r/communism

Hello comrades,

I’m working on a long-term political discussion project based in South Africa called Red Vanguard South Africa, and I wanted to share it here to get feedback from other Marxist, communist, and left-wing perspectives.

The aim is not to copy existing movements, but to develop a South African socialist framework grounded in material conditions, anti-imperialism, and working-class power, while drawing from broader Marxist traditions.

The core direction of the project includes:

Economic Structure

Expansion of worker cooperatives across key industries

Public ownership of strategic sectors (mining, energy, transport, land, infrastructure)

Local beneficiation and industrialisation instead of raw material export dependency

Planning-oriented economic development with social priorities

Class & Employment

Strong focus on full employment through state-led infrastructure and industrial projects

Large-scale public works programs and skills development

Apprenticeships, vocational training, and youth employment pipelines

Strengthening working-class organisation and workplace democracy

Social Programs

Universal access to housing, healthcare, and education

Expanded social protection systems (including basic income discussions)

Strong public health infrastructure and preventive care systems

Support systems for elderly, disabled, and marginalised communities

Political Structure

Deepened democratic participation at community and workplace level

Strong anti-corruption systems and transparent procurement

Community oversight of public institutions

Integration of workers into decision-making structures

Environment & Development

Sustainable industrialisation with environmental protection

Clean energy transition and infrastructure renewal

Public sanitation, water security, and ecological restoration

Cooperative-based agriculture and food sovereignty

Internationalism

Anti-imperialist foreign policy outlook

Support for liberation and anti-colonial struggles globally

Strong Pan-African cooperation and regional solidarity

South–South cooperation between developing nations

This is still a developing framework, and I’m specifically looking for serious Marxist critique, theoretical feedback, and practical critique of feasibility rather than surface-level agreement or disagreement.

If you’re interested in engaging with these ideas or contributing to the discussion around socialist strategy in the Global South, you’re welcome to join the subreddit:

r/RedVanguardSA

Solidarity.

I've been trying to research for any groups, orgs, parties, etc in the area that uphold communist values and directly support local unhoused and impoverished populations, and i figured here would be a good place to ask. im eager to organize but i want to be able to support preexisting groups if possible

We made this because Reddit's algorithm prioritises headlines and current events and doesn't allow for deeper, extended discussion - depending on how it goes for the first four or five times it'll be dropped or continued.

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[ Previous Bi-Weekly Discussion Threads may be found here https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AWDT ]

> X. Conclusions and fundamental tasks

> [...] Having reached this point with the findings, the fundamentally economic and social character of the racial problem in Latin America is clearly stated and the duty that all Communist Parties have to prevent the self-interested deviations that the bourgeoisies intend to bring to the solution of this problem, orienting it in an exclusively racial sense, just as they have the duty to accentuate the social economic character of the struggles of the exploited indigenous or black masses, destroying racial prejudices, giving to these same masses a clear class consciousness, directing them to their concrete and revolutionary demands, distancing them from utopian solutions and evidencing their identity with the mixed-race and white proletarians, as elements of the same producing and exploited class.

> Thus, once again, revolutionary thought is clarified in the face of the campaigns for the alleged current politics of Indians and blacks.

> The C.I. fought, as far as the black race was concerned, these campaigns that tended to the formation of “black Zionism” in Latin America.

> In the same way, the constitution of the Indian race in an autonomous State would not lead at the present time to the dictatorship of the Indian proletariat, much less to the formation of a classless Indian State, as someone has tried to affirm, but to the constitution of a bourgeois Indian State with all the internal and external contradictions of bourgeois States.

> Only the classist revolutionary movement of the exploited indigenous masses will be able to allow them to give real meaning to the liberation of their race, from exploitation, favoring the possibilities of their political self-determination.

>Mariátegui, El problema de las razas en la América Latina, 1929

I was re-reading this text by José Carlos Mariátegui, and it was a interesting read, with some very convincing explanations in a very under-researched topic. Still, at its conclusion (in my view at least, it could be terribly wrong), Mariátegui seems to prefer this line of a "popular front of all nations" (in this case, the white/mestizo oppressor nation, and the oppressed Black and Indigenous nations.) against semi-feudalism, landlordism and imperialism, rather than a line of self-determination for Black and indigenous peoples. This line of self-determination was followed by some CI parties, like the Brazilian CP, until it was abandoned in favor of a line of a anti-fascist 'popular front of all races', that ended up in failure at 1935.

In the way that I see, the white/mestizo oppressor nations in Latin America (which control the state apparatus in almost all countries, from Mexico to Argentina; excluding perhaps Haiti) are the main opponents of revolution in Latin America, since their better conditions of life are based on the oppression/exploitation of the oppressed Black and Indigenous nations, somewhat reminiscent of their North American counterparts. In my view, this would explain, in part, on why Latin America, when compared to Asia and Africa, has less ongoing liberation wars/revolutions and more reformist and revisionist parties.

Mariátegui, which died one year after writing that text, hasn't had that hindsight that we have nowadays. He might have reconsidered that text and wrote more on the topic. Still, his work came to influence very relevant organizations, like the PCP, which in turn, have influenced far-less relevant organizations, which to this day, refuse to acknowledge this national/"racial" inequalities, which in turn, produces national chauvinism.

I want to know what other people think about all of this. I treat all of this as an hypothesis, that could help me to understand Marxism, by applying it to real problems that i face (national chauvinism). As any hypothesis, it could be very incorrect and expose a very poor handling of dialectical materialism and political economy. All criticism is appreciated.

Brushing up on Fascist history before I read R.P Dutt and I’ve only seen great praise on Richard Evan’s trilogy of Nazi Germany. Reading the actual book though it’s incredibly detailed and seems like a thorough history but I’m not quite sure from which political framework Evan’s is approaching it from. It comes across as slightly sympathetic to Marxist movements with jabs here and there on communism but overall it seems good. Some sections that come across as anti-communist do contradict the things I’ve heard from fellow marxists but never actually looked into (this is my first serious reading of Nazi History) like some remarks on Rosa Luxembourg’s efficacy as an organizer but idk. Is this a compatible reading of Nazi History with a Marxist framework?