Shut up, goofball.

My brother in Christ, the “west is a lost cause for revolution” exactly BECAUSE of sentiments and takes like this! You actually posted this seriously thinking that it wasn’t anything other than counterrevolutionary drivel (that, again, Stalin would’ve 100% had you liquidated for stating back in the day – have you thought about why you admire people who would have branded you as enemies and destroyed you, are you into radical politics because you are a masochist?). The lack of self awareness and idealism is just too much. I’m going to block you and move on from this convo, I hope you are not actually involved in any orgs while holding onto these anti-people and frankly dangerous ideas. Better yet, feel free to state what orgs you are involved in so any of our UK comrades who are serious with their love the people and are dedicated in wanting to serve them can avoid them.

Right, just like Gorbachev and Yeltsin, famous MLs who were born in the 1930s in the USSR right? Anyway, I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make and I think you’ve missed mine.

What I’m saying is that it’s nonsensical to say you support Stalin in one breath and then say we should support Corbyn/Galloway in the next breath. The former was an genuinely principled revolutionary, while the latter are socdems, revisionists, opportunists etc who Stalin would have had liquidated if they were in the party. Even before the Bolsheviks had state power there were other revisionist, non-Marxist left parties and trade unions etc that existed who the Bolsheviks had frayed relationships with at best and hostility with at worst, but over the course of the 1920’s-1930’s these other parties were gradually removed from any power they held and placed in the dustbin of history.

So, if we genuinely support Stalin and his legacy, the lesson to learn is that we must maintain our principles. We must advance the positions of the masses instead of giving into reactionary tailism. Our energy should be focused on constructing the genuinely revolutionary vanguard party. In general, other opportunist parties aren’t worth our time, and will not get us any closer to socialism (at worst they will delay us). Now to be more specific, its definitely important for the revolutionary movement to draw into the struggle, work with, and build relations with leftist mass organizations, including ones that may not be specifically Marxist or hold principled positions, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

Something other than a boot on the face of humanity would be nice for a change tbh

Yes, but your folly is thinking that social democrats, right-opportunists, and revisionist pseudo-revolutionaries like Galloway and Corbyn can bring that about. This is a tremendous error and the western left will not mature until it realizes that we cannot compromise on our politics.

Did Marx compromise on the Gotha programme just because “something other than a boot” would be nice?

Ask yourself when Marx, Lenin, Engels, Stalin, Mao etc EVER compromised on their politics?

Please realize that ONLY a revolutionary ML/MLM vanguard party seizing power can remove that boot, anything other than that like these opportunist movements is just not going to fucking cut it, and is not worth our support.

I don’t. He was a product of his time - no doubt historically revolutionary, but committed many mistakes and held onto many backwardisms of his own time. I don’t want Stalin back, I want to build a genuinely revolutionary vanguard party that can cultivate modern day Stalins. But hey do you

Right-opportunism and tailism on my hexbear? It’s more common than you think

If Galloway was completely immovable on green energy/trans rights, I don’t think he’d be offering Corbyn to lead his party

Stalin would’ve had them both shot. Your thoughts on that?

Kind of interesting that the name works though, considering that the jacobins were bourgeois liberal revolutionaries.

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He condemned Hamas and Oct 7th when it happened lol. For me the dividing line would be recognizing the Al Aqsa Flood as genuine expression of colonized people under military dictatorship fighting for liberation, rather than an act of “terrorism” against “innocent civillians” (which is what Lula characterised it as in his condemnation).

Though it’s a different context, I think in State and Revolution, Lenin says something similar, that the real mark of a revolutionary (or something along those lines) is not just in recognizing the class struggle, but embracing the dictatorship of the proletariat.

I don’t have books that disprove your idea besides general Marxist and Maoist works, but approaching from a Maoist perspective, I would critique the first part of your thoughts because I think it falls way to deeply into great man theory.

If the communist movement faltered because of the death of people like Fred Hampton, then the movement was weak to begin with and probably would have faltered anyway had those people stayed alive/true to the cause. Successful communist movements do not rely on strong role models, as you put it. You can have all the strong role models you want but it really means nothing if: a) the internal strength of the vanguard party is weak, b) the relationship between the vanguard party and the oppressed masses is weak, c) the unity of the united front is weak, d) the conditions necessary for revolution simply aren’t present (crises, specifically)

• As formulated by Huey Newton with his theory of “revolutionary suicide”, but also just by intuition, the death of a great number of people, civilians and revolutionaries alike, is inevitable in revolutionary war. Any revolutionaries like Hampton that were killed by the state may have been killed later on when the movement shifted to people’s war. How many “great, strong” revolutionaries do you think were killed during the Long March? A proper vanguard party and united front should be prepared for this inevitability by maintaining strong internal unity, linking themselves firmly with the masses, political education etc. Or do you think the solution would have been to wheel Fred Hampton in like a bulletproof steel vessel or something, lest he be destroyed?
• There were plenty of great revolutionaries who existed contemporaneously to Fred Hampton – he certainly wasn’t the only “great revolutionary” of his time. Many of them either a) fell to revisionism (Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver) b) were killed, imprisoned, or exiled for life by the state (Imam Jamil al Amin, Mumia Abu Jamal, Assata Shakur) c) or just died of natural causes after a life of being a successful revolutionary (Kwame Ture).
• The New Left of the 60’s, and their organizations and revolutionaries, were plagued by a great number of internal issues (misogyny, improper political education, splits/lack of unity, lacking security measures, adventurism), and these issues led them to be especially susceptible to being vanquished by the state powers. IMO this is what actually led to the downfall of the BPP and the other 60’s orgs, not so much Fred Hampton’s death.

and in a formal sense, by pushing parents and teachers that would pass those revolutionary behaviors and lifestyles down to their students to the periphery of livelihood and often killing them through social murder.

Don’t know what you mean by this, you could either elaborate using more accessible/clear language, or I can accept it if the question isn’t meant for me lol.

It’s not a valid excuse.

Sounds like a revisionist. Lets have higher standards for our “communists”.

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My only point is that many people have name-dropped communism in history, and many of these people were counterrevolutionaries, reactionaries, utopians, liberals, social-democrats etc.

I don’t care that Lula thinks a communist is cool. I care whether Lula is communist, whether Lula belongs to a revolutionary communist party, whether the party is firmly linked with the masses and is actively fighting for the concerns of the masses — I could keep going but these things are not true. But yes it is true that Lula praised a communist. So did Pol Pot.

By Juche-style degrowth, do you mean a command economy? Socialism?

I’m not going to argue about things sorted out 200 years ago by Marx. Dig up Marx’s corpse and take it up with him.

And DemSocs are revisionists, so congrats.

You’re seeing the opinions of the western left, and in our countries our movements have only just been rebounding after decades of very harsh repression and propaganda, so it’ll take more time, struggle, and political development for people to see the difference between social democracy and revolutionary society. It is unfortunate, but for now, many will be captivated by the former.

Name-dropping communism astonishes you? Would Pol Pot astonish you?

What are you even saying?