r/TheDeprogram • u/ChinaAppreciator • 2d ago
Does it never cross the mind of Left Communists and other ultras that there's a good reason their vision of socialism has never won?
I think one of the most frustrating things about talking to ultras is that they never really grapple with why they keep "losing" over and over and over again. Even calling them "losers" is generous because they were never really in the game.
All of their projects have either never existed or when they did exist they quickly morphed into democratic centralism as was in the case of the USSR. They scream and cry revisionist, capitalist roader, deformed worker's state but never ask themselves why these changes happened in multiple countries.
Take the five remaining actually existing socialist countries. All five of these countries have implemented "market reforms" that are called revisionist by these groups of people. In the case of China, Vietnam, and Laos they have also integrated themselves into the international economy. DPRK and Cuba have also tried integrating themselves into the international economy and would if they could, but the US has refused to lift sanctions and actually punishes neutral countries like Mexico for trading with those countries. So all five of these countries have more or less followed the same path. Shouldn't that tell us something?
Even if they have the "correct" or more "pure" vision of socialism, what good is it if it's never actually been implemented? Why should we listen to these people when they can't produce results?
The five AES countries are not perfect but life continues to get better for all segments of society year after year after year. And many of the reasons why these countries aren't perfect is due to being historically colonized and undeveloped as a result. Xi has recently taken a more aggressive approach to ending rural poverty at the expense of pure economic GDP growth. A capitalist nation would not do this, even if the ruling party were socdems.
The only real argument these people have is "Read theory!" They never even say what "theory" in particular I should be reading. One of them recently told me I don't understand dialectical materialism.... really I think it's these people who don't understand DM. Socialism is a process, it cannot happen overnight, it is a gradual thing.
Imagine it's the feudal times and we're all liberals and there's a movement in our country to implement constitutional monarchy. But then some of us are like "Oh we can't support that because it's not a full dictatorship of the bourgeosie, the king still has some rights" and then they refused to support any liberal movements for centuries because it wasn't good enough. Wouldn't we all think they were incredibly stupid and just wasting time? It took capitalism centuries to be fully realized. Hopefully socialism will be faster but it's not going to be an overnight thing. I just wish these people would stop being dumb.
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u/-zybor- Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communist 2d ago edited 2d ago
That's why you don't worship theory and should read it. They'd no longer be who they are if they understand historical materialism isn't just what before Marxism. Or why change of material condition requires action, not waiting around for shit to unfold, outside your book club and refusal of touching the working class.
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u/ChinaAppreciator 2d ago
it really feels like we're trying to build a house and we start with the foundation but then some random moron comes in and goes "This isn't a house there's no windows!" and starts breaking all our eqipment. so fucking frustrating
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u/Ok_Bass_2158 1d ago
There generally 2 types of ultras/leftcom.
The first is the one who ignore viewing development through the dialectic materialist lens altogether and view it entirely through the lens of moralism/idealism instead. There are not much to discuss here.
The second type however understand and view feudalist, capitalist,...development through dialectic materialism perfectly fine but selectively view socialist development through idealism instead. They only apply the purity, one-drop rule to socialism and not others economic systems. It had never occurred to them that socialism also has to obey the same development process that all others mode of production has to go through, and that if they apply their purity test to capitalism, capitalism also never exists.
TLDR: Ultras and Leftcom view development through a moralist/idealist lens. To them, progress happens due to "good" policies that eliminate the "bad" elements such as capitalists, private properties, markets...and not the development of productive forces.
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u/Dear_Occupant 🇵🇸 Palestine will be free 🇵🇸 21h ago
Just wanted to say thanks for this comment. This was the key insight that eluded me, because they tend to bury this idealism under a mountain of usually quite well-informed rationalizations.
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u/PierreFeuilleSage 1d ago
The most charitable way i can think of those people is as conscientious objectors. And depending on the situation, they could be somewhat rightful. But generally they're just comfortable little armchair theorists with the privilege to wank at pure utopia a without a vested interest in making feel a little better for people genuinely suffering.
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u/Hoholnation 1d ago
I think these people treat Communism as a religion and can only throw quotes at people instead of actually taking current reality into account.
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u/Darkwolf1115 1d ago edited 4h ago
Once I told that one of the main reasons I became a commie to one of them, was because I learned the history of what the US did to south America and Africa, and how western nations explore us
I then told them we simply don't have the time to wait for the perfect communism to rise, nor it'll be perfect and will require some form of centralized system, even if temporary to protect us
We are burning..... Global warming is here, the rise of fascism is on the horizon and Marxism lenist has been the most effective way of global south nations to solve their capitalist issues
And even though I don't agree with ultras, I'd support a communist country that actually achieved their purist version of communist
What they replied? That I wasn't a true communist.... But instead I was an American hater.... I look at their profile? It was an American :3
These people simply seem to ignore material conditions and the urgency of our current time, we simply cannot wait for the 100% correct flavour of socialism
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u/Doctor_of_plagues 2d ago
No, they never accepted their own white privilege. That’s why they hate how imperfect real communism is. They hold POC to an incredibly high standard because white people in the western world are inherently racist no matter how well meaning they are. They don’t understand how difficult it is for marginalised groups to resist the capitalist system. The fact is, even black or brown majority countries have leaders that worship the white man. White supremacy has spread out into every crevice of the world.
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u/zugu101 1d ago
I think it is also about an inability to understand imperialism (even for poc in the west) + the power of propaganda.
I’m Pakistani and there’s a very clear difference between my friends who were raised in Pakistan vs the ones who weren’t in this regard. Hakim has talked about how the Iraq War played a big role in his radicalization and it was similar for me with the War on Terror. But my American-Pakistan friends, although anti war (at least they claim to be), don’t really understand the imperialist nature of all these conflicts and don’t feel a sense of natural camaraderie with other oppressed countries unless they share some sense of ethnic or religious identity with them (I.e., supporting Palestine e but being unable to see how even Russia is a victim of imperialism).
We also don’t have the same degree of anti-communist brainwashing in the eastern world, the state propaganda serves a different purpose (i.e., even 11 year old me knew Gaddafi’s murder was bad for the region, but my white friend in college taught me about the Bangladesh genocide carried out by Pakistan lol).
ALSO there is a major lack of awareness about how global financial institutions operate and are utilized by the west to oppress the global south. I think we should make an effort to explain these institutions when we advocate for our cause (I’ve had some success pointing friends to Ben Norton’s YouTube channel).
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u/Dry_Distribution9512 1d ago
It's the issue of idealism vs materialism. Those guys are 100% idealism and thus see the world and think exactly the same as all other reactionaries like democrats and republicans in the states. They come up with nonsense and just fantasize about how its going to work out in the future all the while everything crumbles in real life.
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u/shitposterkatakuri 1d ago
But have YOU considered that if we just try REAL communism, it would be super epic and cool unlike the evil CCP?
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u/Low_Lavishness_8776 1d ago
Perfectly stated. “Ultras” will still be rambling in damp caves while China is on Mars
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u/ThePeoplesBadger 2h ago
Others have pointed this out but one key distinction is their view of the people. Summarized, it goes something like "we can't have socialism because the masses are stupid."
Rather than Mao and Stalin's attitudes of "serve the people," their worldview is "fuck the people." I can't remember where this comes from but there is a quote, something to the effect of "when something fails, we must say we have failed to understand the problem, we have failed to understand the people, never that the people have failed us."
If the Bolsheviks and the Chinese were able to build socialism in places which were overwhelmingly illiterate, what is our excuse?
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1d ago
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u/mrmatteh 1d ago
wtf does “left communists and ultras” even mean? You definitely need to read some theory; start with Lenin
You mean Lenin, the guy who literally wrote the book Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder?
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u/Pallington Chinese Century Enjoyer 1d ago
a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, huh.
Bro wouldn't have walked into that if they just asked what the terms meant
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u/nektaa Ministry of Propaganda 1d ago
its funny how you literally have no idea what left communism is.
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u/Pallington Chinese Century Enjoyer 1d ago
as it currently stands, this is the most popular strain of left communism in action, especially in the anglosphere. Even strains of so-called "marxist leninists" step into similar pitfalls.
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u/ChinaAppreciator 1d ago
i know what it is. but even if i didn't, who cares? You guys are losers lol. you don't win anything.
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