I only started researching theory about a month or two ago. I’m trying to take things in a somewhat logical order because there’s SO much to learn and I want to give each topic its due consideration. I’m at the point where I understand Marx/Engels and Lenin moderately well, as well as the October revolution. Throughout this time, I’ve repeatedly heard Trotskyism used derisively like a dirty word. So today, I finally looked him up a bit and… what’s the issue? His biggest points appear to be that the colonized nations can revolt and that the socialist epoch won’t work until it’s worldwide, right? And… isn’t that exactly what history has shown? Doesn’t it seem that Lenin thought quite well of him? I see Stalin gets praised or hated depending on whom you ask, but a lot of Left spaces put him on this pedestal and I gotta say I don’t buy that one bit. But Trotsky gets no such glorification, despite not being a murderous homophobe. What am I missing?

Solidarity ✊

If Marx is right, then markets regardless of type of revolution will collapse when the biggest one does in a sort of chain of dominoes. As long as the revolution succeeds, the revolution WILL be international and the Communist vision will guaranteed to be outside of a single state, and eventually decentralization will be entirely possible.
Why do leftcoms and MLs disagree when there’s really no point?

I find it quite interesting, comparing Marxist-Leninism with Titoism, Trotskyism, or such, and seeing that there are so many subsections of the broader Socialist movement and Marxist political philosophy. I’d be fascinated to learn about more. Perhaps there is one that will resonate with me even more than Marxist-Leninism does already.

There is a common idea among socialists (online at least) that various socialist projects have had to engage in prolonged capitalist production in order to develop the productive forces as a prerequisite for a transition to socialist production. This is mostly discussed regarding China, but it is also frequently applied to Vietnam and the NEP period of the USSR. Putting aside the fact that "we need the NEP to develop the productive forces" is a misreading of Lenin's analysis, this argument about using capitalism to develop the productive forces presupposes that capitalist production is superior to socialist production in this respect.

This is wrong; the development of the productive forces will be faster under socialist production.

Rosa Luxemburg's book The Accumulation of Capital deals with the question of how capital accumulates and how production occurs on an enlarged scale within capitalism. At the end of chapter 23, after critiquing the Russian Marxist Dugan Baranovski's erroneous view that constant capital increases relative to variable capital and that consequently production increases at the expense of reduced consumption, she gives this analysis:

The opinion, that producer goods can be produced independent of consumption, is of course a mirage of Tugan Baranovski’s, typical of vulgar economics. Not so the fact cited in support of this fallacy: the quicker growth of Department I as compared with Department II is beyond dispute, not only in old industrial countries but wherever technical progress plays a decisive part in production. It is the foundation also of Marx’s fundamental law that the rate of profit tends to fall. Yet in spite of it all, or rather precisely for this reason, it is a howler if Bulgakov, Ilyin and Tugan Baranovski imagine to have discovered in this law the essential nature of capitalist economy as an economic system in which production is an end in itself and human consumption merely incidental.

The growth of the constant at the expense of the variable capital is only the capitalist expression of the general effects of increasing labour productivity. The formula c greater than v (c > v), translated from the language of capitalism into that of the social labour process, means only that the higher the productivity of human labour, the shorter the time needed to change a given quantity of means of production into finished products.

This is a universal law of human labour. It has been valid in all pre-capitalist forms of production and will also be valid in the future in a socialist order of society. In terms of the material use-form of society’s aggregate product, this law must manifest itself by more and more social labour time being employed in the manufacture of producer than of consumer goods. In a planned and controlled social economy, organised on socialist lines, this transformation would in fact be more rapid even than it is in contemporary capitalist economy. In the first place, rational scientific techniques can only be applied on the largest scale when the barriers of private ownership in land are abolished. This will result in an immense revolution in vast provinces of production which will ultimately amount to a replacement of living labour by machine labour, and which will enable us to tackle technical jobs on a scale quite impossible under present day conditions. Secondly, the general use of machinery in the productive process will be put on a new economic basis. At present the machine does not compete with living labour but only with that part of it that is paid. The cost of the labour power which is replaced by the machine represents the lowest limit of the applicability of the machine. Which means that the capitalist becomes interested in a machine only when the costs of its production – assuming the same level of performance – amount to less than the wages of the workers it replaces. From the point of view of the social labour process which is the only one to matter in a socialist society, the machine competes not with the labour that is necessary to maintain the worker but with the labour he actually performs. In other words, in a society that is not governed by the profit motive but aims at saving human labour, the use of machinery is economic-aims indicated just as soon as it can save more human labour than is necessary for making it, not to mention the many cases where the use of machinery is desirable even if it does not answer this economic minimum – for reasons of health and similar considerations, in the interest of the workers themselves. However that may be, the tension between the respective economic usefulness of the machine in (a) a capitalist, and (b) a socialist society is at least equal to the difference between labour and that part of it that is paid; it is, in other words, the precise equivalent of the whole capitalist surplus value. Consequently, if the capitalist profit motive is abolished and a social organisation of labour introduced, the marginal use of the machine will suddenly be increased by the whole extent of the capitalist surplus value, so that an enormous field, not to be gauged as yet, will be open to the triumphal march of the machine. This would be tangible proof that the capitalist mode of production, alleged to spur on to the optimum technical development, in fact sets large social limits to technical progress, in form of the profit motive on which it is based. It would show that as soon as these limits are abolished, technical progress will develop such a powerful drive that the technical marvels of capitalist production will be child’s play in comparison.

In terms of the composition of the social product, this technical transformation can only mean that, compared to the production of consumer goods, the production of producer goods – measured in units of labour time – must increase more rapidly in a socialist society than it does even to-day. Thus the relation between the two departments of social production which the Russian Marxists took to reveal typical capitalist baseness, the neglect of man’s need to consume, rather proves to be the precise manifestation of the progressive subjection of nature to social labour, which will become even more striking when production is organised solely with a view to human needs. The only objective proof for Tugan Baranovski’s ‘fundamental law’ thus collapses as a ‘fundamental’ confusion. His whole construction, including his ‘new theory of crises’, together with the ‘lack of proportion’, is reduced to its foundations on paper: a slavish copy of Marx’s diagram of enlarged reproduction.

While capitalist production is surely superior to pre-capitalist modes of production in terms of developing the productive forces, once these modes of production have all be superceded by capitalism, there is no reason to continue reproducing capitalist production if the development of the productive forces is the goal.

​

Antonio Gramsci’s interpretation of Marxism stands out for its sheer innovation. Rather than offering a simple explanation or a basic summary, he creatively adapted Marxist theory, expanding its vision to cover areas and social phenomena that had never been addressed before.

Gramsci's approach was deeply rooted in the Italian Marxist tradition, particularly through thinkers like Antonio Labriola and a young Benedetto Croce. Both of these pioneers were influenced by the German historical school led by Wilhelm Dilthey, who drew a sharp line between nature and humanity. Dilthey argued that the natural sciences require an empirical, experimental method, while the human sciences must rely on a historical method. This intellectual heritage became the defining feature of most of Gramsci’s theoretical work.

At the time, Soviet Marxism was famous for dividing Marxist theory into two separate parts: dialectical materialism and historical materialism. This orthodox view treated the Marxist outlook on nature as the very foundation of its historical view. As Joseph Stalin put it, historical materialism was simply "the application of the laws of dialectical materialism to the realm of history."

Gramsci strongly opposed this rigid, positivist limitation. He argued that any writings within Marxist philosophy regarding nature were merely leftover remnants of traditional, outdated materialist trends. Instead, he stressed that the defining feature of Marxism is that it is a "philosophy of praxis" (human practice)—and its true domain is history.

This perspective led Gramsci to separate the theoretical contributions of Karl Marx from those of Friedrich Engels, warning against the assumption that the two thinkers were always in perfect agreement. By making this distinction, Gramsci aimed to frame Engels’ concept of the "dialectics of nature" as a personal interpretation rather than a core component of Marxism itself. Furthermore, he wanted to critique the Jacobin-style tendency in Engels' thought, which assigned the state apparatus the primary role in driving social change—a top-down approach that later dominated the Second Socialist International.

Ultimately, Gramsci stands as the greatest innovator of Marxist thought since Vladimir Lenin.

Sorry for the text, English not my native language.

I'm russian man. Born early 80s. One think sitting in my head already more than 10 years, it's actually make me smile sometimes, coz it's born in my head as something funny, as a hypothesis. But more I follow western internet society's, more I think it's approves. Well - What if...next red revolution will come from the western world?

The only funny thing here is the faces of all our beloved liberals of every stripe, if this actually happens.

And what you guys think about this hypothesis.

Objectives

—Impossibility of a Nomenklature

—China-like meritocratic running

—Alliance with the Petit Bourgeoisie (they still exist temporarily in certain sectors, although still planned)

—Worker’s direct control over the party

—National self-reliance (planning, no markets)

State Powers

Executive: Uses a little plusvaly of every worker to finance the usual and extraordinary activities of the state.

Legislative: Makes laws

Judicial: Applies laws neutrally

Planning: Secures national self-reliance and logical economic based on what the executive and its voters need

Ideological Structure: Party organizers (propaganda, teaching…)

Federative: Foreign policy and part of the Directorate

currently, i was curious on how council communism works. should i read lenin's works first or shall i proceed with pannekeok's works?

I'm almost done reading to Capital Volume 3 and came across a quote I've seen before, but just love which really hones in on Marx's idea of what communism means in chapter 48:

In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.

While Marx rejected "moralizing" approaches to socialism, he did have some normative idea of what we are fighting for expressed in his idea of human development. Communism is about the full and free development of every individual, specifically in developing their distinctly "human" powers.

Labor is especially important in this, not only as it produces the things we need to exercise these powers, but because labor itself is the most direct way that we engage with the world around us, literally "humanizing" Nature. We look at the world around us, and instead of seeing it as an alien and hostile force imposing itself on us, we work with it harmoniously, which we identify directly with, reflecting us back to it.

Remembering this part of Marx's theory helps us to also avoid the common mistaken views of Marx which identify socialism or communism with a merely rising standard of living, or which takes it as a rational and benevolent, yet still alien, bureaucracy overseeing matters. Certainly to be able to achieve a really human existence, we need to reach at least some minimal level. As Marx says in his Manuscripts:

For the starving man, it is not the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract existence as food. It could just as well be there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding activity differs from that of animals. The care-burdened, poverty-stricken man has no sense for the finest play; the dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value but not the beauty and the specific character of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense. Thus, the objectification of the human essence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects, is required to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance.

But once this is secured, we make a great mistake in thinking that communism is about merely getting stuff instead of focusing on the social relations we have to one another and to Nature. It is about developing our distinctly human capacities, not only mentally, but even "humanizing" the five senses!

In this quote in Capital, Marx helps to clarify this. In any society, any economic structure or mode of production, people need to labor to guarantee that at least certain basic necessities are covered. This is an "eternal" law, just as true for the "savage" (as outdated as that term is) as for the "civilized" man.

Primitive man, like the starving man, has a very narrow horizon for his needs. "Food" exists for them, but not "human food," not something that they can really engage with and see themselves reflected back in. Food is not an art form, but a mere source of calories. For it to become something more requires greater development.

As we rise above this, our needs actually increase, rather than decreasing, because we develop the capacity for greater things, for something human. But at the same time, our ability to satisfy these needs increases with the productive forces.

As humans, we will always have some degree of need, and Marx expects that there will always be some need for labor. Communism retains the "realm of necessity" in this sense. However, it does introduce freedom into this as much as possible. This is not merely a matter of better working conditions or reducing the workload, just as it is not merely a matter of greater distribution (equivalent to higher wages in capitalism today).

Rather, the first and most important thing is that labor is transformed into socialized labor, engaged in by the associated producers (edit: To clarify, it is socialized labor in the sense it is carried out by "socialized man" and under their control. Capitalism beings this process, turning isolated production into social production.). And they are not merely mindless tools executing the commands of some capitalist or bureaucrat, but coming to their own rational plan in their association. Rather than being subject to "blind forces", whether Natural forces or social forces, they are executing their own plan. Their labor is reflective of them. It is humanized. Making the labor something worthy of that human nature is supplemental, though obviously deeply connected, to that.

But the real jewel of communism is not even found here. This all still works in the realm of necessity, even if we have liberated it as far as possible. The real goal of communism comes outside that, in the realm of freedom. By shortening the working-day, something made possible by the developed forces of production and their socialization in this way, we gain a greater ability to develop our human powers outside of the workplace. Outside the hours of necessary labor, we can do as we wish, and further develop our human capacities.

Communism is free time.