/marx/ - Marxism

Marxism contains the philosophy of dialectical materialism, which basically states that only the material world exists and all things in are generally in a state of change and development from one stage to the next and primarily develop according to internal contradictions (opposing forces) within the things themselves. Marxism also applies this philosophy to analysis of human society and history, and looks at the reasons that societies change over time. The main contradiction in class-based human societies is the class struggle, which leads to development of the society. The class structure is determined by the economic system of production and technology, and as those change so too do relations between the classes. Marxism then claims that the class struggle under capitalism will lead into socialism due to the fact that the development of capitalism and the continued mechanization of labor will lead to greater and greater antagonism between the two main classes of capitalism, up to the point where there is a social revolution and a socialist society and state (in contrast to anarchism) is established. Socialism is a society in which there is a state run by the working class which is used to fight against and destroy the capitalist class. Once the capitalist class is destroyed, then the working class will have liberated itself and then there will be no economic classes in society, and then the state's functions can be adapted into functions of the people in general and they state-as-such can wither away and there can be a stateless classless society where all property is held in common, which is the ultimate goal of Marxism.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm

As to the labels:

>Marxism

What I described.

>Marxism-Leninism

Lenin added some further analysis onto the basic Marxism because of further developments of capitalism that occured after Marx's time. Mainly the development of capitalism-imperialism and the transformation of free-competition capitalism into monopoly capitalism. Lenin also outlined the need for a communist vanguard party to lead the workers. It's said that Leninism is the Marxism of the era of imperialism and socialist revolution.

>Trotskyism

Trotsky claimed that the Soviet Union didn't turn out well due to political errors. Nowadays it basically means you think there should be "more democracy" in communism than there was in the USSR. As to what that means, it varies.

>Marxism-Leninism

This is what Trotskyists call people who disagree with their "democratic" ideas.

>Maoism or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism

Further development of Marxism-Leninism to better address the need to avoid capitalist restoration within a communist society. Mainly the recognition that the class struggle continues all the way during socialism, until communism is fully reached. This wasn't fully grasped by the USSR.

Everything else is pretty much special snowflakeism.

>>806
probably no real reason
or the board creator might be a stalin-ist

Lenin didn't call himself a Leninist. After Lenin died, everyone was scrambling to succeed him. He didn't name any successor, and in fact, in his last testament, he harshly criticized many prominent members of the Party in his last testament. (Trots love saying that Lenin harshly criticized Stalin, when Lenin really criticized EVERYONE, regardless) Anyways, many of the leading members of the Party declared that their personal ideology was the TRUE successor to Lenin. They accused other members and their followers of not genuinely being Leninists by calling them by their name, followed by an -ist.
Trotsky never called himself a Trotskyist, he called himself a "Bolshevik-Leninist," because he believed his tendency was the TRUE successor to the Bolsheviks and of Lenin. Stalin called himself a "Marxist-Leninist" for the same reason.
When Stalin accused Trotsky's followers of being Trotskyist, and of Bukharin's followers of being Buckharinists; and when Trotsky accused Stalin's followers of being Stalin-ists, they were insinuating that they weren't TRUE Leninists. (lolsectarianism)
Trotskyists started calling themselves Trotskyists (so now M-Ls call them Trotskyites), but marxist-leninists refused to call themselves Stalin-ists, so in a way the Marxist-Leninists have won that battle for legitimacy.
The whole more Leninist-than-thou phased out, but the word "Stalin-ist" as a curse word remained, so M-Ls don't like being called that.

>>1459
>but marxist-leninists refused to call themselves Stalin-ists, so in a way the Marxist-Leninists have won that battle for legitimacy.
Well also basically every self-styled commie party in power called itself Marxist-Leninist, from the post-Stalin CPSU to the Cuban, Yugoslav, DPRK, East German, Angolan, etc., etc. parties.

Well the issue is if you consider the possibility of building socialism in one country a Leninist position or not. Obviously "Stalin-ists" do, so Khrushchev, Tito or Mao calling their respective countries "socialist" isn't "Stalin-ist," it's demagogy meant to justify the establishment of state-capitalism.

>The modern DPRK constitution has changed the official ideology from Marxism-Leninism to Juche, and removed all references to that particular tendency.
Yeah I know, but in the 60s-80s they were still like "oh BTW we are a Marxist-Leninist party and will always hold high the banner of Marx, Engels and Lenin" in between their extolling of Juche as a glorious advancement for all humanity and Kim Il Sung as the greatest contemporary thinker alive. My point is that "MLism" as a designation was used by basically everyone in power, even if there were genuine MLs and phony "MLs."

>>1482
When a state claims it is "socialist," that the working-class has no need to organize independently of it because it is supposedly a "state of the whole people" (as Khrushchev and his successors argued), carries out a bourgeois dictatorship inside the country, and carries out an imperialist foreign policy abroad (as the USSR did as a consequence of capitalist restoration), then there's quite a bit wrong with it.

As for countries in Africa and whatnot which may use state capitalism, that can play a positive role in the struggle against imperialism and whatnot, but it is still capitalism and the regimes in question were/are still ruled by the bourgeoisie. If they were pro-Soviet then the revisionists claimed they were pursuing "non-capitalist development" and that the working-class should subordinate itself to the "revolutionary democrats" supposedly in power, as the revisionists called for in Ba'athist Iraq and Syria, Egypt, Burma, etc.

Of course there's the other meaning of the term, used by Lenin and Stalin to refer to a portion of the economy in the 20s, but that obviously has little to do with the designation of the USSR of the post-Stalin period as state-capitalist (i.e. as under the control of a new bourgeoisie.)

>>1494
>socialism is state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people.
That quote is taken out of context, and it's usually left-coms and anarchists who do so. He was talking about using state-capitalism as a way to transition to socialism, not that both are synonymous. You can find the whole (short) context here, note that this was like a week or two before the October Revolution: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm

>>1508
I know you weren't trying to slander Lenin, but you still took it out of context, probably because you were unaware of the original context to begin with.

Lenin is not saying that state-capitalism = socialism, he's saying that state-capitalism is used in the service of socialism. As he wrote in that same work,
>You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state-monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism!
>For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organisation of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking.

By centralizing production and replacing small-scale commodity production with large-scale industry, state capitalism helps lay the foundations for nationwide economic planning. That is what he's arguing. That's why he calls socialism a step forward from state-capitalist monopoly.

Again, this usage of the term state-capitalism is very different from the term used to refer to the USSR under Khrushchev and his successors. The former definition is acceptable to a state under the dictatorship of the proletariat which has not yet built socialism in the main, whereas the latter definition refers to a new bourgeoisie which has sized state power under socialism and which works to restore capitalism.

BTW here's three collections of Lenin's writings on economics, you would probably find them very useful and interesting:
* https://archive.org/download/OnStateCapitalismDuringTheTransitionToSocialism/On%20State%20Capitalism%20During%20the%20Transition%20to%20Socialism.pdf
* https://archive.org/download/QuestionsOfTheSocialistOrganisationOfTheEconomy/Questions%20of%20the%20Socialist%20Organisation%20of%20the%20Economy.pdf
* https://archive.org/download/OnWorkersControlAndTheNationalisationOfIndustry/On%20Workers%20Control%20and%20the%20Nationalisation%20of%20Industry.pdf