r/communism101

Settler municipal goverments in mass are begining to ban the use of public funds for ALPR and other self contained network surveillance systems. This tech has existed for a while.

It seems like there have been a few high profile cases of pigs using them to rape and murder women and generally facilitate gender oppression. But that's nothing new. The settler bourgeoisie is usually happy to accommodate the mass surveillance of their internal colonies. What changed?

I am Brazilian, and it is practically certain that the son of the fascist, Flávio Bolsonaro, will become the new president. I recognize that Social Democracy is the gateway to fascism, and it's impossible for there to be real change in labor relations as long as we depend on these bourgeois elections within this capitalist system.

I consider myself a Maoist and I admire Gonzalo and the Peruvian people's war from the bottom of my heart, as well as the current Indian and Filipino guerrilla movements. But I'm very confused about how to deal with the elections in my country.

It seems that not voting is seen as disregarding the small benefits that the working class enjoys under this Social Democratic government. The rise of a fascist government, a direct lackey of Yankee imperialism, would extinguish any remaining breath of fresh air we have. I understand that with or without Lula in power, any imperialist power can invade our country, but I really don't know what to think about the contradictions of voting.

Is it sheer hypocrisy for a Maoist to "support" these revisionists/opportunists? I know there's no real change within this bourgeois system, but I keep thinking about the millions who were able to have food to eat, free medical care, free housing, and the opportunity to study because of these programs made by such revisionists.

I want to emphasize that I detest this filth called the left, but I truly have family and friends who are only alive because of their support. Am I a disgrace? Should I be boycotting? I feel like a disoriented child, with no one to confide in.

P.S.: One thing that bothered me quite a bit about the supposed Maoists who follow a certain independent newspaper is their transphobic and punitive rhetoric, almost on a Nazi level. Statements like "the people deserve fascism," "I hope they suffer a lot," etc.

I wonder what Presidents Mao and Gonzalo would think of these statements from their supposed supporters, wishing the worst for their class.

Across various Marxist works, the proletarian revolution sometimes seems to be presented as a historical inevitability, and sometimes seemingly as an outcome that communists have a moral duty to work towards and achieve. For instance, Marx and Engels say in The Communist Manifesto that

>The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

On the other hand, in A Great Beginning, Lenin says:

>We must carefully study the feeble new shoots, we must devote the greatest attention to them, do everything to promote their growth and "nurse” them. Some of them will inevitably perish. We cannot vouch that precisely the "communist subbotniks” will play a particularly important role. But that is not the point. The point is to foster each and every shoot of the new; and life will select the most viable.

I get that these two views aren't contradictory. In fact this quote from The Eighteenth Brumaire explains quite succinctly why developments are brought about by a mix of conscious and unconscious forces, on a societal level:

>Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

What I'm confused by is whether this view is applicable on an individual level. To what extent do individuals have "free will" (meaning a capacity to make choices that is somewhat independent from their material conditions)? Given that individuals are just an "ensemble of the social relations" (Theses on Feuerbach), it seems like they have no free will at all, but in that case I don't understand why Marx, Engels, and Lenin would appeal to the proletariat on the basis of "duty", which seems to suggest some degree of free will (such as regarding the choice whether to do their duty). Alternatively, a better question might be: how should I understand the concept of "free will"? Recommendations for authors or texts would also be highly appreciated.

Side note: I find it interesting to consider Althusser's Contradiction and Overdetermination, where he speaks of "the relative autonomy of the superstructures", in relation to this. But once again I'm unsure as to whether the concept can be applied on an individual level.

Edit: I did look through both this sub and r/communism for posts on free will, but for the most part people just provided the same quote from The Eighteenth Brumaire that I have included here and did not really explain further. To reiterate, my confusion is regarding why communists appeal to the proletariat on the basis of duty, which seems to presume the existence of individuals with some amount of free will, if ultimately these things do not exist or are just illusions.

In my country (Canada) for example, there are 3 active communist parties. All of them subscribe to the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and uphold the vanguard party as the necessary vehicle for revolutionary change. Despite sharing all of the same goals, they all remain separate parties.

The Marxist Leninist party split from the original communist party in the 70’s because they thought they had become revisionist for supporting Khrushchev. Neither party denounces Stalin or Mao, and both view the Soviet Union as an example of actually existing socialism, yet neither have made any attempt to reconcile in the last 50 years.

The Revolutionary Communist Party is another group that seems to advocate for the exact same overarching ideas and policies, but differs from the other two in that it rejects “Socialism in One Country” and the legacy of Stalin and Mao, in favour of Trotsky and his theory of “Permanent Revolution.” Why does it matter whether or not you like Stalin or Trotsky, or think the Soviet Union should have embraced X policy or not over 100 years ago. None of these things seem to have any bearing to me on the implementation of socialism today, let alone in a country these things have nothing to do about.

Am I missing something?

So ive been a Marxist-Leninist for a long time now and one if the things I keep coming back to the purges of the late 30's. I find the whole Stalin evil paradigm to be false. However the entirety of the purges to be a polarizing time in Soviet society as it seems the entirety of Soviet society was imploding from paranoia over the encroaching Fascist wave and in some aspects suffering from a lack of bureaucratic oversight. One thing that never sat well with me was the historical narrative that Stalin personally sent Ramón Mercader to assassinate Leon Trotsky in an exta-legal fashion. When in all reality the anto-Soviet bloc that Trotsky was apart of could have been grounds for him to legally execute Trotsky. That never made any sense to me. I could fully see the NKDV acting without oversight approving an assassination of Trotsky seeing how out-of-hand that iteration of Checkists was.

What is the objective narrative around this? Sources required.

(I am based in the global south, in case this context matters down the line)

I am not new to Marxism-Leninism, but ever since I split from the mainstream Dengist line I've been more and more considering to reassess many of the established beliefs I have had since I got class and political consciousness. The issue is that I genuinely don't know if a particular principle is correct or needs reassessment, namely the gender question, specifically the right approach to combating the patriarchal tendencies in the system without delving into liberal identity politics.

The thing I really want to hear more about is your suggested approach to this issue.

I don't want to make false claims unintentionally, so I won't assume some of the things I've heard many radical feminists say online are the norm or not.

Gender oppression is real, and it's systemic, but does that mean gender takes an equal level of focus as class in our struggle?

If we take Lenin's and Mao's approaches then we could say gender (and other identities) is very important to struggle for, but not at the cost of working class solidarity. But a smaller resistant line says that Lenin and Mao spoke for their own contemporary social standards and norms and that it's justified to divide the working class into identity-based categories in order to ensure all other struggles aside from class are dealt with properly. Is this correct or not?

I have done research inside this subreddit to find if this was answered before, but I couldn't find an answer to my exact confusion (Perhaps I missed it so I apologize in that case). The most recurring past answers are very old (when this place was possibly more broad than it is today) and they fluctuate between pro-identity politics and full on what some people consider class reductionism. But since this place underwent a structural and principled change in recent years, I wanna hear a clearer opinion.