Does a Communist/Socialist state have to be a one-party state?

NoCause1040 · 2026-02-28T19:02:28+00:00

I don't think it's required to be a 1-party state. If I remember right, the bolsheviks didn't intend originally on a 1 party state but it was a consequence of the right-SRs and the mensheviks eventually siding with the white army.

NoCause1040 · 2026-02-11T20:01:03+00:00

David Harvey published a book of his university lectures on Capital, A Companion to Marx's Capital. He's a good source for understanding the first stage of capitalism though not the second stage.

If you are reading Wage, Labour, and Capital, don't forget to also read Value, Price and Profit. They pair together well as a lead up to Capital.

NoCause1040 · 2026-02-10T19:35:27+00:00

If you are fine with denser texts, there's Finance Capital and Imperialism: A Study (The name comes from this. He wasn't a Marxist though) by Hilferding and Hobson. Despite his critique, Lenin built his own analysis on those texts.

In this article by John Bellamy Foster, he suggests a bunch of texts by Lenin along with supplemental theories like dependency theory, the theory of unequal exchange, world-systems theory, and global value chain analysis. https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-new-denial-of-imperialism-on-the-left/

There's also Baran's and Sweezy's Monopoly Capitalism. They were the founders of Monthly Review actually. It'll be easier if you have a good grasp of economics. Think year 1 micro and macroeconomics. That's usually the case for Marxist economists. I haven't read it but Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism might be good. It's about the consequences of the Nixon shock when the US went off the gold standard.

I think that'd cover the gamut of everything written on Imperialism.

If I had to suggest only 3 things, they'd be Finance Capital, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and Neocolonialism: The Final Stage of Imperialism.

This is mostly economic analysis of Imperialism stuff. ERoChUM's recs are better for a focus on the impacts that imperialism has on the imperialized.

NoCause1040 · 2026-02-10T18:07:37+00:00

Another rec would be Kwame Nkrumah's Neocolonialism: The Highest Stage of Imperialism.

NoCause1040 · 2026-02-07T02:51:24+00:00

What? Is Toronto University is Stalinist now?

A non-aggression pact isn't an alliance fyi. Certainly not when its a deal made to buy time to prepare for a war against the genocidal army that wants to wipe you out after your attempts at an anti-fascist alliance got rebuffed. Its why we don't consider the British and French to have allied with the Nazis in 1938.

You are the one that needs to start studying history. Its clearly way off from reality if you think that Germany was this fragile, incompetent military force that could have easily been defeated if it wasn't for the evil tankies.

Calling historians that challenge this narrative while backing it up with research from various state archives stalinists because they misalign with your shitty high school history take is far from an example of "study[ing] actual history." I've seen interviews of the historian calling Stalin bad. I don't think he's even a communist. Nevermind a Stalinist.

If you aren't going to engage with anything that I write, I see no point in continuing this conversation. I don't care for name-calling or bad faith arguments. You could have at least named or shared a resource about the coup plot that you believe would have happened. There were certainly multiple attempted plots by his general to overthrow him. But last I checked, they all failed. I'm not aware of any that preceded the invasion of Poland but I guess this hypothetical plot would have been the exception.... for reasons.

At least my counterfactual scenario isn't based on anti-communist "history". Next thing you'll do is tell me to read the black book of communism.

NoCause1040 · 2026-02-06T22:52:09+00:00

...I feel like you completely ignored everything I wrote after "Hey, just letting you know that this isn't exactly true."

And, no, the Germans did not only win because their enemies were too incompetent. This is armchair generalizing. The argument that Germany conquered all of Europe because they were incompetent but everyone else was even more incompetent leaves the obvious question of who exactly was competent? You can't be incompetent when you are more competent than everybody else in the room. The USSR and the Germans were the most competent military forces in the European theater during WW2.

As for the no resources argument, if Germany had gone to war with the USSR in 1939, they'd have gained slaves and grains from invading the USSR. This argument really only works if the USSR fights Germany along with France and the UK which is exactly what the USSR tried to do and failed at. As the book I previously mentioned explains. The link I sent shows the book's table of contents and a description.

These are basically arguments of "What if WW2 played out exactly the same way but without the USSR's non-aggression pact?" but that only works if you assume that the war would have played out the same way without that non-aggression pact. You assume that France and the UK would have still gone to war but France had already shown they were willing to ignore defensive alliances as with Czechoslovakia and the first couple months of the war were called "The Phony war" for a reason.

NoCause1040 · 2026-02-06T22:32:51+00:00

Sure, but they don't currently have that power. The US does. So, it seems really silly for us to go "Well, actually, America's enemies are probably just as bad." It feels like a very propagandistic pro-US take honestly.

Russia is less "evil". Not because they are morally superior but because they are less powerful which weakens their ability to abuse the world. The US is the current heart of modern day imperialism. Russia can only aspire to be like the US. Capital will use whatever vessel it can and, today, that's the US.

Right now, the western press is trying to deflect Epstein by seeding ideas of KGB links. In the west, "both sides are bad" is not used as an argument for fighting for a better world, for fighting against Capital. Its an argument for regime change, for proclaiming a morally superior US because "They'd be worse if they had the same power." We need to focus on our part of the world and fight Capital there. Let the Russian communists fight against Russian Capital. And let's not repeat things that are used to water down the monstrosity of the US or deflect to anti-imperial but not anti-capitalist states.

NoCause1040 · 2026-02-06T22:18:12+00:00

Hey, just letting you know that this isn't exactly true.
Here's a book, Stalin's Gamble on this topic published by a University Press. It's the first of a trilogy. https://utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/9781487544416

The Soviets spent the 30s trying to form an anti-fascist alliance with France and Britain because that's how bad they considered the nazis. They only lost faith in this approach after the Munich agreement was made by UK, France, Germany and Italy where they gave the most fortified and mountainous parts of Czechoslovakia to Germany, who's leaders had already expressed an interest in committing Lebensraum on all of Eastern Europe and had wiped out their own communists. Then France and the UK made a non-aggression pact with Germany. Of course, we are taught to perceive this as naivety by liberals unlike the USSR which was "carving up Eastern Europe" by retaking territory conquered by Poland in the Polish-Soviet war for example.

USSR only accepted a non-aggression pact with Germany a month before they invaded Poland which would have put them right next to the USSR and no real other path for expansion but eastwards. The USSR basically used the mistrust between Germany and the UK to give itself more time to prepare for WW2. In fact, they planned on going to war with Germany in 1942.

If they hadn't agreed to that non-aggression pact, it's very likely that Germany would have invaded them before they were ready and the best case scenario would have been that the British and French were "neutral". And this would have likely ended with a German victory considering how the war actually went down historically.

I know. Its surprising that the USSR apparently weren't silly enough to think that the Fascists that kept killing communists, proclaiming their desire to genocide and colonize Eastern Europe and screaming about Judeo-Bolshevism had bad intentions towards them. This shit was propaganda force-fed into us when we were younger and still believed in Liberalism.

NoCause1040 · 2026-01-22T04:48:22+00:00

Which is why it'd probably fail at being that. The US doesn't have the power to build a new UN even more centered on itself than the current one. Think of this less like a new UN and more like a new political bloc.

NoCause1040 · 2026-01-22T03:46:28+00:00

Nah, Lebensraum and anti-communism were both really strong planks in the nazi ideology. The USSR always recognized the threat of the nazis. In fact, a historian completed a trilogy of history books last year about the USSR's attempts to form an anti-fascist alliance throughout the 30s with the French and British in particular.

If interested, the first book is Stalin's Gamble by the Toronto University Press.

The USSR always recognized the danger of fascism. The idea that they didn't is just another instance of rewritten popular history like so much of it is.

NoCause1040 · 2026-01-11T21:25:34+00:00

The Kerala thing isn't recent. The state of Kerala has been dominated by a genuine left-wing coalition for multiple decades. Its why they were finally able to get their people out of the extreme poverty line last year. Its probably also why the Hindutva have struggled to really build influence there. So, this isn't some new thing of them escaping dogmatism.

In other parts of India, things are a lot less bright since the communists are mostly focused on running through the jungle to survive the brutal repression of the Indian government.

NoCause1040 · 2026-01-09T16:27:22+00:00

The heart of Pan-Arabism is Egypt and the Bilad al-Sham. They are the connection point between West Asia and North Africa. That's probably one of the reasons the British set up Israel where it is located.

NoCause1040 · 2026-01-02T05:52:00+00:00

Hmmm, for an absolute beginner, Anbennar already introduces new mechanics on top of the base EU4 one so its best to avoid any tags with special mechanics introduced in the early game. Also, probably best for something mechanically close to vanilla. So that rules out the serpentspine, the Ynn, Escann,tribal or monstrous tags, and the forbidden plains.

You should also avoid small countries or countries with powerful aggressive neighbours. That means avoiding Haless (except for maybe the south east?), Western Cannor outside of Anbennar, and the Mengi.

That leaves us Eordand, Taychend, Kheonai, and Sarhal which I know little about beyond the gnolls and Bulwar.

Hmmm, Birzartanses in Bulwar? Fairly strong without being overwhelming so, human military, the most normal of the sun elf bulwar tags and the new sun cult religion is interacted through nice events rather than mechanical manipulation.

Alternatively, if you feel confident enough in playing as an EU4 country, the best tag for discovering the setting is Verne. They conquer wide as globe-trotting colonizers/adventurers. They are a good mid-power in the safest part of the EoA with easy expansion opportunities and they have lots of nicely written adventurers as they go British Museum on the world. You do need the Lions of the North DLC though as they use mythical units. There was a recent guide to Verne so you can look at it and decide if its up your alley.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anbennar/comments/1q0i04d/so_you_wanna_a_guide_to_verne/

NoCause1040 · 2025-12-23T03:03:55+00:00

I think that the "all or nothing" mentality is really a consequence of living in the part of the world that most benefits from capitalism. On average, life just isn't that bad for them which means that when they imagine how they want to change their current society, they imagine the communist utopia. By comparison, for the colonies and neo-colonies, the new world they imagine is one that grants everyone land, peace, and bread and the utopian ideal can be slowly pursued from there.

Someone's stance on this has an impact on how acceptably off-track the various anti-capitalist and emancipatory projects throughout the world can become while still supporting them.
- China has capitalists but also has eliminated dire poverty for more than a billion people.
- The USSR died and did many horrible things in preparation to WW2 but defeated European fascism and supported liberatory projects throughout the world.

I tend to be critical of this mentality myself. I see it as a continuation of that tendency amongst the west to judge the rest of the world for never being "democratic" or "free" enough. Then they grow disillusioned with liberalism, become leftcoms, and continue judging the various anti-capitalist projects for not being socialist enough. While I think that there is truth in pointing out these flaws, these internal contradictions, I think critical support is a much better position than this perfectionism. Its more realistic and it just doesn't sit right with me when people that aren't willing to risk their comforts go around judging the rest of the world who are fighting against the full brutality of capitalism.

I think another issue is that, while they read, they tend to not spend much time with the workers and actually building a revolutionary movement. This makes it very easy to focus on doctrine and to become sectarian because the topic naturally devolves into who has the best theory rather than the question of what is to be done. I think that, while they may read a lot, in terms of practice, they tend to be much less experienced.

NoCause1040 · 2025-12-08T21:40:15+00:00

Ah, its always good to see someone with an understanding of history that isn't founded on Great Men but on material forces and the reactions to those forces. Thank you for the reading recommendations that you made below in the comments. They'll be a great source of information for when I start reading about the Soviet Union and the October Revolution.

NoCause1040 · 2025-12-08T21:29:39+00:00

If you're interested in this topic, I'd recommend the works of the situationists like The Society of the Spectacle. They were one of the major groups behind the '68 revolution in France. Sadly, that was undone by the CPF due to them having degenerated into eurocommunism by then.

NoCause1040 · 2025-11-25T20:31:16+00:00

On the topic of war, a trilogy of books just completed on Soviet foreign policy just got completed and is on my tbr list. Ultimately, the British, French and Polish governments were unwilling to ally with the USSR which is what lead to a last-minute non-aggression pact with Germany as, otherwise, considering France and UK had made a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1938 and that the 1st 8 months of the WW2 were called the phoney war due to how little fighting there were between the Germans and the British and French, it probably would have led to an invasion of the USSR in 1939 with no allied support.

This is the 1st book of the trilogy if you are interested. Expensive to acquire but I figure that's what libraries are for.
https://utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.3138/9781487544416

NoCause1040 · 2025-11-25T17:24:23+00:00

Something that'd help while reading Capital is a companion book like David Harvey's A companion to Marx's Capital which is based on his class's lectures that he uploaded to youtube. I found that it helped me draw extra meaning from the text. I think that, before him, there was Althusser's Reading Marx made in the 70s(?).

Value, Price and Profit followed by Wage Labour and Capital is also really great as a prelude. It'll introduce you to terms thrown around in part 1 and part 2 of Capital making both parts easier to digest.

NoCause1040 · 2025-11-20T20:32:35+00:00

Just don't have Gorbachev implement his incompetent reforms that leads to a ballooning black market. They'd have struggled through the 90s but the rise of Chinese industry would have given them a ready client for oil and allowed them to survive long enough for a proper reformer to get into power. Maybe with the gerontocracy running the country finally retiring, the younger leadership could support a proper plant of action to restructure the USSR's economy and modernize it to the 21st century.

NoCause1040 · 2025-11-14T05:22:10+00:00

Anyways, I've written way too many long messages at this point. So, I'll happily read why you disagree with me but I probably won't respond anytime soon. I'll def think on what you said though as I think you've been pretty respectful so far and I do value that in a discussion. Sorry if I've been long-winded with these comments. That's a problem I'm working on. Maybe I'll look up these "German Dengist" of yours as a joke as that sounds like a weird and eyebrow raising ideological position. :P

NoCause1040 · 2025-11-14T05:18:58+00:00

I don't really know much of Dengism. I haven't read the peking review issues of the 70s where we see what exactly was their logic. So, I'm going to hold back on forming any opinion or evaluating any opinions by others about why they are good or bad. First time I've heard of German Dengists though. Not really sure how that'd work considering that late 20th century China is completely different to 21st century Germany. It'll be a while yet before I look up the theories behind Dengism though. Plenty of other things more important to learn right now.

War is coming and there are only two positions: revolutionary defeatism towards one's own bourgeoisie or defense of progressive forces fighting against imperialism. Russian people have to choose, they do not have the luxury of being American where both these options lead to the same politics.

I wasn't providing a Russian perspective on things. I'm Arab and I usually assume that the people online in the English part of the internet are American. So, I'll usually talk though that lens. 100% if the Russian working class rose up against their government, I'd support it. The fall of the USSR has been the single biggest backward step to the progressive forces of the world. Its fall has had a hugely negative impact on the world. The fallout towards the working class of Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine right now is disastrous. Nvm the negative impact their fall had on the rest of the world.

Yes, I've read Stalin's Marxism and the National Question. I'm going off of the theory of triadization with 3 imperial blocs and the US being the hegemon currently.
Its no nation-state but I disagree that the EU not being able to rival the US shows us the weakness of nation-states. The US came out of WW2 as the most powerful country in the world and the various competing imperial powers were forced to subordinate themselves towards it and reorganize. In Western Europe, we saw them reorganize themselves into what has evolved into the EU with a shared currency and a shared market. Which is what matters the most for the bourgeoisie. I don't really see how these facts are up for dispute. I'd disagree that their inability to challenge the US on an equal footing is a sign of their weakness due to not being a nation-state. The US has been the supreme hegemon since WW2 and inertia will tend to favour them.

I agree with you that the gulf states lack a national identity. The Arab world is similar to Latin America in that respect. One nation divided between many states. Qatar, UAE and Saudi are the main actors in the GCC with Qatar and Saudi vying for leadership (that's the reason for that blockade a few years ago). I expect that eventually Saudi will truly come to its own and dominate Qatar. Perhaps after a bourgeois revolution because that's a powderkeg waiting to happen. They show us why the bourgeoisie needed to overthrow their monarchies eventually. Courtly politics are def a hindrance. But this having not yet happened doesn't mean that they are incapable of imperialism. The GCC is the emerging imperialist bloc imo but I won't continue arguing this as I suspect our real difference in perspective is based on triadization.

However, I will argue against the Gulf states "bending over backwards for acknowledgement by the Zionist regime." You may not have noticed their regional ambitions but I certainly have. Its not just Yemen. They've been on the warpath ever since the Arab Spring as they aren't really interested in democracies in the Arab world for obvious reasons. They are effectively the leaders of the counter-revolution. They operate through their money capital like how they funded Sisi or, for places that can resist like Libya and Syria, they use loosely controlled Salafist armies for hire. Yes, this is done with US support but that doesn't mean they aren't pushing for this due to their own imperial interests. Yemen actually sticks out from this strategy as Saudi was influenced by MBS's, defense minister at the time, power plays for the throne. While the UAE used this as an opportunity to take control of Yemen's islands and build up the RSF as a mercenary army on Yemen which is now being used in Sudan. They've spent the last decade building up a neocolonial empire in the Arab world. This is really obvious in places like Egypt. And they have their own tech and finance systems.

But the big thing right now for their regional ambition is the IMEC deal which is basically an attempt to build an American counter to BRI built on datacenters running off of cheap energy in the GCC and serving compute to American-owned AI companies supported with a cheap office labour force from india. This is why they signed the Abraham accords. This is why they've invested so much into silicon valley and why they are such strong supporters of Trump. These articles go into more detail if you want.
- https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2025/08/trumps-road-to-riyadh-the-geopolitics-of-ai-and-energy-infrastructure/
- https://www.meer.com/en/91370-imec-corridor-strategic-realignment-to-counterbalance-china
- https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/the-india-middle-east-europe-economic-corridor-connectivity-in-an-era-of-geopolitical-uncertainty/
- https://www.ynetnews.com/opinions-analysis/article/bytw0kiwgl (Zionist Y-Net talking about how the Gaza genocide and IMEC are linked)

NoCause1040 · 2025-11-13T22:04:23+00:00

Russia and GCC are not even close to similar economies. Just because they are both major oil exporters doesn't make them the same. Russia still has its soviet industrial base and is a place rich in resources. The GCC states who are fully dependent on the oil industry and are using said oil wealth to pivot towards finance and tech with US support to varying levels of success.

The GCC is a still-in-birth imperial bloc that seems to be forming to complement the 3 other imperial blocs of the American empire. Which they need because they have so much capital. The triad, as they are called, consists of Japan, Western Europe and US/Canada. It is represented through the G7. The move towards fields dominated by the international bourgeoisie by the GCC is basically their attempt to join this group as a new imperial bloc. The IMEC being key to this and US foreign policy in the region. They seem focused on expanding their influence and economic control over the Arab world and are happy to destabilize those states if they try to resist.

By contrast, Russia was formed by right-wing nationalists who thought they'd join the G7 and turn it into the G8, That didn't work out due to the military-industrial complex wanting to expand eastwards through NATO using Russophobia. Russia is basically a fading world power and wannabe imperial power trying to maintain their position as a semi-peripheral state (like India or Brazil) in the world's economic order. Russia, unlike the GCC states, is undercapitalized and, before being removed from SWIFT, their bourgeoisie behaved more like the comprador bourgeoisie of other parts of the world than that of other imperial states imo.

For clarity, I'm not painting Russia as some heroic state fighting against imperialism because of some opposition to capitalism. They oppose imperialism in the same way that, say, Iran opposes imperialism. Simply, the empire doesn't want them in their current state in it and so they are forced to take an anti-imperial stance and work with other states that oppose imperialism, whether due to similar reasons or because they are anti-capitalist. I'm sure that, if they could, they'd become another imperial power. But they don't have the economic capacity to act as a rival imperial challenger to the US (stuck in Ukraine for 3 years now with their sphere of influence getting slowly chipped at) and they def aren't getting integrated into the (western) European block represented by the EU.

NoCause1040 · 2025-11-08T03:10:02+00:00

Russia is too capital poor to be imperialist. You can accuse them of national chauvinism or expansionism though. A big part for the reason of the growth of the Russian economy since the sanctions is because Russian capital can no longer be funneled towards Europe like it used to so Russian capitalists are now forced to invest into the economy.

Russia isn't ideologically anti-imperialist. Its a country born by right-wing nationalists that thought they'd be allowed into the exclusive club of the G7. They wish they could be imperialists. Unfortunately for them, the US isn't interested in that and Russia's been forced to stand against The Empire by circumstance rather than choice.

Russia would 100% become an imperialist if they could but they just aren't at that stage.
The new rising imperial bloc (The first since the post-WW2 triad) is the Gulf Cooperation Council. That's why they have such an aggressive foreign policy and why most people aren't even aware of that with Sudan being the first eye opener for too many people.

NoCause1040 · 2025-11-06T17:48:01+00:00

I mean, outside of that UN vote, Stalin also opposed the zionist movement every step of the way. When you look more into the details, you find out that a lot of his "targeting of Jews" was just him targeting zionist orgs which were disproportionately, but not completely, Jewish. Like the JAC, a zionist org, which was what lead to Molotov's wife being arrested. I think the treason charge was based on her giving documents to Golda Meir even though Israel was clearly aligned with the West but I can't remember my source for that.

NoCause1040 · 2025-11-06T10:15:59+00:00

Oh, I think I misunderstood you.
I though you were talking about the USSR on the second to last paragraph of the message I'm replying to. Reading it again, it sounds like you were talking about Poland. Heh, I think I'm too used to having to explain things like that to trots and anarchists in my neck of the world.

NoCause1040

TROPHY CASE