The primary advancements of Leninism are the following:
You forget to add "Assassinating the soviet leadership because they defeated the bolsheviks in a fair election, and that was unacceptable to Lenin; and then replacing the dead soviets with bolshevik stooges while appropriating the term “Soviet.”
Oh and betraying the anarchists and other groups who supported them during the revolution.
Oh and highly centralized and controlling surveillance state apparatus, and making the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat” a permanent fixture rather than a transitional government.
Marxism-Leninism
It’s Marxist-Leninism, not “Marxism-Leninism.” You might want to get your own label right before trying to school people on the internet about it.
In the modern era, the number of Marxists that reject Lenin are incredibly fringe.
No, you said Marxism-Leninism isn’t Marxist. Marxism-Leninism is Marxist. All of Marxism in the modern day has historically evolved from the era of Marx, be it through accepting ideas, changing them, or rejecting them. There is no such thing as a Marxist that has no opinion on Lenin one way or the other, for example. The ideology “Leninism” is used to refer specifically to Lenin’s advancements, “Marxism” to the ideology created by Marx and Engels, and “Marxism-Leninism” as the unified ideology created by Lenin and forged in practice.
You then make vague references to the Russian Civil War without actually contextualizing them. The Bolsheviks did not “lose fair elections,” and fighting amongst the Soviets did coalesce around the Bolshevik line, as the Bolsheviks were supported by both the proletariat and peasantry. The fighting between the communists and anarchists wasn’t some one-sided betrayal either, it was a civil war and some sections of the anarchists that did not join the Bolsheviks took up arms against the soviets.
Further still, the soviet state was not some “permanent fixture.” Such an idea is inherently against Marxist understanding of dialectical materialism, as nothing in the world is permanent, as well as the economic basis for the withering of the state. The USSR was a socialist state gradually building towards communism.
As for “Marxist-Leninism,” no, I mean Marxism-Leninism, as understood by Wikipedia, science direct, and Stalin when coining the term. You’re very confident about this point despite being trivially proven wrong.
As for Merleau-Ponty, yes, Western Marxism is incredibly fringe in the global and historical context.
Yeah, people need to stop conflating MLs with Marxists, because Leninism and Marxism are not the same thing at all.
Leninists appropriated the “Marxist” label to lend credibility to their own ideology. Hence it’s “Marxist-Leninism,” not “Leninist-Marxism.”
Nobody is out there calling actual Marxists “tankies.” We’re calling MLs tankies, and then they retreat behind a mote and bailey by saying “yOuR cAlLiNg AlL mArXiStS tAnKiEs?!1?1?!1?1??1?1!!”
You quite explicitly made the claim that “actual Marxism” and Marxism-Leninism are two separate things, stating essentially that Marxism-Leninism is fake Marxism.
Each of those statements I made suggests that “Marxist-Leninism” is not the same thing as “Marxism” outright. As in, they’re not synonymous terms, contrary to the popular usage of the term “Marxist,” (i.e.: noun; an adherent of Marxism).
That’s not the same thing at all as claiming it isn’t “Marxist,” (i.e.: adj; deriving inspiration, origins, or ideological alignment from Marxism.)
The closest thing I said to implying what you claim I said was contrasting MLs with “actual Marxists,” which yes, I admit was poor word choice. The meaning I was aiming for was closed to either “Marxist originalists,” as in people who study Marx’s writings and derive their theoretical outlooks from that rather than from Lenin or Trotsky; or more particularly “Marxists as a broader category,” as in not limiting it to only one sub-school of thought.
Either way, my entire original point was that referring to “Marxist-Leninists” simply as “Marxists” is a misnomer because it conflates Leninism with Marxism, implies that all forms of Marxism are actually Leninism, and erases even the possibility of exploring other forms of Marxism as either intellectual possibilities, innovative theories, or novel iterations of praxis itself. It reduces the entire field of “Marxism” to one point, namely: Leninism.
Which is damaging, precisely because there’s a very real equivalence between “Marxist-Leninism” and bolshevism. In effect, it says “if you’re not a bolshevik, then you can’t be a communist.”
It’s a form of gatekeeping when it happens on the left, and it’s a caricaturization when it happens on the right, because when they use the term “Marxist” as a pejorative for the left as a whole, what they’re saying is that we’re all bolsheviks.
I personally would like to distinguish between myself and bolshevism without rejecting Marxism outright. I do that by rejecting Maxist-Leninism, while pointing to the distinction between it and Marxism.
You can still try to monopolize the entire field of Marxism across philosophical, sociological, political, and economic spheres. You can claim being a Leninist is a requirement for being a Marxist. I would still disagree with you, and honestly that approach isn’t going to advance leftwing causes anywhere in the world.
It’s pretty simple, Marxism-Leninism is the largest and most significant subset of Marxism. Much of Marxism-Leninism is just Marxism, and as such it shares with other branches of Marxist thought. When pertinent, it is more useful to use Marxism, rather then Marxism-Leninism, such as discussing the Marxist law of value or theory of the state, neither of which Marxism-Leninism meaningfully deviates from.
In a single word, “fringe.” Marxism-Leninism isn’t just the most historically relevant branch of Marxism, it’s also the most important in the modern era. It isn’t a “false equivalency,” I never made the claim that all Marxists are Marxist-Leninists, just that much of peoples critiques of Marxism-Leninism are more accurately critiques of Marxism itself, Lenin’s work not being relevant in that particular critique.
That’s literally what I just said.
You forget to add "Assassinating the soviet leadership because they defeated the bolsheviks in a fair election, and that was unacceptable to Lenin; and then replacing the dead soviets with bolshevik stooges while appropriating the term “Soviet.”
Oh and betraying the anarchists and other groups who supported them during the revolution.
Oh and highly centralized and controlling surveillance state apparatus, and making the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat” a permanent fixture rather than a transitional government.
It’s Marxist-Leninism, not “Marxism-Leninism.” You might want to get your own label right before trying to school people on the internet about it.
Someone’s never read Merleau-Ponty, and it shows…
No, you said Marxism-Leninism isn’t Marxist. Marxism-Leninism is Marxist. All of Marxism in the modern day has historically evolved from the era of Marx, be it through accepting ideas, changing them, or rejecting them. There is no such thing as a Marxist that has no opinion on Lenin one way or the other, for example. The ideology “Leninism” is used to refer specifically to Lenin’s advancements, “Marxism” to the ideology created by Marx and Engels, and “Marxism-Leninism” as the unified ideology created by Lenin and forged in practice.
You then make vague references to the Russian Civil War without actually contextualizing them. The Bolsheviks did not “lose fair elections,” and fighting amongst the Soviets did coalesce around the Bolshevik line, as the Bolsheviks were supported by both the proletariat and peasantry. The fighting between the communists and anarchists wasn’t some one-sided betrayal either, it was a civil war and some sections of the anarchists that did not join the Bolsheviks took up arms against the soviets.
Further still, the soviet state was not some “permanent fixture.” Such an idea is inherently against Marxist understanding of dialectical materialism, as nothing in the world is permanent, as well as the economic basis for the withering of the state. The USSR was a socialist state gradually building towards communism.
As for “Marxist-Leninism,” no, I mean Marxism-Leninism, as understood by Wikipedia, science direct, and Stalin when coining the term. You’re very confident about this point despite being trivially proven wrong.
As for Merleau-Ponty, yes, Western Marxism is incredibly fringe in the global and historical context.
I quite clearly said it isn’t the same thing as “Marxism,” as anyone who scrolls up will plainly see.
I’m done wasting my time on you.
You quite explicitly made the claim that “actual Marxism” and Marxism-Leninism are two separate things, stating essentially that Marxism-Leninism is fake Marxism.
Each of those statements I made suggests that “Marxist-Leninism” is not the same thing as “Marxism” outright. As in, they’re not synonymous terms, contrary to the popular usage of the term “Marxist,” (i.e.: noun; an adherent of Marxism).
That’s not the same thing at all as claiming it isn’t “Marxist,” (i.e.: adj; deriving inspiration, origins, or ideological alignment from Marxism.)
The closest thing I said to implying what you claim I said was contrasting MLs with “actual Marxists,” which yes, I admit was poor word choice. The meaning I was aiming for was closed to either “Marxist originalists,” as in people who study Marx’s writings and derive their theoretical outlooks from that rather than from Lenin or Trotsky; or more particularly “Marxists as a broader category,” as in not limiting it to only one sub-school of thought.
Either way, my entire original point was that referring to “Marxist-Leninists” simply as “Marxists” is a misnomer because it conflates Leninism with Marxism, implies that all forms of Marxism are actually Leninism, and erases even the possibility of exploring other forms of Marxism as either intellectual possibilities, innovative theories, or novel iterations of praxis itself. It reduces the entire field of “Marxism” to one point, namely: Leninism.
Which is damaging, precisely because there’s a very real equivalence between “Marxist-Leninism” and bolshevism. In effect, it says “if you’re not a bolshevik, then you can’t be a communist.”
It’s a form of gatekeeping when it happens on the left, and it’s a caricaturization when it happens on the right, because when they use the term “Marxist” as a pejorative for the left as a whole, what they’re saying is that we’re all bolsheviks.
I personally would like to distinguish between myself and bolshevism without rejecting Marxism outright. I do that by rejecting Maxist-Leninism, while pointing to the distinction between it and Marxism.
You can still try to monopolize the entire field of Marxism across philosophical, sociological, political, and economic spheres. You can claim being a Leninist is a requirement for being a Marxist. I would still disagree with you, and honestly that approach isn’t going to advance leftwing causes anywhere in the world.
It’s pretty simple, Marxism-Leninism is the largest and most significant subset of Marxism. Much of Marxism-Leninism is just Marxism, and as such it shares with other branches of Marxist thought. When pertinent, it is more useful to use Marxism, rather then Marxism-Leninism, such as discussing the Marxist law of value or theory of the state, neither of which Marxism-Leninism meaningfully deviates from.
Sooo… what is your word for “Marxists who reject bolshevism,” since your false equivalency seems to imply “All Marxists are bolsheviks by default.”
In a single word, “fringe.” Marxism-Leninism isn’t just the most historically relevant branch of Marxism, it’s also the most important in the modern era. It isn’t a “false equivalency,” I never made the claim that all Marxists are Marxist-Leninists, just that much of peoples critiques of Marxism-Leninism are more accurately critiques of Marxism itself, Lenin’s work not being relevant in that particular critique.