Commiunism

I don't have enough hubris to say that I have all the answers, especially when it comes to the way forward - this is something that's up to the revolutionary party collectively to decide, but I do disagree with the ML's theory and methodology, especially with "Socialism in one state" or the 'worship' of State Capitalism. However, if you had a gun to my head, I'd probably manage to squeak out something possibly infantile like this:

When it comes to proletarian revolutions that attempt to build socialism, internationalism is a necessity (both to allow international trade to help meet everyone's needs and weakening of the capitalist global order and reducing them as a threat) - once proletarian and an international party takes power, the focus should be in coordinating/exporting the revolution worldwide mostly via the support of proletarian movements, else it will get isolated, start playing for survival, have to adapt to capitalism and eventually collapse or degenerate as seen historically.

Also, instead of treating state capitalism and markets as a transitional phase that is constantly expanded/built upon, it should instead not be viewed as legitimate and rather something residual, to be replaced as soon as possible. In theory, this should allow for a certain amount of goods to be produced for use, and goods that are more scarce could be produced as commodities and rationed through money.

Once sufficient economic restructuring for transition towards socialist mode of production is done, that's when the transition towards non-accumulative labor vouchers can be done, which should eliminate the law of value and capital relations.

I don’t think it’s particularly productive to back up controversial claims within the Marxist current with statements like “it’s clear that xyz” or “it’s without question.” These topics are controversial because they aren’t clear and are questionable claims.

I really appreciate this and you are right - the claims I made do go against ML theory, and whether something is right or wrong in this case is dependent on one's views and perspectives (as in intra-Marxism) rather than cold, hard, unquestionable facts. I will definitely try to avoid such loaded language in the future.

In essence, I do largely agree with you - the material conditions in the historically socialist countries (USSR specifically in this case but can also more or less be applied to others) be it their peasant problem or being isolated due to international revolutions failing did require them to do what they had done and develop using state capitalism or "building socialism in one state", and they were successful in that regard. Same applies to the anti-colonial national liberation movements - they were successful and historically progressive and indeed should be celebrated.

However, the issue that this is a win for (state) capitalism and all the baggage that comes with it rather than actual socialism, given how socialist mode of production was never realized and arguments such as "people's billionaires who will get punished by going against the party" or "the economy was nationalized" don't define socialism. Wage labor remained (therefore surplus extraction too), commodity production and markets both within the country and interaction with international capitalist world market had remained (Why Russia isn't socialist talks about this). One could also make an argument that even in those countries where capitalists got done away with (which is a proletarian W) but state capitalism persisted, the functions of the capitalist remained and were carried out by mere managers, like how Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific points out:

Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great institutions for production and communication, first by joint-stock companies, later in by trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees.

And again to reiterate, rather than being a win for socialism, it's instead a win for a regressive form of it which is state capitalism that's comparable to social democracy.

As about your point about the rejection of AES, that's not my argument at all - instead of rejecting any attempt outright and waiting for a perfect revolution, one should instead support all revolutionary attempts but, most importantly, realize when the revolution had failed/ended instead of clinging onto false hope which is something that ML's tend to do at least from my perspective. Of course, when a revolution fails depends on ones perspective, but from mine it's when the proletarian revolution (which must be internationalist) fails to spread and a country has to start fully focusing inwards for its survival within global capitalism and the inevitable participation in it, like what happened in USSR in 1920's - at that point, it's only a matter of time until the country falls to revisionism, degeneration of socialist ideas and the aforementioned full reintegration into global capitalist system.

That being said, I really do appreciate your responses, even though some of them might be too long for me to respond to.

Love how the exact same thing is now being said about the US lmao (the collapse part at least), I LOVE the media machine

Just because something is initially successful doesn't mean it's necessarily correct, and I'm saying that as a proponent of a vanguard party or similar form of centralized organization, given how it's a necessity post-revolution.

USSR's revolution was successful thanks to the Bolshevik Party, but after a while it was clear that the party had replaced the proletariat as the ruling class and instead had started to direct/rule over the workers (in order words, the party became Substitutionist). Later on, the party had fully succumbed to revisionism and eventual collapse. Similar thing happened to China, and even though the party didn't disappear, it's without a question a bourgeoisie party and you'd need insane amount of misinterpretation of Marxist theory to claim otherwise.

For other revolutions like in Cuba or Vietnam, even though the same thing applies right from the get-go (given how Stalin is a revisionist), one could argue that they weren't Marxist revolutions, but rather part of anti-colonial wave of the 20th century that's more in the ballpark of "bourgeois-nationalist revolution". Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh was particularly explicit about this.

And to go back to the first point I made, a fun example that would push this kind of logic would be what's happening to US right now - Trump has successfully gone into power twice now, it doesn't automatically mean that his success means that he and his policies are correct.

While I do like your writing style and think you're quite talented at it, that's just a bunch of ML revisionism/State capitalist (Dengist) apologetics that misrepresents Marx.

Not gonna thoroughly debunk it cause it's a wall of text, but ownership =/= mode of production. Marx never said that public ownership alone makes something socialist, what matters is how things are produced: Is it for exchange or use? Is labor still waged? Does surplus value still exist and get extracted? If yes - that's still capitalism therefore not Marxist.

You also claim that "Marx didn't think you could abolish private property by making it illegal" which is true cause else it would be idealism, but then you use this to spin it into "that's why we need to let firms develop then make them public" while in reality what Marx meant is that we should abolish capital relations, not co-exist with capital and preserve businesses until they're "ready".

You're also trying to spin the "by degrees" quote from the manifesto to act as if Marx argued for gradual market-led process of evolution from Capitalism to Socialism (or in other words, keeping Capitalism and Markets for decades after the revolution) and not a revolutionary process of abolition of Capital entirely.

That isn't Marxism, but maybe I'm just too ideologically pure and idealistic. Still, I think being more honest that it's not actually "classical Marxism" wouldn't hurt.

If you maintain public control over the large firms and industries, and the proletariat controls the state, you remain on the Socialist road.

Agree, there has to be DOTP directly after the revolution which has to retain some capitalist features, mostly for economic survival purposes.

However, once the military struggle against capitalists are over and economy is sufficiently reorganized, a country has to quickly abolish the value form and actually turn to a socialist mode of production, else it risks either backpedaling to capitalism and/or turning revisionist. This is precisely what happened to USSR, given how they couldn't transition to socialist mode of production due to their peasant problem + Stalin's delusions of "Socialism in one state".

If there's an active maintenance in post-revolutionary period of capitalist mode of production, then the country is capitalist even if the production is nationalized or owned by workers.

Markets themselves are not necessarily Capitalism.

Historically markets predate Capitalism, so yes, but they're never socialist or communist given how socialist mode of production does away with commodity production. If commodity production is abolished, then commodity exchange (markets) can no longer exist. This does mean that market socialism is capitalist as commodity production remains, the law of value remains, all that's different when compared to Capitalism is that the state regulates it which doesn't magically make it socialist.

Anarchists would still have to deal with scale in terms of trade, production and centralization - after all, not every commune would be able to produce penicillin, insulin, chips, phones, steel, etc as a hobby. In other words, they would still have to replace capitalist system to a decent enough extent to be able to meet all their needs.

Capitalism is a global system, it is based on exchange value and things being produced and sold for a profit, not for use (which is known as commodity production), and if you want to trade internationally, you have to follow this capitalist mode of production. Communism, on the other hand, aims to abolish the production of commodities (money included) and instead produce goods for use. Notice how these two systems differ so much, international trade between actual communist and capitalist countries becomes impossible given how differently they value things.

Now consider how today's capitalist nations are so dependent on trade, and it's because trade allows nations to prosper, to grow, to have increased standards of living and gives the nations access to materials they otherwise couldn't have produced within their local borders. If a nation goes full isolationist, it loses access to all of that and the nation becomes crippled.

So there's three ways for communist countries to go about the global capitalist system:

1. Go full isolationist, which would cripple a country substantially.

2. Participate in the capitalist market, meaning the country would be forced to produce commodities and participate in capital exchange which would make them, in one definition or another, capitalist. This also heavily risks the country to fall into full capitalism with time (as seen historically).

3. Support worker movements internationally en masse and hope they succeed with achieving their revolutions. If they succeed, only then can exchange value be safely abolished, goods be produced for use instead of profit, and international socialist/communist trade can actually happen with people having their needs met.

It's clear that international communist revolution is pretty much the only viable way forward, and the only opportunity to do so failed (with Spartacist uprising, Hungrarian Soviet Republic, etc being crushed, leaving USSR standing pretty much alone).

So to answer your question with all this nonsensical wall of text in mind, no. Actual communist/socialist mode of production has never existed (therefore whether communist ideology works hasn't been proven), as any experiments so far had essentially been capitalist.

Stalinists, Maoists and Socialists (at least the reformist ones) are pro-capital, just under a different form. They love their commodity production and wage labor...

I mean you say that, but...

1. Western world has been living in liberal democracies for 100+ years, yet labor unions are weaker than ever (both in numbers and power), especially when compared to the union zeitgeist 100 years ago.

2. Worker rights are no longer a hot button issue people rally behind, nowadays it's pretty much all about immigration, LGBT rights, taxation to a certain extent and whatever else. It's legitimately difficult to find a representative in most countries who cares about expanding worker rights and giving more power to unions - best you can hope for is someone who won't suppress them.

3. Relying solely on voting to get expanded workers/union rights leads to passivity from the workers (as in them stopping to do anything outside electorialism to fight for themselves), and there's no guarantee they won't get rolled back later anyway as history shows, with infamous examples being Thatcher and Reagan administrations.

I could go on and make this unreadable, but essentially electorialism isn't the way to go when it comes to workers rights or especially when it comes to abolishing capitalism entirely.

That being said, your comment isn't entirely without merit as there's not that many movements nowadays actually fighting out there for better working conditions outside electorial politics. There are some international efforts though, like International Communist Party or Class Struggle Action who have helped to organize, keep strikes alive or spread propaganda to help the workers in their fight - small scale action but action nonetheless.

If you want a better future, elect people who understand this properly and fight for workers rights.

Oh you sweet summer child...

Yes, that's implicit - you build something in order to use/live in it. The end I was talking about was referring to the end of the gradual transformation from capitalism to communism, it's not an instant process.