DO NOT MAKE A POST ABOUT BEING BANNED FROM SOME OTHER SUBREDDIT

The author is a Democratic Socialist/Eco Socialist and not a Leninist leftist (neither am I - I am an Independent Socialist[TM]) but his books do cover the topic of a revolution and building a better society. I am just finishing Red Mars (the first book in the trilogy) so comments with no or minimal spoilers would be welcomed.

From the communist/socialist perspective, is the Taliban good or bad?

I'm genuinely trying to understand what attracts people to communism. Not whether the USSR was good or bad, but the ideology itself. I have a hard time understanding how communism can put the collective and society above the individual without undermining people's individuality in the process. If personal interests, ambition, and the desire to improve your own life are considered secondary or even harmful, then what is supposed to motivate people?The idea of working “for society,” “for the common good,” or simply “for the cause” sounds nice, but how realistic is it when you take human nature into account? Most people naturally want something for themselves: money, comfort, recognition, freedom of choice, and the opportunity to improve their lives. So I'd genuinely like to hear from communists: what am I fundamentally misunderstanding about the ideology? And why do you believe communism doesn't sacrifice individual freedom and individuality for the sake of an abstract collective?

Systematic grandiosity is accelerating; I know how to decelerate it, revolutionary optimism, begin small organizing, & direct workplace dynamics.

J'entends souvent parler de l'autogestion comme un système se rapprochant le plus de la vision marxiste mais aussi comme une des causes de l'effondrement de la Yougoslavie, je voulais donc savoir si c'est un bon système

So before starting i would like to add in a few things for context:
1)English isn't my first language, so i apologise for any mistakes that i make.
2)I consider myself a communist, but i have only recently started to learn more about it and i'm still very ignorant in pretty much everything regarding this topic.
3)I'm the son of a police officer and a farmer, so i've had a constant influence of gun culture in my life since childhood, which probably makes me more biased than i even realize.
4)I'm from Brazil, and in here the gun culture is completely different than it is in America. For one, we had a government program that started in the early 2000s called the "Instituto Do Desarmamento"(institute of disarmament) that banned automatic weapons, heavily restricted any weapons chambered in 7.62,5.56 or even 9mm and 357magum so that only people with a level 3 CAC license(basically a driver license, but for guns), and made it harder to obtain the remaining weapons and ammunitions. But two important points to add is: 1)the brazilian police force is still heavily armed. 2)The restrictions created for more "powerful" firearms are basically paywalls, so if you're really rich you can still get these weapons anyway.

For starters, i haven't read or consumed much of marxists materials and media, so i may be misinterpreting a lot of stuff here, but what i've gathered so far is that most movements here in Brazil generally oppose arming the general population because of the poor material conditions that the majority of the workers see themselves in, and the believe that such policies are idealist at best since a successful revolution is decided on the popular support rather than how much tangible damage the workers can inflict on the opressive forces that will actively fight back.

On the other hand, the ones that do support such ideas still are agains't a massive privatization of firearms(i.e similar to how it is in America) instead supporting it in the form of a "public service"(if we can call it that) with the goal of giving cheaper and easier acess to weapons and ammo so that the working class could train and organize itself more efficiently.

In my personal view, i don't need a firearm for personal protection and i will very likely never need one, so the way i see it is our current gun laws aren't too restrictive, but are not restrictive enough, for i either get cheap acess to 9mm handguns and 5.56 carbines, or no one get's them at all. But i could also make the argument that a lot of people DO need firearms for personal protection, like: women trying to get away from abusive relationships, small farmers and indigenous groups that are constantly harrassed or even killed by wealthy farmers, people that live in areas that are controled by the organizaed crime and/or millitia groups, or just people of color that are constantly racially profiled by our police(we have one of the, if not THE most violent police force in the world btw).

More important than that is alltough we did manage to significantly slowdown the rising trend of gun deaths of the late 90's(it is estimated that 130.000 lives were saved thanks to these policies) gun deaths haven't actually decreased, or even stagnated, since the flow of illegal guns, either imported from the U.S, Belgium, Switerland and even Paraguai, or the legal ones that are either stolen or bought from the civillian market, haven't actually stopped at all. So not only is the majority of the working class effectively unarmed, the State and the capitalist class are now more armed than ever.

However, i don't think i have ever seen any evidence that suggests arming the population actually reduces crime or make people lives safer, as all of the problems that we face are systematic issues that will require deep structural changes in your society for them to be effectively erradicated. Even though i can see how arming and organizing the workers could help or even decide if such changes happen in the first place(especially considering our current reality), i don't really believe that giving M4's and glocks to regular people is going to actually make their lifes safer.

On the flip side, i really want a M4 and a glock :D.

I’ve been a communist for quite some time, and in studying the German Ideology currently, and combined with my other knowledge, it is clear that communism is not a moral framework. Communism has nothing to do with equality, because of course people are not equal. Communism is merely the next supposed stage in evolution. While capitalism is necessary, it is at a point where it becomes a fetter to human existence. But it would be disingenuous for me to argue I am only a communist because of scientific outlooks, not because I want workers to be “free”. But I struggle when people use words like “better”, or “good”. “You think socialism is better?” Well, yes? But at the same time I don’t like moral words such as “better”. Marx used to laugh when people brought up morals. But of course I want everyone to be free and happy and not starve. It’s a bit of an internal debate km having with my self. Lenin became a Marxist after reading when his brother was executed. But I also worry that if I don’t ground my beliefs in my supposed morals, then deaths don’t matter because I justify them under “well revolution and the abolition of capitalism needs to happen”. Hope this isn’t too much of a ramble. Thanks for any help

So basically I been reading a little these past months, and I have tried to see how my own personal class position applies under a materialist analysis, I have come the conclusion that most likely I'm part of the bourgeois class, my dad is a landowner and owns many stocks on various companies, basically he does not have to work to make a living, and I will inherit all of that someday, I have been reading about people who found themselfs on the same situation who are all sympathetic with the working class, but personally I have found no real reason to not follow my own class interest, why would I give up my privilege? Why would I not want to extract the greatest amount of value from workers if that benefits me? I honestly have found no objective material answer to this, so I'd like you ask what you think? I know Engels used to be on the same position as me but he became a class traitor because of idealist moral reasons when he saw the conditions of the working class, but those weren't any real material reason to really become a communist, and I'm having hardship finding that reason.

Posted this on r/marxism and got some engagement but I want to see if other people have other points of view.

I’ve increasingly started to think that one of the biggest unresolved questions in socialism is not simply who owns the means of production, but what restrains political power during and after socialist transformation.

A society can nationalise industries, abolish private capital, call itself socialist, and even write extensive rights into its constitution. None of that guarantees socialism if the ruling party itself stands above the law.

The historical split within socialism seems increasingly important to me. Bernstein treated democracy as intrinsic to socialism. Rosa Luxemburg warned that suppressing elections, press freedom and open political struggle would eventually leave bureaucracy as the only active force in public life. Later Eurocommunists explicitly tried to reconcile socialist transformation with constitutional legality and political pluralism.

Much of the Soviet-derived tradition developed in the opposite direction: party supremacy, democratic centralism and legal instrumentalism allowed law to become an instrument of political objectives instead of an independent restraint on power.

And history seems to have given us a fairly brutal warning about where that can lead.

Some states still describe themselves as socialist today while operating under authoritarian or totalitarian political systems. That raises an uncomfortable question: if a political system suppresses genuine political accountability, places the ruling party above effective legal constraint, and prevents society from correcting the state, how much does the socialist label actually tell us?

I increasingly think the institutional lesson of twentieth-century socialism is quite simple:

Socialism cannot place itself above the rule of law and remain emancipatory.

Economic transformation may require powerful public institutions. The greater that power becomes, the stronger the legal and democratic restraints on it must become as well.

This also makes me wonder whether we have historically focused too narrowly on one question:

Who owns the means of production?

That question matters enormously. But there is another question that may be just as important:

Who restrains those who exercise power in the name of society?

If ownership is socialised while political power becomes monopolised, socialism can end up replacing one form of domination with another.

So perhaps socialism or communism should be understood partly as an ideological and economic project, while its survival depends on constitutional institutions: rule of law, genuine political accountability, independent legal constraints, freedom of expression, institutional checks, and mechanisms that allow the state itself to be challenged and corrected.

This also makes me wonder: if a second socialist or communist movement ever becomes necessary, should it still rely on secret societies, underground organisations, or highly closed revolutionary parties?

I don’t think it should.

The Soviet and CCP experience suggests that organisations built around secrecy, rigid hierarchy and absolute loyalty can carry those habits into the state after taking power.

If there is ever a second movement, I think it should grow through open politics, public debate, legal organisation, democracy and the rule of law from the beginning.

Otherwise, we risk repeating the same institutional mistakes under a new name.

So I’m curious what people here think:

Can socialism remain genuinely socialist without constitutional democracy, rule of law, independent legal constraints and real political accountability?

Or should those institutions themselves be considered part of what socialism must mean?

And looking back at the twentieth century, was the central failure of Soviet-style socialism primarily economic — or was it also a constitutional failure of power?

A peculiar phenomenon has emerged on the Chinese internet today: a whole group of so-called “left-wing bloggers” enthusiastically praise “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” portraying it as China’s adaptation and reform of socialism to suit the conditions of the Chinese Revolution. At the same time, they mock and ridicule those who genuinely uphold left-wing principles and defend the interests of the people.
It is nothing short of absurd.
In reality, socialism with Chinese characteristics has long since departed from the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist path. Take, for example, the claim that “public ownership remains the mainstay.” When Deng Xiaoping put forward this idea, he argued that as long as the state controlled the key sectors of the economy, the dominant position of public ownership could be guaranteed. But this argument is fundamentally flawed, because it conflates public ownership with state ownership.
When people think of private enterprises, they usually imagine a company controlled by an individual or a group of private individuals—companies such as SpaceX or Nvidia, for example. But private ownership does not necessarily mean ownership by a single individual. Enterprises can also be controlled by state institutions or bureaucratic organizations without genuinely being owned and controlled by the public as a whole. Organizations such as China Merchants Group and CITIC Group may be described as state-owned enterprises, but state ownership is not automatically equivalent to genuine public ownership.
Many people fail to distinguish between public ownership and state ownership, treating the two as if they were identical. This confusion has become one of the most common arguments used by Chinese revisionists to defend the existing system.
Furthermore, Deng Xiaoping abandoned the principle of taking class struggle as the key link. The concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was replaced in the Constitution by the “people’s democratic dictatorship,” while economic development was declared the central task. Revisionists attempt to justify this by claiming that the people’s democratic dictatorship is merely a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
But this is yet another rhetorical trick.
One of the core principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought is the recognition of class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. To abandon class struggle in the name of “economic development” is, quite openly, to admit a departure from the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist tradition.
The same problem applies to the concept of the “people’s democratic dictatorship.” The terms “the people” and “the proletariat” are not interchangeable. The concept of “the people” is far broader and more ambiguous. In Marxist discourse, historical progress can involve individuals and classes that are not themselves proletarian. Under an increasingly distorted definition in contemporary China, however, “contributing to historical progress” has gradually been reduced to “contributing to economic development.” As a result, capitalists can simply be incorporated into the category of “the people.”
And so capitalists are renamed “entrepreneurs” and are allowed to enter the political system and wield enormous influence and power with full legitimacy.
Then there is the abandonment of the class narrative in favor of a nationalist one. The emphasis is increasingly placed on the “Chinese nation” rather than the international proletariat. China has moved away from supporting progressive forces around the world and has instead entered into global competition with U.S. imperialism.
Take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of recent years as an example. Faced with what many see as a struggle by an oppressed people against oppression, China chose not to clearly take either side and instead repeatedly called for negotiations and compromise. This approach ignores the actual conditions of oppression faced by the Palestinian people. Israel is allowed to continue exercising overwhelming power over Palestinians, while whenever Palestinians resist, the response is to lecture them about reconciliation, peace talks, and compromise.
The same can be seen in China’s ambiguous attitude toward the Russia-Ukraine war. It appears willing to support Russia, but is unwilling to do so openly, while remaining largely indifferent to the realities faced by Ukrainians—both the consequences of Russian military aggression and the social and political contradictions within Ukraine itself.
Its reactionary nature could hardly be more obvious.

A mi pensamiento, creo que el sistema capitalista es estable, pero no justo. Podría tener ciertos puntos compartidos con los idealistas, pero, al saber que el comunismo implica no tener propiedad privada, abolición de clases sociales y prácticamente todo igualitario, me hace pensar que pasará con los doctores que estudien por años, para terminar ganando lo mismo que un plomero (que con mucho respeto, es un trabajo respetado y honrado)
Sin embargo, no se si estoy muy de acuerdo en ese aspecto.
Mi opinión es solo eso y nada más. La verdad es que me falta aún mucha lectura, y me gustaría que resolvieran esa duda mía. Me interesa ampliar mi criterio.

Marxism has always treated labour as central to capitalism: workers sell labour-power, capital owns the means of production, and class conflict develops around this relationship.

But AI and automation raise a difficult question.

What happens if a future economy can produce most necessary goods and services with far less human labour?

If society no longer needs everyone to work full-time, should a communist transition still treat full employment as a goal?

Or should the goal become something different: reducing necessary labour as much as possible while guaranteeing everyone access to the material abundance produced by increasingly automated systems?

This also changes the ownership question.

If automated firms generate enormous output with relatively little human labour, perhaps the central issue is no longer only who receives wages. It becomes:

Who owns automated productive capital?

Who receives the surplus generated by it?

Should economic rents be socialised?

Could some private firms remain while society captures rents and guarantees a universal material floor?

Could consumers, communities, workers, or public institutions hold different forms of ownership simultaneously?

At what point does “from each according to ability, to each according to need” become materially feasible rather than merely aspirational?

There is also a deeper philosophical question.

Is communism fundamentally about giving labour political power, or about eventually freeing human beings from compulsory labour itself?

If automation drastically reduces socially necessary labour time, continuing to organise society around the expectation that everyone must have a job might reproduce one of capitalism’s assumptions rather than transcend it.

I’m interested in how Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, council communists, autonomists, and other communist traditions would approach this.

If human labour becomes progressively less necessary for production, what should replace employment as the main mechanism connecting people to income, consumption, and social participation?

My own direction is currently built around three economic institutions: Universal Basic Income, socialisation of economic rents, and consumer ownership.

UBI would reduce dependence on wage employment. Socialising economic rents would return monopoly, land, financial and platform rents to society. Consumer ownership would broaden access to the returns generated by increasingly automated productive systems.

The broader goal is to use rising productivity to reduce socially necessary human labour while expanding material security and widely distributed ownership.

After the revolution, Lenin implemented the NEP which blatantly made the USSR state-capitalist which perfectly follows the original orthodox historical materialist concept. Stalin wanted to rapidly industrialize the USSR but he wanted to seize full control of it (just like a capitalist taking full control of the workers in a factory). For that, he instead followed the voluntarism concept which is clearly deviating from the original marxist concept. This concept of emphasizing that human consciousness, moral choices, and deliberate actions altering economic reality is very close to utopian socialism which Karl Marx spent most of his life proving wrong (metaphorically) By that, Stalin also became the capitalist (metaphorically again) of the entire nation by following a simple capitalist idea of extracting surplus from workers and using it for his own use. Stalin even sent many innocent people to gulags for forced labour. This completely aligns with the marxist concept of worker exploitation and alienation which doesnt makes his era socialist.

I hear this theory thrown around a lot, the idea that everyone in the first world is part of a "labour aristocracy" at the expense of the Global South.

How does this actually work then? As far as I can see, outsourcing manufacturing to cheaper labour overseas is something that put downwards pressure on wages in the developed world, and this barely if at all offset by low cost goods.

The only way I can see this making sense is if it's talking about the supply of cheap raw materials to manufacturing in the west. But this seems somewhat irrelevant today when the west is dominated by services rather than manufacturing, which is now centred in places like Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, India etc. I can see it making sense in the 19th Century when cheap exports from the industrial European powers subsidised by wealth plundered from colonies destroyed e.g. Indian textile industries but doesn't particularly relevant today.

Is this not a rather anachronistic theory that people repeat to seem radical without really understanding it or being able to explain it?

Hi everyone, I’m looking for people to have concrete discussions about communist ideas regarding France.

These are critical times, with a presidential campaign about to kick off and a need to galvanize a vanguard.

The political parties and organizations in my area aren't very interesting and are far removed from genuine communist concerns (I’m stuck out in the countryside).

We could schedule regular online sessions for collective discussion and—ideally—meet up in person if anyone is in the same area.

Hope to read you all soon.

Question simple mais qui vaut la peine d’être posé selon moi ?

Que pensez-vous du partie communiste en France aujourd’hui ?

I notice many supporters on this sub advocate for the USSR's superiority of technological advancements, especially during the space race, and various medical and scientific works. But most of which stated were primarily the result of state commissioning, state approval, and state capital directly funneled from the government.

Comparitive to its western counterparts, how did the USSR hold up to the likes of the U.S, Germany, Britain, etc, etc. Can you name major Soviet technological breakthroughs that were conceptualized, funded, and brought to scale independently by private individuals or autonomous groups without state commissioning, state approval, and state capital. The answers that come to me personally are few, and when I compare and contrast with the U.S the difference is night and day. But I am not denying that they were state-funded projects in the western world as well, this questions is specfically driven to address my original prompt of self-directed and self-funded innovation.

I ask for a very unbiased response, without emotion-driven respones please. Prior experience speaks a lot within this sub.