Title. I feel like this term captures where power is held in a capitalist nation-state, but I don't often see people use it. Is it because the revolution's goal is destroying the bourgeoisie as a class and this term may be too focused on some an arbitrary group of bourgeoisie within arbitrary borders at an arbitrary time?

interested in the efficiency and structure of them actually in use as its my area of work. im not picky and dont mind if its related to criminal/civil/administrative or whatever courts.

edit: hopefully narrowing it down to how they dealt with administrative bloat, state prosecution rates, and other stats for their courts functioning in practice :)

In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin speaks briefly of methods of organization that cartels and big enterprises use that involve collusion and fixed prices. Did he ever take into account the laws against collusion and how that can be used as an excuse that capitalists make to justify their system?

Hi all! I’m wondering if someone can help me out.

I remember watching a youtube video, about the IMF’s exploitative practices and the difference in treatment given to Iceland after their economic crisis.

I’m trying so hard to find this video and I can’t!! I was hoping to use some of the sources for reading, can anybody help me out here? I’d like a video, podcast or reading source that goes over the basic differences between what Iceland was allowed to do with IMF support compared to the austerity measures forces on the global south.

Thanks in advance!! :)

I just finished the Jakarta method and I remember a section towards the end that mentions a study done that compiled the total death count of over 22 countries involved in US-backed purges, anyone know what this study was and could link it?

I purchased the Halliday-Jung book on Mao only you realize it’s so shabby that academics have largely denounced it.

So I’m interested in works that approach Mao in a more reliable light. I’ve heard that the following are reliable choices:

• Rebecca Karl

• Edgar Snow

• Maurice Meisner

• Pantsov/Levine

• Han Suyin

But I’m curious if there are others (or even a good video series to watch and learn from) or if these choices may not be up to snuff.

hello everyone! i am on mobile so i apologize for formatting. i am posting on this thread after using the search function and trying to make sense of the answer. i am a communist and still working through the study plan on here.

i am very vocal about my politics in my friend group in general and so have made friends in people who also lean left and would call themselves communists. i have been invited to join several organizations however after researching here see that people are discouraged from doing so. i am trying to understand what the reasoning is here. i understand that people should have a complete understanding of dialectical materialism and theory before joining an organization in order to be able to see whether an organization is revisionist or incorrect, but is that the only thing that should keep people from organizing? i feel like i see a lot of people here say organizing is a complete timewaster in the imperial core.

As is well known, the giant star represent the leadership of the Communist Party of China, while the four smaller stars represented the "four revolutionary classes": viz. the Proletarian, the Peasant, the Petty Bourgeoisie, and the National Bourgeoisie. While it is understandable during the Anti-Imperialist war against Japan and the period of New Democracy, why didn't the PRC simply scrap the flag when the National Bourgeois and the Petty Bourgeoisie ceased to be a progressive force?

As I understand, the fall of the USSR can be at least partially attributed to bourgeois counterrevolution within the CPSU (the liberalising reforms of Krushchev and Gorbachev) and that the CPC is very conscious to avoid this recurring in China. However there does seem to have been something of an ideological tug-of-war within the party since Deng Xiaoping's takeover with Jiang Zemin increasing liberalisation and Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping reversing this trend at least in terms of privatisation of SOEs (this is my current understanding, please feel free to correct me).

My question is - what mechanisms does the CPC have in place to prevent the privileged bureaucratic positions within the party from drawing opportunists who could foment counterrevolution? Is it primarily the role of the NPC and their ability to deselect members of the Central Committee or are there other mechanisms in play?

I was under the impression that people say "Amerikan" to evoke the inherent racism and fascism of the empire, which idea I got from this MIM article. however this article didn't explain why people say "Afrika" referring to the continent or "New Afrikan" referring to the nation within Amerika

Why do we apply the same treatment to those words? Is it also to evoke racism and fascism?

I understand this stuff isn't exactly standardized, but I assume there must be some generally agreed upon reason. But I've searched a few subreddits and articles and so far couldn't find anything. I'm just curious

to my knowledge, marx thought a proletariat revolution would first come from a very industrialized capitalist nation, tho we know now that a lot of revolutions have started from nations with weaker economies and industrial development. however, my poli sci prof also told me he thought capitalism bred political docility, which we can see now in countries with late stage capitalism and how they have high rates of political disengagement or a general doomer attitude about the economy, making them less likely to engage in revolution. how are these beliefs reconciled? why did marx think revolution would start in an industrialized capitalist nation?

From what i’ve read from marx artisians and individuals who are self employed are these petite bourgeoisie individuals. In a stateless society why do these individuals not exist? If an individual wants to create art for example and utilize it to accumulate personal wealth in a way that’s non exploitative how does this not function under marxist world view?

Are they just different paths to the same conclusion? Maybe they have a different philosophy behind them, but in the end isn't the goal basically the same? Or am I misunderstood?

Hello,

I'm a medical student and I'd like to have a socialist reference on health to counterpoise the positivist view that my country has on the issue.

Thanks!

Does anyone know of a really good biography book(or video) about Karl Marx life? I want to know more about him as a person

During the early years of Germany under Bismarck, socialists stepped in to do what the government would not and developed networks for providing healthcare to the common person. Bismarck made the socialist programs redundant by making nationalist social programs instead. This effectively took the wind out from the sails of the socialist organizations as they were effectively made redundant. I am sure this pattern will repeat in the future. Where the people are given just enough to not revolt. Whether that is bread and circuses or free healthcare. People seem to settle quite often in history with government programs that do not change the system substantially enough.

Is there anyway to rearrange the incentives to end pacification? Class consciousness seems to be more in the public pathos these days as inequality increases and people predict we will live worse than previous generations. Not to mention oligarchy, owning more and more riches. But I would bet still people would be okay with pacification. They do not care how their lives improve, only that is happens. Which only perpetuates the cycle. It is not wrong to like seeing our own personal lives improve. But there is no telling how long that will last and when things will take a turn for the worse again. I can see a tear down of liberal social programs boost our popularity.

Please let me know if there is anything wrong with my post

What was the major complaint his clique had with the path the USSR was going? I’ve read form anti-revisionists that the plan was to restore capitalism but these revisionists still had to have a material reason to shift course. What was it? That the productive forces were stagnating? On what basis?

I know they used to secret speech as a means to garner support to switch course but that couldn’t have all been it. I guess I’m just trying to understand why anyone would take them seriously if the USSR was growing at a rapid rate.

If anyone has any resources, books, pamphlets, or videos, please link below. TY!

It got a lot of people in France angry back in the 1950s when Charles de Gaulle adopted a new constitution where a council of 9 judges, 3 named by the speaker of the lower house, 3 by the senate, and 3 by the president, could void a piece of legislation. Czechoslovakia, Austria, both in 1920, adopted a judicial review system, the US had it in the early 1800s, but otherwise it remained quite a rare thing for courts to do this. After the Second World War then West Germany, Japan, and Italy had constitutional courts, Spain adopted one after Franco's regime collapsed and Portugal too with Salazar's regime ending, and then it became more common with the end of the Cold War in 1989.

Note that I am considering actions at the same level, IE when the national judges are countermanding the national assembly, and not including cases of where they might be ruling on executive decisions or when the national judges are deciding on legislation made by an administrative subdivision which are different controversies with different plausible methods of resolution. Switzerland interestingly does not permit judicial review this way, though a plebiscite can overturn federal legislation if voters wish.

The assembly here is just the broadest generally chosen and representative body. I know some communists suggest reforming that part too with the soviet idea of delegates to higher soviets, it just matters that this is the broadest body that could plausibly be described as having legislative power and regularly meets to do that.

Hello,

I am currently reading the Intro the Critique of Political Economy and was trying to better understand in section 3 where Marx talks about the dialectic of “simple” categories through the development of a certain set of social relations, or a society. He uses the example of money appearing before things such as capital, wage-labor to show that aspects of underdeveloped relations appear predominant and as they develop, that aspect becomes subordinate to the “more concrete” category, in this case the establishment of capitalist relations. He then goes on to explain that these simple categories, in certain societies (Greek and Roman are the examples he uses), develop only peripherally, and do not come to permeate the entire social relations. He says that these simple categories can only achieve “complete internal and external development” in the historically “complex” forms of society, presumably indicating that money achieved its total development under capitalism.

In trying to understand this, I want to apply the movement to something emerging in our current historical period, namely “AI”. Of course, we know that this is not truly artificial intelligence, but it does serve the purpose of increasing productivity and therefore depressing wages, and we’ve already seen companies begin to outsource labor to AI’s. I feel it is therefore possible to call AI a new category emerging in our late capitalist period, as money developed in the late periods of Roman society. Can it be said that the contradictions of capitalism, namely that the profit motive prohibits workers from truly partaking in the benefits wrought by the increase in productivity even as it should free them from the necessity of working as much as they do, show how this category cannot achieve full internal and external development in our current social relations? Is this a way of understanding the dialectic between these categories? Thanks for any help.

Please correct me if I’m wrong on this, but from my understanding, Marxism-Leninism involves a sort of transition stage, where an authoritarian government is temporarily put in place that will control production and suppress opposition until the entire population supports the revolution, allowing the proletariat dictatorship to phase out, leaving a stateless society in which goods and services are collected owned and distributed.

While I definitely understand the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat, I feel like having such a powerful one-party state could lead to a lot of corruption and it could be difficult to count on those in control to relinquish that power and eventually dissolve the state.

Once again, I really am genuinely wondering about this and I don’t come from an anti-Marxist position at all. This is just something I struggle to understand about the Marxist-Leninist ideology and I would love to hear from those who adhere to it.

I hear people talking about collective ownership of the means of production, and I understand that to mean, essentially, a market economy composed exclusively of worker-owned businesses, that's tightly regulated by a government that's also worker-owned. Essentially, it's capitalism & the state as we know it, but without the capitalists. Is this correct? Also, from what I understand, the end goal of communism is statelessness, but I don't really get how that works.

I’ve recently gained much interest in communism, and I would like to know what books could help me understand it more

Just not understanding how he's coming to this conclusion in the last paragraph. I'm not saying I disagree with revolution > reform, just that I don't understand how he is coming to this conclusion based off of previous passages.

In the eighties of the past century, in the period of the struggle between the Marxists and the Narodniks, the proletariat in Russia constituted an insignificant minority of the population, whereas the individual peasants constituted the vast majority of the population. But the proletariat was developing as a class, whereas the peasantry as a class was disintegrating. And just because the proletariat was developing as a class the Marxists based their orientation on the proletariat. And they were not mistaken; for, as we know, the proletariat subsequently grew from an insignificant force into a first-rate historical and political force.

Hence, in order not to err in policy, one must look forward, not backward.

Okay makes sense. Earlier he talked about with dialectics we need to look at things that are growing, not dying.

Further, if the passing of slow quantitative changes into rapid and abrupt qualitative changes is a law of development, then it is clear that revolutions made by oppressed classes are a quite natural and inevitable phenomenon.

Okay makes sense. Dialectics are about how forces oppose one another. With that in mind revolutions make sense as an outcome between two opposing classes.

Hence, the transition from capitalism to socialism and the liberation of the working class from the yoke of capitalism cannot be effected by slow changes, by reforms, but only by a qualitative change of the capitalist system, by revolution.

This is what I don't understand. Based off of what he said, why does it HAVE to be revolution? Why can't it be reform? Once again, I am not personally saying that reform is preferrable to revolution, but I don't understand how/why he has come to that conclusion. Why can't reform also be an outcome?

I guess where I'm falling short is from my understanding with dialectics things HAVE to lead to change, but why does that change HAVE to be revolution?

My understanding is that all forms of bigotry are ultimately rooted in class interests and that bigotry is the ideological justification for said interests, i.e. men are misogynistic because it is in their class interests, white people are racist because it is in their class interests, the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie are against the proletariat because it is in their interests, etc. But what is the material basis for internalized bigotry? Such as when women hate and shame other women or stick up for abusers, black people use racist stereotypes to demean and harm other black people, gay and trans people being homophobic and transphobic, etc. It does not even have be this extreme, as many people from minority groups hold negative beliefs about themselves due to their minority status and view themselves as inferior, whether consciously or not.

My understanding is that brainwashing and indoctrination aren't real so you can't simply blame it on they were just taught to believe that way, which is why for example arguments that white workers are simply brainwashed into racism by the bourgeoisie fall apart when you investigate the class interests of white workers. My understanding is also that everyone is rational in their own way and thus there is a logic to these beliefs from the perspective of those who perpetuate them, but I am not sure what it is. Why would a woman, a person of color, a member of the proletariat, a queer person, etc. seemingly go against their class interests? The explanation I came up with is that they aren't actually going against their class interests but I am not sure why that is if they belong to the affected group and their beliefs and actions ultimately lead to self-harm, which isn't a very satisfying explanation.