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Marxist-Leninist ☭

Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don’t know where to start? Check out my Marxist-Leninist study guides, both basic and advanced!

  • 5 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: December 31st, 2023

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  • Your last paragraphs again prove my point of China and Vietnam progressing after having liberalised their economies. Of course, they didn’t become US or Singapore. But they had to let go of socialist doctrines.

    Wrong. Both the PRC and Vietnam were rapidly developing prior to increasing marketization, and socialism was not abandoned, but strengthened. Marketization of secondary industries stableized growth, it did not create growth:

    Secondly, the soviets stopped Russification from the Tsar. Stalin did not implement Russification, it was stopped by Lenin and Stalin protected that. Ethnic minorities were protected. As for Afghanistan, the legitimate government requested aid from the soviets, the soviets did not invade.

    As for the protection of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, none of what you said is true. Mandarin, for example, is taught while Uyghur language and culture is protected. You are sidestepping the mountain of resources provided to you to double down. Socialism is rising, and was not defeated. The USSR falling was a tragedy, but the PRC is the largest economy in the world by PPP and is driving the world forward, thanks to their socialist system.



  • The USSR was not “Russified.” It was a federation of multi-national ethnicities, which were protected by the soviets. Tsarist Russification was stopped by the soviets. Advocating for a common writing system and language was done alongside vast literacy programs and protecting ethnicities and languages. National liberation was taken incredibly seriously by the soviets.

    Tibet was a feudal slave society backed by the CIA. The PLA liberated Tibet. Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth:

    Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” [12]

    Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. [13] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” [14] In fact it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

    Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeatedremoved, beginning at age nine. [15] The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

    In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [16] The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care. They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land — or the monastery’s land — without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. [17] Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. [18]

    As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

    One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” [19] Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed. [20]

    The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery. [21]

    The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

    Regarding Xinjiang, the best and most comprehensive resource I have seen so far is Qiao Collective’s Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Qiao Collective is a group of Chinese diaspora living in the west, and they compiled an extremely comprehensive write-up of the entire background of the events, the timeline of reports, and real and fake claims. The majority of their sourcing is western, and they cite official Chinese government writing and white papers when relevant. Uyghur culture is preserved.

    I also recommend reading the UN report as well as (especially) China’s response to it, which eclipses it in size and detail.These are the most relevant accusations and responses without delving into straight up fantasy like Adrian Zenz, Christian nationalist and professional propagandist for the Victims of Communism Foundation, does. Zenz’ work has been thoroughly discredited, yet is supported by western media for its utility in fearmongering. An example is lying about 8.7% of new IUDs as 80%, to back up claims of “forced sterilization,” from this chart:

    As for the socialist market economies of Vietnam and China, they are not liberalized, and are still socialist. Private ownership is secondary to public, and is relegated to small/medium firms, as well as highly competitive, non-critical industries like tech. The commanding heights of the economy are overwhelmingly publicly owned, while private ownership typically is found in secondary industries and highly competitive non-critical industries like tech. In China, the CPC often has controlling shares of private companies as well, especially the larger ones. As these private firms grow, they are socialized and often folded into the public sector. This is why public ownership is the principal aspect of their economies, and determines the nature of Vietnam the PRC’s path on the socialist road.

    See also the stages of socialism presented by Chinese economists, like Cheng Enfu:

    The character of the state is a dictatorship of the proletariat. Whole-Process People’s Democracy is the form of consultative democracy in China. Local candidates are directly elected, and then these ladder upwards in indirect elections. The top conducts many surveys and tries to find policy from the people via the Mass Line, while practicing democratic centralism and maintaining the ability to quickly respond to changing conditions. Long-term policy change is slow but positive as consensus is built, short-term crisis is quickly adapted to as needed.

    Both Vietnam and China have similar systems with unique characteristics best fitting their conditions.





  • I personally am economically extremely communist while being very anti-soviet and anti-CCP, because I disagree with their authoritarian methods of enforcing socialism.

    Any socialist country that exists will need to use the state to oppress capitalists, fascists, and reactionaries. The working class holding state power over capitalists is a good thing. Being “extremely communist” while opposing all possible methods of building socialism isn’t being a communist, it’s letting the perfect version of socialism in your head become the enemy of existing socialism.





  • A lot of Lemmy.world users sign up because they believe it to be a “neutral” instance, and just want a drop-in FOSS reddit replacement. The truth is that Lemmy.world is highly partisan, particularly of the establishment DNC variety. Liberal zionism, anti-communism, and more are the mainstays of Lemmy.world admins and moderators, but many users don’t realize it until much later. Further, Lemmy.world defederates and censors communist and other leftist instances, creating a walled garden where their users cannot even see opposition.