To clarify, this video isn't claiming all anarchists are individualistic. The criticisms are pointed solely at the one strand within anarchism of individualist anarchists, rather than the whole movement, and especially not collectivist anarchists, social anarchists, Anarcho-Communists, etc. The remark about "lifestylism" was a reference to Murray Bookchin's text "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism" (which I strongly recommend everyone, whether Maoist or Anarchist, should read): theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-social-anarchism-or-lifestyle-anarchism-an-unbridgeable-chasm
this obsession with qualifying 'anarchist' with various adjectives is very "think tank" and beside the point. the attempt to break up ANARCHISTS as simply everyone who is ANTI RULERSHIP will not work. we're growing.
@@legalfictionnaturalfact3969cknowledging our differences in beliefs is not breaking us up. The thing is that we don’t all agree on what rulership exactly means, or who could potentially be a ruler. So we need these terms to clarify. I don’t need my allies to agree with me, but I don’t want to be lumped in with some dude that thinks he’s an Anarchist because he’s an ‘AnCap’ and doesn’t think that stuff like Company Towns should be considered tyrannical. This doesn’t weaken us. It gives us the ability to communicate and organize better. If we want to actually change things we need to organize.
@@benshatpiro83 NOPE. the plant or asset always says "DepEndS oN Yr DeFInITiOn of X". open a dictionary. again: anarchists are anti-rulership. no one gets to rule over that term by attaching some infinite number of terms to it. it stands alone. or hey, be an attack helicopter pickupartist ubercommieanarchodummy-dumdum. whatevs. either way, anarchists moving on and up. funny how the "uNiTyyYY no matter whutTT" trolls and the "dePenDS of Yr DEfinItiOn" trolls never cross paths... lmfao
@@thevarietyshowyt They aren't but anarchists need to understand how the state operates in a class society. They try to use weird moral "Hierarchy" arguments to justify their ideology.
As an ancom who’s still very politically influenced by MLM, I totally agree, but also vice versa, as leftists we should be studying and opening our ears to, and have a lot to learn from all post-capitalist philosophical branches.
I personally shifted away from using a specific ideological label for myself for this reason; there's good stuff in many theoretical models, and while I might lean more heavily towards one than others, I feel like thinking of that model as a part of my identity instead of just a source of knowledge might make me more closed off to other sources (or, on the flipside, insufficiently critical of ideas coming from whichever tendency I identify with).
That would actually be a really interesting video. Like if Paul were to do a book report on some Kropotkin or Bakunin. Paroles d'un Révolté would be pretty fun.
@@SomasAcademy This is pretty much where I've ended up. There's a lot of good tidbits from many anti-capitalist schools of thought, as well as a lot of flaws. If we want anything done, we need to learn to take the good and leave the bad, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you specifically label yourself as. If we went Maoist in America, and Mexico went Anarcho-Communist, why should it matter? The world's a big place, and our differences in political organization from region to region don't really matter all that much in the grand scheme, especially if say Canada is Fascist and actively trying to topple both. Stupid analogy, I know, but it gets the point across all the same. When there's actual constructive debate, and deliberation going on, then chances are things are getting done. The good thing about Maoists is that they do see the value in some Anarchistic ideas and implement them, and many Anarchists also see the value in Maoist ideas as well. These constructive critiques and discussions drive us forward, provided none of the parties try to wreck the other in bad faith of course. So long as everyone remembers it's them versus Capitalist hegemony, and not some free for all battle royale of ideologies, then we can stand to learn a lot from each other. It's generally better to have many minds attacking a problem from different angles to find the best possible solution, than it is to have one mind slamming into a brick wall over and over and screaming at itself, after all, isn't it?
@@SomasAcademy I agree. While I still heavily lean towards Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought and I've my fair share of principled criticisms against anarchism, that doesn't mean that I'd be closed off to good ideas or suggestions that's gonna help the people and the revolution. I've had a close friend who's anarchist (they've passed on, unfortunately) but they enriched my understanding of all Maoist theory and practice and I'm grateful that I had the honour and privilege of knowing them.
MLM needs to be studied. On the other hand, we in the seat of empire need to understand that, dialectics being what they are, revolutionary theory always needs synthesis and advancement. We learn from what came before, while understanding that what Lenin learned needed to be advanced for the conditions of China. We don't stop at yesterday's revolutions. We study, hypothesize, test, and learn. Probably goes without saying for many, but there are those who treat revolutionary science as religion more than science and try to keep it frozen in time.
"Probably goes without saying for many, but there are those who treat revolutionary science as religion more than science and try to keep it frozen in time." idk if it goes without saying because ya sure told me!
If I wanted to be bossed around by people who think they can because they're higher up on an arbitrary hierarchy like "wealth" or "party loyalty" then I'd sit around and do nothing because that's already my life, thanks
Why would you be bossed around by anyone? The whole point of Maoism is giving all power to the people, up to and including overthrowing communist parties themselves
@@niklas4813 it literally did, the cultural revolution actually failed which is why democracy (while still present in china) is not as ideal as it could be
I think it was Mao who said something along the lines of "anarchism is the conscience of communism", reflecting what you said at the end, how anarchists are crucial to the revolutionary project to hold the bureaucratic tendencies of parties in check. Also, I was considering writing a text about how democratic centralism vs diversity of tactics is a false dichotomy and how we should strive for centralisation of strategy and the autonomy of decentralized tactics
I consider myself a ML who occasionally studies Maoism. I'll admit I've (unfortunately) seen several MLs fall into the trap of only studying old texts and turning into academic debate bros, which isn't exactly a great way to win the masses over. All sections of the left, not just anarchists, should be open to and study Maoism.
I'd arguee that socialists and communists of every stripe should study every corrent closely. I might not be an anarchist, but I can still recognize that they can have compelling critiques that are worth studying. Dogmatism can be a real problem among communists, so I thank you for this video
I’m not sure I fully get this critique. As I understand it, many anarchists still have praxis, they just believe the route to communism can be achieved without a dictatorship of the proletariat. And many anarchists also criticize MLM for failing to abolish its own systems of oppression because it only ever shifts power from one group of people to another rather than trying to abolish it. Please enlighten me if I’m being ignorant, I’m still learning.
The critique is that Anarchists believe that the communist society can be established through one singular breaking point that ends the old society immediately. Maoists believe that the continuation of the state is a necessary evil to defend the revolutionary communities from capitalist encirclement and they recognise that the old ways of society will not end if the class struggle isnt continued after the revolution.
@@ycasto1063not a single anarchist has ever said that its going to be an everything revolution and discussed how an anarchist revolution would probably last generations. I do also want to mention that mao destroyed the Shanghai commune by retracting his support destroying decentralized communism while also only being taken out of power by the conference of 3000 cadres a extremely undemocratic institution before he later had many of them killed or re educated in the cultural revolution, the state is antithetical to communism.
@@ycasto1063 but anarchists have historically criticised this viewpoint and none of the theory says it will all go down in one fell swoop. The point is just that a dictatorship of the proletariat cannot really be of the proletariat if it's of the state, because a state is inherently hierarchical and oppressive
@@ycasto1063I'm not opposed to the continuation of the state as a necessary evil. My concern is that these types of states inevitably become tyrannical, unnecessarily repressing even other leftists who oppose certain policies or state action. To repress the proletariat is to betray the very foundations of what you fought for to begin with.
@@ycasto1063 "Anarchists believe that the communist society can be established through one singular breaking point that ends the old society immediately" I'm sorry what ? Where do you get that idea of anarchism ?
Paul, I have got to say, this is a GIANT help to me in my own introspection as to “what do I really believe” within my leftist politics. For a solid 3 years I’ve been trying to reconcile the aspects I love from both Marxist and anarchist traditions. I’ll be revisiting this visiting video as well as following being intentional about researching MLM.
Glad to help! If you'd like recommendations for reading or anything like that, feel free to drop me a DM on Twitter or Instagram. I might need to follow you back on the platforms for the messages to come through though, so if I'm not already then let me know your username and then the DMs should be open
i am an ancom that is quite pro leftist unity, and i think if we all study different types of leftism, then we understand everyone better and can build solidarity among leftists
This video on "Why Anarchists Should Study Marxism-Leninism-Maoism" is deeply frustrating to watch. Yeah, I HAVE studied Maoism. I have great respect for the Maoist ultraleft. What Marxist Paul misunderstands about the Cultural Revolution was that the Maoist ultraleft that reinvented anarchism in Maoist lingo was purged by Mao himself. Same for the Maoists who reached libertarian conclusions in the Communist Party of the Philippines: purged. And anti-revisionism? What exactly is being defended against revision? "Socialism in one country"? Stalinism? "National Democracy"? All these concepts are just state capitalism. The very thing anti-revisionists defend is itself a revision of basic Marxism perpetuated by Stalin and Stalinism. Finally, Protracted People's War. Now the PPW in the Philippines is pretty secretive, but the PPW in Nepal already has good documentation. Liberated villages in Nepal saw staged elections. Doubtless some elections in Nepali villages were real, but there are too many accounts saying otherwise. And the revolutionary state? What happened to the people's revolutionary state in Nepal? Abolished by decree by Prachanda, the chair of the Nepali Maoists. Does that sound like a state owned by the people? No it does not. Anarchists are right: state power and people power are incompatible. Yeah, I'm an anarchist. Yeah, I studied Maoism. I'm impressed by the ultraleft and libertarian Maoists, but the "official" Maoists in India, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines? Not impressed. Nepal: fake people's governments. Peru & India: killing indigenous peoples. Philippines: murdering their own comrades and also assassinating other leftists. Maoism has some good ideas, and these good ideas are often found with the Maoist ultraleft, but there can be no support to their communist parties for they will lead back to capitalism. Happened already with China and Nepal. In the Philippines, their ridiculous theory of National Democracy is literally a naked defense of state capitalism. We already know that if they win, it will be capitalism.
@@Marxism_Today because power ALWAYS corrupts. and if people have the ability to eliminate anyone they dislike for any reason, they WILL. history shows no other option when humans are given power over others. you need competition to stay within the market instead of within a "party" of unelected family and friends of the rich person who funded the revolution. that way merit is maintained and there is a real incentive to make technological progress and make things. there are too many people who havent had to earn anything who would be given power over others in a communist party. and that always leads to mismanagement because well, if you havent proven to be good at managing resources and understanding their value and understand the needs of others through experience, you dont have the capacity to be good at it and will cut corners to hide your incompetence from the boss/the rest of society
@Deamon Cohln Why would people's war be waged against the people? It's waged to overthrow the bourgeoisie. When there's no longer a bourgeoisie, what basis would there be for continuing to wage it?
@@Marxism_Today That's inherent to all groups seeking to take over power rather than abolish it - a hierarchy and upper class is formed, which inevitably results in some form of return of the bourgeoisie
What Maoists don't understand is that centralization with decentralized elements isn't actually going to lead to communism. Because the decentralized elements are always at the behest of the vanguard, the vanguard continually needs to justify its existence by reifying its own power over the masses who are supposed to follow their plan. This creates a two-tier system of governance where the vanguard is clashing with the masses, as their own vision (where they have all the power) constantly comes into conflict with ideas that are independently developed by the so-called "decentralized cadres." This leads to an authoritarian version of capitalism. If the community doesn't have direct control over their labor and resources, you've essentially just created a political bourgeois class. I don't get why this is so hard to understand for MLMs. No MLM has ever been able to explain to me why a vanguard isn't redundant when the masses are supposed to have direct control over their destiny. Like, either you trust the proletariat, or you don't. There really isn't any in between, and the creation of a centralized authority basically signals that actually the party doesn't trust the proletariat at all. They just want power for themselves.
Tbh, as an anarchist, I still have a lot of criticisms of the MLM approach. If anyone is interested in learning about specifically anarchist alternatives to MLM, I would suggest looking more into the strategic and organizational theories of anarcho-syndicalism, platformism, especifismo, dual organizationalism, and anarchist dual power.
@@dr.zoidberg8666 the great thing about a lot of anarchist theory, and particulary the strategic and organizational positions I listed, is that they are rooted in the practical application of anarchist ideas historically. So, platformism is rooted in the experiences and lessons of both the Makhnovist revolution in Ukraine, as well as the Friends of Durruti group that was active during the Spanish Civil War. Especifismo is rooted in the history of the struggles of anarchist movements and organizations in Latin America. Dual organizationalism and anarchist dual power are rooted in the strategic and organizational methods employed by pretty much all of the largest and most successful historical anarchist movements and revolutions, including the Spanish Revolution, the Ukrainian Makhnovists, the Kirin Revolution in Manchuria, as well as the Magonista rebellion in Mexico, the Macedonian and Bulgarian anarchists in the Strandzha uprising, and many others. And anarcho-syndicalism has been one of the largest and most successful forms of anarchist working class struggle against capitalism pretty much throughout its entire history.
@@edwinrollins142 That's very exciting. It's a shame all of those efforts failed time & time again. I look forward to the great & mighty anarchist power which will shake the foundations of the world. Perhaps the People's Republic of China will discover them in their exploration of the far side of the moon.
@@dr.zoidberg8666 ohhh, i see, youre being facetious. All the Marxist revolutions have failed as well, so youre really not making the point you think you are here.
@@audunms4780 then again, mao let anarchist experiments happen just to crush them when they got too strong for his liking, so thats how far his true commitment with anarchism was and were he saw anarchists fit within his proyect.
I know that this video is old, but as someone that is an ancom i have to say that reading MLM and Anarchist texts is like being a child of divorced parents and every time you go to one parents house you just hear them complain about the other parent. That is to say that Anarchists and MLMs have a lot to learn from each other, both in theory and in practice and even though they won't suddenly agree with each other after that, this kind of mutual understanding will make a unified block against capitalism, fascism and the far-right much easier and more efficient.
I feel like you should also make a "Why MLs should study MLM" video too. I'm biased because I am currently an ML (and former anarchist) studying MLM myself lol
Honestly would love a series explaining the difference between these schools of thought because I myself still don't understand the difference between ML, MLM, Maoism (as its own separate thing), Socialism with Chinese characteristics, the DPRK's version of socialism, and all the other socialisms.
@@guy-sl3kr I'll try to answer some of these briefly. ML is an incomplete form of MLM. If it exists with Maoist thought omitted, it's due to a lack of understanding of Marxist history. Maoist thought has a very useful "toolset" outlined by this video. While Maoist thought can be applied to ideologies other than Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, it would be in a revised form. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is a revisionist form of MLM envisioned by Deng Xiaoping to essentially "pause socialism" to build up Chinese industry. It's very flawed thinking, but it seems to have served its purpose. Juche, or the DPRK's socialism, is a revisionist form of ML, with extreme emphasis on the Cult of Personality, or idealizing leadership. There is something to be learned from every form of socialism, but each sucessful form is tailor-made for the region that it is able to exist in.
I believe I may be identifying a notable fundamental difference between MLM's and An-Coms. From what I understand, MLM's want to achieve communism through conquest, while An-Com's want to achieve communism through solidarity and reconciliation. If this is at least somewhat accurate, then I probably wouldn't accept a state run by MLM's (as an ideal) because I believe that their conquest, based ideology will inevitably be pointed inwards when it runs out of ways to expand. Ideology has a tendency to expand both outward and inwards, and I would rather that ideology be one that is ideal for human flourishing
Very American way of seeing things. Might makes right has been burned into your very genetics. Doesn't matter how many times we say "We are destroying the Capitalists to liberate the workers." All they ever hear is "we are destroying..."
I also can't think of any leader that lived up to their ideals. I'd probably have to read more to outline all the affects but it puts me to sleep and i have people that depend on me.
@jumpin jehosephat I tend to believe that humanity is inherently too flawed to take up an authority position without abusing it in some way. People tend to do what is easiest in the long term, and it is easy to ignore problems when they don't affect them personally. Having a government with no authorities accommodates this flaw of humanity perfectly, because the people that vote for change are the people that the policy affects the most. I do believe anarchists will need leaders though, they wouldn't have more authority than anyone else, but they have the trust of the community to make good decisions in situations where voting would be too cumbersome (such as trusting the expertise of a senior worker). Their leadership would be brought to intervention or trial if people suspect they are misusing it.
Central decision making and ideological unity are the main pillars of Platformism (an anarchist approach) as well. Here are some key differences: 1. who takes the initiative in central decision making? In MLM, it’s the party that sends out its officials to listen to the people. Then, the party deliberates, makes a decision and commands the local population to enact that. Anarchists turn that from the head back on its feet: there are no party officials, but instead there are mechanisms so local communities can call a summit. They then send their delegates - regular workers - to this summit where they deliberate and reach a decision. Then they go back and the communities enact the decisions. Crucially, the delegate will go back to being a worker and therefore always maintains the same class interest as his comrades, whereas party officials are their own class and would love nothing more than finding a workaround to any checks and balances (like workers throwing bombs at them). 2. MLM usually claims that before socialization of the means of production can take place, you first need to let the capitalists develop the means of production to the point that you’re no longer poor. But don’t worry, the dynamics of capitalism can be reigned in by MLM checks and balances: bombs and guns pointed at the capitalists, and even party officials. How do you know which party official to bomb? -A great man like Mao will tell you, and you better obey or you’ll be accused of counterrevolutionary tendencies. Anarchists find that absurd. It’s almost as if those MLM checks and balances are just a spectacle organized by those who really run the show just so you have a good time bullying some scapegoat. The only real way to overcome revisionist tendencies is to socialize the means of production right away and educate everyone accordingly so the workers can develop the means of production themselves. That’s the proper materialist position. Checks and balances - bourgeois ones via courts and cops or MLM ones via bombs and terror - are idealist nonsense. 3. Anarchists and MLM agree on their theory of what states have hitherto always been: an instrument of the ruling class to protect them from unruly peasants. During a revolution, the ruling class is no longer in power and the streets are ruled by the mass of people. If those masses are organized enough so they can enact radical changes before the ruling class rebuilds its state apparatus, one can technically call that a proletarian state, and as the means of production are being socialized, there’s no longer a need for an apparatus protecting the ruling class from the rules class - the state withers away. From the anarchist perspective, this should take like 5 minutes or so. But MLM finds all kinds of fascinating reasons to delay that and maintain this workers state as long as possible - uhm - „necessary“. Anarchists are not opposed to organizational structures to run society or even to protect society from imperialists. But we do promote a unity between means and ends. The means we use to achieve the revolution have the inconvenient tendency to become an end in itself, hence we ought to choose means that are compatible with our ends. If you want to abolish football, don’t start by founding a team that competes to be the best one in the league just to own the libs. The team will end up loving the sport they play for a living, and they’ll find a way to disappoint the fan base that wants to see Football abolished. But once you bomb the team, you’re only left with teams that never wanted to abolish Football in the first place.
platformism is not an anarchist approach, it's just a particular form of tactical unity with a different name. liberals use it, anarchists use it, communists use it, even fascists use it
Those points are so understated that I don't understand why they're not commonly understood by MLMs and Stalinist-tainted MLs. You can't wither away a state that you ensure holds all the power. You can only accomplish that by starting with democratization to disperse its duties and powers to the masses in their community-based/level democracy from the very beginning. To do otherwise is to justify statism with "but look at the outcomes it produced! Aren't they wonderful," when your entire reason for overthrowing the old regime was "we should be the ones to decide for ourselves, together, what/when/where/how/why to do a thing. We definitely want those same outcomes...but we want to be the ones to make and carry out the decisions to achieve them!" The withering away of the state should take a matter of years, not generations, but if people want it to happen even quicker, they need to normalize the processes by which they would govern after the revolution so that the transition between systems is more natural and less "you must do it this way from now on or we'll shoot you." One of the things that a lot of MLMs etc don't see, which they should given the "learn from our mistakes" and "dialectical materialism FTW" rhetoric, is that they don't need to rally behind a central party authority to give them purpose and direction; they can start building that community-level democracy and start working on changing social norms to support it. The fact is, though, that they want to take the easy way out and get someone else, you could call them a "feudal lord," to do it for them. Great points, in any case. I've read enough of Marx and Lenin to recognize that that's what they advocated (more or less), and that's why I am a Marxist-Leninist (without the Stalinist taint) instead of a MLM.
@@afgor1088 I'll admit to not having read much Mao, but I'd ask "how" he did those things when Lenin's ideas were already solid and actionable. Just not from above. The soviets weren't Lenin's brainchild, but they were definitely a solid organizational and decision-making tool that he was clear were necessary for Russians to work towards socialism because of their (bottom-up) democratic nature. Also, what specific works of Mao's would you recommend? I'm not a ML because I think Lenin and Marx can do no wrong, but because I recognize some fundamental truths about top-down organization and human tendencies (including the adaptive nature of humanity), so I lean towards their ideas, but if Mao made their ideas of bottom-up democracy (not outcomes dictated and enforced from above) solid and actionable as you say, then I'd be interested in seeing exactly what that means.
The mass line does not include the party deliberating with the masses and then commanding them to do something. If you would like to understand the method better, watch How Yukong Moved the Mountains on UA-cam. Specifically the generator factory episode.
Damn, that's one hell of a pitch! I'm sure this super awesome MLM ideology will eventually lead to a free and happy society and absolutely not some kind of nightmarish dystopian dictatorship! Right? **RIGHT??**
@@MrCram "on its way bro, it will be here any day now bro! Xi is working on it super hard behind the scenes, bro! Just endure the state capitalist dictatorship, bro! Stop worrying!" 🤡
In my experience as an anarchist it's largely babychists who don't know very much about anarchism to begin with that turn to MLM / ML. There are some anarchists that turn to more state-oriented projects, but those are mostly platformists that turn to different left communist schools
@@guul66 marxism is based on centralizing the means of production into the workers state and to extend the productive forces as rapid as possible to achieve communism. Anarchists prefer decentralization.
@@fate8007 that's just one application of marxism. if you know about marxism you know it has been taken into many different directions throughout many different fields
In my experience anarchists already read a fair bit of marxist, ML, and Maoist theory. It's only the Anarcho-Capitalist types, aka conservatives, who don't. If any of us are want to abolish the state and not reproduce it in the form of corporate ownership we need communism.We should study ALL labor movement's successes, failures, and differences. I think this was a good olive branch, good job.
I'm reminded of the Mao Spontex movement that was popular during the protests in France during the 1970s where Anarchist synthesized anarchism and Maoist tactics as a way to bring about revolution.
Thank you for mentioning that Mao was highly influenced by Anarchism in his early years. It makes a lot of sense because his best tendencies were based on Anarchism.
I’m an anarchist and I just now started watching and reading some on Marx and Lenin Mao I haven’t got to yet but thank you for the informal video even if I don’t agree with everything in this video thank you
People forget how closely aligned Marx was to anarchist theory. Watching this video as a relatively fresh anarchist, I appreciate that Maoism deviates further from a centralized power structure through tactical decentralization. However, hearing arguments from both sides, it seems like proponents of each philosophy are talking past each other, so the conversation doesn’t actually progress. This video doesn’t address the tendency of hierarchical power structures to perpetuate themselves. It doesn’t address the ownership relationships that alienate workers from the means of production. At the same time, anarchist critics of MLM don’t explore deep enough to see the overlap in strategies. There is a lot more common ground than I initially thought. But anarchist criticism of MLM still remains unanswered in my opinion.
@@ΑρτεμισίαΠλοκαμίδου I’m not a great point of reference, as I haven’t read as much as some people here. However, I recommend you listen to / read Anark’s essay The State Is Counter-Revolutionary (Part 3) on Maoist China and explore its bibliography. Anark and Zoe Baker also have a bunch of reading recommendations if you actually want to dig in deeper. Let me know what you think :)
Thinking Marx was in any way aligned with anarchist theory is historical revisionism at worst, and lazy research at best. Bakunin specifically painted Marx as an authoritarian. And, to an extent, it's true which is easy enough to find when reading Critique of the Gotha Programme, or his work on the Paris Commune. Marx is very consistent in wanting to establish a state, and maintain authority through arms. He very much wished for the revolutionaries at the Paris Commune to openly target and 'oppress' the anti-revolutionaries and capitalists, much moreso than they already had. In fact, Marx doesn't even think we should do away with 'authority' and 'hierarchies' after the state withers away, he only thinks we need to do away with *political* authority. He also thinks a government should remain, because Marx differentiated between a state and a government.
I'm an anarchist and all I can say is, like any scientific theory, hypotheses need to be tested and adapted, and we should learn from the mistakes or non-mistakes of the past! Like any good dialectal, we should synthesis our ideals rather than bicker over it! In the States, I don't think a communist party is a viable solution, not that it hasn't worked in the past for other countries. Your videos have been quite helpful in learning Marxism!
@@comradetrashpanda8777 Firstly, I wanna say I agree with @lulujuice in general. I also think there are multiple different approaches to solve complex problems. With that said, why wouldn't this work in the states? Can you imagine a US "transitionary state that will wither away"? Especially considering the history of how the state as an organ of class rule is used in the states? It's a rhetorical question because the US governs itself in the interest of lobbying capital. You'd have to dismantle capitalism first to create a state that would wither away. Otherwise you're essentially shifting the goal post on an already competitive imperial monopoly playground. You'd have to make way for a lot of other grass roots movements that sometimes align with MLM and others that do not. You'd have to evolve as a moment to not just be empty populism.
I think you've hit on the most significant issue in this struggle. All of the sociopolitical philosophies were developed in the past, and while the core ideas are still relevant, the detailed structures, tactics, and strategies were created in worlds that no longer exist for societies that no longer exist. If we analyze how the dominant systems came to be and rose to dominance, the common thread is a mythology that appeals to the hopes and desires of the most people. IOW, we need a "new" story, a story that people who will not commit to studying social, political, and economic theories. One which uses the things and ideas they already have accepted to inspire them with (apparently) tangible gains and hope for more, while keeping in mind that people fear change, are generally greedy, and don't really care very much about people they don't know.
@@comradetrashpanda8777 As a ML myself, the imperial core is difficult to sustain a vanguard party with revolutionary action. Communist parties do the most good in the weakest links of the imperialist chain, like India, China, Brazil, South Africa and so on. Revolution in these countries is necessary first in order to destabilize the imperial core, forcing (specially in the "social democratic countries") them to further stretch the class contradictions which will weaken their bourgeoisie and further strengthen proletariat movements within them.
@@comradetrashpanda8777 while boomers and gen x are alive and allowed to vote / have monetary power it just isnt possible because they were put through a lot of cold war propaganda brainwashing crap. they were also given lives during the time when the USD actually could buy things for an average person so they think capitalism is superior to everything. even tho they have lived through now seeing the dollars value drop through the floor to the point where the cost of living is higher than anywhere else on earth and no amount of labor will earn you enough money to simply stay alive. even tho they have seen rich people crash the economy over and over with fraudulent and quality of life lowering behavior. even tho they have been told directly by their employers that they are disposable tools to them who dont deserve to be able to have basic necessities and should be happy to work themselves to death for no compensation. even tho they watched a healthcare system morph into a drug addiction producing factory. even tho they have had the veil removed from history with the power of the internet. they will still advocate for capitalism, even as its killing them.
I found this video to very much talk down to Anarchists. Like it just being a stepping stone to MLM. Which I find very reductive. People changing ideological ism's doesn't mean they always progress or that MLM going to anarchism doesn't exist. Stating that anarchists eventually become or should become MLM and that this is the only way forward I find very demeaning. On top of that the anarchism eventually doesn't work while MLM does work in revolutions now is also reductive considering you admitted yourself that there are no currently MLM countries. The same has been the case for anarchism there have been anarchist communities and they eventually died. There have been successful MLM communities and they have also died. I would love to hear your take on how the strategy of cultural revolution is supposedly to counteract the corrupting nature of centralized power in for example the case of china atm. If this tactic worked so well how come China itself has been victim to revisionism after the maoist revolution?
I agree with your criticism. I am an organized anarchist platformist who is constantly re-developing theories and strategies of modern anarchism, and I agree that this political theory/ideology has had many flaws that need to be dealt with nowadays. But just because we learn from each other and overthink our current concepts, it doesn't mean we move on to another ideology. I am still an anarchist, even though MLM has many good points that I have been implementing in my own practice. And I will probably also stay an anarchist.
While there are no currently MLM countries, there is at least 1 ongoing MLM revolution, in the Philippines. Which is obviously not the case for anarchism.
@@fate8007 rojava is a state controlled by it's municipal counsels, if you don't see how that's an exemple of anarchic principles then i can't help you. But I do love how that's the only thing you have to respond, not only does that not show me wrong, it is a way of moving the conversation elsewhere. Do you understand that your idea of an anarchic revolution is wrong ? We don't have to wait for the destruction of the system, we construct our revolution by building alternative, more horizontal, power structures. The way any leftist revolution should be built.
I have met Anarchists but my journey into the Left was by a Trotskyist (may his soul be in a better place). I prefer Marx and Lenin personally but Mao is on my reading list. Currently re-reading Engel's right now then moving on to my hero Karl Marx. Great video Paul ✊
I got a bunch of anarchist friends in the USA who have found a lot of utility in Lenin . They want to win the fight against capitalism. They’ll enjoy this video
I've read a bit on MLM. My only criticism is that it was written for countries that had a large rural population, and since I live in Japan, a country that's essentially nothing but a sprawling, giant interconnected concrete jungle, that we can't take it and apply it directly to Japan, as the material conditions are substantially different. Mass line is still not necessary a bad idea though, and there's absolutely ways to apply something similar to anarchism so I'm not about to toss the baby out with the bathwater so to speak when it comes to MLM.
MLM is not only Mao's particular practical work, but also the universal experience gained from it. One thing that is essential to Marxism is that we do concrete analysis of concrete conditions. Yes pre-Revolutionary China was different, but these differences can be bridged in many ways, such as Mao's philosophical contributions, forms of organizing the proletariat specifically, how to manage an economy while carrying out cultural revolution, etc. It's not a step by step guide to do a revolution, but an ideological outlook, philosophy, toolkit, for solving problems in many different conditions.
Every Leninist doctrine was designed for rural countries. Marxism classic was designed for the highly developed capitalist countries, and so Marx's work should be given far more deference than Lenin when regarding the first world.
You're planting those seeds! Nice video. I'll be sure to share with the anarchists around me. I think it also works for people who are upset with current living conditions but stuck in a nihilist mindset.
I thought this was gonna be an outreach thing, like finding the shortcomings of anarchism, and learning from MLM to fill those gaps. Instead this feels like "anarchism has shortcomings, so you should switch to MLM". Or maybe I just got the wrong impression at the start, and got so annoyed that I couldn't pay attention to the rest.
It's important for Maoists that our ideology is a method for serving the long term interests of the proletariat, and not an expression of our personal interests. None of us were born as Maoists, and most of us didn't begin our political journey as Maoists. But all of us have been attracted to Maoism because we think it is the most advanced political program for waging the world proletarian revolution. If people use the lessons of Maoism to serve the people, this is a good thing. But we think the gaps between Anarchism and MLM are that Anarchism does not solve the problems of the world proletariat while Maoism does, we don't think the gaps can be filled, but that we need more Maoists. (That's why I became a Maoist after being an Anarchist btw)
@@bencatechi4293 Aight cool. There's a lot of jargon there, which makes it harder for me to understand. What are the problems of the world proletariat which anarchism can't solve? Are anarchism and Maoism mutually exclusive?
@@Drawoon I feel like I didn’t use that much jargon. There are aspects of Maoism that can be applied by non-Maoists, and if they do that it will be a good thing. But Maoism and Anarchism are still mutually exclusive. Being a Maoist or an Anarchist should not be about which one fits our individual personalities or desires better, but about which one serves the real, long term interests of the proletariat better. The interests of the world proletariat require seizing state power, smashing the old state, and constructing new state forms to exercise dictatorship over the bourgeoisie (and landlords in semi-feudal countries.) Anarchism is obsessed with non-hierarchy, but in a super unscientific way. It has a crude and distorted way of understanding the development of human society. I can’t give like “the” answer to why it doesn’t work. It’s a very big subject, but reading the works of Marx Lenin and Mao is the best place to start.
@@bencatechi4293 as far as I'm aware there's only one thing at the base of anarchism: We seek to get rid of unjust hierarchies. That still leaves a lot of room for interpretation. There's no reason it has to be unscientific.
@@otherperson It seems we have different definitions of hierarchy then, but we can agree on what we want to abolish. The systems I call unjust hierarchies are the only kind of hiererchy to you. If I hear "hierarchy" used that way more often, I might adopt that defenition too. Thanks for the really long post :p I'll try to check out some of your recommendations.
I'm an ancom who used to be a maoist, and I would absolutely support a maoist revolution if given a chance. Life in a maoist society would absolutely be better then life in a capitalist one.
I respect your work and I like some of MLM ideas as an anarchist, but there are things I do not like: 1. History of ML. Stalin and Lenin did a lot of horrible things to people. 2. State capitalist economy 3. Not caring about individual. Anarchists are anti-individualist too, but it seams like MLMs are hypercollectivist. For example in USSR there were no place for left-handed and people with disabilities.
@@jprole8508 What do you mean "no place for woman"? There were literally woman who were fighting equally with man against fascists. Revolutionary Catalonia was feminist.
@@jprole8508 I never sad that ML movements had no place for woman. But another minorities were oppresed. That is only one point. You can answer to other points if you want.
As a former anarchist I agree that MLM is a step up from anarchism and that it's probably the most fruitful organizational form in the imperial periphery. The core is perhaps the future stage of acid communism.
The problem I have with MLM's is that many of them would support any regime just as long as their against the west or the US. It doesn't matter whether their policies harm minorities, or their positions are inherently theocratic, authoritarian, imperialist or even fascistic like Russia, Iran, China or North Korea, the only criteria to garner MLM's support is for these countries to be opposed to the west. I'm aware of the harm the west and especially the US has brought, but that doesn't mean that every nation that opposes them is communist or socialist.
@MrCram China with its persecution & mass-incarceration of Uyghur turks and muslims in Xinjiang, born out of pure racism and Islamophobic sentiment by the ruling classes and by reactionary forces in China, just like with all of Europe's fascist hatred against muslims and minorities...
Maoism has good ideas that are smart methods to gain power, as many Marxist theories do, but the common problem with Marxist ideology is that once you have state power you don’t actually have to follow any of these rules. You can just get lazy and lean on bureaucratic structures and military power. Obviously China, even during Mao’s time, clamped down on worker power. There’s never been a state that has allowed worker revolt once the supposedly proletarian leaders took over. I think it’s important to not treat anarchism as a junior partner here. Marxists have much to learn from anarchists and abolitionists, because once you have a proletarian state you now have a different set of contradictions that you need to understand, and although anarchist don’t often have great strategies for taking power they have great strategies on how to structure society once capital is out of the way. A big problem with modern leftist mass organizing is this obsession with getting everyone to join a single party or flank of left thought. We have to get used to the idea that this won’t happen, and indeed, it is deeply problematic to demand this. Revolutionary theory requires everyone’s ongoing input. That’s what Praxis is about and it’s how you avoid issues when organizing with bipocs and other historically marginalized people who are used to being fucked by supposedly pure ideologies that have “totally figured it out this time”.
There's a big difference between being against the current authority and believing that a moral socioeconomic organization can't coexist with any heirarchies,forced authority, government, or state.
While I do appreciate the civility and apparent empathy that is in your words, this video has only made me more sure of my anarchist leanings. Social anarchism has far too much in common with Maoism and this video comparing the two has made that very clear. I do wish good luck in any future projects or endeavors you find yourself in though.
same this video just made me more sure in my anarchism and i get a lot of my views from max stirner and peter kropotkin so my ideology is mix of individualist anarchism and social anarchism
@@Somberdemure had you read the uquie and it property by max stirner or idk any book by any individualist anarchist like benjamin tucker or lysander spooner or just any mutualist ?
Hey Marxist Paul. Have you thought of doing a full video on how Deng came to power and how to combat revisionist forces? This of course is an extremely big topic that requires a lot of analysis(especially in terms of the material reasons for the rise in revisionism). Still it is easily one of the most important topics for current and future movements. Capitalist restoration has been the #1 issue of all communist states and is the main reason why the movements have failed in the past
I was an anarchist up to a year ago, and I am currently studying some of the marxist classics. I am very intrigued by the ideas of Maoism, and the fact that many of the current revolutionary movements are Maoist in nature. What pushed me out of anarchism was figuring out that there have been almost no successful anarchist revolutions, even though I still think anarchism contributed to the broader workers movement.
Maybe it just hasn't been tried enough? It's the same argument they use against communism in general (that there has been no succesful communist countries).
@@mr.anoynmous1986 They were defeated, and the latter disunited the working class leading to Franco's dictatorship. They're failed revolutions. It's a case study in the effectiveness of democratic centralism.
@@person-yu8cuговорить об эффективности какой-либо идеологии, ты должен сначала рассмотреть изначальные условия. Махно имел только свой поселок Гуляйполе с 10 тыс жителями, через год он распространил свое влияние на территорию с населением в 8 миллионов человек. Большевики совершили революцию на большей части территории России, у них изначально было огромное количество ресурсов, и при этом они почти проиграли, когда Деникин был около Москвы и только Махно спас большевиков в тот момент, когда ударил Деникину по путям снабжения. А знаешь как уничтожили Махно? Большевики взяли Махно в союзники чтобы добить Врангеля в Крыму, а сразу после того как значительные силы анархистов оказались в Крыму, большевики сразу после победы над белыми ударили анархистам в спину в Крыму и на Украине. Примеры анархизма не ограничиваются Каталонией и Украиной, посмотри на Мексиканский штат Чьяпас и на сапатистов, которые живут сейчас, посмотри на Рожаву в Сирии, многие мои товарищи-анархисты из России воевали за Рожаву в Сирии.
I’m a Libertarian Socialist so basically the “centrist” of leftism. I like pulling and learning from a multitude of leftist thought including Maoist and Anarchist theory. A big concern of mine when reading Maoist literature or primers, and something I hear stated in some of your videos, is stating of Maoist doctrine as “correct” in a nearly objective and possibly even metaphysical sense. There is discussion as “Maoism” as the correct line and all others as “incorrect” or “false lines”. It’s natural to advocate for one’s doctrine/ideology to be the best but I think this framing of “objectively correct” Maoism may breed or make it easy for individuals to fall into the trap of dogmatism, or may exacerbate differences between doctrines more than necessary. Much love for your videos though and I enjoy learning more about MLM theory!
My interpretation for this has always been that the Maoists' _method_ for finding truth (not the opinions of people calling themselves Maoists) is one based entirely in dialectical and historical materialism, much like the evidence-based scientific _method;_ in that we say the correct method for finding the correct line in politics is MLM, much like the scientific method is said to be in the sciences. Not to say I entirely disagree with you, however; dogmatism is certainly a trap to steer well clear from, and just because someone followed the Maoist method doesn't always mean they're right. Always crit/self-crit! (edit: I spelt "steer" wrong, oops!)
@@novinceinhosic3531 Maybe you're using dogmatism in a different way than I'm used to, but I would specifically characterise dogma as being inflexible and unadaptable, not merely principled. Sticking to your principles is good, but outright dogmatism is incompatible with crit/self-crit and scientific socialism. If we're not basing our programs on actual evidence, we become utopian idealists incapable of responding to real changes in material conditions.
@@novinceinhosic3531 Then, as I suspected, you are using dogmatism in an extremely technical way. Most people do not use the term that way, and you will not be understood if you use it that way. You will also frequently misunderstand other people if you assume that they are using your definition.
~3:29-3:50 It may also surprise many to learn that at the start of the 20th century, East Asian radicals largely thought of "Marxism" as a reformist ideology, while Revolutionary Socialism and Anarchism were almost synonymous terms. This only changed after the 1917 Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviks provided a clear example of Revolutionary Marxism. Also, if anyone is interested in learning a bit more about the Chinese Anarchist movement that influenced Mao, I have a short video about the topic on my channel, and plan to talk about it more extensively in the future, as well as possibly making a video just talking about Mao's ideological development further down the line.
Still an Ancom but I appreciate this video a lot. That imagination anarchism forces your head into for a better world is the only thing giving me hope currently. It's unfortunate a lot of the wannabe vanguard parties in my area are just shoddy and have this weird almost dogmatic hatred of anarchism. It doesn't help that things get pretty fucking cultish with how the social culture develops especially in the study circles. I love reading, discussing, writing and sharing theory and history but when people are clapping to "just elect good officials and representatives for the vanguard" because the previous paragraph dogged on anarchism there's some twisted shit going on. I'm no better I clapped along within that crowded muggy room but the dissonance was astonishing in that moment and I wonder what other dip shittery I clapped along to. This isn't meant to be a knock against leftist study groups or a vanguard party but please take note and be aware of the culture you develop within your organizations especially early on when numbers are small.
It would be great to see a video, or rather a mini-series, going deep into the history of the Cultural Revolution, what caused It, what were the mistakes committed during It that led to It being ended etcetera.
I would love to see this also. The cultural aspect of a socialist revolution has to be one of the most serious challenges. Mao criticised Stalin's period for putting emphasis on revolutionising the means of production and neglecting the cultural aspects of a revolution. For me, in this day and age and given the material conditions in developed countries, the cultural challenge would potentially far outweigh the economic challenges relating to the means of production. We are in a stage of development in which capitalists are producing commodities out of thin air, but we have means of production that could distribute resources the world over and the transfer to a socialist economic system (base) would be nowhere near as difficult as what the USSR faced during the revolutionising of the means of production during Stalin's period. The bourgeoisie will naturally not just hand everything over but, in the event that the proletariat seized power, it is bourgeois culture that would present the greatest difficulties in terms of overcoming its ideological reign for so many decades. I think that studying Mao's period and the PRC's attempts at this would be an incredibly valuable study. Bourgeois superstructural elements are far more embedded and advanced today in what some people call 'late stage capitalism' than they ever were in previous revolutions. Althusser's 'Ideological State Apparatus' is always good to read when considering the superstructural elements of capitalism.
I'm learning more about MLM, I'm a Marxist community organizer living in a very urban state in north America, it's the protracted people war that is really hard to imagine living in a place that the proletariat and lumpenproletariat are so violently separate from the land because of land value. Are there any resources for what that could look like in really urban/high cost of living areas like? Particularly in coastal north American cities that have a militarized police that breaks up any "illegal" encampments? I've seen American Maoists focusing on organizing homeless folks, do you think organizing homeless people is the translation of MLM organizing in urban areas? I can understand that to some extent, but the trauma that these folks experience living under the state violence and lack of stability definitely gives me pause when it comes to organizing. Great video, super informative, I'm thankful for any opportunity to learn more about the translation of rural remote/to urban when it comes to MLM organizing tactics.
Finally, I'm on time for once! Another upload, another banger, Paul! I'm running out of ways of saying "cool video!" :D It's so difficult to find nuanced takes regarding anarchism from a Marxist's point of view, or vice versa. _It doesn't help that including the search term "Marxist" on the modern Internet just means you're bound to be bombarded with redscare nonsense..._ As an ex-anarchist, I'd beg any of those who haven't studied MLM to study it and take seriously the lessons of dialectical materialism, crit/self-crit, mass line, and so, so much more. I deeply wish someone had pulled me in a Marxist direction earlier, because my years of unprincipled and undirected action were unfocused, short-sighted, and - in retrospect - an unfortunate waste.
Emma Goldman would call bullshit, and no mention of enviromental protection and sustainable industry , remember both Lenin and Mao murdered Anarchists. As an indigenous anarchist who refuses to be a "worker", which is a term in the post-colonialist world to refer to colonized indigenous the world over. No central plan needed only mutual aid, only shared culture of LOVE. In fact Communist states have been as oppressive to indigenous peoples and as destructive to the environment, or more so, than capitalism. Mao the sparrow murderer.
I'm a marxist who likes to consider myself an anarchist as well, but without getting into the nitty-gritty details of my ideology I can say that I agree with both you and Emma Goldman. Emma for me is a huge inspiration, as I take both people like her into account and Marxists (those marxists that support higher levels of decentralization) when I construct my analysis, I always dislike how MLs and MLMs seem to ignore comments like yours. I have yet to hear a good reason for their centralized power structures and how they are supposed to prevent all the problems that accured in their previous projects, it seems to fall on deaf ears unfortunaly.
Might well as call yourself a capitalist cause in capitalism the nature of competition itself makes sure that people will eventually fight for resources and power and only a few remain, and maintaining a system where everyone has equal power is just a naive understanding of how the world works
Multi Level Marketing truly is the revolution of our time lmao. Jokes aside, even though I am a Marxist, not a ML, i think it is important to study the history of all socialist projects to learn what they did right and wrong, even if just being able to formulate valid critizism or to self-critizise more effectively. Only because a leftist dislikes stalin doesn't mean they should not learn about soviet history. Especially when you dislike stalin or mao you should definitely do that. Only then are you able to effectively critizise. I often discover dogmatism in leftist discussions (from all stripes of leftists, Maoists, MLs, Anarchists, DemSocs etc.) and that's honestly a real problem. A lot of leftists don't seem to understand dialectic thought.
The key here is that centralization does not necessarily have to be authoritarian, though there is significant overlap. Any revolutionary movement MUST be done from a bottom-up structure. Collective central strategy must be decided by those at the bottom, otherwise, the power structures are identical to the existing ones and your revolution will inevitably create a new bourgeoisie, which what we saw in the USSR and China. There are revolutionary groups that exist right now that are organized on libertarian structures and confederacies, like Zapatistas and Rojava.
i participated in 100 days plus of the george floyd uprisings, and you hit the nail on the head. i was frequently disappointed by the decentralized and directionless approach we had in comparison to the masses we had on the ground. i became MLM just over a year ago.
The productive forces are developed enough. We're gonna do class struggle to transform the relations of production and there's nothing you can do to stop it, revisionist
As a leftist who hasn't yet aligned to any tendency, this channel has made me more interested in MLMism. However I'm curious how MLMs address the shortcomings of the Chinese Revolution or whether there are any recommended readings on the topic? Are there critiques of MLM from an ML or Trotskyist perspective? Thanks for the content!
@@Marxism_Today That would be good Because I understand the good intentions of mlm theory, but I am personally foremost interested in history, that's where I get alot of my political views from and part of the reason of why I'm on the left. While no academic expert, studying the history of the Soviet Union and Maoist china has let be to be very critical of those states as I'm sure you'd have to admit they did some pretty bad things historically, (including towards the working class itself). That's why I have been reluctant to study Leninist and Maoist theory in particular, having just dived in more seriously recently and I currently tend to agree more with libertarian socialist ideas, (although I do believe in a transitional state and therefore not an anarchist per'se) I'm quite sceptical of the vanguard party in practice. Theoretically I think its a good idea depending on the material conditions of the relevant country/society. Theory is great but historically socialism doesn't have a great track record, especially concerning the Stalinist period. I am coming at this from a revolutionary socialist perspective, so I will admit the right wing does inflate the deaths suffered under communism and also I recognise that the Soviet Union for example did some good things, although I believe that's sort of tangential to my actual point. I hope to hear from you, if not I understand you are probably busy. Great content anyway comrade Paul!
I literally tried in my local anarchist chapter and they rejected this. Oh well, hopefully when I can afford to move I’ll find some more reasonable anarchists
The bastion of this video is held up by the alleged context that Anarchism is incapable of producing a stateless, classless, moneyless society through revolution. While no one book can wholly prove this statement to be unequivocally true or false, I highly recommend the book "Anarchy Works" by Peter Gelderloos. It's readable for even those who haven't read a lot of theory or who don't understand the intricacies of Anarchism and puts a large emphasis on historical material examples of non-hierarchical societies, movements, and groups. The reason I share this book is that if this is a good-faith video offering up a book from an ML/MLM perspective on the failures of Anarchism, then it is only fair also to provide a book to let the Anarchists (or at least Peter Gelderloos) speak for themselves and show that Anarchism is so much deeper than what it is portrayed and clear up common misconceptions. Have a great day!
@@ABPHistory I apologize for the wall of text, as I realized very quickly there was no way I could succinctly reply to this whilst disputing what "accomplishments" means & providing anarchistic examples. You must be talking to some very nihilistic anarchists. To that point, what are we declaring as "accomplishments"? Because, indeed, taking over multiple entire nations, such as Cuba, China, Laos, etc., is an accomplishment. But an accomplishment to what end? If socialism entails that the workers directly own the means of production, then what countries have truly made headway toward socialism? This isn't even considering the abolition of the state, class, or money. This is the absolute minimum to even bear the name "Socialist" without being dishonest. Do the workers control the means of production? If the answer is no, it isn't socialism. The reason for this is, as any communist living in a capitalist country knows, any benefit given to the workers from above can just as quickly be taken away. And secondly, as any communist also knows, this fantasy of the state "withering away" has never once come to fruition in 150+ years of constant attempts. So, in reality, whilst MLs and MLMs have conquered entire nations multiple times, this is essential in describing their GARGANTUAN failure with mounds upon mounds of evidence. Dominating and controlling such power with the might of the entire nation's GDP backing their effort and the workers have not once in the history of ML/MLM governments tangibly controlled the means of production themselves, only in namesake. Yet in much smaller societies in comparison, there are actual living examples of people that control the means of production and have completely dissolved and abolished private property, money, class, and the state. Living up to the promises that Russia, China, and any other example country has unequivocally failed to keep to this day. Current modern examples are Freetown Christiania within Denmark, the community of Exarcheia in Greece, the Zapatista movement in Mexico, the Barcelona Squatter's Movement in Spain, and many, many more. And this isn't even counting the former societies such as Anarchist Ukraine, Revolutionary Catalonia, and many others that, whilst no longer active, put the means of production into the hands of the workers and made great strides towards communism. If we're discussing accomplishments, then let us talk about the accomplishments of socialism and not state capitalism. Societies that actually make strides towards a more egalitarian society and not just 150 years of empty promises of the state just "withering away" eventually.
@@ABPHistory I believe the reason you've seen this excerpt quite a few times isn't by mistake. The one infallible truth throughout history is that power structures and hierarchy inevitably seek to perpetuate themselves. This is thoroughly researched both theoretically and historically and is the core principle of why most Anarchists (including me) became such in the first place. The only example of the state withering away is when the Soviet Union voted itself out of existence against the will of the people into current modern-day fascist Russia. You might think this is a tired argument or hear it all the time, but there's a reason for it. It's unignorable, like an abusive ex that keeps promising you that they'll change but never have in the past and never will in the future. A power structure "withering away" defies logic entirely and, to this day, is pure fantasy. Hierarchical power structures historically can only be taken by force or threat of force, and communism will only truly be achieved when the people's revolution doesn't replace their State with another State.
@@ABPHistory That was a joke by the way, if you didn't catch it. I'm well aware of what Leninists (or more accurately Blanquists) conceptualize as the withering of the state. Funny how the only thing you responded to in that entire message was just my use of sarcasm. Ah, so be it; maybe it might allow you to ponder the idea that it might not be the smartest idea to hand the people's revolution over into the hands of a powerful few in the hope that it isn't undemocratically "restored" in 69 years without a single worker ever seeing faintest part of the ownership of the means of production. - Also happy holidays!
"the State is like a vast slaughterhouse and an enormous cemetery, where under the shadow and the pretext of this abstraction (the common good) all the best aspirations, all the living forces of a country, are sanctimoniously immolated and interred." - Bakunin “The State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.” - Nietzsche
I've seen that this channel speaks highly of the MLM armed forces in India and the Philippines, but I'm curious about it's stance on Shining Path? Does the MLM ideology promoted here match up with Gonzalo Thought? The brutality that group is accused of is quite staggering (boiling people alive etc.) and claiming human rights are reactionary is a massive turn off. Do you claim all that was fake, or that it was justified?
The MLM upheld by this channel aligns with that of the revolutionaries in the Philippines and India. Both the MLM parties in the Philippines and in India have heavily criticised the errors of the Peruvian movement. While overall upholding the successes of the revolutionary masses in places like Peru, we would have a lot of criticisms of them - not the least of which would be the extreme excesses of violence that occurred without any kind of rectification for these horrific events. Like with every movement, build on the good parts and learn from the bad parts to ensure it never happens again.
@@Marxism_Today That's a good stance to have. I was also wondering what the MLM position was on the infighting that occurred during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I don't think you have a video on it? For instance, do they think the dissolution of the Shanghai People's Commune was a good thing? Do they dislike the more radical Red Guards for being ultra-left, or dislike the Scarlet Guards for defending CPC bureaucracy? I know they dislike Deng for revisionism, but views on the other factions are unclear.
as an anarchist that doesnt go around calling all ML(M)s redfash, i was always interested in the peoples war. this video definitely makes me want to study it more!
I do think the Dialectical Synthesis point of Anarchism and MLM is going to be the ideology that truly makes real the revolution, but what exact form that will take I dare not to claim to know.
An Anarchist society in my opinion should be the end end goal. The way to get there is the hard part. One thing that is missing that is extremely essential to have in this revolution is intersectionality. All systems of oppression are connected, so we need to be fighting all of them together. Patriarchy is to gender as Capitalism is to the economy. The similarities are too immense to ignore. Systems of oppression are one organism. We need a case study of the linkage between Patriarchy/other hierarchies and the Soviet Union / China. What systems of hierarchy turn people into counter-revolutionaries, and what can we do to mitigate them during the revolution?
I like this video, but I find your framing that this is the "most advanced" thinking on the left to fall into a hierarchical progress trap. I find a more helpful to look more broadly. Ultimately it's good to have a diversity of thought as a wider pool to draw from.
You make some valid points. I’m still concerned about totalitarianism. I do believe there needs to be a an active group of paraprofessional revolutionaries though. Although I’m 63 I plan to train myself in revolutionary warfare. And I will encourage others to do likewise. In the meantime what books can I read to learn more of Maoism?
@@abuthahirumarhathab4201 if we operated on the basis of fear, we'd never have any revolution to begin with. And with the Hindutva fascist reactionaries in power at the helm of the Indian State, they'd frame anything and everything against them as "anti-Indian" while they continue to remain the biggest traitors to the broad, toiling masses of India.
@@anushghosh4606 Umm, yeah. I am a student staying in a hostel. I had a terrible experience once. Generally, in one hostel room, we have 3 students living together. I went to my friends room for something i dont remember clearly. But my friend's roommate asked me to get out of the room. I asked why. He said it is because of my religion. All this doesn't stop here. I went to another classmate's room regarding internship (for which he is incharge of it). While i was going into his room, I noticed that he with his friends were watching news about muslim's house being demolished in UP. They were cheering for it. I did not utter a word. But then they asked me "Why your community is so bad?" To which I answered "I am an atheist. I don't believe in any religion so dont lump me with any community". And whenever I comment something, there are a bunch of people calling me jihadis. All of those guys are indians. I guarantee it. I agree that we should not operate on the basis of fear. But i think that we can have the criticisms in mind while we try to educate as much people as possible about why this capitalist economic system and all other previous systems are not sustainable. And make all workers think in a scientific manner. Then we can plan for revolution. I don't want to say anything about naxals. If i say something, the govt may pursue me. I would say one thing: I feel pity for them due to lack of support for them from the Indian working class.
Yeah I’m actually 100% confused by anarchists. They really believe they can overcome capitalism without any type of large organization?? I feel like reactionaries will just take back everything from revolutionaries at that point.
@@guyfauks2576 for conversation, most times. I've been a marxist for quite some time so I dont think I'll ever go back to the anarchocommununist phase of my political development.
I’m convinced that western society has degraded and caved to individualism so much that only some form of libertarian socialism would ever be accepted by society. Everywhere else has hope for ML
Where does "western" end & "eastern" begin? Asking because I live in the _Eastern Shore_ region of the mid-Atlantic United States & we refer to every place west of the Mississippi river as "the west" 😉
There is no meaningful compromise. I mean, you can be a straight up anticommunist social democrat and western society will treat you as if you were literally Stalin. Since you're going to have to disabuse people of bourgeois myths to get anywhere anyway, you might as well just go all in on ML(M). The idea that the revolution can or will begin in the imperial core is a pipe dream, anyway. Our best hope is that third world movements like the one in India see enough success that eventually they can surround the US and EU (kind of like a bigger scale picture of how Maoists approach revolution in a single country).
Totally approved fom someone who went through this exact pipeline. I'd maybe argue that one thing even harder to get over than indivudalism was changing my perception on whole periods of history since with anarchism it's easier to fall into individualistic dogmatism of following the correct, non-scarred line by alienating oneself from whole (propagandised and falsificated) history of atrocities and failures of communist experiments. The one thing I think you could've brought up in this video is analyses of French May 68, due to the historical context and cultural influence of Chinese style socialism and GPCR over Soviet at that period for western communist groups. IMO this is the prime contemporary evidence that anarchist revolutionary will is almost sufficient, with the present vanguard unwilling to capitulate to electoralism etc. it can be sufficient even in the core. To anarchist - maoist unity, people complementing the party and vice versa and to maybe 10 unironic mao-spontex adherers. Cheers!
It's incredible how so many disingenuous arguments can be made so genuinely. You answer none of the critics of hierarchies and the state made by anarchism which makes this video look a lot more like thoughtless propaganda than any sort of argument.
This video pushed me over the edge into no longer considering myself an anarchist. Don't know if I would consider myself an ML or MLM yet (haven't done that reading yet), I actually understand Marxism as a science now, and I can almost understand dialectics!
Please read Marx first and don't automatically assume the right brand of Marxism is Leninism. Try Luxembourg, Paul Mattick, Pannekoek, etc. to learn about opposing theorists of Marxism.
You're not anything yet if a single video can so readily change your mind- rather than committing to a factional leftist ideology do more reading, or absorb a wider and more diverse range of leftist content if you can't spare the time or stamina
Because it prevents genuine liberation. It is an obstacle to ending oppression, offering nothing more than individualistic delusions in place of genuine freedom. Ape alone, weak. Apes together, strong.
@@Marxism_Today Six months later, I get it. Radical egalitarianism, through the prism of individual associations, could be what Lenin called "bourgeois ideology, turned inside out," augmenting liberal concepts, rather than extrapolating the fundamental flaws and altering the overall framework.
As an Anarchist, I've had a lot of respect for Maoist thought, and I'd be the first to admit that Anarchism has issues. However this video doesn't really address the Anarchist criticism of centralized power. The Cultural Revolution didn't stop China from turning capitalism, and neither did Tactical Decentralization or the Mass Line. The party still holds the material means to enforce decisions - and so they can simply ignore the masses (just as in Capitalist democracy). And this video repeats stereotypes of Anarchists that apply to all of the left: Both Anarchists and Maoists have lost most of their regions to capitalism (whether by conquest or revisionism). The majority of both Anarchists and Maoists are ineffectual and spend too much time online. Even if you change ideology, it won't change that you're still a guy commenting on social media. Yes, Maoism has successes in India and the Philippines (as shown in the clips), but there also Anarchist-adjacent successes in Rojava and Chiapas/the Zapatistas. Nevertheless, Maoism has a lot to offer: Anarchism needs more discussions of concrete tactics. It's already been used effectively by the Black Panthers, who adapted Mao's rural strategy for urban environments. Instead of in-fighting and dogmatically asserting that one ideology is correct, we should scientifically analyze the past and learn from mistakes. And most importantly: actually do something, instead of just commenting online.
7:16 idk y anarchists would be opposed to this but I have experienced this. Its more anarchal to do it this way than what they often propose. The anarchist movement has much to learn still. I think its be best if it was only held together by a few core values/ideals like communal cooperation, shared resources, societal progression whatever that means for the community; things like that and let each community go deeper on their own.
I want any anarchist that saw this video to think long and hard about the current state of China, of the people who live there, and of the ideals that are(or, more specifically, aren't) upheld by the chinese party. Do you want that? Does that appeal to you? Think about it.
Of modern capitalist China? The China that has been on the capitalist road since Mao's death and the ensuing counter-revolution led by Deng Xiaoping began, leading to full capitalist restoration today, and that is opposed by MLMs?
Modern Russia holds Stalin in high regard. You think that modern Russia is the same as Stalin's USSR? Obviously not. They uphold these figures in name only for nationalist reasons to trick the people and consolidate their bourgeois domination of the masses.
@@Marxism_Today Never said they're the same. But yes, modern Russia is heavily influenced by Stalin's policies and also holds him in high regard. Turns out if you build an awful authoritarian regime and kill people for farting in the wrong direction, other authoritarian regimes really like you. Weird, that.
You honestly can't see the difference between revolution and counter-revolution, can you? Polar opposites like up and down are the very same thing to you
... no leftist movement should take inspiration from the state capitalists that were lenin and mao. This video is full of false assumptions about anarchism and ml revolutions : the idea that anarchist are individualist, or funniest of all that the maoist revolution was succesfull. 16:17 "tried and tested" where is the maoist state ? Where is the the marxist leninist state or organization ? Cause anarchist don't have to bother with theories on this, we have our arnarchic examples living and breathing in the real world : cecosesola, rojava and others. This is just a desperate attempt at converting anarchist into authoritarian leftist.
I gotta say, as an anarchists, I thought this video was super interesting! Would you happen to have any recommendations for good books for studying mlm? Good video, comrade!
(From an anarchist) This video is amazing! Though the criticisms of individualistic anarchism could be conflated with general anarchism, the other cristicism are well done. Anarchists are (ironically) not centralised on goals and this is normallt because of our weird phobia of any hierarchy. I think a semi centralised organisation is best to push anarchist views with leaders being subject to change by the people. And about MLM, if a proletariat maoist state can properly meet the burden of proof needed for such a hierarchy without the concentration of power away from the general proletariat I'm all for it! I'm just skeptical on a state's reluntancy to do such an action. I still think complete decentralisation of the economy and the state (expect from stuff like military to fight off capitalists which would be semi centralised) is best to reaching communism. Though I'll always support felloe communist revolutions and hopefully help keep power to the people in any state socialist scenario. While I know that leftist unity is implausible, I hope state socialists and anarchists alike can properly give criticisms to eachother so we can build a more free, egalitarian and secure communist future.
Anarchist here. The issue with this viewpoint is the idea that Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism are "tried and tested" just ain't accurate. These strategies led to brutal wars and the starvation of millions of people, and the countries that had these revolutions are now capitalist authoritarian states. Just because someone clearly writes down a plan does not mean that plan works, and we've watched them not work, to the disastrous effect. We need a new plan. To reiterate, look at the state of China and Russia now. Seem ideal? Both are comparable if not worse than neo-liberal capitalism.
While i may not be an MLM i do find learning from their methodology to be important not because they are right, concrete results have proven otherwise but because it is a necessary part of the process of dialectics. The Soviets did some things right and some things wrong same with Mao's China. Same thing within China with Deng and Mao. The point of Xi Jinping's methodology is to find a synthesis between both Deng's and Mao's way of doing things in accordance with the dialectical method. This is why learning from MLMs is important. We need to learn from them as well as MLs (which i identify as) in order to create a higher level understanding through synthesizing the thesis (ML) and the antithesis (MLM) to advance theory further
When I first got into the Left, I had an anarchist phase too. Of course, I was later won over to MLM by Dialectical Materialism (by your Socialism 101 series, no less!)
In fairness to Mao, anyone who reads Kropotkin is likely to be influenced. Clear and ferociously intense analysis of the necessity of mutualism to complex organisms in general, and human beings specifically, in the same stroke of the pen. Certainly strikes me like ringing a bell every time.
I do have my reservations about the cultural revolution and mass line, especially as it was implemented in the Chinese Revolution. As previous revolutions have shown, the mass of the proletariat has a level of inertia to it. Specifically, large swathes of the proletariat build their identity around superstructures, which leads them to resist cultural revolution. Meanwhile, all successful subversions of superstructures have been invariably carried out by a vanguard party with privileged access to means of communication. This leads me to question the very possibility of cultural revolutions against the vanguard party, as a vanguard party in a socialist state has the ability to contain any such revolution from spreading amongst the proletarian masses unless a more tactical united counter-party exists as the vanguard of such a revolution. With the Mass line, as can be again seen with the CPC post-Mao, it is entirely possible for revolutionaries to deliberately ignore the will of the proletariat while pretending to be utilizing the mass line.
As you said @Marxist Paul , when the tools of MLM are used correctly, they can stop revisionism. My main concern is the people who will be able to exercise those tools won't have the incentive to use them
"If used correctly" is the laziest part of the whole pitch, this coming from my vage understanding of mlm philosophy itself. Trying to see revisionism (and its violent consequences against the people) as just an undeveloped stance, or lack of principles in leadership, before and instead the result of economical forces and dialectical processes within the revolutionary movement itself. If no one believes the state will wither away, why would anyone believe that the same vanguard creating this state will have in its interest the fostering of its own destruction? An/LibComs I think basically want the cultural revolution first, achieving change in consciousness, as part of the masses themselves, throught direct change in reality. And if power is always going to be agains that no matter what, what difference makes the color of the enemy flag?
If, after studying Maoism, and learning about the great famine, Pol Pot, and Shining Path. You still become a Maoist. You're a nihilist, not a Marxist.
Pol Pot was not a Maoist. The PCP were left-deviationists. And it was Mao's China that solved "the great famine", ensuring such things would never happen again. Bunk points.
Right, everything bad in communism is Maoist. And everything good is not Maoist. Either that or you're a liberal who hasn't taken the time to unlearn anti-communist propaganda. If the latter, start here: mronline.org/2006/09/21/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward/
Studied it... came to this conclusion: Vanguardism is dead without the USSR funding armies. At BEST, Vanguardism brought undeveloped nations to a basic level of development....on par with the leading capitalist nations but never gave autonomy or agency to the working class. It made the local intelligentsia into the new rulers. In developing countries, it has proven to be a C+ movement at best. In the US and Canada...Leninist movements are a sorry circle jerk of college campus NGOs that break movements from the inside with entryist tactics and reading group stagnancy. Anarchists and/or Anti-Authoritarians have been leading the radical left in protest movements in North America, while Libertarian-Socialist ideologies have done well in places like Rojava and Chiapas. People respond well to Direct Democracy.
Rojava is anything but a democracy, and EZLN is a popular front of Maoists, Anarchists, indigenous leaders, who extend solidarity to both the Cuban Revolution and the Bolivarian Revolution. Bad Faith Comment.
@jprole8508 I'll believe the actual information coming out of Rojava instead of rumors from some online tankie that has a hard on for the Baath party. Also... your input on Chiapas couldn't be more irrelevant. You can be an ally to another country without having tge same ideology. I find it surprising I would even have to explain that. Zapatistas have denounced vanguardism. Call yourself what u want. If you build direct democracy amongst the lower class, it's actual revolution. Not the same as the traditional leninist/stalinist states we're used to. You have no clue. Read theory.
@@j.leonardo260 When a "tankie" believes something out of Russia, China whatever, youll nag at them for believing "russian/chinese campist propaganda" But believing rojava propaganda is fine. Sure Jan. And many MLs do support the Zapatistas along with other anti imperialist countries/projects that arent (explicitly ML) and are attacked and deplatformed for doing so because unlike your unnecesarity combative ass, we dont give a fuck about labels or treat this as a team sport, we admire anyone who stand up to western hegemony, grow up and stop being so sectarian.
@@j.leonardo260 If so called "tankies" believed the information coming out of China, Russia etc, you would nag at them for believing "Russian/Chinese campist propaganda" 2. MLs do support the Zapatistas just like we support all anti-imperialist countries that aren't (explicitly) ML, and have regularly been demonized and deplatformed for doing so, because unlike you, we don't treat this like a team sport. Grow up, stop being sectarian, and come off this degenerate, psychopathic debate bro Vaush nonsense.
I shall reconcile Anarchism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with Nikita Khrushchev thought as expressed in the 1961 programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
My journey as a leftist: starts as an unread ancom, joins a trotskyist group and reads lots of theory, leaves the trots to be a principled ML, reads more theory and lots of Mao, realizes I come to the same conclusions as MLMs. Hmmm...
To clarify, this video isn't claiming all anarchists are individualistic. The criticisms are pointed solely at the one strand within anarchism of individualist anarchists, rather than the whole movement, and especially not collectivist anarchists, social anarchists, Anarcho-Communists, etc. The remark about "lifestylism" was a reference to Murray Bookchin's text "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism" (which I strongly recommend everyone, whether Maoist or Anarchist, should read): theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-social-anarchism-or-lifestyle-anarchism-an-unbridgeable-chasm
this obsession with qualifying 'anarchist' with various adjectives is very "think tank" and beside the point. the attempt to break up ANARCHISTS as simply everyone who is ANTI RULERSHIP will not work. we're growing.
@@legalfictionnaturalfact3969cknowledging our differences in beliefs is not breaking us up. The thing is that we don’t all agree on what rulership exactly means, or who could potentially be a ruler. So we need these terms to clarify.
I don’t need my allies to agree with me, but I don’t want to be lumped in with some dude that thinks he’s an Anarchist because he’s an ‘AnCap’ and doesn’t think that stuff like Company Towns should be considered tyrannical.
This doesn’t weaken us. It gives us the ability to communicate and organize better. If we want to actually change things we need to organize.
@@benshatpiro83 NOPE. the plant or asset always says "DepEndS oN Yr DeFInITiOn of X". open a dictionary.
again: anarchists are anti-rulership. no one gets to rule over that term by attaching some infinite number of terms to it. it stands alone.
or hey, be an attack helicopter pickupartist ubercommieanarchodummy-dumdum. whatevs. either way, anarchists moving on and up.
funny how the "uNiTyyYY no matter whutTT" trolls and the "dePenDS of Yr DEfinItiOn" trolls never cross paths... lmfao
@@thevarietyshowyt makhno is awful
@@thevarietyshowyt They aren't but anarchists need to understand how the state operates in a class society. They try to use weird moral "Hierarchy" arguments to justify their ideology.
As an ancom who’s still very politically influenced by MLM, I totally agree, but also vice versa, as leftists we should be studying and opening our ears to, and have a lot to learn from all post-capitalist philosophical branches.
I personally shifted away from using a specific ideological label for myself for this reason; there's good stuff in many theoretical models, and while I might lean more heavily towards one than others, I feel like thinking of that model as a part of my identity instead of just a source of knowledge might make me more closed off to other sources (or, on the flipside, insufficiently critical of ideas coming from whichever tendency I identify with).
That would actually be a really interesting video. Like if Paul were to do a book report on some Kropotkin or Bakunin. Paroles d'un Révolté would be pretty fun.
@@SomasAcademy This is pretty much where I've ended up. There's a lot of good tidbits from many anti-capitalist schools of thought, as well as a lot of flaws. If we want anything done, we need to learn to take the good and leave the bad, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you specifically label yourself as.
If we went Maoist in America, and Mexico went Anarcho-Communist, why should it matter? The world's a big place, and our differences in political organization from region to region don't really matter all that much in the grand scheme, especially if say Canada is Fascist and actively trying to topple both. Stupid analogy, I know, but it gets the point across all the same. When there's actual constructive debate, and deliberation going on, then chances are things are getting done.
The good thing about Maoists is that they do see the value in some Anarchistic ideas and implement them, and many Anarchists also see the value in Maoist ideas as well. These constructive critiques and discussions drive us forward, provided none of the parties try to wreck the other in bad faith of course. So long as everyone remembers it's them versus Capitalist hegemony, and not some free for all battle royale of ideologies, then we can stand to learn a lot from each other. It's generally better to have many minds attacking a problem from different angles to find the best possible solution, than it is to have one mind slamming into a brick wall over and over and screaming at itself, after all, isn't it?
@@SomasAcademy I agree. While I still heavily lean towards Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought and I've my fair share of principled criticisms against anarchism, that doesn't mean that I'd be closed off to good ideas or suggestions that's gonna help the people and the revolution. I've had a close friend who's anarchist (they've passed on, unfortunately) but they enriched my understanding of all Maoist theory and practice and I'm grateful that I had the honour and privilege of knowing them.
@Ajinkya Meshram excuse me, but what's there to laugh at?
Oh yes, multi level marketing is really what we need
It's the ONLY way forward
We need more men loving men 🏳️🌈
Mid level managers!? But the employing class has nothing in common with the working class!
@@Salsmachev Know the enemy XD
@@charlesdaloz2547 fr tho 😳
MLM needs to be studied. On the other hand, we in the seat of empire need to understand that, dialectics being what they are, revolutionary theory always needs synthesis and advancement. We learn from what came before, while understanding that what Lenin learned needed to be advanced for the conditions of China. We don't stop at yesterday's revolutions. We study, hypothesize, test, and learn.
Probably goes without saying for many, but there are those who treat revolutionary science as religion more than science and try to keep it frozen in time.
Facts.
I agree. Far too many treat theory as religion.
Facts.
@@Marxism_Today MLM=men loving men
"Probably goes without saying for many, but there are those who treat revolutionary science as religion more than science and try to keep it frozen in time."
idk if it goes without saying because ya sure told me!
Here as an anarchist who studies MLM
Same
anarchist also brave fighters!Although I am a Maoist,I still inspire you
here as an anarchist who studies men loving men
If you believe in his teachings then you are not an anarchist.
Well im an MLM who studies anarchism, because in my area anarchists do the most work and i want to get to know them
If I wanted to be bossed around by people who think they can because they're higher up on an arbitrary hierarchy like "wealth" or "party loyalty" then I'd sit around and do nothing because that's already my life, thanks
Why would you be bossed around by anyone? The whole point of Maoism is giving all power to the people, up to and including overthrowing communist parties themselves
@@Marxism_TodayHow'd that workout in capitalist authoritarian hell China?
@@Marxism_Today Ah yes, this very famously happened in China
@@niklas4813 it literally did, the cultural revolution actually failed which is why democracy (while still present in china) is not as ideal as it could be
@@niklas4813It did lol but the reactionaries won
I think it was Mao who said something along the lines of "anarchism is the conscience of communism", reflecting what you said at the end, how anarchists are crucial to the revolutionary project to hold the bureaucratic tendencies of parties in check.
Also, I was considering writing a text about how democratic centralism vs diversity of tactics is a false dichotomy and how we should strive for centralisation of strategy and the autonomy of decentralized tactics
I consider myself a ML who occasionally studies Maoism. I'll admit I've (unfortunately) seen several MLs fall into the trap of only studying old texts and turning into academic debate bros, which isn't exactly a great way to win the masses over.
All sections of the left, not just anarchists, should be open to and study Maoism.
I'd arguee that socialists and communists of every stripe should study every corrent closely. I might not be an anarchist, but I can still recognize that they can have compelling critiques that are worth studying. Dogmatism can be a real problem among communists, so I thank you for this video
Considering that many socialists and communists _want_ to be part of a hierarchy, there will always be a division between them and anarchists.
I’m not sure I fully get this critique. As I understand it, many anarchists still have praxis, they just believe the route to communism can be achieved without a dictatorship of the proletariat. And many anarchists also criticize MLM for failing to abolish its own systems of oppression because it only ever shifts power from one group of people to another rather than trying to abolish it.
Please enlighten me if I’m being ignorant, I’m still learning.
The critique is that Anarchists believe that the communist society can be established through one singular breaking point that ends the old society immediately. Maoists believe that the continuation of the state is a necessary evil to defend the revolutionary communities from capitalist encirclement and they recognise that the old ways of society will not end if the class struggle isnt continued after the revolution.
@@ycasto1063not a single anarchist has ever said that its going to be an everything revolution and discussed how an anarchist revolution would probably last generations. I do also want to mention that mao destroyed the Shanghai commune by retracting his support destroying decentralized communism while also only being taken out of power by the conference of 3000 cadres a extremely undemocratic institution before he later had many of them killed or re educated in the cultural revolution, the state is antithetical to communism.
@@ycasto1063 but anarchists have historically criticised this viewpoint and none of the theory says it will all go down in one fell swoop. The point is just that a dictatorship of the proletariat cannot really be of the proletariat if it's of the state, because a state is inherently hierarchical and oppressive
@@ycasto1063I'm not opposed to the continuation of the state as a necessary evil. My concern is that these types of states inevitably become tyrannical, unnecessarily repressing even other leftists who oppose certain policies or state action. To repress the proletariat is to betray the very foundations of what you fought for to begin with.
@@ycasto1063 "Anarchists believe that the communist society can be established through one singular breaking point that ends the old society immediately"
I'm sorry what ? Where do you get that idea of anarchism ?
Paul, I have got to say, this is a GIANT help to me in my own introspection as to “what do I really believe” within my leftist politics. For a solid 3 years I’ve been trying to reconcile the aspects I love from both Marxist and anarchist traditions. I’ll be revisiting this visiting video as well as following being intentional about researching MLM.
Glad to help! If you'd like recommendations for reading or anything like that, feel free to drop me a DM on Twitter or Instagram.
I might need to follow you back on the platforms for the messages to come through though, so if I'm not already then let me know your username and then the DMs should be open
i am an ancom that is quite pro leftist unity, and i think if we all study different types of leftism, then we understand everyone better and can build solidarity among leftists
So just Tribalism but with more steps.... and people on your side call themselves Progressives.
This video on "Why Anarchists Should Study Marxism-Leninism-Maoism" is deeply frustrating to watch. Yeah, I HAVE studied Maoism. I have great respect for the Maoist ultraleft. What Marxist Paul misunderstands about the Cultural Revolution was that the Maoist ultraleft that reinvented anarchism in Maoist lingo was purged by Mao himself. Same for the Maoists who reached libertarian conclusions in the Communist Party of the Philippines: purged.
And anti-revisionism? What exactly is being defended against revision? "Socialism in one country"? Stalinism? "National Democracy"? All these concepts are just state capitalism. The very thing anti-revisionists defend is itself a revision of basic Marxism perpetuated by Stalin and Stalinism.
Finally, Protracted People's War. Now the PPW in the Philippines is pretty secretive, but the PPW in Nepal already has good documentation. Liberated villages in Nepal saw staged elections. Doubtless some elections in Nepali villages were real, but there are too many accounts saying otherwise. And the revolutionary state? What happened to the people's revolutionary state in Nepal? Abolished by decree by Prachanda, the chair of the Nepali Maoists. Does that sound like a state owned by the people? No it does not. Anarchists are right: state power and people power are incompatible.
Yeah, I'm an anarchist. Yeah, I studied Maoism. I'm impressed by the ultraleft and libertarian Maoists, but the "official" Maoists in India, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines? Not impressed. Nepal: fake people's governments. Peru & India: killing indigenous peoples. Philippines: murdering their own comrades and also assassinating other leftists. Maoism has some good ideas, and these good ideas are often found with the Maoist ultraleft, but there can be no support to their communist parties for they will lead back to capitalism. Happened already with China and Nepal. In the Philippines, their ridiculous theory of National Democracy is literally a naked defense of state capitalism. We already know that if they win, it will be capitalism.
The idea that the maoist revolution was succesfull is so funny to me. Successful in what way ? In creating capitalism again ?
I mean my goals can get achieved until the Party says I'm revisionist and I end up on the same wall the capitalists would have put me on.
Why would that happen?
@@Marxism_Today People's war has to be waged against someone and at some point you run out of capitalists.
@@Marxism_Today because power ALWAYS corrupts. and if people have the ability to eliminate anyone they dislike for any reason, they WILL. history shows no other option when humans are given power over others. you need competition to stay within the market instead of within a "party" of unelected family and friends of the rich person who funded the revolution. that way merit is maintained and there is a real incentive to make technological progress and make things. there are too many people who havent had to earn anything who would be given power over others in a communist party. and that always leads to mismanagement because well, if you havent proven to be good at managing resources and understanding their value and understand the needs of others through experience, you dont have the capacity to be good at it and will cut corners to hide your incompetence from the boss/the rest of society
@Deamon Cohln Why would people's war be waged against the people? It's waged to overthrow the bourgeoisie. When there's no longer a bourgeoisie, what basis would there be for continuing to wage it?
@@Marxism_Today That's inherent to all groups seeking to take over power rather than abolish it - a hierarchy and upper class is formed, which inevitably results in some form of return of the bourgeoisie
What Maoists don't understand is that centralization with decentralized elements isn't actually going to lead to communism. Because the decentralized elements are always at the behest of the vanguard, the vanguard continually needs to justify its existence by reifying its own power over the masses who are supposed to follow their plan. This creates a two-tier system of governance where the vanguard is clashing with the masses, as their own vision (where they have all the power) constantly comes into conflict with ideas that are independently developed by the so-called "decentralized cadres."
This leads to an authoritarian version of capitalism. If the community doesn't have direct control over their labor and resources, you've essentially just created a political bourgeois class. I don't get why this is so hard to understand for MLMs. No MLM has ever been able to explain to me why a vanguard isn't redundant when the masses are supposed to have direct control over their destiny. Like, either you trust the proletariat, or you don't. There really isn't any in between, and the creation of a centralized authority basically signals that actually the party doesn't trust the proletariat at all. They just want power for themselves.
Tbh, as an anarchist, I still have a lot of criticisms of the MLM approach. If anyone is interested in learning about specifically anarchist alternatives to MLM, I would suggest looking more into the strategic and organizational theories of anarcho-syndicalism, platformism, especifismo, dual organizationalism, and anarchist dual power.
I like theory, but I'm more of a history buff myself.
I prefer to learn from the anarchist superpowers which have challenges capitalism globally.
@@dr.zoidberg8666 the great thing about a lot of anarchist theory, and particulary the strategic and organizational positions I listed, is that they are rooted in the practical application of anarchist ideas historically. So, platformism is rooted in the experiences and lessons of both the Makhnovist revolution in Ukraine, as well as the Friends of Durruti group that was active during the Spanish Civil War. Especifismo is rooted in the history of the struggles of anarchist movements and organizations in Latin America. Dual organizationalism and anarchist dual power are rooted in the strategic and organizational methods employed by pretty much all of the largest and most successful historical anarchist movements and revolutions, including the Spanish Revolution, the Ukrainian Makhnovists, the Kirin Revolution in Manchuria, as well as the Magonista rebellion in Mexico, the Macedonian and Bulgarian anarchists in the Strandzha uprising, and many others. And anarcho-syndicalism has been one of the largest and most successful forms of anarchist working class struggle against capitalism pretty much throughout its entire history.
@@edwinrollins142 That's very exciting. It's a shame all of those efforts failed time & time again.
I look forward to the great & mighty anarchist power which will shake the foundations of the world.
Perhaps the People's Republic of China will discover them in their exploration of the far side of the moon.
@@dr.zoidberg8666 ohhh, i see, youre being facetious.
All the Marxist revolutions have failed as well, so youre really not making the point you think you are here.
@@edwinrollins142 Good point. I'll let China, Vietnam, Cuba, & Laos know.
As an anarchist i do study MLM philosophy to understand better their ideas and mayde taking the best parts and use them in anarchist way
See that gigachad in the thumbnail? That's you.
Sorry for doxxing
mao learned from anarchists, he hung with them alot, anarchism was considered the intelectual possision in china and manchuria.
@@Marxism_Today it's ok comrade
@@audunms4780 then again, mao let anarchist experiments happen just to crush them when they got too strong for his liking, so thats how far his true commitment with anarchism was and were he saw anarchists fit within his proyect.
@@davidlozano5047 oh no, mao didn't let anarchists have more power than mao himself! what a terrible authoritarian
I know that this video is old, but as someone that is an ancom i have to say that reading MLM and Anarchist texts is like being a child of divorced parents and every time you go to one parents house you just hear them complain about the other parent. That is to say that Anarchists and MLMs have a lot to learn from each other, both in theory and in practice and even though they won't suddenly agree with each other after that, this kind of mutual understanding will make a unified block against capitalism, fascism and the far-right much easier and more efficient.
I feel like you should also make a "Why MLs should study MLM" video too. I'm biased because I am currently an ML (and former anarchist) studying MLM myself lol
Absolutely. I was an anarchist, before becoming an ML. And then, I began to study, uphold and defend Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought.
Honestly would love a series explaining the difference between these schools of thought because I myself still don't understand the difference between ML, MLM, Maoism (as its own separate thing), Socialism with Chinese characteristics, the DPRK's version of socialism, and all the other socialisms.
@@guy-sl3kr I'll try to answer some of these briefly. ML is an incomplete form of MLM. If it exists with Maoist thought omitted, it's due to a lack of understanding of Marxist history. Maoist thought has a very useful "toolset" outlined by this video. While Maoist thought can be applied to ideologies other than Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, it would be in a revised form. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is a revisionist form of MLM envisioned by Deng Xiaoping to essentially "pause socialism" to build up Chinese industry. It's very flawed thinking, but it seems to have served its purpose. Juche, or the DPRK's socialism, is a revisionist form of ML, with extreme emphasis on the Cult of Personality, or idealizing leadership. There is something to be learned from every form of socialism, but each sucessful form is tailor-made for the region that it is able to exist in.
@@anushghosh4606 why Gonzalo
@@stinky702 do you think can mlm be applied in the imperial core? If yes, why it is superior to ML (inside the imperial core)?
I believe I may be identifying a notable fundamental difference between MLM's and An-Coms. From what I understand, MLM's want to achieve communism through conquest, while An-Com's want to achieve communism through solidarity and reconciliation. If this is at least somewhat accurate, then I probably wouldn't accept a state run by MLM's (as an ideal) because I believe that their conquest, based ideology will inevitably be pointed inwards when it runs out of ways to expand. Ideology has a tendency to expand both outward and inwards, and I would rather that ideology be one that is ideal for human flourishing
Very American way of seeing things. Might makes right has been burned into your very genetics. Doesn't matter how many times we say "We are destroying the Capitalists to liberate the workers." All they ever hear is "we are destroying..."
I also can't think of any leader that lived up to their ideals. I'd probably have to read more to outline all the affects but it puts me to sleep and i have people that depend on me.
@jumpin jehosephat I tend to believe that humanity is inherently too flawed to take up an authority position without abusing it in some way. People tend to do what is easiest in the long term, and it is easy to ignore problems when they don't affect them personally.
Having a government with no authorities accommodates this flaw of humanity perfectly, because the people that vote for change are the people that the policy affects the most.
I do believe anarchists will need leaders though, they wouldn't have more authority than anyone else, but they have the trust of the community to make good decisions in situations where voting would be too cumbersome (such as trusting the expertise of a senior worker). Their leadership would be brought to intervention or trial if people suspect they are misusing it.
Central decision making and ideological unity are the main pillars of Platformism (an anarchist approach) as well. Here are some key differences:
1. who takes the initiative in central decision making? In MLM, it’s the party that sends out its officials to listen to the people. Then, the party deliberates, makes a decision and commands the local population to enact that. Anarchists turn that from the head back on its feet: there are no party officials, but instead there are mechanisms so local communities can call a summit. They then send their delegates - regular workers - to this summit where they deliberate and reach a decision. Then they go back and the communities enact the decisions. Crucially, the delegate will go back to being a worker and therefore always maintains the same class interest as his comrades, whereas party officials are their own class and would love nothing more than finding a workaround to any checks and balances (like workers throwing bombs at them).
2. MLM usually claims that before socialization of the means of production can take place, you first need to let the capitalists develop the means of production to the point that you’re no longer poor. But don’t worry, the dynamics of capitalism can be reigned in by MLM checks and balances: bombs and guns pointed at the capitalists, and even party officials. How do you know which party official to bomb? -A great man like Mao will tell you, and you better obey or you’ll be accused of counterrevolutionary tendencies. Anarchists find that absurd. It’s almost as if those MLM checks and balances are just a spectacle organized by those who really run the show just so you have a good time bullying some scapegoat. The only real way to overcome revisionist tendencies is to socialize the means of production right away and educate everyone accordingly so the workers can develop the means of production themselves. That’s the proper materialist position. Checks and balances - bourgeois ones via courts and cops or MLM ones via bombs and terror - are idealist nonsense.
3. Anarchists and MLM agree on their theory of what states have hitherto always been: an instrument of the ruling class to protect them from unruly peasants. During a revolution, the ruling class is no longer in power and the streets are ruled by the mass of people. If those masses are organized enough so they can enact radical changes before the ruling class rebuilds its state apparatus, one can technically call that a proletarian state, and as the means of production are being socialized, there’s no longer a need for an apparatus protecting the ruling class from the rules class - the state withers away. From the anarchist perspective, this should take like 5 minutes or so. But MLM finds all kinds of fascinating reasons to delay that and maintain this workers state as long as possible - uhm - „necessary“. Anarchists are not opposed to organizational structures to run society or even to protect society from imperialists. But we do promote a unity between means and ends.
The means we use to achieve the revolution have the inconvenient tendency to become an end in itself, hence we ought to choose means that are compatible with our ends. If you want to abolish football, don’t start by founding a team that competes to be the best one in the league just to own the libs. The team will end up loving the sport they play for a living, and they’ll find a way to disappoint the fan base that wants to see Football abolished. But once you bomb the team, you’re only left with teams that never wanted to abolish Football in the first place.
platformism is not an anarchist approach, it's just a particular form of tactical unity with a different name. liberals use it, anarchists use it, communists use it, even fascists use it
Those points are so understated that I don't understand why they're not commonly understood by MLMs and Stalinist-tainted MLs. You can't wither away a state that you ensure holds all the power. You can only accomplish that by starting with democratization to disperse its duties and powers to the masses in their community-based/level democracy from the very beginning. To do otherwise is to justify statism with "but look at the outcomes it produced! Aren't they wonderful," when your entire reason for overthrowing the old regime was "we should be the ones to decide for ourselves, together, what/when/where/how/why to do a thing. We definitely want those same outcomes...but we want to be the ones to make and carry out the decisions to achieve them!"
The withering away of the state should take a matter of years, not generations, but if people want it to happen even quicker, they need to normalize the processes by which they would govern after the revolution so that the transition between systems is more natural and less "you must do it this way from now on or we'll shoot you." One of the things that a lot of MLMs etc don't see, which they should given the "learn from our mistakes" and "dialectical materialism FTW" rhetoric, is that they don't need to rally behind a central party authority to give them purpose and direction; they can start building that community-level democracy and start working on changing social norms to support it. The fact is, though, that they want to take the easy way out and get someone else, you could call them a "feudal lord," to do it for them.
Great points, in any case. I've read enough of Marx and Lenin to recognize that that's what they advocated (more or less), and that's why I am a Marxist-Leninist (without the Stalinist taint) instead of a MLM.
@@samuelrosander1048 you should be an MLM, mao took lenins practical improvements on marx and made them solid and actionable
@@afgor1088 I'll admit to not having read much Mao, but I'd ask "how" he did those things when Lenin's ideas were already solid and actionable. Just not from above. The soviets weren't Lenin's brainchild, but they were definitely a solid organizational and decision-making tool that he was clear were necessary for Russians to work towards socialism because of their (bottom-up) democratic nature.
Also, what specific works of Mao's would you recommend? I'm not a ML because I think Lenin and Marx can do no wrong, but because I recognize some fundamental truths about top-down organization and human tendencies (including the adaptive nature of humanity), so I lean towards their ideas, but if Mao made their ideas of bottom-up democracy (not outcomes dictated and enforced from above) solid and actionable as you say, then I'd be interested in seeing exactly what that means.
The mass line does not include the party deliberating with the masses and then commanding them to do something. If you would like to understand the method better, watch How Yukong Moved the Mountains on UA-cam. Specifically the generator factory episode.
Damn, that's one hell of a pitch! I'm sure this super awesome MLM ideology will eventually lead to a free and happy society and absolutely not some kind of nightmarish dystopian dictatorship! Right?
**RIGHT??**
Yeah, thats rigth.
Whats your point?
@@MrCram Please tell me, where is this promised land?
on its way, its explained in the video
@@MrCram "on its way bro, it will be here any day now bro! Xi is working on it super hard behind the scenes, bro! Just endure the state capitalist dictatorship, bro! Stop worrying!" 🤡
McCarthyism is about 60 years out of fashion.
Move on kid
In my experience as an anarchist it's largely babychists who don't know very much about anarchism to begin with that turn to MLM / ML. There are some anarchists that turn to more state-oriented projects, but those are mostly platformists that turn to different left communist schools
I agree, if you understand anarchism and its critiques of hierarchy and the state you can't revert to MLM.
@@RayyanKesnan If you understand marxism you can't be an anarchist
@@fate8007yes you can, marxism doesn't go into conflict w anarchism
@@guul66 marxism is based on centralizing the means of production into the workers state and to extend the productive forces as rapid as possible to achieve communism. Anarchists prefer decentralization.
@@fate8007 that's just one application of marxism. if you know about marxism you know it has been taken into many different directions throughout many different fields
Fantastic that Left Wing Books is sponsoring you! There isn’t a better bookstore out there.
In my experience anarchists already read a fair bit of marxist, ML, and Maoist theory. It's only the Anarcho-Capitalist types, aka conservatives, who don't. If any of us are want to abolish the state and not reproduce it in the form of corporate ownership we need communism.We should study ALL labor movement's successes, failures, and differences. I think this was a good olive branch, good job.
I'm reminded of the Mao Spontex movement that was popular during the protests in France during the 1970s where Anarchist synthesized anarchism and Maoist tactics as a way to bring about revolution.
Thank you for mentioning that Mao was highly influenced by Anarchism in his early years. It makes a lot of sense because his best tendencies were based on Anarchism.
no
I’m an anarchist and I just now started watching and reading some on Marx and Lenin Mao I haven’t got to yet but thank you for the informal video even if I don’t agree with everything in this video thank you
I am anarchist too
Скоро в России будет анархистская революция
People forget how closely aligned Marx was to anarchist theory. Watching this video as a relatively fresh anarchist, I appreciate that Maoism deviates further from a centralized power structure through tactical decentralization. However, hearing arguments from both sides, it seems like proponents of each philosophy are talking past each other, so the conversation doesn’t actually progress. This video doesn’t address the tendency of hierarchical power structures to perpetuate themselves. It doesn’t address the ownership relationships that alienate workers from the means of production. At the same time, anarchist critics of MLM don’t explore deep enough to see the overlap in strategies. There is a lot more common ground than I initially thought. But anarchist criticism of MLM still remains unanswered in my opinion.
Do you have some reading recommendations on anarchist criticism of MLM?
@@ΑρτεμισίαΠλοκαμίδου I’m not a great point of reference, as I haven’t read as much as some people here. However, I recommend you listen to / read Anark’s essay The State Is Counter-Revolutionary (Part 3) on Maoist China and explore its bibliography. Anark and Zoe Baker also have a bunch of reading recommendations if you actually want to dig in deeper. Let me know what you think :)
Thinking Marx was in any way aligned with anarchist theory is historical revisionism at worst, and lazy research at best.
Bakunin specifically painted Marx as an authoritarian. And, to an extent, it's true which is easy enough to find when reading Critique of the Gotha Programme, or his work on the Paris Commune. Marx is very consistent in wanting to establish a state, and maintain authority through arms. He very much wished for the revolutionaries at the Paris Commune to openly target and 'oppress' the anti-revolutionaries and capitalists, much moreso than they already had.
In fact, Marx doesn't even think we should do away with 'authority' and 'hierarchies' after the state withers away, he only thinks we need to do away with *political* authority. He also thinks a government should remain, because Marx differentiated between a state and a government.
That's a maoist trying to proselytize. so obviously he doesn't take interests in answering the very relevant questions raised by anarchism.
@@devas185tator7 Anarchists can't read.
I'm an anarchist and all I can say is, like any scientific theory, hypotheses need to be tested and adapted, and we should learn from the mistakes or non-mistakes of the past! Like any good dialectal, we should synthesis our ideals rather than bicker over it! In the States, I don't think a communist party is a viable solution, not that it hasn't worked in the past for other countries. Your videos have been quite helpful in learning Marxism!
Why do you think it isn't viable in the States (the Imperial Core)?
@@comradetrashpanda8777 Firstly, I wanna say I agree with @lulujuice in general. I also think there are multiple different approaches to solve complex problems. With that said, why wouldn't this work in the states? Can you imagine a US "transitionary state that will wither away"? Especially considering the history of how the state as an organ of class rule is used in the states? It's a rhetorical question because the US governs itself in the interest of lobbying capital. You'd have to dismantle capitalism first to create a state that would wither away. Otherwise you're essentially shifting the goal post on an already competitive imperial monopoly playground. You'd have to make way for a lot of other grass roots movements that sometimes align with MLM and others that do not. You'd have to evolve as a moment to not just be empty populism.
I think you've hit on the most significant issue in this struggle. All of the sociopolitical philosophies were developed in the past, and while the core ideas are still relevant, the detailed structures, tactics, and strategies were created in worlds that no longer exist for societies that no longer exist.
If we analyze how the dominant systems came to be and rose to dominance, the common thread is a mythology that appeals to the hopes and desires of the most people.
IOW, we need a "new" story, a story that people who will not commit to studying social, political, and economic theories. One which uses the things and ideas they already have accepted to inspire them with (apparently) tangible gains and hope for more, while keeping in mind that people fear change, are generally greedy, and don't really care very much about people they don't know.
@@comradetrashpanda8777 As a ML myself, the imperial core is difficult to sustain a vanguard party with revolutionary action. Communist parties do the most good in the weakest links of the imperialist chain, like India, China, Brazil, South Africa and so on. Revolution in these countries is necessary first in order to destabilize the imperial core, forcing (specially in the "social democratic countries") them to further stretch the class contradictions which will weaken their bourgeoisie and further strengthen proletariat movements within them.
@@comradetrashpanda8777 while boomers and gen x are alive and allowed to vote / have monetary power it just isnt possible because they were put through a lot of cold war propaganda brainwashing crap. they were also given lives during the time when the USD actually could buy things for an average person so they think capitalism is superior to everything. even tho they have lived through now seeing the dollars value drop through the floor to the point where the cost of living is higher than anywhere else on earth and no amount of labor will earn you enough money to simply stay alive. even tho they have seen rich people crash the economy over and over with fraudulent and quality of life lowering behavior. even tho they have been told directly by their employers that they are disposable tools to them who dont deserve to be able to have basic necessities and should be happy to work themselves to death for no compensation. even tho they watched a healthcare system morph into a drug addiction producing factory. even tho they have had the veil removed from history with the power of the internet. they will still advocate for capitalism, even as its killing them.
I found this video to very much talk down to Anarchists. Like it just being a stepping stone to MLM. Which I find very reductive. People changing ideological ism's doesn't mean they always progress or that MLM going to anarchism doesn't exist. Stating that anarchists eventually become or should become MLM and that this is the only way forward I find very demeaning.
On top of that the anarchism eventually doesn't work while MLM does work in revolutions now is also reductive considering you admitted yourself that there are no currently MLM countries. The same has been the case for anarchism there have been anarchist communities and they eventually died. There have been successful MLM communities and they have also died.
I would love to hear your take on how the strategy of cultural revolution is supposedly to counteract the corrupting nature of centralized power in for example the case of china atm. If this tactic worked so well how come China itself has been victim to revisionism after the maoist revolution?
I agree with your criticism. I am an organized anarchist platformist who is constantly re-developing theories and strategies of modern anarchism, and I agree that this political theory/ideology has had many flaws that need to be dealt with nowadays. But just because we learn from each other and overthink our current concepts, it doesn't mean we move on to another ideology.
I am still an anarchist, even though MLM has many good points that I have been implementing in my own practice. And I will probably also stay an anarchist.
While there are no currently MLM countries, there is at least 1 ongoing MLM revolution, in the Philippines.
Which is obviously not the case for anarchism.
@@devas185tator7 cecosesola, rojava and many others, anarchism exist in the real world, marxism leninism does not.
@@cortexavery1324 Rojava is a parliamentary/bourgeois democracy with a police, military and prisons. truly the greatest anarchist experiment!
@@fate8007 rojava is a state controlled by it's municipal counsels, if you don't see how that's an exemple of anarchic principles then i can't help you.
But I do love how that's the only thing you have to respond, not only does that not show me wrong, it is a way of moving the conversation elsewhere.
Do you understand that your idea of an anarchic revolution is wrong ?
We don't have to wait for the destruction of the system, we construct our revolution by building alternative, more horizontal, power structures. The way any leftist revolution should be built.
I have met Anarchists but my journey into the Left was by a Trotskyist (may his soul be in a better place). I prefer Marx and Lenin personally but Mao is on my reading list. Currently re-reading Engel's right now then moving on to my hero Karl Marx. Great video Paul ✊
Would definitely recommend reading Stalin as well
I recommend reading Marx and Marxism by Bakunin and The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin.
I got a bunch of anarchist friends in the USA who have found a lot of utility in Lenin . They want to win the fight against capitalism. They’ll enjoy this video
If ones watns to destroy capitalism they should not support the state capitalism of maoism.
I've read a bit on MLM. My only criticism is that it was written for countries that had a large rural population, and since I live in Japan, a country that's essentially nothing but a sprawling, giant interconnected concrete jungle, that we can't take it and apply it directly to Japan, as the material conditions are substantially different.
Mass line is still not necessary a bad idea though, and there's absolutely ways to apply something similar to anarchism so I'm not about to toss the baby out with the bathwater so to speak when it comes to MLM.
MLM is not only Mao's particular practical work, but also the universal experience gained from it. One thing that is essential to Marxism is that we do concrete analysis of concrete conditions. Yes pre-Revolutionary China was different, but these differences can be bridged in many ways, such as Mao's philosophical contributions, forms of organizing the proletariat specifically, how to manage an economy while carrying out cultural revolution, etc. It's not a step by step guide to do a revolution, but an ideological outlook, philosophy, toolkit, for solving problems in many different conditions.
@@bencatechi4293 "Mao's philosophical contributions"
Yeah, like grass soup and giving concubines STDs.
@@MK_ULTRA420 What?
Every Leninist doctrine was designed for rural countries. Marxism classic was designed for the highly developed capitalist countries, and so Marx's work should be given far more deference than Lenin when regarding the first world.
@@BrainInJar Socialist revolutions only succeed when overthrowing feudalist economies while copying capitalism's homework.
You're planting those seeds! Nice video. I'll be sure to share with the anarchists around me. I think it also works for people who are upset with current living conditions but stuck in a nihilist mindset.
*nihilistic mindset.
@@fynnkelly5543 appreciate it!
Muzzle discipline, comrades, muzzle discipline. Y’all makin’ me nervous.
I thought this was gonna be an outreach thing, like finding the shortcomings of anarchism, and learning from MLM to fill those gaps. Instead this feels like "anarchism has shortcomings, so you should switch to MLM".
Or maybe I just got the wrong impression at the start, and got so annoyed that I couldn't pay attention to the rest.
It's important for Maoists that our ideology is a method for serving the long term interests of the proletariat, and not an expression of our personal interests. None of us were born as Maoists, and most of us didn't begin our political journey as Maoists. But all of us have been attracted to Maoism because we think it is the most advanced political program for waging the world proletarian revolution. If people use the lessons of Maoism to serve the people, this is a good thing. But we think the gaps between Anarchism and MLM are that Anarchism does not solve the problems of the world proletariat while Maoism does, we don't think the gaps can be filled, but that we need more Maoists. (That's why I became a Maoist after being an Anarchist btw)
@@bencatechi4293 Aight cool. There's a lot of jargon there, which makes it harder for me to understand. What are the problems of the world proletariat which anarchism can't solve? Are anarchism and Maoism mutually exclusive?
@@Drawoon I feel like I didn’t use that much jargon. There are aspects of Maoism that can be applied by non-Maoists, and if they do that it will be a good thing. But Maoism and Anarchism are still mutually exclusive. Being a Maoist or an Anarchist should not be about which one fits our individual personalities or desires better, but about which one serves the real, long term interests of the proletariat better. The interests of the world proletariat require seizing state power, smashing the old state, and constructing new state forms to exercise dictatorship over the bourgeoisie (and landlords in semi-feudal countries.) Anarchism is obsessed with non-hierarchy, but in a super unscientific way. It has a crude and distorted way of understanding the development of human society. I can’t give like “the” answer to why it doesn’t work. It’s a very big subject, but reading the works of Marx Lenin and Mao is the best place to start.
@@bencatechi4293 as far as I'm aware there's only one thing at the base of anarchism: We seek to get rid of unjust hierarchies. That still leaves a lot of room for interpretation. There's no reason it has to be unscientific.
@@otherperson It seems we have different definitions of hierarchy then, but we can agree on what we want to abolish. The systems I call unjust hierarchies are the only kind of hiererchy to you. If I hear "hierarchy" used that way more often, I might adopt that defenition too.
Thanks for the really long post :p I'll try to check out some of your recommendations.
Getting really in depth into studying anarchist experiments of the past is what led me to discover Lenin and then eventually Mao.
I'm an ancom who used to be a maoist, and I would absolutely support a maoist revolution if given a chance. Life in a maoist society would absolutely be better then life in a capitalist one.
Likewise. As a Maoist, I'd happily take an anarchist society over capitalism 🍻
That's not true historically
@@kiwichippie5465 ok buddy
I respect your work and I like some of MLM ideas as an anarchist, but there are things I do not like:
1. History of ML. Stalin and Lenin did a lot of horrible things to people.
2. State capitalist economy
3. Not caring about individual. Anarchists are anti-individualist too, but it seams like MLMs are hypercollectivist. For example in USSR there were no place for left-handed and people with disabilities.
There was no place in the CNT-FAI for women and LGBTQ+. bad faith comment.
@@jprole8508 What do you mean "no place for woman"? There were literally woman who were fighting equally with man against fascists. Revolutionary Catalonia was feminist.
@@Платформіст it literally had to create mujeres libres to counteract the machismo in the CNT-FAI. It existed in all socialist movements.
@@jprole8508 I never sad that ML movements had no place for woman. But another minorities were oppresed. That is only one point. You can answer to other points if you want.
As a former anarchist I agree that MLM is a step up from anarchism and that it's probably the most fruitful organizational form in the imperial periphery. The core is perhaps the future stage of acid communism.
The problem I have with MLM's is that many of them would support any regime just as long as their against the west or the US. It doesn't matter whether their policies harm minorities, or their positions are inherently theocratic, authoritarian, imperialist or even fascistic like Russia, Iran, China or North Korea, the only criteria to garner MLM's support is for these countries to be opposed to the west. I'm aware of the harm the west and especially the US has brought, but that doesn't mean that every nation that opposes them is communist or socialist.
Show me one singel MLM org that acts that way
@MrCram China with its persecution & mass-incarceration of Uyghur turks and muslims in Xinjiang, born out of pure racism and Islamophobic sentiment by the ruling classes and by reactionary forces in China, just like with all of Europe's fascist hatred against muslims and minorities...
Maoism has good ideas that are smart methods to gain power, as many Marxist theories do, but the common problem with Marxist ideology is that once you have state power you don’t actually have to follow any of these rules. You can just get lazy and lean on bureaucratic structures and military power. Obviously China, even during Mao’s time, clamped down on worker power. There’s never been a state that has allowed worker revolt once the supposedly proletarian leaders took over.
I think it’s important to not treat anarchism as a junior partner here. Marxists have much to learn from anarchists and abolitionists, because once you have a proletarian state you now have a different set of contradictions that you need to understand, and although anarchist don’t often have great strategies for taking power they have great strategies on how to structure society once capital is out of the way.
A big problem with modern leftist mass organizing is this obsession with getting everyone to join a single party or flank of left thought. We have to get used to the idea that this won’t happen, and indeed, it is deeply problematic to demand this. Revolutionary theory requires everyone’s ongoing input. That’s what Praxis is about and it’s how you avoid issues when organizing with bipocs and other historically marginalized people who are used to being fucked by supposedly pure ideologies that have “totally figured it out this time”.
There's a big difference between being against the current authority and believing that a moral socioeconomic organization can't coexist with any heirarchies,forced authority, government, or state.
While I do appreciate the civility and apparent empathy that is in your words, this video has only made me more sure of my anarchist leanings. Social anarchism has far too much in common with Maoism and this video comparing the two has made that very clear. I do wish good luck in any future projects or endeavors you find yourself in though.
Likewise. All the best :)
same this video just made me more sure in my anarchism and i get a lot of my views from max stirner and peter kropotkin so my ideology is mix of individualist anarchism and social anarchism
Nice. I can def recommend watching Anark on UA-cam, he attempted to do a synthesis of those strands in his A Modern Anarchism series.@@holstonmatt
@@Somberdemure had you read the uquie and it property by max stirner or idk any book by any individualist anarchist like benjamin tucker or lysander spooner or just any mutualist ?
Hey Marxist Paul. Have you thought of doing a full video on how Deng came to power and how to combat revisionist forces? This of course is an extremely big topic that requires a lot of analysis(especially in terms of the material reasons for the rise in revisionism). Still it is easily one of the most important topics for current and future movements.
Capitalist restoration has been the #1 issue of all communist states and is the main reason why the movements have failed in the past
Deng saved China.
@@shn324 how
@@miguelpereira9859 by developing industry. The productive forces must be developed to combat capitalism or you will communally live in huts.
I was an anarchist up to a year ago, and I am currently studying some of the marxist classics. I am very intrigued by the ideas of Maoism, and the fact that many of the current revolutionary movements are Maoist in nature. What pushed me out of anarchism was figuring out that there have been almost no successful anarchist revolutions, even though I still think anarchism contributed to the broader workers movement.
Ukraine's free territory? Revolutionary Catalonia? Imagine being so ignorant
Maybe it just hasn't been tried enough? It's the same argument they use against communism in general (that there has been no succesful communist countries).
@@mr.anoynmous1986 They were defeated, and the latter disunited the working class leading to Franco's dictatorship. They're failed revolutions. It's a case study in the effectiveness of democratic centralism.
@@mr.anoynmous1986 You're proving his point by bringing those up.
@@person-yu8cuговорить об эффективности какой-либо идеологии, ты должен сначала рассмотреть изначальные условия. Махно имел только свой поселок Гуляйполе с 10 тыс жителями, через год он распространил свое влияние на территорию с населением в 8 миллионов человек. Большевики совершили революцию на большей части территории России, у них изначально было огромное количество ресурсов, и при этом они почти проиграли, когда Деникин был около Москвы и только Махно спас большевиков в тот момент, когда ударил Деникину по путям снабжения. А знаешь как уничтожили Махно? Большевики взяли Махно в союзники чтобы добить Врангеля в Крыму, а сразу после того как значительные силы анархистов оказались в Крыму, большевики сразу после победы над белыми ударили анархистам в спину в Крыму и на Украине.
Примеры анархизма не ограничиваются Каталонией и Украиной, посмотри на Мексиканский штат Чьяпас и на сапатистов, которые живут сейчас, посмотри на Рожаву в Сирии, многие мои товарищи-анархисты из России воевали за Рожаву в Сирии.
I’m a Libertarian Socialist so basically the “centrist” of leftism. I like pulling and learning from a multitude of leftist thought including Maoist and Anarchist theory.
A big concern of mine when reading Maoist literature or primers, and something I hear stated in some of your videos, is stating of Maoist doctrine as “correct” in a nearly objective and possibly even metaphysical sense. There is discussion as “Maoism” as the correct line and all others as “incorrect” or “false lines”.
It’s natural to advocate for one’s doctrine/ideology to be the best but I think this framing of “objectively correct” Maoism may breed or make it easy for individuals to fall into the trap of dogmatism, or may exacerbate differences between doctrines more than necessary.
Much love for your videos though and I enjoy learning more about MLM theory!
My interpretation for this has always been that the Maoists' _method_ for finding truth (not the opinions of people calling themselves Maoists) is one based entirely in dialectical and historical materialism, much like the evidence-based scientific _method;_ in that we say the correct method for finding the correct line in politics is MLM, much like the scientific method is said to be in the sciences.
Not to say I entirely disagree with you, however; dogmatism is certainly a trap to steer well clear from, and just because someone followed the Maoist method doesn't always mean they're right. Always crit/self-crit!
(edit: I spelt "steer" wrong, oops!)
@@novinceinhosic3531 Maybe you're using dogmatism in a different way than I'm used to, but I would specifically characterise dogma as being inflexible and unadaptable, not merely principled. Sticking to your principles is good, but outright dogmatism is incompatible with crit/self-crit and scientific socialism. If we're not basing our programs on actual evidence, we become utopian idealists incapable of responding to real changes in material conditions.
@@novinceinhosic3531 Empiricism and rationalism are inherently anti-dogmatic. That's pretty much what the entire scientific revolution was about.
@@novinceinhosic3531 Then, as I suspected, you are using dogmatism in an extremely technical way. Most people do not use the term that way, and you will not be understood if you use it that way. You will also frequently misunderstand other people if you assume that they are using your definition.
That's how most of the authoritarian communists groups act.
~3:29-3:50 It may also surprise many to learn that at the start of the 20th century, East Asian radicals largely thought of "Marxism" as a reformist ideology, while Revolutionary Socialism and Anarchism were almost synonymous terms. This only changed after the 1917 Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviks provided a clear example of Revolutionary Marxism. Also, if anyone is interested in learning a bit more about the Chinese Anarchist movement that influenced Mao, I have a short video about the topic on my channel, and plan to talk about it more extensively in the future, as well as possibly making a video just talking about Mao's ideological development further down the line.
Still an Ancom but I appreciate this video a lot.
That imagination anarchism forces your head into for a better world is the only thing giving me hope currently.
It's unfortunate a lot of the wannabe vanguard parties in my area are just shoddy and have this weird almost dogmatic hatred of anarchism.
It doesn't help that things get pretty fucking cultish with how the social culture develops especially in the study circles. I love reading, discussing, writing and sharing theory and history but when people are clapping to "just elect good officials and representatives for the vanguard" because the previous paragraph dogged on anarchism there's some twisted shit going on.
I'm no better I clapped along within that crowded muggy room but the dissonance was astonishing in that moment and I wonder what other dip shittery I clapped along to.
This isn't meant to be a knock against leftist study groups or a vanguard party but please take note and be aware of the culture you develop within your organizations especially early on when numbers are small.
I always stand by the fact it's right to rebel
I've never given much thought to MLM but I will definitely look into it more thanks to your video.
It would be great to see a video, or rather a mini-series, going deep into the history of the Cultural Revolution, what caused It, what were the mistakes committed during It that led to It being ended etcetera.
I would love to see this also. The cultural aspect of a socialist revolution has to be one of the most serious challenges. Mao criticised Stalin's period for putting emphasis on revolutionising the means of production and neglecting the cultural aspects of a revolution. For me, in this day and age and given the material conditions in developed countries, the cultural challenge would potentially far outweigh the economic challenges relating to the means of production. We are in a stage of development in which capitalists are producing commodities out of thin air, but we have means of production that could distribute resources the world over and the transfer to a socialist economic system (base) would be nowhere near as difficult as what the USSR faced during the revolutionising of the means of production during Stalin's period. The bourgeoisie will naturally not just hand everything over but, in the event that the proletariat seized power, it is bourgeois culture that would present the greatest difficulties in terms of overcoming its ideological reign for so many decades. I think that studying Mao's period and the PRC's attempts at this would be an incredibly valuable study. Bourgeois superstructural elements are far more embedded and advanced today in what some people call 'late stage capitalism' than they ever were in previous revolutions. Althusser's 'Ideological State Apparatus' is always good to read when considering the superstructural elements of capitalism.
@@the_local_bigamist so…state atheism and no family?
@@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482 That's a very narrow interpretation of socialist/marxist cultural theory lol.
@@jcivilis533 What else would MLM imply if applied to the USA and the “imperial core”?
I'm learning more about MLM, I'm a Marxist community organizer living in a very urban state in north America, it's the protracted people war that is really hard to imagine living in a place that the proletariat and lumpenproletariat are so violently separate from the land because of land value. Are there any resources for what that could look like in really urban/high cost of living areas like? Particularly in coastal north American cities that have a militarized police that breaks up any "illegal" encampments?
I've seen American Maoists focusing on organizing homeless folks, do you think organizing homeless people is the translation of MLM organizing in urban areas? I can understand that to some extent, but the trauma that these folks experience living under the state violence and lack of stability definitely gives me pause when it comes to organizing.
Great video, super informative, I'm thankful for any opportunity to learn more about the translation of rural remote/to urban when it comes to MLM organizing tactics.
Finally, I'm on time for once! Another upload, another banger, Paul! I'm running out of ways of saying "cool video!" :D
It's so difficult to find nuanced takes regarding anarchism from a Marxist's point of view, or vice versa. _It doesn't help that including the search term "Marxist" on the modern Internet just means you're bound to be bombarded with redscare nonsense..._
As an ex-anarchist, I'd beg any of those who haven't studied MLM to study it and take seriously the lessons of dialectical materialism, crit/self-crit, mass line, and so, so much more. I deeply wish someone had pulled me in a Marxist direction earlier, because my years of unprincipled and undirected action were unfocused, short-sighted, and - in retrospect - an unfortunate waste.
Emma Goldman would call bullshit, and no mention of enviromental protection and sustainable industry , remember both Lenin and Mao murdered Anarchists. As an indigenous anarchist who refuses to be a "worker", which is a term in the post-colonialist world to refer to colonized indigenous the world over. No central plan needed only mutual aid, only shared culture of LOVE. In fact Communist states have been as oppressive to indigenous peoples and as destructive to the environment, or more so, than capitalism. Mao the sparrow murderer.
They murdered counter-revolutionaries.
I'm a marxist who likes to consider myself an anarchist as well, but without getting into the nitty-gritty details of my ideology I can say that I agree with both you and Emma Goldman. Emma for me is a huge inspiration, as I take both people like her into account and Marxists (those marxists that support higher levels of decentralization) when I construct my analysis, I always dislike how MLs and MLMs seem to ignore comments like yours. I have yet to hear a good reason for their centralized power structures and how they are supposed to prevent all the problems that accured in their previous projects, it seems to fall on deaf ears unfortunaly.
MLM (maoist loving maoist)
Maosexual
This is revisionism. Maoists do not have sex, it's a distraction from the PPW
I'm joking obviously
No thanks, I'm an anarcho capitalist! But you can try to change my worldview.
Might well as call yourself a capitalist cause in capitalism the nature of competition itself makes sure that people will eventually fight for resources and power and only a few remain, and maintaining a system where everyone has equal power is just a naive understanding of how the world works
Multi Level Marketing truly is the revolution of our time lmao. Jokes aside, even though I am a Marxist, not a ML, i think it is important to study the history of all socialist projects to learn what they did right and wrong, even if just being able to formulate valid critizism or to self-critizise more effectively. Only because a leftist dislikes stalin doesn't mean they should not learn about soviet history. Especially when you dislike stalin or mao you should definitely do that. Only then are you able to effectively critizise. I often discover dogmatism in leftist discussions (from all stripes of leftists, Maoists, MLs, Anarchists, DemSocs etc.) and that's honestly a real problem. A lot of leftists don't seem to understand dialectic thought.
The key here is that centralization does not necessarily have to be authoritarian, though there is significant overlap. Any revolutionary movement MUST be done from a bottom-up structure. Collective central strategy must be decided by those at the bottom, otherwise, the power structures are identical to the existing ones and your revolution will inevitably create a new bourgeoisie, which what we saw in the USSR and China.
There are revolutionary groups that exist right now that are organized on libertarian structures and confederacies, like Zapatistas and Rojava.
i participated in 100 days plus of the george floyd uprisings, and you hit the nail on the head. i was frequently disappointed by the decentralized and directionless approach we had in comparison to the masses we had on the ground. i became MLM just over a year ago.
as an ML, i’m glad we’re finally admitting that anarchists and MLMs are basically interchangeable
The productive forces are developed enough. We're gonna do class struggle to transform the relations of production and there's nothing you can do to stop it, revisionist
@@Marxism_Today this reads like it was written by an AI trained on reddit posts
As a leftist who hasn't yet aligned to any tendency, this channel has made me more interested in MLMism. However I'm curious how MLMs address the shortcomings of the Chinese Revolution or whether there are any recommended readings on the topic? Are there critiques of MLM from an ML or Trotskyist perspective? Thanks for the content!
Critical reflection on what went wrong during the Chinese Cultural Revolution will require a full video in itself - I'll add it to the list 😊
There is a video by TheFinnishBolshevik critiquing Maoism, I believe it's called Thoughts on Maoism.
@@Marxism_Today That would be good Because I understand the good intentions of mlm theory, but I am personally foremost interested in history, that's where I get alot of my political views from and part of the reason of why I'm on the left.
While no academic expert, studying the history of the Soviet Union and Maoist china has let be to be very critical of those states as I'm sure you'd have to admit they did some pretty bad things historically, (including towards the working class itself). That's why I have been reluctant to study Leninist and Maoist theory in particular, having just dived in more seriously recently and I currently tend to agree more with libertarian socialist ideas, (although I do believe in a transitional state and therefore not an anarchist per'se) I'm quite sceptical of the vanguard party in practice. Theoretically I think its a good idea depending on the material conditions of the relevant country/society.
Theory is great but historically socialism doesn't have a great track record, especially concerning the Stalinist period. I am coming at this from a revolutionary socialist perspective, so I will admit the right wing does inflate the deaths suffered under communism and also I recognise that the Soviet Union for example did some good things, although I believe that's sort of tangential to my actual point.
I hope to hear from you, if not I understand you are probably busy.
Great content anyway comrade Paul!
As soon as a bureaucrat or leader shows up in the situation, I'm out.
Then you'll never accomplish anything ever.
Even more horizontal and democratic power structures have non-democratic power and leaders of some kind.
you need organization, be it with a leader or a group of leaders…
and no i dont mean in society; in protests and movements
I literally tried in my local anarchist chapter and they rejected this. Oh well, hopefully when I can afford to move I’ll find some more reasonable anarchists
"local anarchist chapter"? 😂
Chapter?
Grand video again! Filled in lots of gaps I have in knowledge on details of Maoism.
The bastion of this video is held up by the alleged context that Anarchism is incapable of producing a stateless, classless, moneyless society through revolution. While no one book can wholly prove this statement to be unequivocally true or false, I highly recommend the book "Anarchy Works" by Peter Gelderloos.
It's readable for even those who haven't read a lot of theory or who don't understand the intricacies of Anarchism and puts a large emphasis on historical material examples of non-hierarchical societies, movements, and groups. The reason I share this book is that if this is a good-faith video offering up a book from an ML/MLM perspective on the failures of Anarchism, then it is only fair also to provide a book to let the Anarchists (or at least Peter Gelderloos) speak for themselves and show that Anarchism is so much deeper than what it is portrayed and clear up common misconceptions.
Have a great day!
Thanks for the recommendation! I'll check it out
@@ABPHistory I apologize for the wall of text, as I realized very quickly there was no way I could succinctly reply to this whilst disputing what "accomplishments" means & providing anarchistic examples.
You must be talking to some very nihilistic anarchists. To that point, what are we declaring as "accomplishments"? Because, indeed, taking over multiple entire nations, such as Cuba, China, Laos, etc., is an accomplishment. But an accomplishment to what end? If socialism entails that the workers directly own the means of production, then what countries have truly made headway toward socialism? This isn't even considering the abolition of the state, class, or money. This is the absolute minimum to even bear the name "Socialist" without being dishonest. Do the workers control the means of production? If the answer is no, it isn't socialism. The reason for this is, as any communist living in a capitalist country knows, any benefit given to the workers from above can just as quickly be taken away. And secondly, as any communist also knows, this fantasy of the state "withering away" has never once come to fruition in 150+ years of constant attempts. So, in reality, whilst MLs and MLMs have conquered entire nations multiple times, this is essential in describing their GARGANTUAN failure with mounds upon mounds of evidence. Dominating and controlling such power with the might of the entire nation's GDP backing their effort and the workers have not once in the history of ML/MLM governments tangibly controlled the means of production themselves, only in namesake.
Yet in much smaller societies in comparison, there are actual living examples of people that control the means of production and have completely dissolved and abolished private property, money, class, and the state. Living up to the promises that Russia, China, and any other example country has unequivocally failed to keep to this day. Current modern examples are Freetown Christiania within Denmark, the community of Exarcheia in Greece, the Zapatista movement in Mexico, the Barcelona Squatter's Movement in Spain, and many, many more. And this isn't even counting the former societies such as Anarchist Ukraine, Revolutionary Catalonia, and many others that, whilst no longer active, put the means of production into the hands of the workers and made great strides towards communism. If we're discussing accomplishments, then let us talk about the accomplishments of socialism and not state capitalism. Societies that actually make strides towards a more egalitarian society and not just 150 years of empty promises of the state just "withering away" eventually.
@@ABPHistory I believe the reason you've seen this excerpt quite a few times isn't by mistake. The one infallible truth throughout history is that power structures and hierarchy inevitably seek to perpetuate themselves. This is thoroughly researched both theoretically and historically and is the core principle of why most Anarchists (including me) became such in the first place. The only example of the state withering away is when the Soviet Union voted itself out of existence against the will of the people into current modern-day fascist Russia. You might think this is a tired argument or hear it all the time, but there's a reason for it. It's unignorable, like an abusive ex that keeps promising you that they'll change but never have in the past and never will in the future. A power structure "withering away" defies logic entirely and, to this day, is pure fantasy. Hierarchical power structures historically can only be taken by force or threat of force, and communism will only truly be achieved when the people's revolution doesn't replace their State with another State.
@@ABPHistory That was a joke by the way, if you didn't catch it. I'm well aware of what Leninists (or more accurately Blanquists) conceptualize as the withering of the state. Funny how the only thing you responded to in that entire message was just my use of sarcasm. Ah, so be it; maybe it might allow you to ponder the idea that it might not be the smartest idea to hand the people's revolution over into the hands of a powerful few in the hope that it isn't undemocratically "restored" in 69 years without a single worker ever seeing faintest part of the ownership of the means of production.
- Also happy holidays!
"the State is like a vast slaughterhouse and an enormous cemetery, where under the shadow and the pretext of this abstraction (the common good) all the best aspirations, all the living forces of a country, are sanctimoniously immolated and interred." - Bakunin
“The State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.” - Nietzsche
I've seen that this channel speaks highly of the MLM armed forces in India and the Philippines, but I'm curious about it's stance on Shining Path? Does the MLM ideology promoted here match up with Gonzalo Thought? The brutality that group is accused of is quite staggering (boiling people alive etc.) and claiming human rights are reactionary is a massive turn off. Do you claim all that was fake, or that it was justified?
The MLM upheld by this channel aligns with that of the revolutionaries in the Philippines and India.
Both the MLM parties in the Philippines and in India have heavily criticised the errors of the Peruvian movement.
While overall upholding the successes of the revolutionary masses in places like Peru, we would have a lot of criticisms of them - not the least of which would be the extreme excesses of violence that occurred without any kind of rectification for these horrific events.
Like with every movement, build on the good parts and learn from the bad parts to ensure it never happens again.
@@Marxism_Today That's a good stance to have. I was also wondering what the MLM position was on the infighting that occurred during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I don't think you have a video on it? For instance, do they think the dissolution of the Shanghai People's Commune was a good thing? Do they dislike the more radical Red Guards for being ultra-left, or dislike the Scarlet Guards for defending CPC bureaucracy? I know they dislike Deng for revisionism, but views on the other factions are unclear.
as an anarchist that doesnt go around calling all ML(M)s redfash, i was always interested in the peoples war. this video definitely makes me want to study it more!
I do think the Dialectical Synthesis point of Anarchism and MLM is going to be the ideology that truly makes real the revolution, but what exact form that will take I dare not to claim to know.
An Anarchist society in my opinion should be the end end goal. The way to get there is the hard part. One thing that is missing that is extremely essential to have in this revolution is intersectionality. All systems of oppression are connected, so we need to be fighting all of them together. Patriarchy is to gender as Capitalism is to the economy. The similarities are too immense to ignore. Systems of oppression are one organism. We need a case study of the linkage between Patriarchy/other hierarchies and the Soviet Union / China. What systems of hierarchy turn people into counter-revolutionaries, and what can we do to mitigate them during the revolution?
Couldn’t agree more
I like this video, but I find your framing that this is the "most advanced" thinking on the left to fall into a hierarchical progress trap. I find a more helpful to look more broadly. Ultimately it's good to have a diversity of thought as a wider pool to draw from.
All MLs started as anarchists. Its just a matter of reading and time to make the transition.
Mostly, yes. And most MLMs started as MLs who then developed over time through studying theory and testing that theory out in practice.
@Marxism_Today yup its all a process of refinement and improvement. Which is why extending the olive branch like this was great for everyone.
You make some valid points. I’m still concerned about totalitarianism. I do believe there needs to be a an active group of paraprofessional revolutionaries though. Although I’m 63 I plan to train myself in revolutionary warfare. And I will encourage others to do likewise. In the meantime what books can I read to learn more of Maoism?
Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought! Long Live Naxalbari! Long Live the Indian New Democratic Revolution!
Bro be careful.... Indian government might track your internet data. They might frame you as an anti indian.
@@abuthahirumarhathab4201 if we operated on the basis of fear, we'd never have any revolution to begin with. And with the Hindutva fascist reactionaries in power at the helm of the Indian State, they'd frame anything and everything against them as "anti-Indian" while they continue to remain the biggest traitors to the broad, toiling masses of India.
bruh, that better not be unironic support for Gonzalo
@@folke_hagall2946 it's unironic support for Chairman Gonzalo.
@@anushghosh4606 Umm, yeah. I am a student staying in a hostel. I had a terrible experience once. Generally, in one hostel room, we have 3 students living together. I went to my friends room for something i dont remember clearly. But my friend's roommate asked me to get out of the room. I asked why. He said it is because of my religion. All this doesn't stop here. I went to another classmate's room regarding internship (for which he is incharge of it). While i was going into his room, I noticed that he with his friends were watching news about muslim's house being demolished in UP. They were cheering for it. I did not utter a word. But then they asked me "Why your community is so bad?" To which I answered "I am an atheist. I don't believe in any religion so dont lump me with any community". And whenever I comment something, there are a bunch of people calling me jihadis. All of those guys are indians. I guarantee it. I agree that we should not operate on the basis of fear. But i think that we can have the criticisms in mind while we try to educate as much people as possible about why this capitalist economic system and all other previous systems are not sustainable. And make all workers think in a scientific manner. Then we can plan for revolution. I don't want to say anything about naxals. If i say something, the govt may pursue me. I would say one thing: I feel pity for them due to lack of support for them from the Indian working class.
A lot in the comment section are nothing more than paper tigers
I remember my anarchist phase. It was the ideological ecletism and lack of organization that eventually drove me away.
Yeah I’m actually 100% confused by anarchists. They really believe they can overcome capitalism without any type of large organization?? I feel like reactionaries will just take back everything from revolutionaries at that point.
would you like to come back
@@guyfauks2576 for conversation, most times. I've been a marxist for quite some time so I dont think I'll ever go back to the anarchocommununist phase of my political development.
My man being disappointed at the lack of organisation within anarchists is the comedic irony I live for
I’m convinced that western society has degraded and caved to individualism so much that only some form of libertarian socialism would ever be accepted by society. Everywhere else has hope for ML
Where does "western" end & "eastern" begin? Asking because I live in the _Eastern Shore_ region of the mid-Atlantic United States & we refer to every place west of the Mississippi river as "the west" 😉
There is no meaningful compromise. I mean, you can be a straight up anticommunist social democrat and western society will treat you as if you were literally Stalin. Since you're going to have to disabuse people of bourgeois myths to get anywhere anyway, you might as well just go all in on ML(M). The idea that the revolution can or will begin in the imperial core is a pipe dream, anyway. Our best hope is that third world movements like the one in India see enough success that eventually they can surround the US and EU (kind of like a bigger scale picture of how Maoists approach revolution in a single country).
Totally approved fom someone who went through this exact pipeline. I'd maybe argue that one thing even harder to get over than indivudalism was changing my perception on whole periods of history since with anarchism it's easier to fall into individualistic dogmatism of following the correct, non-scarred line by alienating oneself from whole (propagandised and falsificated) history of atrocities and failures of communist experiments.
The one thing I think you could've brought up in this video is analyses of French May 68, due to the historical context and cultural influence of Chinese style socialism and GPCR over Soviet at that period for western communist groups. IMO this is the prime contemporary evidence that anarchist revolutionary will is almost sufficient, with the present vanguard unwilling to capitulate to electoralism etc. it can be sufficient even in the core.
To anarchist - maoist unity, people complementing the party and vice versa and to maybe 10 unironic mao-spontex adherers.
Cheers!
It's incredible how so many disingenuous arguments can be made so genuinely. You answer none of the critics of hierarchies and the state made by anarchism which makes this video look a lot more like thoughtless propaganda than any sort of argument.
This video pushed me over the edge into no longer considering myself an anarchist. Don't know if I would consider myself an ML or MLM yet (haven't done that reading yet), I actually understand Marxism as a science now, and I can almost understand dialectics!
Ayoooo congratulations! Welcome aboard.
Let me know if you have Discord - you can come join our server if you'd like
Please read Marx first and don't automatically assume the right brand of Marxism is Leninism. Try Luxembourg, Paul Mattick, Pannekoek, etc. to learn about opposing theorists of Marxism.
You're not anything yet if a single video can so readily change your mind- rather than committing to a factional leftist ideology do more reading, or absorb a wider and more diverse range of leftist content if you can't spare the time or stamina
Why the hostility to Individualist Anarchism? I kind of like their mission to liberate the will of the individual from external determinants.
Because it prevents genuine liberation. It is an obstacle to ending oppression, offering nothing more than individualistic delusions in place of genuine freedom.
Ape alone, weak.
Apes together, strong.
@@Marxism_Today Six months later, I get it. Radical egalitarianism, through the prism of individual associations, could be what Lenin called "bourgeois ideology, turned inside out," augmenting liberal concepts, rather than extrapolating the fundamental flaws and altering the overall framework.
As an Anarchist, I've had a lot of respect for Maoist thought, and I'd be the first to admit that Anarchism has issues.
However this video doesn't really address the Anarchist criticism of centralized power. The Cultural Revolution didn't stop China from turning capitalism, and neither did Tactical Decentralization or the Mass Line. The party still holds the material means to enforce decisions - and so they can simply ignore the masses (just as in Capitalist democracy).
And this video repeats stereotypes of Anarchists that apply to all of the left:
Both Anarchists and Maoists have lost most of their regions to capitalism (whether by conquest or revisionism). The majority of both Anarchists and Maoists are ineffectual and spend too much time online. Even if you change ideology, it won't change that you're still a guy commenting on social media.
Yes, Maoism has successes in India and the Philippines (as shown in the clips), but there also Anarchist-adjacent successes in Rojava and Chiapas/the Zapatistas.
Nevertheless, Maoism has a lot to offer: Anarchism needs more discussions of concrete tactics. It's already been used effectively by the Black Panthers, who adapted Mao's rural strategy for urban environments.
Instead of in-fighting and dogmatically asserting that one ideology is correct, we should scientifically analyze the past and learn from mistakes. And most importantly: actually do something, instead of just commenting online.
7:16 idk y anarchists would be opposed to this but I have experienced this. Its more anarchal to do it this way than what they often propose. The anarchist movement has much to learn still. I think its be best if it was only held together by a few core values/ideals like communal cooperation, shared resources, societal progression whatever that means for the community; things like that and let each community go deeper on their own.
I want any anarchist that saw this video to think long and hard about the current state of China, of the people who live there, and of the ideals that are(or, more specifically, aren't) upheld by the chinese party.
Do you want that? Does that appeal to you?
Think about it.
Of modern capitalist China? The China that has been on the capitalist road since Mao's death and the ensuing counter-revolution led by Deng Xiaoping began, leading to full capitalist restoration today, and that is opposed by MLMs?
@@Marxism_Today
Yes, of that China, that came about through the work of Mao, and still holds him in high regard.
Modern Russia holds Stalin in high regard. You think that modern Russia is the same as Stalin's USSR?
Obviously not. They uphold these figures in name only for nationalist reasons to trick the people and consolidate their bourgeois domination of the masses.
@@Marxism_Today
Never said they're the same. But yes, modern Russia is heavily influenced by Stalin's policies and also holds him in high regard. Turns out if you build an awful authoritarian regime and kill people for farting in the wrong direction, other authoritarian regimes really like you. Weird, that.
You honestly can't see the difference between revolution and counter-revolution, can you?
Polar opposites like up and down are the very same thing to you
... no leftist movement should take inspiration from the state capitalists that were lenin and mao.
This video is full of false assumptions about anarchism and ml revolutions : the idea that anarchist are individualist, or funniest of all that the maoist revolution was succesfull.
16:17 "tried and tested" where is the maoist state ? Where is the the marxist leninist state or organization ? Cause anarchist don't have to bother with theories on this, we have our arnarchic examples living and breathing in the real world : cecosesola, rojava and others.
This is just a desperate attempt at converting anarchist into authoritarian leftist.
Don't forget Chiapas, Mexico, a Zapatista run city democratically by workers.
I gotta say, as an anarchists, I thought this video was super interesting! Would you happen to have any recommendations for good books for studying mlm? Good video, comrade!
Mao, On Practice and On Contradiction are good places to start
(From an anarchist) This video is amazing! Though the criticisms of individualistic anarchism could be conflated with general anarchism, the other cristicism are well done. Anarchists are (ironically) not centralised on goals and this is normallt because of our weird phobia of any hierarchy. I think a semi centralised organisation is best to push anarchist views with leaders being subject to change by the people. And about MLM, if a proletariat maoist state can properly meet the burden of proof needed for such a hierarchy without the concentration of power away from the general proletariat I'm all for it! I'm just skeptical on a state's reluntancy to do such an action. I still think complete decentralisation of the economy and the state (expect from stuff like military to fight off capitalists which would be semi centralised) is best to reaching communism. Though I'll always support felloe communist revolutions and hopefully help keep power to the people in any state socialist scenario. While I know that leftist unity is implausible, I hope state socialists and anarchists alike can properly give criticisms to eachother so we can build a more free, egalitarian and secure communist future.
What documentaries is he playing? Particularly the one where the soldiers wear the hammer and sickle face paint. I wanna watch it
Anarchist here. The issue with this viewpoint is the idea that Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism are "tried and tested" just ain't accurate. These strategies led to brutal wars and the starvation of millions of people, and the countries that had these revolutions are now capitalist authoritarian states. Just because someone clearly writes down a plan does not mean that plan works, and we've watched them not work, to the disastrous effect. We need a new plan. To reiterate, look at the state of China and Russia now. Seem ideal? Both are comparable if not worse than neo-liberal capitalism.
While i may not be an MLM i do find learning from their methodology to be important not because they are right, concrete results have proven otherwise but because it is a necessary part of the process of dialectics. The Soviets did some things right and some things wrong same with Mao's China. Same thing within China with Deng and Mao. The point of Xi Jinping's methodology is to find a synthesis between both Deng's and Mao's way of doing things in accordance with the dialectical method. This is why learning from MLMs is important. We need to learn from them as well as MLs (which i identify as) in order to create a higher level understanding through synthesizing the thesis (ML) and the antithesis (MLM) to advance theory further
When I first got into the Left, I had an anarchist phase too. Of course, I was later won over to MLM by Dialectical Materialism (by your Socialism 101 series, no less!)
Delighted to hear these videos have had at least some kind of real-world impact ❤️
In fairness to Mao, anyone who reads Kropotkin is likely to be influenced. Clear and ferociously intense analysis of the necessity of mutualism to complex organisms in general, and human beings specifically, in the same stroke of the pen. Certainly strikes me like ringing a bell every time.
I do have my reservations about the cultural revolution and mass line, especially as it was implemented in the Chinese Revolution. As previous revolutions have shown, the mass of the proletariat has a level of inertia to it. Specifically, large swathes of the proletariat build their identity around superstructures, which leads them to resist cultural revolution. Meanwhile, all successful subversions of superstructures have been invariably carried out by a vanguard party with privileged access to means of communication. This leads me to question the very possibility of cultural revolutions against the vanguard party, as a vanguard party in a socialist state has the ability to contain any such revolution from spreading amongst the proletarian masses unless a more tactical united counter-party exists as the vanguard of such a revolution.
With the Mass line, as can be again seen with the CPC post-Mao, it is entirely possible for revolutionaries to deliberately ignore the will of the proletariat while pretending to be utilizing the mass line.
As you said @Marxist Paul , when the tools of MLM are used correctly, they can stop revisionism. My main concern is the people who will be able to exercise those tools won't have the incentive to use them
@@novinceinhosic3531ur mom
"If used correctly" is the laziest part of the whole pitch, this coming from my vage understanding of mlm philosophy itself. Trying to see revisionism (and its violent consequences against the people) as just an undeveloped stance, or lack of principles in leadership, before and instead the result of economical forces and dialectical processes within the revolutionary movement itself. If no one believes the state will wither away, why would anyone believe that the same vanguard creating this state will have in its interest the fostering of its own destruction?
An/LibComs I think basically want the cultural revolution first, achieving change in consciousness, as part of the masses themselves, throught direct change in reality. And if power is always going to be agains that no matter what, what difference makes the color of the enemy flag?
@@novinceinhosic3531 Because I check youtube only once or twice in a month, and I am too lazy to change it.
If, after studying Maoism, and learning about the great famine, Pol Pot, and Shining Path. You still become a Maoist. You're a nihilist, not a Marxist.
Pol Pot was not a Maoist. The PCP were left-deviationists. And it was Mao's China that solved "the great famine", ensuring such things would never happen again. Bunk points.
@@Marxism_Today "we only starved 50 million people once" isn't much of a gotcha, and Shining Path and Khmer Rouge were definitely Maoists.
Right, everything bad in communism is Maoist. And everything good is not Maoist. Either that or you're a liberal who hasn't taken the time to unlearn anti-communist propaganda. If the latter, start here: mronline.org/2006/09/21/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward/
"Trust me anarkiddy, pappa stalin is the only way to help you"
Cultural revolution, as an Anarchist, is necessary to study. I fully agree. If you wanted a tl;dr, that's it. Great video, Paul.
Studied it... came to this conclusion: Vanguardism is dead without the USSR funding armies. At BEST, Vanguardism brought undeveloped nations to a basic level of development....on par with the leading capitalist nations but never gave autonomy or agency to the working class. It made the local intelligentsia into the new rulers. In developing countries, it has proven to be a C+ movement at best. In the US and Canada...Leninist movements are a sorry circle jerk of college campus NGOs that break movements from the inside with entryist tactics and reading group stagnancy.
Anarchists and/or Anti-Authoritarians have been leading the radical left in protest movements in North America, while Libertarian-Socialist ideologies have done well in places like Rojava and Chiapas. People respond well to Direct Democracy.
Rojava is anything but a democracy, and EZLN is a popular front of Maoists, Anarchists, indigenous leaders, who extend solidarity to both the Cuban Revolution and the Bolivarian Revolution. Bad Faith Comment.
@jprole8508 I'll believe the actual information coming out of Rojava instead of rumors from some online tankie that has a hard on for the Baath party.
Also... your input on Chiapas couldn't be more irrelevant. You can be an ally to another country without having tge same ideology. I find it surprising I would even have to explain that. Zapatistas have denounced vanguardism. Call yourself what u want. If you build direct democracy amongst the lower class, it's actual revolution. Not the same as the traditional leninist/stalinist states we're used to. You have no clue. Read theory.
@@j.leonardo260 When a "tankie" believes something out of Russia, China whatever, youll nag at them for believing "russian/chinese campist propaganda" But believing rojava propaganda is fine. Sure Jan.
And many MLs do support the Zapatistas along with other anti imperialist countries/projects that arent (explicitly ML) and are attacked and deplatformed for doing so because unlike your unnecesarity combative ass, we dont give a fuck about labels or treat this as a team sport, we admire anyone who stand up to western hegemony, grow up and stop being so sectarian.
@@j.leonardo260 If so called "tankies" believed the information coming out of China, Russia etc, you would nag at them for believing "Russian/Chinese campist propaganda"
2. MLs do support the Zapatistas just like we support all anti-imperialist countries that aren't (explicitly) ML, and have regularly been demonized and deplatformed for doing so, because unlike you, we don't treat this like a team sport. Grow up, stop being sectarian, and come off this degenerate, psychopathic debate bro Vaush nonsense.
@@j.leonardo260 and yet you wouldn't believe the info coming out of the CPC. Hypocrite.
I shall reconcile Anarchism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with Nikita Khrushchev thought as expressed in the 1961 programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
My journey as a leftist: starts as an unread ancom, joins a trotskyist group and reads lots of theory, leaves the trots to be a principled ML, reads more theory and lots of Mao, realizes I come to the same conclusions as MLMs. Hmmm...