/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

In the modern era, the task is not to "convince" people of communism, but to clarify what communism actually is and formulate both an immediate program and long-term program.

You don't really need to convince most workers that higher wages would be good for them, or that they deserve better working conditions, and freedom from war and oppression.

The difficulty self-described communists face in spreading their message is because they themselves are confused and conflicted about communist theory, programme and praxis.

Like what is communism? Is it USSR style planned economy forever? Dengist social democracy? Or do you actually want a stateless moneyless classless society? What kind of roadmap actually achieves that?

These kinds of confusions is the real reason why self-described communists have trouble with the working class. Many can't answer even basic questions honestly and clearly about their actual long-term goals, short-term goals and what practical activities are needed to get there.

That's why all leftist movements eventually degenerate to social democracy, because socdems are actually theoretically and practically consistent, and they are able to communicate in an honest, direct and consistent manner. Higher taxes on wealthy, subsidized necessities, cheap housing etc.

What's the communist equivalent to that? The Bolsheviks promised peace, land and bread. What do modern communists have to offer that social democrats already don't?

>>2891717
>When people say "communism doesnt work"? Why not point out that it took liberalism like 300 years of failed revolutions and counterevolutions to finally settle?


We do.


<“I am convinced that more and more people will come to believe in Marxism, because it is a science. Using historical materialism, it has uncovered the laws governing the development of human society. Feudal society replaced slave society, capitalism supplanted feudalism, and, after a long time, socialism will necessarily supersede capitalism. This is an irreversible general trend of historical development, but the road has many twists and turns. Over the several centuries that it took for capitalism to replace feudalism, how many times were monarchies restored! So, in a sense, temporary restorations are usual and can hardly be avoided. Some countries have suffered major setbacks, and socialism appears to have been weakened. But the people have been tempered by the setbacks and have drawn lessons from them, and that will make socialism develop in a healthier direction. So don't panic, don't think that Marxism has disappeared, that it's not useful any more and that it has been defeated. Nothing of the sort!”

• Deng Xiaoping, Excerpts From Talks Given In Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai And Shanghai, 1992
  
  

>>2891717
According to the German Ideology, communism is a hot house flower that dies upon contact with capitalism unless it happens all at once and can overwhelm it.

<This "alienation" (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be
abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an "intolerable" power, i.e. a power against
which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity
"propertyless", and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and
culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its
development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the
actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely
necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the
struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore,
because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between
men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the "propertyless"
mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally
has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones.

<Without this, (i) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have
developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions
surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism.
Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once" and
simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world
intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers – the utterly
precarious position of labour – power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited
satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life
– presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist
*world-historically*, just as communism, its activity, can only have a "world-historical" existence.
World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with
world history.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf