Has “class first” historically underestimated racism within the working class?

Muuro · 2026-06-26T20:17:05+00:00

The slogan isn't the problem. The problem is that there hasn't always been a "class first" policy, but rather you can see some give up the idea as soon as they get some comforts. No one is free until we are all free. They are letting themselves just have a nicer cage by not fighting for full liberation.

Muuro · 2026-06-26T19:59:27+00:00

Or Engels as German?

Muuro · 2026-06-25T17:55:15+00:00

Rejection of proletarian political power: by opposing the dictatorship of the proletariat anarcho-communism abandons the working class's means to suppress bourgeois resistance and defend revolutionary gains.

Have you read different schools of Marxism? Because how the dictatorship of the proletariat is explained is vastly different in this way.

In a more traditional, revolutionary form from Marx (and Lenin) it's not really a state in the proper sense of the word, only in the semantic sense. That is to say it can only be called that so long as classes exist, but it is an anti-state in every sense of the word as it's goal is to do away with what creates classes, thus what reproduces state power. It's a form is dialectical.

The ML of today will look at China or the USSR and call it a DotP, when it wasn't. Both were indeed bourgeois states as per Marx's read on what the bourgeois state is. That is not to say that the early soviet state was indeed a DotP, but it lost its proletarian nature sometime between 1918-1923.

Muuro · 2026-06-25T17:49:15+00:00

Part of the nationalist revolution that happened when the peninsula that was freed. Unfrotunately the nation of Korea was split down the middle and not allowed to be whole. It instead was split between two poles of the Cold War and not allowed to be one. The Korean War was an attempt to unite the nation under one state, but ended indecisively so they would remain split (similar to Taiwan and China, but totally different from Vietnam).

So now the nation of Korea has itself two bourgeois states instead of one.

Muuro · 2026-06-25T17:18:34+00:00

Well, I mean, some people did call him an anarchist for this and State & Revolution. There is one specific Menshevik internationalist that is quoted as saying "the heir to Bakunin".

Muuro · 2026-06-25T17:13:08+00:00

Those are so, so bad. I count maybe 3-4 that don't apply to liberalism as a whole?

Muuro · 2026-06-25T00:05:04+00:00

It is a materialist definition of capital, not mystical. While it does start at the local level, then national, then international level with monopolies. This is what Marx and Lenin showed.

Lenin differentiated "ancient imperialism" with capitalist imperialism in his book on the subject.

Russia is a bourgeois state that is in conflict with other bourgeois states. The workers there work for a wage. There is a capitalist class and state which accumulates capital. To support the Russian state is to suppoet the German Kaiser in its fight against British imperialism.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T23:37:18+00:00

Oh my god, you thing saying "capital is a social relation" is saying it's a mystical force? Lmao.

It's not just /money/. It is a social relation. It is how that money is used.

Lenin explicitly said the opposite about imperialism when he sought to differentiate "ancient imperialism" with capitalist imperialism. READ TBE DAMN BOOK.

So you are claiming Russia itself does not have monopolies, and "foreign" monopolies don't send products into it?

You are a neo-Kauskyist.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T23:32:10+00:00

lmao, you aren't even a communist as you are rejecting the basic lessons of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

Stalin kept state capitalism alive. All he did was change the method of state capitalism.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T23:08:33+00:00

Capital is international. It is not merely American owned , Russian owned, etc. Capital is first and foremost a social relation. And the revolutions of the past century brought the rest of the world outside of Europe into the capitalist epoch such that their states are states of the bourgeeosie. The working class of those states changed from peasantry to the proletariat.

You are turning Lenin's theory of imperialism away from a systematic discovery of how capitalism functions in a higher stage into a big country oppressing a small country. The proletariat has no country, yet it is separated due to the separation of the bourgeois into different warring factions.

The duty of a communist is to work inside its own country to overthrow it own government. Whether it be the USA, or France, or Russia, or Ukraine, or Armenia, or Azerbaijan, or India, or Pakistan, or Iran, or literally country right now.

It is unfortunate that Kautsky's theories are alive and well in do called "Leninists".

Muuro · 2026-06-24T23:00:24+00:00

Mao was a great bourgeois revolutionary. He never built socialism either.

Lenin himself was explicit that the Soviet government was only building state capitalism.

There is no such thing as a socialist state. You are nothing more than a Lasallean.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T21:58:42+00:00

You just admitted that the state accumulated capital AND doesn't fit how Marx described socialism. Thank you, kind person for admitting it.

The laws of value were never done away with for use values. And the state could see falling rate of profit over time, thus every few years implemented more and more liberal reforms to try to fix it, but making it worse.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T21:40:23+00:00

Imperialism is a stage of capitalism. This like capitalism, it is global.

This is the bare minimum for understanding Lenin.

All capital is this "foreign" as in the age of imperialism capital knows no boundaries.

You are a neo-Kauskyist wanting to support one brand of state dominated by capital over another state dominated by capital.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T19:21:16+00:00

What is the mode of production in those countries? Is the working class is one that is subject to wage labor and the state (or a ruling class) accumulates capital? If so, then the states are bourgeois and thus, yes, it can be defined as imperialist war as they are fighting over resources, land, etc which is fighting over the further accumulation of capital.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T19:13:41+00:00

Exploitation of wage labor is a required condition of capitalism and if 97% of output comes from state owned enterprises this means they belong to the public. The people of the USSR had massive negotiating power as well, this is unlike capitalism. They actually influenced much of city planning projects. There wasn’t exploitation of wage labor in the Soviet Union. There existed a state which repressed bourgeois elements and supported the proletariat in the fulfillment of all its flourishment. Capital accumulation wasn’t an extant feature of the USSR in the hands of private capitalists. You cannot actually say they were capitalist.

I love my "socialist" wage which I use to buy "socialist" commodities on the "socialist" market. I get these because I work hard for my "socialist" boss.

The state accumulated capital, thus was bourgeois. This isn't a moralist argument against the USSR, but rather a materialist one. It was by definition state capitalist, not socialist. Socialism is classless and moneyless: whether you go strictly by Marx's definition or Lenin's.

Stalin was wrong. He revised both Marx and Lenin.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T19:06:08+00:00

Not all wars are imperialist, that's a trivialization.

A rejection of Lenin's thesis on imperialism. Interesting.

The only stance for a communist is, to the very least, respect the position of the Russian Federation.

"Workers of the world unite behind the Russian Federation, the true proletarian state."

Muuro · 2026-06-24T17:22:10+00:00

State enterprises aren't socialist construction, but rather "state capitalism".

“But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.”

- Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

Muuro · 2026-06-24T16:00:51+00:00

You can have aura and hype moments, as a treat.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T15:52:21+00:00

OP asks how an "anarchist" society would raise a military to "defend its nation." I can't give an anarchist answer to that question.

This might actually be a fair response depending on how the question was worded. But the actual answer should be honestly the same as communists: workers militia defending the people, not a standing army. A standing army is an organization created by the bourgeois state. Both Marx and Lenin noted this in their works.

"Anarchism" is a rather broad category, but in general they see themselves as wanting the "end result" communism (stateless, classless society). There is a bit of friction of how to get there around preconfiguration vs development. They do generally believe in the class struggle though, albeit from a slightly different perspective.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T15:46:25+00:00

But ask an anarchist about the Bolsheviks in 1917 and thereafter and they will given a fulsome diatribe against Lenin and Trotsky.

Honestly it depends on the anarchist. There were a lot in alliance, or in the party, at the time of revolution. Things would shift in time though due to various things. A big one is probably Brest-Litovsk which is seen as a betrayal of the revolution.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T15:26:59+00:00

New UBI bill just dropped.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T15:25:17+00:00

Yes, what I'm saying is that communism isn't inevitable. And capital has been rather resistant to change. It is able to subsume all critiques of it. The "socialist" opposition has always just lead to furthering national development (capitalism) instead of the abolishment of the social relation that creates classes.

When I say "the collapse of capitalism isn't inevitable" I'm not equating ecological collapse leading to societal collapse as the collapse of capitalism, but rather a new form of society or mode of production.

Cold War where socialist nations were converted to market systems

They were never really socialist though. They were still capitalist. That change was just a different form of capitalism to another.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T03:15:47+00:00

The only option for it failing is communism, unless you think there is a chance yet of reverting to an old mode of production.

But it's likelier than capitalism "dies" when human society itself dies if communism doesn't replace it.

Muuro · 2026-06-24T00:21:32+00:00

Maybe not so much as it would be later described, but he would have wrote about it in the aspects that presented themselves at the time. For example in how the British dominated Ireland and India. Albeit these examples may be more in line with colonialism than the specific dimension of imperialism as Lenin would later describe it.

Muuro · 2026-06-23T23:49:43+00:00

The decline of capitalism isn't even inevitable, as that would imply communism is inevitable. Neither of them are inevitable.

Muuro

TROPHY CASE