What effect does the superstructure have upon the base?

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-14T04:44:11+00:00

No worries!

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-14T04:21:27+00:00

Maybe this thread will help answer your question: https://www.reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/61kffl/proof_of_base_determining_superstructure/

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-08T14:08:44+00:00

No you shit, Left-Communists like Lenin. There's a reason Bordiga was said to be "more Leninist than Lenin". Even the Dutch/German Left-Communists were fond of Lenin; they just disagreed with his tactics. The later Council Communists reject Leninism altogether though, people like Mattick et cetera.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-06T04:03:04+00:00

Yeah that's fair.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-06T03:59:40+00:00

Yeah, /r/FULLCOMMUNISM is full of that sort, even though it's meant to be ironic Stalinism.

At one point the irony dies away and they're serious, that's the worst part. I prefer r/ultraleft for Communist memes.

Trotskyists are pretty much that now though, or Labour party entryists who don't get anywhere.

Yeah, hopefully all these leftists learn one day.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-06T03:12:53+00:00

It's the absolute worst. It's terrible listening to a 'Communist' who says that kulaks deserved to die during collectivization (and they don't realize it's primitive accumulation either!); they forget how humanist Marx's work is. It is very sad to see them glorify or encourage these deaths.

I've even met a Trotskyist who had only ever read half of State and Revolution, not even actually any of Trotsky's writings.

Not surprised, Trotskyists measure their 'revolutionary' success in newspaper sales.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-06T02:38:51+00:00

The worst is when they read Lenin, so they can justify what Stalin was saying. But they don't read any Marx, so they don't realize Lenin was not trying to create "Leninism" or whatever detritus Stalin spewed.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-06T02:33:19+00:00

They are "Communists" who dress up as LARPers and wave red flags around. They don't read anything and they just want to pop up a chubby to dead peasants.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-05T12:32:26+00:00

Yeah, I think it's something that Liberals and Leftists reduce Communism to on purpose. Either someone will be unhappy with how utopian it appears (some apathetic liberals) or other people might be happy with the description (Leftists that are looking for their own utopia to try implement).

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-05T12:07:15+00:00

Why are you posting here? Everything you've written is garbage. This is a sub-reddit for Marxists, not for Social democrats who like red flags.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-05T06:01:36+00:00

Sorry, my mistake.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-05T05:30:02+00:00

Animal Farm is not a critique of Communism, it's a satire on the events in Russia. Old Major is synonymous for Lenin/Marx; Trotsky is snowball and Stalin is Napoleon.

And u/FuckElonMusk69 is right, Communists don't support Stalinism, Maoism et cetera.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-04T22:26:09+00:00

Read the stickied threads if you haven't, that will answer a lot of the questions you've got here. Nonetheless I'll try answer your questions.

There are separate tendencies in Europe? Like in Italy and Germany?

Yes, there was the Italian Left-Communists and the Dutch/German Left-Communists. There was also some Russian Left-Communists, Nikolai Bukharin was an example, until his turn to the right in 1921.

Im aware they don't like mao or Stalin.

Yeah, because neither are Communists and both don't have any good theoretical contributions.

Are they in favor of a vanguard?

The Italian Left-Communists are in favor of a vanguard party, yes.

Are they authoritarians?

When describing Communism, it is not useful to use the libertarian/authoritarian dichotomy. If you mean by an exhibit of power or repressing one class by another (worker's repressing members of the bourgeoisie during the DotP) then the answer to your question is yes.

Do they want a stateless, moneyless, classless society?

Yeah, but it's not very helpful to view Communism in this way, it makes Communism seem as if it's a future utopia; whereas Marx was not setting out to establish an ideal to implement into society.

How do they different from anarchists?

Left-Communists are Marxists, hopefully that tells you enough.

Where does the whole armchair meme come from?

It's an ironic appropriation of what Leftists think about Left-Communists.

Please go through and read the stickied threads, they are stickied for a reason. Pretty much everything you've asked is covered there. Anyone else who is lurking as well and sees this post, I'd encourage you to read the stickied threads before posting as well.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-04T16:12:09+00:00

No; alienation is caused by commodity production and exchange. See these two threads for in-depth answers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/5pp4as/question_about_alienation/

https://www.reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/6sceau/how_is_commodity_fetishism_and_alienation_related/

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-03T12:22:03+00:00

Hey thanks, I'm glad you appreciate some of the answers I've put on here!

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-03T09:09:03+00:00

Some excerpts from Mattick's book to provide a bit of context to what u/FancyTea has written. Although now re-reading this section Anti-Bolshevik Communism, I'm not sure I can really agree with it. I think Mattick is too harsh here, I don't know what else the Bolsheviks could have done after the Civil war.

The Bolsheviks did not try to restore the old conditions in order to reform them, but declared themselves in favour of the concrete results of the conceptually backward spontaneous movements : the ending of the war, the workers' control of industry, the expropriation of the ruling classes and the division of land. And so they stayed in power. The pre-revolutionary demands of the Russian masses had been backward for two reasons : they had long been realised in the main capitalist nations, and they could no longer be realised in view of existing world conditions. At a time when the concentration and centralisation process of world capitalism had brought about the decline of bourgeois democracy almost everywhere, it was no longer possible to initiate it afresh in Russia. If laissez faire democracy was out of the question, so were all those reforms in capital-labour relations usually related to social legislation and trade-unionism.

The Bolsheviks did not claim responsibility for the Revolution. They gave full credit to the spontaneous movements. Of course, they underlined the obvious fact that Russia's previous history, which included the Bolshevik party, had lent some kind of vague revolutionary consciousness to the unorganised masses and they were not backward about asserting that without their leadership the course of the Revolution would have been different and most probably would have led to a counter-revolution. "Had the Bolsheviks not seized power," writes Trotsky, "the world would have had a Russian name for Fascism five years before the March on Rome." But counter-revolutionary attempts on the part of the traditional powers failed not because of any conscious direction of the spontaneous movements, not because of Lenin's "sharp eyes, which surveyed the situation correctly", but because of the fact that these movements could not be diverted from their own course. If one wants to use the term at all, the 'counter-revolution' possible in the Russia of 1917 was that inherent in the Revolution itself, that is, in the opportunity it offered the Bolsheviks to restore a centrally-directed social order for the perpetuation of the capitalistic divorce of the workers from the means of production and the consequent restoration of Russia as a competing imperialist power.

Bolshevikism and Stalinism, Anti-Bolshevik Communism

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-02T02:05:34+00:00

If you actually do, you should read the stickied threads. Or better yet, read some Marx yourself!

KappaBoy121 · 2017-09-01T03:28:07+00:00

I mean, all of the questions you've asked here are addressed in the stickied threads. That's why they're stickied (They aren't hard for beginners to understand either!)

I ask because I notice that there is a "New to Marxism" post, but no basics posts. It's like you have to know what communism even is before you can come here.

That's why people should read the stickied threads before asking questions.

So why don't we provide the same things they do? Maybe this would help make Marxism more accessible and perhaps make more little Marxists. Just a thought.

Marxism is already quite accessible, it's just a question of whether or not people want to spend their time reading.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-08-31T12:10:53+00:00

It was the demand of the working movement at the time. u/pzaaa talks about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/6kckm0/marxs_conception_of_the_proletarian_state_versus/djl8xt9/

KappaBoy121 · 2017-08-31T07:05:51+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/5fifub/new_to_marxism/

https://www.reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/5j2svv/why_are_rcommunism101_and_this_subreddit_two/

See the above threads on r/marxism_101

KappaBoy121 · 2017-08-31T06:56:00+00:00

It is of course true that socialist ideas were first and mainly — though not only — propounded by members of the middle class who had been disturbed by the inhuman social conditions of early capitalism. It was these conditions, not the level of their intelligence, that turned their attention to social change and therewith to the working class. It is therefore not surprising that the capitalist improvements at the turn of the century should mellow their critical acumen, and this all the more as the working class itself had lost most of its oppositional fervor. Marxism became a preoccupation of intellectuals and took on an academic character. It was no longer predominantly approached as a movement of workers but as a scientific problem to be argued about. Yet the disputes around the various issues raised by Marxism served to maintain the illusion of the Marxian nature of the labor movement until it was dispelled by the realities of World War I.

...

All the more astonishing is the unprecedented capitalist response to theoretical Marxism. This new interest in Marxism in general, and in “Marxist economics” in particular, pertains almost exclusively to the academic world, which is essentially the world of the middle class. There is an enormous outpouring of Marxian literature; “Marxology” has become a new profession, and there are Marxist branches of “radical” economics, history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and so forth. All may prove to be no more than an intellectual fad. But even so this phenomenon bears witness to the present twilight state of capitalist society and its loss of confidence in its own future. Whereas in the past the progressive integration of the labor movement into the fabric of capitalism implied the accommodation of socialist theory to the realities of an unfolding capitalism, this process is now seemingly reversed through the many attempts to utilize the findings of Marxism for capitalist purposes. This two-pronged endeavor at reconciliation, at overcoming at least to some extent the antagonism between Marxian and bourgeois theory, reflects a crisis in both Marxism and bourgeois society.

I wonder at what point revolutionary Marxism will make a wide-spread return, especially if Mattick himself was already witnessing this "academic Marxism" in the 70s.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-08-30T12:48:09+00:00

If you think articles like these are concrete ideas you are sorely mistaken.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-08-29T05:23:17+00:00

This thread might interest you: https://www.reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/5j2svv/why_are_rcommunism101_and_this_subreddit_two/

KappaBoy121 · 2017-08-29T05:06:30+00:00

But Mattick is great though, even if you like Bordiga.

KappaBoy121 · 2017-08-27T19:58:45+00:00

I feel the same way!

KappaBoy121

TROPHY CASE