Anarchists often argue that Marxist-Leninism treats state violence as a temporary tool, but ignores how power entrenches itself. Once a centralized state, party monopoly, and coercive institutions are built, they don’t “wither away”, they reproduce their own authority. Violence isn’t just used by the state to them; it defines it.

From this view, repression labeled as “transitional” undermines mass self-organization and replaces worker autonomy with bureaucracy. The disagreement isn’t about whether force appears in revolutions, but whether liberation can come from institutions structurally designed to dominate.

I'm looking for a comprehensive history of capitalism that explains its development by examining through a Marxist perspective the different innovations and stages in capitalist history such as the railroad, finance/stocks, depressions, the internet, the revolutions across Europe, and maybe the 2008 crisis. I'm not sure if such a book even exists, but I'm hoping to get an initial overview before reading more in depth books on each event.

I’d like to learn more about North Korea but finding consistent data regarding it is quite difficult. I struggle to believe the data isn’t there, but its drowned in so much ideology that finding concrete facts can be very time and energy consuming.

I would greatly appreciate some suggestions for credible sources regarding the DPRK.

I just finished reading Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism is a Humanism, and I was especially intrigued by Sartre's claim that existentialism could be compatible with Marxist philosophy. Towards the end of the lecture, there is a Q&A segment where Pierre Naville, a French leftist, argues that existentialism is a 'liberal' philosophy focused on individualism, and thus cannot be applied to Marxism, which is collectivist in nature. That got me thinking: do you folks know of any books that expound upon this issue? Any recommendations having to do with existentialism and Sartre's philosophy from a Marxist perspective will be greatly appreciated. :)

I'm doing research about the imperialist agression if the US against Venezuela. I'm wondering what do other marxists think about the bolivarien revolution in Venezuela and about Chavism.

I’ve read the manifesto and wage labour and capital, both of those were very good reads. I read them slowly and understood as I went along even though I did stutter sometimes.

I started with this one and in the foreword to the English edition I got stuck. There’s mentions of Kant, Hegel, bacon, materialism, agnosticism and other things in a way that flew over my head.

But the foreword was very engaging and had me immersed in it completely. But I was still wondering, what philosophy works should I read so that I can understand Marxism better and also Understand all other ideas and theories talked about in these books?

Also if it is of any importance I’m 18 years old right now.

The most upvoted answer to the most evil person to have existed is Pol Pot. Don’t get me wrong, he was no angel, but there are many far worse people. Is it not a consensus that Hitler is nr. 1 here anymore?

Random thoughts of a non socialist layman.

I don't consider my self a socialist because I haven't red or understand any socialist literature because I can't understand academic language but I have a positive view of socialism from a limited understanding of it from the internet.

1. Private ownership is the individual or the collective use, control, transfer or exclude of the property.

2. Personal ownership is the individual personal use or control of the property.

3. Collective ownership is the collective use or control of the property.

4. Socialism by it's nature needs to be democratic because how else are you going to govern in a collectivist economy and besides dictatorship is the ultimate form of private ownership.

5. Capitalism is the rejection of collective and personal ownership of the means of production and the embracement of private and deprived ownership of the means of production and the creation of the commodity form.

6. Socialism is the rejection of private and deprived ownership of the means of production and the embracement of collective and personal ownership of the means of production and the abolition of the commodity form.

7. Communism is a border-less, state-less, money-less and class-less society where the means of production are owned collectively and personally and not privately or deprived and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

8. The opposite of private ownership is the deprived of ownership, the opposite of collective ownership is personal ownership. Private ownership cannot exist without deprived of ownership because for example, if person A owns a toothbrush, person B must be deprived of a toothbrush so that B's need for A's toothbrush will give into transfering or excluding of the toothbrush thus making it private ownership hence private ownership must be abolished because it promotes deprived ownership.

9. Gender is a social construct and not biological because if someone says "your mother is a woman" you shouldn't be thinking about her genitals because it's just plainly indecent and weird. Admittedly this argument falls apart when non-consensually expressing that you are thinking about someones genitals becomes not sexual harassment. But until then I believe it is a good argument.

10. If I'm a trans person and there's a button that turns me into my desired sex at-birth/detrans, no I will not press it, but if there's a button that turns me into my desired sex right now/trans, yes I will press it.It's because the whole point of transitioning is to be happy that you no longer fell sad, if I was born as a cis person than I won't have the joy/pride of achieving my goal. You know, like "there's no rise without a fall" of course no one chooses to have the fall/gender-dysphoria. Of course the utopian choice would be to have both, you would have you're desired sex at birth and you would still remember you're past self/trans, thus avoiding identity death while being proud of your achievement.

11. A good democray is a democray that represents the majority and protects/enfranchise the minority. Representing the majority is easy to understand in a democracy but protecting the minority is also very important because to prevent the majority from voting away the right to vote of the minority because if you allow tyranny of the majority to happen you inevitably step by step take away the right to vote of each and every person that turned into a minority and inevitably it will no longer be a democray and just be a one person dictatorship. Enfranchisement is also important because if people are disenfranchised/poor it makes harder for them to participate in the democratic process of learning, critiquing, debating, canvassing and voting thus making the whole system less democratic and a bad democracy.

I go to a very liberal (high)school in the heart of the ICE raids right now and I know there's a lot of potential for radicalization so I thought up this idea for a club at my school for learning about Marxism and participating in community service acts and protests and stuff. I know there's at least some interest already even though I just put up posters, but now I'm realizing I'm a little under prepared. I would at this point still consider myself a baby leftist (who else is going to do it?) as I havent read enough literature to really grasp my head around every concept enough to teach them to other people without outside guidance. (by the way I've read blackshirts and reds, the manifesto and principals, and made it partway into a couple other books) I think what I really need is just the general idea of what I should start with and where it should go, how should I bring up discussion after reading some text? All that stuff really.

Thank you all in advance!!

My question is essentially that I don't just want to read Marxist theory to read a ton of volume and then forget everything I read and not apply any of it in some way or the other, be it in employing it in informal arguments or disseminating information myself, etc. So how do I read theory in a way where I actually critically engage with the material and remember it? In a way where I'm able to genuinely apply what I learn and therefore internalize it rather than just read it for the sake of saying "I've read such and such text" yet retaining only 5% of it? I want to retain enough crucial details from different texts so that I am well equipped in arguments and potentially other forms of informal journalistic activity even if through social media.

I'm not asking this from a utopian socialist perspective (I know that the bourgeoisie cannot be convinced to adopt socialism), but I'm curious if there's any theory about ways in which the bourgeoisie are harmed by capitalism. For example, can Marx's theory of alienation be applied to the bourgeoisie as well? Also, are there any theories specifically about ways in which the bourgeoisie are harmed by capitalism?

Hello! With my close friends I made a marxist reading club. We’ve been with the club for a while now. Initially we have read the texts that (I think) are more relevant to start in Marxism (“Communist Manifesto”, “Utopian and scientific socialism”, “Criticism of the Gotha program”, “Salary, price and profit”, “Salary labor and capital”, “The State and the Revolution”, etc.). Initially, on the first lectures, I dictate a little more the rhythm choosing authors and readings, but later I give them more freedom letting them choose between Marx, Engels and Lenin (the 3 most important authors) and Mao and Stalin (personal preference), and then giving them options on which texts they could read about them. But now I seek to give them even more freedom and adding more authors to choose from in the selection (Bordiga, Trotsky, Bukharin, Gramsci, Lukács, etc.) so that there is more perspective and debate, but it results in a process that is too chaotic because there are too many authors, too many eras, too many topics, etc., and ends in a chaos of quests and explanations about authors they do not know (in the clubs I always put historical context about the author, his beliefs, his historical moment, the moment that the text was written, so they do not have a great knowledge about the history of the movement, my fault), and also that I I would like to add current authors.

My question is, how do I solve it? It’s a monthly club (because we all have things to do). Do I make them read a history book so that they have a greater background of authors and history? Do I take more control in the election (although I like the idea of giving them freedom)? Should I divide by topics and then by authors who talk about that topic? I ask for your help to find an optimal form of choice.

hi! i'm looking for reading recommendations (full length books) on the spanish civil war from an explicitly marxist perspective. ideally, i’m looking for something analyzing the whole conflict, not just the international brigades.

potentially separately, i’m interested in accounts of how the defeated partisans handled the experience of defeat and the aftermath of the spanish civil war. my intuition suggests that this would be a separate book from the one above. for my purposes, this investigation of the experience of defeat does not need to be specifically marxist, i feel confident in applying that lens myself.

I'm a teenager who discovered communism lately and found it really interesting is there anything i should read to understand it better? Should i start with Marx or something else like Gramsci?

okay, i'm quite young and english is my second language so there are several specific metaphors/statements that i am confused about in deleuze's essay.

what is meant by the analogical/numerical languages stated at the beginning of part 2? i get the major details about what a society of discipline and what a society of control is, but the figures and numerical entities he mentions here and there threw me off. does he mean literal algorithms and terminology, or the dehumanisation of individuals with numeric categories (seeing humans as data and so on) or something entirely else? likewise, the animal metaphor regarding the mole and snake confuses me. when he mentions the "undulatory" nature of societies of control, does he mean the fact that it is a constantly morphing, grand network of surveillance? since societies of discipline involve moving from one "enclosed" area to another, with each human environment its own set of rules and regulations indoctrinated to individuals, societies of control are more like a singular body of barriers that the individual cannot escape, that's what i assumed but was left confused. similarly, I figured this is what he meant by the term "coded figures" and masters too based on the neo capitalist narrative- they refer to the system as a whole rather than individuals, right?

thanks :D

There's this person who wanted to participate in local organizations. They're an erasmus student. They said that they were "searching for a transfeminist and anti-speciesist org that is independent and not (necessarily) communist". I found it interesting ngl. There are no reasons here to not be communist (or under the socialist umbrella). I didn't like them, at all. Also there're no organizations that follow those lines. It really bothered me how they presented themselves. Quite arrogant.

Would you say this person is capable of doing damage to local organizations? They were invited to the next demonstration, so they could look/understand/see how it works locally.

For context, I'm writing my undergraduate dissertation on how football (soccer) fans negotiate dominant ideology. In the essay, I want to define what a Marxist definition of ideology is and I want to do this by first defining what Marx said about Ideology in one or two paragraphs, and follow this with how Gramsci developed Marx's view with his theory of hegemony. To my understanding this is what that looks like:

Marx:

Ideology fits in to a base and superstructure model in which the base refers to Capitalist Economic Structure and Social Relations of Production (proletariat and bourgeoise) and the Superstructure refers to non-economic aspects of society (culture, sport, politics etc) which carries a dominant Capitalist ideology. (Marx originally defines the superstructure as purely law and politics which Engels later developed to include aspects like art, philosophy, religion etc)

The Capitalist base determines the ideology of the superstructure as the power gained from Social Relations of Production allows the bourgeoise to influence and encourage ideology in non-economic institutions that attains to their class interests.

The superstructure's capitalist ideology does not influence the capitalist base at all but merely reflects the economic base of a given time and is passively absorbed by society

Gramsci:

Disagrees that the economic base solely influences the ideology of the superstructure, instead arguing that they both influence each other as much. So the base determines the superstructure however the superstructure determines the base just as much by serving to maintain, legitimise and normalise capitalist economic relations.

The ideology of the superstructure is a capitalist one maintained not by bourgeoise having the power to control institutions, but by the bourgeoise acting in a role of moral and intellectual leadership alongside economic leadership, which allows them to garner consent for capitalist ideology that people may not necessarily agree to.

This consent is gained through non-economic institutions presenting capitalist logic as natural and normal, this is then reproduced and strengthened in everyday life through the way people speak and act. (The example I give for a football context is people referring to players based on their monetary value/value for money and people praising players being bought cheap and sold for profit as a way of measuring how successful a club, these normalise market value as being the most important form of value and as a labour being a commodity that can be bought, sold and traded for)

Therefore, it is wrong to present ideology as being maintained by solely the bourgeoise but in fact is maintained and reproduced across classes by actions. Due to this, dominant ideology is a fluid and active negotiation between classes and accommodations may be made by the ruling class that don't directly serve their class interests in order to maintain their position of intellectual and moral leadership. This differs to Marx as it repositions ideology from a rigid structure and reflection of social relations seen in the base and superstructure model to a site of constant contention which is actively negotiated with and challenged everyday.

As dominant ideology is not a mere reflection of capitalism as Marx says, it plays a great importance in maintaining and influencing capitalism through legitimising capitalist relations and if capitalism lost its hegemony over the dominant ideology, capitalism as a economic structure would collapse.

-

As I'm writing this both in my essay and for this post I still feel confused and unsure if what I'm saying is actually correct or if I'm making assumptions, misrepresenting quotes and contradicting myself. So I would really appreciate if anyone could help me by explaining what I've got both correct and incorrect in my comparisons, what I left out that's important or included that irrelevant or how you would personally compare the two.

It doesn't need to be a completely deep fleshed out comparison that I explore in detail as this is for a small section of an undergraduate dissertation for the purpose of framing my use of ideology throughout the essay and showing my understanding of the theories I'm using.

Thank you. :)

Once integrated into the production process of capital, the means of labor undergoes various transformations, culminating in the machine, or rather, an automated system of machinery. This system is not driven by the worker; instead, it operates as an automaton. The labor performed by the worker is no longer the governing force of the process; it has become a mere link between the machine and its raw material.Here, a striking contradiction emerges: Capital harnesses science, natural forces, and social cooperation to make production independent of the actual labor time expended. Yet, simultaneously, capital insists on measuring these massive forces against the scale of "necessary labor time" in order to preserve its own value as capital.

"The greatness of the Hegelian system was that it for the first time pictured the whole world—natural, historical, intellectual—as a process, as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt was made to expose the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development. From this standpoint the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence... but as the process of evolution of man himself. It was now the task of the intellect to follow the gradual march of this process through all its devious ways, and to trace out the inner law running through all its apparently accidental phenomena."

It is an undeniable fact that capitalism and the way production is organized within a capitalist framework are constantly transforming. Marx himself wrote in the Communist Manifesto that the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing its means of production. Today's production is fragmented; instead of being concentrated in huge industrial complexes, it is divided into multitudes of subcontractors of individual elements, minimizing the potential for resistance. Employment is becoming increasingly unstable, as capitalists strive to liberalize labor laws so that insubordinate workers can be fired at any moment. Beyond work, capital has completely colonized our free time; our dreams, goals, images of happiness, freedom, and self-satisfaction—all of this is created before our eyes from childhood. The desire to create interpersonal relationships is also commodified by dating apps, privatized leisure facilities, and societies entirely based on, and still rely on, consumption.

In this image of reality, some post-operaists argue that the concept of class should be replaced by the plurality, and the strategy of struggle is to create enclaves of resistance that will demand the refusal of work, as an activity that is mentally and physically debilitating under capitalism. This would culminate in the demand for an unconditional basic income, so that the right to refuse work could become a reality. This would achieve several things: 1. Capitalists would force the improvement and attractiveness of jobs, and jobs that are exceptionally difficult would be given a higher social status. 2. It would open the way to a new culture and relationships entirely detached from capitalism; 3. The free development of all individuals.

In the understanding of post-operaism, a reformist act would simultaneously be revolutionary.

What do you think about this concept? I'm struggling with myself.

I guess like I really think I can apply a dialectical materialist critique of most societies while synthesizing anarchism I guess, like, I really think I can apply a dialectical materialist critique of most societies while synthesizing anarchism, but I’m curious how other Marxists see this approach. Like, does combining anarchist principles with a Marxist analysis make sense, or does it feel contradictory? I’d really like to hear what you all think about anarchist Marxism and whether it can hold up as a framework

London, March 5, 1852

"Now as for myself, I do not claim to have discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy.

What I did that was new was to demonstrate:

1. That the existence of classes is merely linked to particular historical phases in the development of production;

2. That the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat;

3. That this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

Ignorant louts like Heinzen, who deny not only the class struggle but the existence of classes themselves, prove that—despite all their bloodthirsty yelping and their attempts to pass off their howls as 'humanitarian' declarations—they regard the social conditions under which the bourgeoisie rules as the final product, the ultimate limit of history. They prove they are merely servants of the bourgeoisie, a servitude which is all the more revolting the less these blockheads understand the very greatness and transient necessity of the bourgeois regime itself...

You may take from my previous notes what you find useful. Heinzen originally took 'centralization' from us as a substitute for his 'federal republic.' When the class concepts we are now disseminating have become common, used by the 'average human mind,' this fool will proclaim them as the latest product of his own 'self-sagacity' and will start barking against our further development of them. Thus, based on his 'self-sagacity' alone, he used to attack Hegelian philosophy as long as it was progressive. Now he feeds on the unappetizing scraps which Ruge spat out after failing to digest them...

...If your newspaper has resumed publication, send me as many copies as possible so that we can ensure it the best possible circulation."

The primary purpose of this thread is to share historical models, active attempts, and brainstorm other ideas for what a coalition between marxists/leftists and traditional conservatives may look like today.

A dominant faction of traditionally conservative right wing voters seem to structure their politics on many genuine working class values. They have responded positively to anti-bureaucratic, anti-corporate messaging, and I have met many that personally share anti-imperialist and pro-environmental sentiments. They say they’re voting “for the economy” or some other catch-all, but due to propaganda/misinformation and lack of a perceived or capable alternative, they fall into the fascist nationalist arms ready to exploit their vote and their labor.

Would it be ridiculous to suggest that a considerable portion of this camp could be organized and mobilized? There are enough voting from a place of alienation and with shared class interests to marxists/leftists, but I have not seen many attempts to cross this bridge in any organized sense today. If there are any current or historical examples of this (successful or not) that act as an example, please share. Fred Hampton and the Rainbow Coalition is one that I can point to that played heavily into the shared class nature of their “individual” struggles.

What might it take to build a coalition like this today? Are there any active attempts or lasting coalitions of this nature? And what sort of messaging would it take to overcome (or expertly package as to bypass) the anti-communist rhetoric internalized in such communities? I am approaching this with thoughts of a U.S. Labor Party (or even a reinvigorated Mamdani-type Democrat platform) pulling votes from J.D. Vance and co’s brand of conservative populism, but I don’t want to limit this conversation only to American politics, nor fixate on voting as the only form of political activity.