/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>A lot of the defenses of these countries I've seen from Marxists is to try and say they're not as authoritarian as we think or try and show how capitalist countries are equally or more authoritarian.
Both of those things are true and are good lines of argument to make.
>But as someone who sees no problem with it is there any actual defense of the Communist Party having a strong influence?
Off the top of my head Blackshirts and Reds is a pretty good one, although it also makes the two above arguments alongside arguing that communist "authoritarianism" was a natural and inevitable response to conditions of siege.

>>2576213
yea

>>2576217
I read plenty of Marx and Engles I don't see a lot of defense of modern Marxist state influence

Mein Kumf
>>2576217
>t. read the preface to the manifesto once

Pseudos be linking an image of library they found online without being able to articulate a single sentence in it

Losurdo comes to mind. Stalin a black legend has a lot of moments like that.

>>2576215
>Blackshirts and Reds is a pretty good one,
It was a dissapointment to me but im not trying to defend authoritarian socialism.

>>2576548
>authoritarian socialism
Buzzword

>>2576621
OP already prefaces "for a lack of a better word" you twitter brained troglodyte.

Very recentely (2012) brought from state archives, the book of 1965:
https://www.marxistleninists.org/Soviet%20Archives/Molotov%20Letter%20to%20the%20CC%20of%20CPCU/part%201.htm

%%Questions of History, 2011, issues 1-6, 8-11; 2012, issues 1, 3.

The funniest thing is that this document may not belong to Molotov, but to Malenkov, as stated in one of the notes to the publication.
Nevertheless, the magazine calls it Molotov's letter.
This document appears as Molotov's letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU (1964). Published in the magazine Questions of History, issues 1-6, 8-11 for 2011, and issues 1, 3 for 2012. The editorial preface states the following:

Publishing the document stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 198a) V. M. Molotov's manuscript on the personality cult of I. V. Stalin and other problems of party and state life, the editors of the journal "Questions of History" were guided by the desire to publicize the views of one of the leader's closest associates. Molotov bears considerable responsibility for the crimes of the Stalin regime.

Much of the manuscript is devoted to criticism of N. S. Khrushchev and his rule, while it contains a description of many events and facts that are interpreted from the position of a convinced Stalinist.

The publication of V. M. Molotov's manuscript, one must assume, will provoke controversial judgments among readers both regarding the assessment of many events and individuals, and regarding the position of the author himself. There is no doubt, however, that this material will also serve to establish the historical truth in its entirety.

The manuscript was received by RGASPI from the Archives of the President of the Russian Federation on November 3, 1995 and is dated according to its content.

However, a little later in a footnote, the editors write:

Regarding this paragraph A remark is made in the margins: "It is not clear enough about the dictatorship of the workers' class." This remark, as well as the authorship notes "G. M." found in the explanations of the quotations, as well as references to Molotov in the third person, lead us to assume that this unsigned document may not belong to Molotov, as the RGASPI attributed the manuscript, but to G. M. Malenkov. - Ed.

Indeed, it is unlikely that Vyacheslav Mikhailovich would write the following in his letter:

"Thinking about this criticism of Molotov, based on my own findings and conclusions from the analysis of the CPSU Program, I can say only one thing - honor and praise to him!" (L. 279)

In fact, the file is kept in the Molotov archives, but it bears no mention of Molotov's authorship. The internal file inventory lists it as "Note (by G.M.) on the Problem of I.V. Stalin's Personality Cult and the CPSU Program (second half of 1965)." The letters "G.M." could be interpreted as referring to Georgy Malenkov (which many do), if not for a few "buts." The author writes in the first person, but in such a way that it's impossible to identify him by his involvement in any particular events. Indeed, it's difficult to call this document either a note or a letter. It's a monumental work (a rough draft) of 357 pages, with a significant number of appendices missing. The document is divided into five sections. The introduction covers the cult of I.V. Stalin, issues of intra-party struggle, criticism of the CPSU program adopted at the 22nd Party Congress, and criticism of Khrushchev's economic activities. The document contains Molotov's annotations and, most interestingly, editorial notes. Therefore, in our opinion, this is most likely a collective work, and the letters G.M. likely stand for Malenkov Group (yes, that same anti-Party group with Shepilov as its ally). This interpretation is supported by phrases contrasting the position of Malenkov's anti-Party group with Khrushchev's policies. Furthermore, writing such a major work by one person is extremely difficult.

Unfortunately, the journal publication lacks a sectional structure, making the document appear disorganized. So, if while reading you come across a topic that is of little interest or unclear to you (as I did), don't close the document; instead, keep scrolling your mouse. I can personally say that this work is very impressive. And I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to Voprosy Istorii for publishing it.
%%

>>2576213
>>2576267
The communist manifesto is at odds with any concept of liberal or petty-bourgeois socialism.

<The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

<Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

<Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

<1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
<2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
<3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
<4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
<5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
<6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
<7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
<8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
<9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
<10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

<When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

<In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

You do not understand the obligation to install the revolutionary government of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

<While this utopian doctrinaire socialism, which subordinates the total movement to one of its stages, which puts in place of common social production the brainwork of individual pedants and, above all, in fantasy does away with the revolutionary struggle of the classes and its requirements by small conjurers' tricks or great sentimentality, while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows, and wants to achieve its ideal athwart the realities of present society; while the proletariat surrenders this socialism to the petty bourgeoisie; while the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolution as against another – the proletariat rallies more and more around revolutionary socialism, around communism, for which the bourgeoisie has itself invented the name of Blanqui. This socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.

<Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, (1848 to 1850)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/ch03.htm

<It appears that the defeat of the Parisians was their own fault, but a fault which really arose from their too great honnêteté [decency]. The Central Committee and later the Commune gave the mischievous abortion Thiers time to centralise hostile forces, in the first place by their folly in trying not to start civil war–as if Thiers had not started it by his attempt at the forcible disarming of Paris, as if the National Assembly, which was only summoned to decide the question of war or peace with the Prussians, had not immediately declared war on the Republic! (2) In order that the appearance of having usurped power should not attach to them they lost precious moments–(they should immediately have advanced on Versailles after the defeat (Place Vendôme) of the reaction in Paris)–by the election of the Commune, the organisation of which, etc., cost yet more time.

<You must not believe a word of all the stuff you may see in the papers about the internal events in Paris. It is all lies and deception. Never has the vileness of bourgeois journalism displayed itself more brilliantly.

<Marx to Wilhelm Liebknecht In Leipzig, (London, April 6 1871)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_04_06.htm

<If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire you will find that I say that the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is essential for every real people's revolution on the Continent. And this is what our heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting. What elasticity, what historical initiative, what a capacity for sacrifice in these Parisians! After six months of hunger and ruin, caused rather by internal treachery than by the external enemy, they rise, beneath Prussian bayonets, as if there had never been a war between France and Germany and the enemy were not at the gates of Paris. History has no like example of a like greatness. If they are defeated only their “good nature” will be to blame. They should have marched at once on Versailles, after first Vinoy and then the reactionary section of the Paris National Guard had themselves retreated. The right moment was missed because of conscientious scruples. They did not want to start the civil war, as if that mischievous abortion Thiers had not already started the civil war with his attempt to disarm Paris. Second mistake: The Central Committee surrendered its power too soon, to make way for the Commune. Again from a too “honorable” scrupulosity! However that may be, the present rising in Paris – even if it be crushed by the wolves, swine and vile curs of the old society – is the most glorious deed of our Party since the June insurrection in Paris. Compare these Parisians, storming heaven, with the slave to heaven of the German-Prussian Holy Roman Empire, with its posthumous masquerades reeking of the barracks, the Church, cabbage-junkerdom and above all, of the philistine.

<Marx to Dr Kugelmann Concerning the Paris Commune, April 12, 1871”

Marx and Engels do not tolerate market socialism that many petty bourgeois who fear "authoritarianism" want in their idealism and propagandize their ideas here. Let's see what Marx says on low-level communism:

<Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product.

<From this must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

<These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity.

<There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.

<Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.

<Only now do we come to the "distribution" which the program, under Lassallean influence, alone has in view in its narrow fashion – namely, to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers of the co-operative society.

<The "undiminished" proceeds of labor have already unnoticeably become converted into the "diminished" proceeds, although what the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.

<Just as the phrase of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor has disappeared, so now does the phrase of the "proceeds of labor" disappear altogether.

<Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

<What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

<Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

The Critique of the Gotha Programme was written after the paris commune and Capital volume 1, any fanciful interpretation that contradicts this text with fear of planning the economy must be discarded.

More quotes that prove my point against decentralization:

<The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralized government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers.

<In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and thereafter responsible agents.

[…]

<The Communal Constitution has been mistaken for an attempt to break up into the federation of small states, as dreamt of by Montesquieu and the Girondins,[B] that unity of great nations which, if originally brought about by political force, has now become a powerful coefficient of social production. The antagonism of the Commune against the state power has been mistaken for an exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against over-centralization. Peculiar historical circumstances may have prevented the classical development, as in France, of the bourgeois form of government, and may have allowed, as in England, to complete the great central state organs by corrupt vestries, jobbing councillors, and ferocious poor-law guardians in the towns, and virtually hereditary magistrates in the counties.

<The Communal Constitution would have restored to the social body all the forces hitherto absorbed by the state parasite feeding upon, and clogging the free movement of, society. By this one act, it would have initiated the regeneration of France.

<Karl Marx: The Civil War in France, The Third Address, May, 1871, [The Paris Commune]

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

Regarding the question of banks, you can see Engels' criticism of the Paris Commune for not appropriating the Bank of France. This is a lesson that all communist revolutions cannot forget: to appropriate the banks by nationalizing them and suppressing private banking if you want your revolution to succeed:

<It is therefore comprehensible that in the economic sphere much was left undone which, according to our view today, the Commune ought to have done. The hardest thing to understand is certainly the holy awe with which they remained standing respectfully outside the gates of the Bank of France. This was also a serious political mistake. The bank in the hands of the Commune – this would have been worth more than 10,000 hostages. It would have meant the pressure of the whole of the French bourgeoisie on the Versailles government in favor of peace with the Commune, but what is still more wonderful is the correctness of so much that was actually done by the Commune, composed as it was of Blanquists and Proudhonists. Naturally, the Proudhonists were chiefly responsible for the economic decrees of the Commune, both for their praiseworthy and their unpraiseworthy aspects; as the Blanquists were for its political actions and omissions. And in both cases the irony of history willed – as is usual when doctrinaires come to the helm – that both did the opposite of what the doctrines of their school proscribed.

<1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels, On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris Commune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm

Now I will leave a quote for the fearful who are afraid to use force to consolidate power and fear using revolutionary terror to maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat for fear of being hated:

<We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.

<Final Issue Neue Rheinische Zeitung May 1849, Suppression of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/05/19c.htm

>>2577472
*I forgot to post a link to the text "Marx to Dr. Kugelmann Concerning the Paris Commune":

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_04_12.htm

>north korea bad
Stop worrying sbout north korea and pay your roommates rent tardo

>>2576213
You can read pretty much any M-L literature related to the above countries. The defense will be either implicit or present in the book. Personally, I don't think it's worth justifying from either a practical, ethical, or quality of life perspective. I have read Parenti and others who sort of defended the Warsaw Pact and such, but generally speaking while I can appreciate the development, social progress and the social safety nets which were brought by the USSR to Eastern Europe while it was still a shithole, I think the "authoritarianism" attributed by some to the influence of Western imperialism was more destabilizing to the USSR and its allies than anything else in the long run.