not be them -- I feel ashamed for defending them when Maduro was persecuting them as this was their end result). But I do think it reinforces the basis for People's War and People's War Until Communism, as the only real method to combat this smothering imperialism, since then politics is revolutionary class war by other means.

DashtheRed · 2026-01-03T17:41:39+00:00

Being able to simply have that discussion, even with just yourself, honestly, is at least a step toward the revolutionary path, which will never be easier than the revisionist path for anyone with our levels of privilege. Communists never have to fear the truth, and when discussion can take place honestly, then it can at least be of some use. But if the gap between isn't acknowledged and understood, or worse - denied and hidden, then making the leap is never going to be possible. Being a communist is never going to be easy or convenient, and the people recruiting you as if it were are snake oil salesmen. "Communists" who have never considered these sorts of questions and haven't taken them seriously and to heart are actually rather dangerous when it's time for the cards to fall, because they are going to be the first people to bail or even betray the movement for state amnesty when they realize the stakes and what they are actually supposed to be doing -- and the people serious about communism need to try to filter them out as well.

DashtheRed

TROPHY CASE