I would like to know what communist tendency you follow, why you follow it and who best represents your tendency of communism weather it be a modern day country like China or a country like the USSR?
The answer to this question myself is that I am a Marxist-Leninist. I follow Marxism Leninism because it gives power to the working class rather than the bourgeois and aims for a classless money less society this is achieved through following Marxist Leninist theory and analyzing the conditions in the country you are trying to achieve Marxism-Leninism in. Those who best represent Marxism Leninism for me are Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Hoxha.
While I do identify more with Marxist Leninists than any other tendency, I don’t like these labels a lot. I think sometimes this leads more to group identity, so people are forced to uphold values of a particular tendency rather than criticize and evolve our thinking.
Marx and Engels laid the foundation of the system and there were many contributors to our field. We have people like Rosa Luxemburg, Kautsky (before he turned into a renegade), Bebel, Liebknecht, Plekhanov, Bukharin, Lenin, Mao, Trotsky, Stalin, Losurdo, Deng, and many others. Some people held contradictory views, some argued against each other, but I do think debating is important to make our field grow scientifically. Our science needs criticism and contradiction in order to develop itself more and to respond to our current practical issues.
It does not mean, however, we should embrace eclecticism, as some people may criticize correctly. When we are building a political movements we need to have a clear political line and avoid embracing everything, or we end up with nothing. In this way, MLs were the people who brought me to Marxism, and I tend to agree with them more than anyone else.
Yep. We need to always be interrogating our own positions and if they continue to be relevant to our current conditions, which will be different depending on where the struggle is located. People becoming too attached to labels encourages people to treat socialism like a subculture.
I agree, but I sometimes do not understand the disdain or avoidance of labels that some communists have (not talking about peeps here); if it comes from a place of inexperience and not knowing the theory behind any communist positions, then I understand not wanting to attach a label to yourself, but if you know enough theory to say what you are yet you do not, I have trouble coming up with a good reason for doing so (admittedly, I am not sure how common this second type is). If you think you are boxing yourself in by attaching yourself to a label, then I think you misunderstand the fact that people can have labels and interrogate them while having these very same labels.
I assume that the second type might want to avoid confrontation or being wrong, but that is honestly not a major problem for me (despite myself being a beginner Marxist, I am firm in my conviction that Marxism is the right path; any criticisms thrown towards my way can either be criticized themselves or they can help me improve), and labels are important whether it is or is not desirable. It might also be a way for some people (like content-creators) to become popular amongst a wide variety of people without alienating their audience, which is a more selfish reason for it.
On a somewhat related note, Lenin made it very clear that labels are important in What is to be Done?: “only short-sighted people can consider factional disputes and a strict differentiation between shades of opinion inopportune or superfluous. The fate of Russian Social-Democracy for very many years to come may depend on the strengthening of one or the other “shade”.”
I agree with you too. Theres nothing wrong with labels inherently, especially as signifiers of an ideological lens. But the danger is forgetting that Marxism-Leninism is, in fact, a lens not a dogma. When the lens is treated like a dogma, then it’s proponents can take on a religious or subculture tendency.
Neither of us are describing the users here. I think both of us are describing a specific type of person. People especially in the West like to box themselves into labels as placeholders for their identities.
For example, “attachment styles.” The whole point of the attachment model is to help a person become conscious of the ways they let trauma influence their relationships with others. But instead of using that awareness to move towards becoming more secure, they treat being “anxious/avoidant” as an identity unable to be changed.
Yeah, some less educated people (not saying I am not much of a professional on Marxist theory) stick with labels for identity purposes rather than using whichever describes them best or reading more to develop an understanding of their identity.
I think most of us here are Marxist-Leninists. The reason for me at least is fairly simple: it’s the most scientific (in the sense that it looks at the world through a materialist lens and analyses it rationally, systematically and holistically) and it demonstrably works when used to guide revolutionary practice.
The second part is particularly important because if your ideology doesn’t work in the real world then what good is it? I’m paraphrasing here, but: “The point isn’t just to analyze the world, it’s to change it.” Only Marxism-Leninism has managed to produce successful revolutions that create stable socialist societies which have improved the level of human well-being beyond what any capitalist system would be capable of doing in the same circumstances.
Marxism-Leninism is also flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances and to incorporate a newer and better understanding of how the world works. Dogmatism is the death of science. I find that China has some great phrases that express the scientific approach to socialism, such as: “Crossing the river by feeling the stones” and “Seeking truth from facts”. We observe the world as it is to form theories, proceed forward through trial and error, adopt what works and discard what doesn’t.
This also means we should be open to learning from many different sources, so we should not attach ourselves to one particular person or country (though obviously some have been objectively more successful than others, and we should study why that is and learn how we can replicate their successes and avoid their mistakes).
A Marxist-Leninist here as well. In my view, dialectical materialism is the best tool we have for understanding the world and social relations.
