I don’t believe I misread you, I think you’re entirely mistaken about Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and how socialist states actually function. For example, this comment here:
There is a fundamental difference between delegates who are directly accountable, recallable, and subordinate to workers’ assemblies, and a centralized party-state whose decisions flow downward.
These are not incompatible, and in fact, all of this existed simultaneously in the USSR. The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference. Recall elections, workers assemblies, and bottom-up accountability all are tools used to keep the central government accountable.
The political party is merely the formalized and organized subsection of the working class that is politically advanced. Their role is to bring up the working classes to their level. This is employed by Marx, and is also employed by every communist party. To reject itself as a potential vanguard is to limit action to a glorified book club.
As for the lessons of the Paris Commune, indeed, the old state apparatus is not sufficient. Instead, it must be smashed and replaced. After all, Engels said we ought to blame them for not exerting their power even more than they did, and failing to codify a worker-state. The Paris Commune was incredibly progressive, but it ultimately failed for very good reasons, reasons which Marx used to advance his theory of the state further.
As for why socialist states ban opposition, this speaks for itself. Historical practice shows that opposition parties are the main mechanisms by which counterrevolution can occur, and we have many lessons from the 20th century showing how allowing factionalism and organized opposition can be leveraged by imperialist powers into color revolt. The quest for communism is one that breaks down liberal ideas that endless infighting is a sign of political strength, and instead pushes for unity. Disunity is leveraged against the rest, putting proletariat against proletariat.
In conclusion, your argument against political parties bows to sponteneity, in the quest for a “pure” revolution that will not and cannot manifest. Without organizing, and making use of all your best tools available, without creating a disciplined, educated, and dedicated force for revolution, you are merely stacking the odds in the favor of the capitalists and disarming yourself. It’s no coincidence that left-communists, council communists, and the like have never seen popularity outside of the west, and have never actually taken power anywhere. They are consistently on the backfoot due to relying on sloganeering in place of sound dialectical materialist analysis.
And even then, the majority of left-communists and so forth still acknowledge Lenin, to the point that Bordiga claimed to be “more Leninist than Lenin.”
I don’t believe I misread you, I think you’re entirely mistaken about Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and how socialist states actually function. For example, this comment here:
These are not incompatible, and in fact, all of this existed simultaneously in the USSR. The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference. Recall elections, workers assemblies, and bottom-up accountability all are tools used to keep the central government accountable.
The political party is merely the formalized and organized subsection of the working class that is politically advanced. Their role is to bring up the working classes to their level. This is employed by Marx, and is also employed by every communist party. To reject itself as a potential vanguard is to limit action to a glorified book club.
As for the lessons of the Paris Commune, indeed, the old state apparatus is not sufficient. Instead, it must be smashed and replaced. After all, Engels said we ought to blame them for not exerting their power even more than they did, and failing to codify a worker-state. The Paris Commune was incredibly progressive, but it ultimately failed for very good reasons, reasons which Marx used to advance his theory of the state further.
As for why socialist states ban opposition, this speaks for itself. Historical practice shows that opposition parties are the main mechanisms by which counterrevolution can occur, and we have many lessons from the 20th century showing how allowing factionalism and organized opposition can be leveraged by imperialist powers into color revolt. The quest for communism is one that breaks down liberal ideas that endless infighting is a sign of political strength, and instead pushes for unity. Disunity is leveraged against the rest, putting proletariat against proletariat.
In conclusion, your argument against political parties bows to sponteneity, in the quest for a “pure” revolution that will not and cannot manifest. Without organizing, and making use of all your best tools available, without creating a disciplined, educated, and dedicated force for revolution, you are merely stacking the odds in the favor of the capitalists and disarming yourself. It’s no coincidence that left-communists, council communists, and the like have never seen popularity outside of the west, and have never actually taken power anywhere. They are consistently on the backfoot due to relying on sloganeering in place of sound dialectical materialist analysis.
And even then, the majority of left-communists and so forth still acknowledge Lenin, to the point that Bordiga claimed to be “more Leninist than Lenin.”