>>1455547><Explain to me why are MLs superior to other leftoid sectarian tendencies, when other tendencies gather more people IRL?They don't ML, and MLM which are both based in dialectical materialism, are the main communist tendencies world wide. ML is small in the west exclusively due to capitalist propaganda.
><Why should I give money to ML orgs when they are a minority at the protests I go to?I don't think you necessarily should. Even anarchist or socdems might be the best option depending on your local parties.
>What is so great about "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism"?The explanation of dialectics and positivism, and how non-dialectical thought necessarily leads to idealism. All the polemics are just fluff provided to give examples, ironically the same as Pannekoeks pamphlet.
>Why was Pannekoek wrong?He is only wrong about claiming that Lenin was a "Middle-Class Materialist". He is claiming that Lenin is a vulgar materialist or physical reductionist because he doesn't like his use of the word matter or his insistence on its primacy in the dialectic, but he doesn't disagree with his method at all. He thinks that Lenin's insistence on the primacy of matter is fundamentally tied to the implementation of state capitalism over immediate abolition of commodity production and is the source of corruption in the USSR. I don't really see an argument to support this or how one follows from the other.
He is actually correct about dialectics and that you have to abolish commodity production to change the consciousness of people to achieve communism, but he is incorrect that abolishing commodity production immediately in a country that is underdeveloped and lacks industry to defend itself from military invasion by imperialist powers is reasonable or possible.
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