Addressing Progressive Criticisms of Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism might seem outdated to you. What worth could there be in an ideology associated primarily with a now defunct state, the USSR? Marxism-Leninism is denounced from almost all angles of contemporary society. The average bourgeois apologist cries about freedom and the virtue of private property in the face of parties and states which adopt Marxism-Leninism as their guiding theory.
Marxism-Leninism is not void of value by any means. It was the principle of a significant amount of revolutionary national liberation movements in the 20th century, and continues to be so in the 21st century. Each of these has learned to derive knowledge through this framework in the course of their experiences. To dismiss the accumulated experiences of these people would be a major mistake and the discarding of their history.
What we are more interested in engaging with is attacks on the foundations of Marxism-Leninism itself, instead of claims about particular countries or movements. This means both its applicability to contemporary reality and associated claims of its inherent limitations. For attacks on particular bodies, we recommend books such as War and Revolution by Domenico Losurdo, or resources like Anticonquista.
We will focus on criticisms fielded primarily from other socialists, demonstrating why we ought to stick to Marxism-Leninism, rather than leave it behind as outdated. We will particularly address criticisms of Marxism-Leninism from anti-colonial and feminist perspectives, which are central to contemporary radical political tendencies.
Scientific Theory
To deal with particular theory and practice around revolution, we ought to deal with critical claims around Marxist-Leninist theory itself. What do we mean when we say “theory”? What makes theory legitimate and correct?
Many people accuse Marxist-Leninists of merely adopting “whatever dead old white guys said” as gospel truth. Having assumed that theory is simply sticking to exactly what Marx said, they undercut Marxist analysis by saying that socialist states are failures for not immediately reaching higher-stage communism.
Socialist development is a process. You cannot immediately establish communism. You must create and take advantage of the preconditions first, instead of merely establishing micro-political entities such as isolated communes of only a few people or co-operative firms. Such pre-conditions are These are the repression and destruction of the bourgeoisie, the development of productive forces, the organization of social appropriation, and the abolition of class distinctions. The development of productive forces and social appropriation are particularly important for the abolition of commodity production, what many most identify with communism, as they ensure the feasibility of production for direct immediate consumption.
On this subject, Engels asks in Principles of Communism:
[w]ill it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke? No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.
Marxism offers a sober, realistic approach to socialism, one which theorizes according to existing conditions, and not according to utopias within our minds.
This brings us deeper into the Marxist-Leninist approach to theory. Theory is not dogma. In Oppose Book Worship, Mao states:
[w]hen we say Marxism is correct, it is certainly not because Marx was a ‘prophet’ but because his theory has been proved correct in our practice and in our struggle. We need Marxism in our struggle. In our acceptance of his theory no such formalisation of mystical notion as that of ‘prophecy’ ever enters our minds.
If we follow Marxism because it is proven correct by practice, what does that tell us about the foundational relation of Marxist theory and practice?
Engels approaches the problem of truth in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:
Again, our agnostic admits that all our knowledge is based upon the information imparted to us by our senses. But, he adds, how do we know that our senses give us correct representations of the objects we perceive through them? And he proceeds to inform us that, whenever we speak of objects, or their qualities, of which he cannot know anything for certain, but merely the impressions which they have produced on his senses. Now, this line of reasoning seems undoubtedly hard to beat by mere argumentation. But before there was argumentation, there was action. Im Anfang war die That. [from Goethe’s Faust: ‘In the beginning was the deed.’] And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn to our own use of these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perception. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But, if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is proof positive that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.
Practice is key to understanding. One must understand specificity first before one can understand generality or the logic of specificities and generalities. One cannot work with a priori logic, but must work with practical engagement with reality.
We hope it is clear that Marxism is not a dogma. It is based on knowledge gained from practice, with theory being generalized knowledge accumulated from centuries of practice.
Because Marxism is scientific, it is capable of self-criticism and adaptation. This comes into conflict with certain claims critics make about Marxism and science in relation to colonialism and patriarchy, objectivity in social sciences, and Marxism’s historic approach to production and consumption.
Colonialism and Patriarchy in Science
Critics often identify the history of “scientific” rhetoric being tied into colonialism and patriarchy. This is absolutely true. The dominant ideology is reified in all sections of society, including those intellectuals who claim to be objective. Marx and Engels themselves identified that modern science developed out of the bourgeoisie’s need for rational production practices, and thus was formed in a bourgeois mold (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific). Along with this critique, we identify that science has reified colonialism through race science, both antique (phrenology) and contemporary (The Bell Curve).
Science reproduces the gendered division of labor through the historic promotion of biological determinism, ignoring that the supposed inherent weakness of women is primarily the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy caused by the patriarchal gendered division of labor. Science is capable of self-criticism. Incorrect science is disproven by taking into account the knowledge from the practice of life of those affected by its reification. Correct and consistent application of the scientific method is how one destroys reification in science, not complete rejection of it.
The scientific method we refer to is the use of practice to inform, reform, and refine theoretical scientific knowledge. Scientific theory is the accumulation of past practice, scientific practice being experimentation or observation. The scientific method engages with empirical information in its engagement with practice, and uses this to determine the correctness or incorrectness of ideas.
Many attempts to apply the scientific method are stiff due to a one-size-fits-all approach. Technologistic ideologues who point to such perspectives tend to generalize in an incorrect manner the empirical findings of the so-called “hard” sciences. These ideologues look for the foundations of morality in physics and the origins of gendered behavior in chromosomes. As such, they generally take a crude approach to social life.
Critics often assert that as Marxism works with the social sciences, it is invalid, as the social sciences are somehow “lesser” than “the hard sciences” and cannot be “objective.” Such a claim is found in neoliberal rhetoric seeking to justify devaluing the humanities and focusing on STEM fields. This is because STEM fields are more important to the bourgeoisie as they aid in the organization of production. The social sciences can and often do reify the capitalist-imperialist order, but so do STEM fields.
The “hard” science approach to society fails in its lack of success in adapting the scientific method and analysis to particular avenues. The development and transformation of morality cannot be subject to the same method of analysis as the laws of physics. These ideologues tend to fill in the gaps in this transfer with bourgeois ideological assumptions. Biological determinism is used to explain social dynamics and behaviors, reifying colonialism and patriarchy. These perspectives take up the bourgeois project of ‘rational’, mutually exclusive categorization so essential to capitalist production and bring its logic to the realm of society.
To avoid these mistakes, and to apply the scientific method correctly in the realm of society, historicization is extremely important. Bourgeois ideology sees people as nothing but abstract individuals whose differences are mere happenstance. A correct understanding of society must keep the historic construction of categories, groups, and distinctions. These become evident in the empirical realms of social information, such as differentiation in the average real incomes of Black and Euro-American people in the United States.
That reification occurs within science does not mean truth within it is impossible. What is important to recognize is that the objective information of historical analysis is almost always told conditional to a particular goal, usually to legitimize Euro-colonial capitalistic order. This is sometimes used as self-assertion by the oppressed as well. One should recognize that objectivity is possible in this field, but that historic narratives tend to be told relative to a particular goal, such as the victory of the proletariat and liberation of the oppressed classes for us Marxist-Leninists.
Truth in the social sciences is social truth. It is the use of empirical study of social relations to understand society as a whole. It necessitates understanding of societies as particular societies, humans as particular social humans in particular social relations, and such realities as transitory and in eternal motion.
“Revolution” vs “revolution”
It is often observed that patriarchy predates capitalism. Capitalism is an extension of patriarchy, with the forms of power in class societies, as well as standards for interpersonal conduct, being heavily informed by the patriarchal division of labor. As Marxist-Leninists, we agree with this analysis. A scientific investigation of the origins of the state finds it to be largely rooted in the gendered division of labor and associated emergence of classes. We also agree with criticisms of socialist cishet men often reproducing patriarchal standards of conduct in interpersonal interactions.
Where people distinguish between small-r “revolution” and capital-R “Revolution” is where their analysis begins to diverge from ours. They define “Revolution” as being an adventurist and masculine approach to revolution that strongly emphasizes violence above all else. On one hand, analysis of this simplistic and violence-fetishistic view of “Revolution” being strongly informed by masculinity is correct. Oppressed men tend to express their revolutionary aims in masculine terms, expressions that simultaneously reproduce patriarchal relations.
But characterization of Marxism-Leninism as endorsing such an approach is incorrect. Marxist-Leninism does not posit that a successful revolution is waged by the brutal killing of every class enemy. It rejects fetishism of violence. Neither Marx nor Engels advocated for or engaged in the killing of every capitalist, landowner, or aristocrat on Earth.
In The Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx says:
[…]socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.
Marx lays out the task of the proletariat in clear terms here: not the murder of every class enemy, which is neither necessary nor desirable, but the abolishment of class distinctions.
For those who may claim Lenin differed with Marx, Lenin writes, in “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder:
The abolition of classes means not only driving out the landlords and capitalists — that we accomplished with comparative ease — it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be driven out, or crushed; we must live in harmony with them; they can (and must) be remoulded and re-educated only by very prolonged, slow, cautious organizational work[…] The dictatorship of the proletariat is a persistent struggle — bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative — against the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit of millions and tens of millions is a most terrible force.
Lenin emphasizes that class struggle isn’t nonstop violence, but that it must be both violent and nonviolent. He advocates not for the total obliteration of a group of people, but the prolonged and protracted struggle for abolition of particular social relations.
Marxist-Leninists reject the idea of total slaughter. We advocate for the abolition of class distinctions and exploitative social relations, not the simplistic and incorrect approach of the mass murder of exploiters.
Small r “revolution” is defined, in contrast to Revolution, as a gradualist approach to building dual power in a manner that ostensibly prevents mass violence. One such ostensible tendency which is claimed makes this feasible is that the bourgeoisie will apparently fully automate production. This “fully automated luxury capitalism” of sorts makes both workers and consumers redundant, and results in a society where the bourgeois lives off of the goods produced by their machines.
This is a poor analysis of automation. Automation is not occurring at the cartoonishly fast pace some seem to think it is. No industry is completely automated. And the bourgeoisie does not have the time to achieve this robot utopia before climate catastrophe wipes humanity off the face of the earth.
Even if we were to pretend the specter of extinction was not hanging over the earth, the development of such a society seems unlikely. The bourgeoisie would not simply decide to produce exclusively for their own consumption, as this would represent the destruction of capital. Think of the entire bourgeoisie as a unified person to understand this. Buying produce with one’s own money does not introduce any new value into one’s income. Taken as a whole, the bourgeoisie cannot consume the total produce of present production levels, much less consume beyond their own production levels to ensure the expansion of that production.
Capitalist production’s internal logic is based on the realization of surplus-value and accumulation of capital. To seek production merely for their own consumption would be impossible with capitalist social relations, which require eternal expansion. The bourgeoisie would not just arbitrarily decide to switch to essentially feudal productive relations with robo-serfs because the vast majority of their capital would no longer be able to be used in production and would be destroyed.
Any attempt to switch that through total automation would severely exacerbate the ‘Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Decline’. While the capitalists would still be producing commodities for a market economy, the rapid decrease of the workforce would also mean a rapid decrease of surplus-value relative to total capital investment. They would be met with total ruin before succeeding in such a catastrophic transition. Thus, this cannot be a valid path to socialism.
Socialism must be strived toward in an organized and coordinated manner. The foundations of a new society must be consciously built on the foundations of the existing society. This is dual power. The understanding of many as to what dual power means is severely flawed. The coalition on which some seek to base this dual power includes as a necessary component the police and soldiers that people hope will become disenchanted with the bourgeois Euro-American imperialist order. For people who support this yet claim to also support anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, such an idea is Western-chauvinist. The US is an imperialist settler-colonial state. Its military and police force serve the function of reproducing this state of affairs.The interests of this stratum are directly opposed to the interests of those subject to imperialist subjugation.
This idea also fails to realize that American police and military are not directly comparable to the police and military in 1917 Russia. In the latter case, most soldiers and police were desperate or conscripted peasants, paupers, and proletarians facing destitute conditions. They had the most motivation to join the revolution. By contrast, most soldiers in the US are better-off settler-citizens, particularly the petite-bourgeoisie whose higher standards of living are bought through the spoils of colonialism and imperialism. US police tend to be better off than most workers. And their livelihoods depend directly on the effective reproduction of US colonial relations, which target the colonized Black population in particular as anti-citizenry. This same police force can increase their funding (and thereby their individual incomes) by meeting arrest quotas.
To call for loyal citizens of empire to be incorporated into a revolutionary movement is to disregard the interests of the people who are under the yoke of imperialism. Any successful revolutionary movement in the US will be based in the masses of those to whom the contradictions of capitalism are most evident. This will almost certainly not be the footsoldiers of the colonial state apparatus, who do not have much of a propensity toward such a recognition compared to the racialized working classes. The latter witness the contradictions of US imperialism laid bare daily, and are in an integral position in this society to undermine its operation.
The State and Revolution
Many Social Democrats accuse Marxist-Leninists of having a crude understanding of revolutionary practice. Apparently, we merely seek to overthrow the state, rejecting all pursuit of reforms.
We will first quote from Lenin’s “Left-Wing Communism” to disprove this claim:
The conclusion is clear: to reject compromises ‘on principle’, to reject the admissibility of compromises in general, no matter of what kind, is childishness, which it is difficult even to take seriously. A political leader who desires to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must know how to single out concrete cases when such compromises are inadmissible, when they are an expression of opportunism and treachery, and direct all the force of criticism, the full edge of merciless exposure and relentless war, against those concrete compromises, and not allow the past masters at ‘practical’ Socialism the parliamentary Jesuits to dodge and wriggle out of responsibility by disquisitions on ‘compromises in general.’
And another quote, from Marxism and Reformism:
Unlike the anarchists, the Marxists recognise struggle for reforms, i.e., for measures that improve the conditions of the working people without destroying the power of the ruling class. At the same time, however, the Marxists wage a most resolute struggle against the reformists, who, directly or indirectly, restrict the aims and activities of the working class to the winning of reforms. Reformism is bourgeois deception of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital.
We hope that it is quite evident that Marxism-Leninism does not reject revolutionary reforms and compromises where they are necessary. Almost the entirety of the aforementioned book is a collection of criticisms of those who take ultraleft positions with regards to revolutionary struggle. We do not merely seek to seize the old state apparatus and make it work for our aims.
In The Civil War in France, Marx states,
…the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.
Lenin, in his study of Marx and Engels’ analysis of the state in The State and Revolution, concurs, asserting instead that
…[t]he answer given in the Communist Manifesto was that this machine was to be replaced by ‘the proletariat organized as the ruling class[…]
In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a new state with revolutionized social relations associated. And this revolutionary state is necessitated by the conditions of class war. One cannot merely build dual power unharmed. Building dual power is an inherent challenge to the bourgeois-colonial order. So it is faced with repression. This doesn’t mean one should wage endless war with the bourgeois colonial order while building dual power. It means one must prepare for self-defense and the organization of the proletariat as the ruling class. One should not be dogmatic, seeking either solely to avoid conflict or solely to instigate it. One must take proper account of the situation, and Marxism-Leninism gives us that tool.
Marxist-Leninists do not think that the dictatorship of the proletariat is “morally better” than the bourgeois state simply because we see it as “more democratic.” We aren’t idealists and don’t claim socialism’s victory is assured by “moral correctness.” Rather, we assert socialism as good relative to our goal because our goal is the liberation of the proletariat and, in the long term, the abolition of class distinctions. Socialism is good relative to these goals. To assert socialism as “good” in a general sense is moralistic, to assert it as “good” relative to these aims is not.
The Ramifications of Struggle for Dictatorship
Now we will deal with the accusation that Marxist-Leninists believe that the “Revolution” is merely the revolutionary seizure of power and that the struggle ends in that moment. This can be debunked by The Critique of the Gotha Programme. Marx states,
[b]etween the capitalist and the communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. To this there corresponds a political transition period whose state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
Nowhere here is a hint of conceiving revolution as a single event. Rather, it is conceived of as a process, an ongoing struggle where the proletariat must continuously defend its grasp on power from the bourgeoisie.
Lenin continued this view, and in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, tied it to the Soviet Union’s situation:
For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property — often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the ‘secrets’ (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.
If the exploiters are defeated in one country only — and this, of course, is typical, since a simultaneous revolution in a number of countries is a rare exception — they still remain stronger than the exploited, for the international connections of the exploiters are enormous[…]
Marx and Lenin make very sober analyses of the ramifications of revolution. They were not utopians. Lenin was educated through practice by his leadership of the Bolshevik Party. This identification of the bourgeoisie continues to constitute a threat that also leads us to another criticism: that Marxist-Leninists seek a centralized state as our “end goal.”
Lenin did not conceal his aim for centralization. He openly advocated it in What is to Be Done?, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, and a text we will be quoting from, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder. He did not dvocate it as an end in itself, but as a necessary measure for victory in resisting counterrevolution.
Lenin explains,
The abolition of classes means not only driving out the landlords and capitalists — that we accomplished with comparative ease — it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be driven out, or crushed; we must live in harmony with them; they can (and must) be remoulded and re-educated only by very prolonged, slow, cautious organizational work. They encircle the proletariat on every side with a petty-bourgeois atmosphere, which permeates and corrupts the proletariat and causes constant relapses among the proletariat into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism, and alternate moods of exaltation and dejection. The strictest centralization and discipline are required within the political party of the proletariat in order to counteract this, in order that the organizational role of the proletariat (and that is its principal role) may be exercised correctly, successfully, victoriously.
Keeping continuity with socialist history is important because it ensures that one inherits the knowledge accumulated by their practice, both in success and failure. As Marx and Engels declared in The Communist Manifesto, “Communists disdain to conceal [our] aims.” In the first place, to do so is to lie, and risk losing the trust of the masses. People are not as ignorant as you think. They know socialism when they see it and, sooner or later, you will have to deal with propaganda around socialist history whether you like it or not. Secondly, there is no reason to constantly reinvent the wheel when negative narratives are attached to figures in our movement. If we do that, then we will never get anywhere.
As a final remark on revolutionary strategy, let us address defeatist claims about the prospects of struggle against the bourgeois colonial state in the US. Critics claim that, because the state has such major firepower, they could simply launch an airstrike or drop a nuke on any revolutionary force.
Marxist-Leninists do not have such a childish and reductive view of revolutionary strategy. As identified earlier, we recognize the need for base-building, for aboveground along with underground work, and struggling for revolutionary reforms. In direct struggle, we do not call for direct conventional warfare. We call for a proper, contextualized strategy that is adapted to the local relations of the Party to the masses and the geographic characteristics and ecology of the region.
What is important to assert is that the US state would not simply nuke or bomb itself on a mass scale. Yes, the US has bombed citizens before. But in the context of a civil war, it would not do so on the scale necessary to destroy a revolutionary movement because that would be ultimately destroying the productive capacity of the US.
“State Capitalism”? A “New Bourgeoisie”?
An accusation, usually thrown out by anarchist critics, is that a “worker’s state” is in itself an oxymoron. Apparently, the proletariat cannot be the ruling class except as an undifferentiated mass, a consensus or majoritarian democracy. These critics claim that the proletarian state is actually “state capitalist,” and that the specialized officials who constitute the Party and the state are a “new bourgeoisie.” Apparently, as the new state controls the means of production, it is “one giant capitalist.”
This criticism is based on flawed grounds. It presumes that a capitalist is only a capitalist because they control the means of production. In fact, a capitalist cannot be a capitalist without engaging in generalized commodity production and the associated extraction of surplus-value. The keyword here is value. Extraction of surplus is not inherently capitalist. It is something engaged in by all societies with productive forces developed beyond subsistence needs.
So what of the state apparently being a gigantic “boss”? This does not itself indicate the state as a “new bourgeoisie.” The state does not constitute its own class, it is the apparatus of class rule for particular classes, constantly being contested by classes and sections of classes, with its form being altered decisively in revolutions so as to destroy the old state apparatuses in favor of new ones. The proletarian state is not its own class. It is the specialized organ for the coordination of proletarian class rule. The officials which compose it do not personally own the means of production.
According to the anarchist critic perspective, proletarian rule of society can only be engaged in if the workers personally own the means of production. Whether this means workers as individuals or workers as particular co-ops and communes, it implies a decentralized and localized form of society. This is untenable for a society seeking to coordinate resistance against counter-revolution. A national or even international economy needs centralized coordination.
The proletarian state is the organ of this centralized coordination. The workers do not control the means of production as individuals or separate groups, but as a total social group. The means of production are thus socially owned. It coordinates the necessary functions of a socialist society as outlined in the Critique of the Gotha Programme:
Let us take, first of all, the words ‘proceeds of labor’ in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product. From this must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.
These deductions from the ‘undiminished’ proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity. There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.
Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.
It is important to clarify, in passing this point, that a communist society does not employ a state to coordinate this. Rather, with the abolition of class antagonism and the division of labor (and thus class distinctions), the very basis of the state is taken out from under it, and it completes the process of withering away. This does not mean it chooses to disband itself, but that it becomes redundant, ‘civil society’ has already adopted its functions as a habit without need for a specialized body to coordinate it.
Anti-Imperialism and Campism
Marxist-Leninists are often charged with supporting Third World, or even simply anti-American/European, fascists and reactionaries in the name of anti-imperialism, engaging in what is termed “campism.” Apparently, our entire set of positions can be summed up as looking at what the US government does or says, then doing the exact opposite out of a “moral” opposition to the US empire.
This is an exaggeration, but it is not a fabrication. There is in fact a tendency among some Marxist-Leninists and other anti-imperialist socialists to defend states and leaders struggling against the US either as anti-imperialist where they are not, or as socialist where they are not. But this is not inherent or unique to Marxism-Leninism.
The term for the support we offer to states which have reactionary tendencies but which are still engaged in an anti-imperialist struggle is ‘critical support’. Some people do lose sight of the key word “critical.” But because we make room for strategically backing non-communists against imperialism doesn’t mean we are somehow engaging in “Red Fascism,” or “campism.” This is not to say campism is not a real tendency, rather that not all support for anti-imperialists is automatically “campism,” particularly not critical support.
Where we agree with the charge of campism is where Marxist-Leninists uncritically back Arab chauvinism, in the form of Ba’athism, as “socialist” or otherwise revolutionary. This support is founded on a simplistic and orientalist understanding of West Asia and North Africa, failing to account for the fact that non-Arab ethnicities exist in the region and exist in a continuing oppressed relation to Arab cultural and linguistic hegemony. Typically, these relations are the continuity of pre-capitalist colonialism, transferred into the capitalist relations of the nation-state.
A socialist cannot uphold national homogenizing projects and correctly believe it is conducive to socialism. National homogenizing projects often create national antagonisms and uphold pre-imperialist social relations, rather than struggling for new ones. Arab chauvinism is not the path forward for the region. It has been the grave of thousands of Assyrians, Kurds, Yazidis, and other non-Arab peoples.
Socialism is not simply anti-imperialism. But socialism is, in the long-term, the only viable road for anti-imperialism. Socialism is specifically the socialization of appropriation, the abolition of the bourgeoisie and its aligned classes, and the abolition of the division of labor. As a component to building socialism, national liberation and self-determination are key to the development of economies independent from imperialism. Anti-imperialist states do not always represent successful self-determination within themselves, and we must recognize this.
This is not to say that any critical support for states such as, say, the Syrian Arab Republic, is completely reactionary. Assad is not Hussein. That is not to say he does not engage in Arab chauvinism, but that he is not outright genocidal or as particularly radical in his chauvinism as Hussein was. His struggle against balkanization of Syria and US/European imperialism is in line with a general struggle against imperialism.
Critical support is not a complete endorsement of all the actions of the body being critically supported. It is a recognition of limited, temporary overlapping interests and projects, while also recognizing limitations and the need for a different long-term path forward. When we support Iran against US imperialism, it does not mean we are ultimately positing it as some sort of “moral good guy,” or claiming it is revolutionary. Rather, we are recognizing that its struggle against US imperialism and for the development of an independent nation is progressive, while also allowing ourselves to recognize that it is not socialist, and has significant reactionary tendencies (such as in being a patriarchal theocracy). Critical support is not a wedding.
With regards to the Syrian Arab Republic, Marxist-Leninists generally take to a long-term project of a socialist, ethnically pluralistic Syria, with self-determination for national minorities. US or Turkish balkanization of the region is not conducive to this. However, some socialists seem to think somehow that this end goal is desirable.
Rojava has been the darling of Western socialists and radical liberals for many years. They variously claim that it represents a libertarian socialism, a true autonomy, a radical “direct” democracy, an anti-nationalism, and, contradictorily, Kurdish liberation. Curiously, they ignored the years of its dependency on US imperialism in Syria, its associated long-term tendency toward essentially petite-bourgeois commodity production (no, co-ops existing does not constitute socialism, just ask Reagan) instead of anything like a successful “socialist” economy or something headed toward one, its suppression of ethnic minorities (particularly of Assyrians), its assertion of Kurdish chauvinism, and the predominance of Kurdish and Democratic Confederalist authorities in its political process. With it being the darling of both the Pentagon and Israel (even the positing of it as a prospective similar power to Israel in the region), it’s surprising that this isn’t indicative enough that there are ulterior motives involved in its survival.
They have also absolved it of the “sin” of negotiating with and aligning to Syria, while condemning Marxist-Leninists for even just rhetorical support. Rojava is repeatedly touted as an alternative to authoritarian Syria, which is usually slandered by Islamist opposition lies about gas attacks. Ironically, these critics engage in the same campism they charge us with. They support Rojava merely because it posits itself as “anti-authoritarian” and because they want to score points against the “tankies,” furthering the US project of balkanizing Syria.
Colonialism and Marxism-Leninism
Critics are eager to extend their criticism of science and reification to Marxism-Leninism. They criticize Marxism-Leninism as being opposed to decolonization and the struggle against patriarchy. They evidence the first claim by stating that many Marxists support colonialism as “good” because it develops the preconditions for socialism. While this might be true with vulgar Marxists, it is not inherent to Marxism nor is it reflective of Marx’s mature position of colonialism. Yes, Marx described British colonialism in India as progressive in the 1844 Manuscripts. He had not yet become a scientific socialist by that time, and was still developing out of his previous liberalism.
In the 1853 text The Future Results of British Rule in India, Marx declares his support for Indian national liberation struggle against the British, saying:
All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive powers, but on their appropriation by the people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation? The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the [Indians] themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether.
Marxist-Leninists do not posit colonialism and imperialism as “good” for forwarding capitalism’s preconditions. We identify their development as historically inevitable because we are materialists. Whatever has occurred in history was by definition inevitable within a materialist analysis of history. We do not hold such a simplistic view as believing the West is simply “inherently advanced”. Rather, we identify the development of productive forces in industry, especially arms, as playing a major part in Euro-American hegemony, which resulted from geographic and ecological luck, connection to Afro-Asian trade (which gave Europe access to Afro-Asian commodities, technological advancements and scientific knowledge), and sheer historic coincidence in many regards.
We also do not oppose decolonization. We support it strongly. Marx and Engels supported national liberation, with the latter saying “[a] nation cannot become free and at the same time continue to oppress other nations” in a November 29, 1847 speech on Poland. By this, it is meant that as long as the antagonistic national contradictions of colonialism and imperialism exist, socialist development cannot succeed. Socialism relies upon the cooperation of nations, and so socialist world order cannot do with antagonistic national contradictions.
National liberation against national oppression is called for by Lenin in The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination,
[…] just as mankind can achieve the abolition of classes only by passing through the transition period of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, so mankind can achieve the inevitable merging of nations only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all the oppressed nations, i.e., their freedom to secede.
In the US context, this has historically been applied by Marxist-Leninists with regards to the Black Nation. In Statistics and Sociology, Lenin says,
In the United States, the Negroes (and also the Mulattos and Indians) account for only 11.1 per cent. They should be classed as an oppressed nation[…]
He again asserts his support for Black national liberation in Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions For The Second Congress Of The Communist International, stating that,
[…] all Communist parties should render direct aid to the revolutionary movements among the dependent and underprivileged nations (for example, Ireland, the American Negroes, etc.) and in the colonies. Without [this] condition, which is particularly important, the struggle against the oppression of dependent nations and colonies, as well as recognition of their right to secede, are but a false signboard.
This project for Black national liberation was taken up by Black radical elements of the early CPUSA, who ensured it played a major part in the Party’s platform through their influence, and later by Mao Zedong Thought-inspired Marxist-Leninists such as the Black Panther Party.
It must be admitted that Marxism-Leninism has an issue with regards to Indigenous national liberation. Often, mere autonomy is proposed as a solution, rather than abolition of the US in favor of a pluralistic union of colonized nations. This is something to be criticized. But it is not inherent to Marxism-Leninism, which is scientific and not dogmatic.
Patriarchy and Marxism-Leninism
Marxism quite infamously calls for the abolition of marriage and the bourgeois-style family. It is even listed in The Communist Manifesto. In On the Origin of the Family, Engels examines the historic rise of patriarchy, outlining it as such:
With the herds and the other new riches, a revolution came over the family. To procure the necessities of life had always been the business of the man; he produced and owned the means of doing so. The herds were the new means of producing these necessities; the taming of the animals in the first instance and their later tending were the man’s work. To him, therefore, belonged the cattle, and to him the commodities and the slaves received in exchange for cattle.
All the surplus which the acquisition of the necessities of life now yielded fell to the man; the woman shared in its enjoyment, but had no part in its ownership. The ‘savage’ warrior and hunter had been content to take second place in the house, after the woman; the ‘gentler’ shepherd, in the arrogance of his wealth, pushed himself forward into the first place and the woman down into the second. And she could not complain. The division of labor within the family had regulated the division of property between the man and the woman. That division of labor had remained the same; and yet it now turned the previous domestic relation upside down, simply because the division of labor outside the family had changed[…]
Where men’s division of labor is empowered relative to women, patriarchal social relations begin to emerge. Here, the transition to a general division of labor founded on property and exploitation disempowers the position of women.
“The same cause which had ensured to the woman her previous supremacy in the house — that her activity was confined to domestic labor — this same cause now ensured the man’s supremacy in the house: the domestic labor of the woman no longer counted beside the acquisition of the necessities of life by the man; the latter was everything, the former an unimportant extra. We can already see from this that to emancipate woman and make her the equal of the man is and remains an impossibility so long as the woman is shut out from social productive labor and restricted to private domestic labor.
The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large, social scale, and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of her time. And only now has that become possible through modern large-scale industry, which does not merely permit of the employment of female labor over a wide range, but positively demands it, while it also tends towards ending private domestic labor by changing it more and more into a public industry.
While Engels’ analysis is valuable, it also tends to be Eurocentric. This does not mean it is to be completely discarded, but evaluated relative to information about Indigenous and African gendered divisions of labor and family structures, which had many instances of matriarchal families, even where there was private property. The fact that Indigenous America was not dominated by patriarchy to any degree comparable to Eurasia can partially be explained by a lack of large fauna viable for livestock, which played a major part in the empowering of men relative to women in Eurasia in its gendered labor divisions, but we digress.
We admit that the traditional Marxist analysis of patriarchy is rather lacking. In the same book, Engels also claims that the proletarian family lacks a patriarchal division of labor, which was true for the context they were writing about (mid-late 19th century industrial England), but not necessarily for now. This was a position also held by Marx. This is not entirely due to ignorance on their part, as Marx and Engels did in fact express misogynistic views in their personal correspondences.
Though she isn’t a Marxist-Leninist, Silvia Federici provides us a fantastic analysis of the gendered division of labor, and explains their view thus, in Counterplanning from the Kitchen:
[…]At the time when Marx was writing, the nuclear family and housework had yet to be fully created. What Marx had before his eyes was the proletarian woman, who was employed along with her husband and children in the factory, and the bourgeois woman who had a maid and, whether or not she also worked, was not producing the commodity labor power. The absence of the nuclear family did not mean that workers did not mate and copulate. It meant, however, that it was impossible to have family relations and housework when each member of the family spent fifteen hours a day in a factory, and neither the time nor the physical space were available for family life.
It was only after epidemics and overwork decimated the workforce and, most important, after waves of proletarian struggles, in the 1830s and 1840s, brought England close to a revolution, that the need for a more stable and disciplined labor force led capital to organize the nuclear family as the center for the reproduction of labor power. Far from being a precapitalist structure, the family, as we know it in the ‘West,’ is a creation of capital for capital, as an institution that is supposed to guarantee the quantity and quality of labor power and its control. Thus, ‘like the trade union, the family protects the worker but also ensures that he and she will never be anything but workers. And that is why the struggle of the woman of the working class against the family is crucial.’
We recommend Federici’s Revolution at Point Zero and Caliban and the Witch as essential to incorporate into a Marxist-Leninist analysis of gender. Marxism-Leninism can use self-criticism to produce a more correct analysis of patriarchy, and the appropriate practice of confronting it and the gendered division of labor.
Marxism-Leninism is not inherently incompatible with decolonization and the struggle against patriarchy, as it is not a dogma. We agree with calls for Marxist-Leninists to listen to the concerns of non-men and Indigenous people, and strongly condemn those who fail to. But we also must assert that this is not an inherent issue with Marxist-Leninist theory itself.
Concluding Thoughts
If you are to critique an ideology, it is necessary to engage with its theory. To critique the system resulting from a particular application of a theory does not disprove the correctness of the method of that theory. If you want to prove the unviability of Marxism-Leninism itself, engage with its method, not its perceived systems.
We argue that Marxism-Leninism has demonstrated its successes in recognizing successes and failures of practice and offering a theoretical framework derived from the knowledge of practice to effectively operate in the context of global imperialism.
For those who would posit that Marxist-Leninist parties devolve into “authoritarianism” as failing to alter society toward revolutionary ends, we would advise you familiarize yourself more with the Marxist theory of the state, particularly as it is forwarded in response to anarchists. Books such as William Henry Chamberlin’s Soviet Russia: A Living Record and History or Anna Louise Strong’s accounts of socialist revolutions provide insight into the relevance of this theory to real history. Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme and Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy are a good start, as well as The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict by Ann Robertson. We did not engage with Marxist-anarchist arguments in this piece as it is oversaturated in responses to criticisms. It is preferable to deal with 21st century challenges.
Marxism-Leninism, like Marxism broadly, is adaptable. In fact, it must be adapted and “updated.” The key relevance of Marxism is that it can incorporate criticisms of it and become stronger by it. This is why we remain Marxist-Leninists.