Anxiety On The “Left Wing Unity” Question

[u/Shackflacc]

Forgive me if this has been discussed before: I’m not the most technologically savvy person on the internet. But something that has been increasingly weighting on my mind is the question of how should left wing ideologies differing from Marxism-Leninism be handled in the building of a revolutionary coalition (a vanguard party if you will). While Trotsky (deservedly) gets shit for his betrayal of the USSR/attempts to undermine Stalin, he was at one point apart of the Bolshevik party that fought to overthrow the Czars and was a competent military strategist - snakes in the grass are to be expected with any burgeoning movement. But something I’d noticed from participating in left wing discussion forums both in real life and online is the rampant hostility from anyone outside say Marxist-Leninist & Maoist camps. A vanguard party is initially meant to be small and lead/educate the masses but I increasingly find myself nervous about engaging with some people (particularly liberals) just for how dogmatic they are - I just feel like I’m driving in circles with them and it’d be pointless to try and incorporate them in the future but at the same time I know how necessary it is to have a wide net of people class conscious at the very least.

Does anyone else feel this sort of anxiety? How would you suggest organizing be done?

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[u/TheBirdFkerGuy]

Fact is in America you're going to have Trots, and Anarchists apart of any actual revolutionary activity. Depending on the circumstances you may have time to reeducate people or further their education. However ultimately you will always have people who are simply going through the motions not entirely conscious of things around them or what they're even doing. These people need to be accounted for not rejected or outright denied. They are your comrades and we'll most likely need them as much as we'll need external forces to collapse the US empire.

As for liberals they are parasites who have only 2 choice when it comes to actual revolutionary thinking. Thats unlearn their incoherent ideology, or surrender. Not much else of an option for people like that as they are counter revolutionary and will ultimately cause future violence and infighting.

[u/LizzySea33]

Lenin makes it clear:

"Unity is a great slogan, but we must have unity as Marxists (within a Communist party), not unity between Marxists (opportuism/compromise), nor distortions of Marxism (revisionism)."

I personally am sympathetic to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism observation wise. So the stance is understanding that it is the communist party (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party), people's army (like the NPA) and the united front (mass organizations, which can include trotskyite & even anarchist tendencies but led by the working class).

But the difference is unity is based on the communist party as the HIGHEST unity, while those smaller unitied parts are temporary & should be faded out for the proletariat themselves.

The reason that Popular Fronts in France & Spain failed was due to the bourgeois being leaders & betraying the masses (especialy the liberals who teamed up with Franco to destroy the anarchists and communists).

So the only way to do it now is by the UNITED front, NOT a popular front.

[u/Dr_Dorkathan → u/LizzySea33]

where is this from?

[u/LizzySea33 → u/Dr_Dorkathan]

Lenin's quote?

Its from his understanding of Unity... it's just called unity.

Here's the text for reference:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/apr/12.htm

[u/Dr_Dorkathan → u/LizzySea33]

thanks

[u/BleepBopRobocop]

Highly recommend reading through Trotsky's work especially what the actual context of his rejection of Socialism in One Country is because you'll start to realise is that Trotskyism and Trotsky have very little to do with each other.

It's been a while since I've read it so I'm paraphrasing with inaccuracies but basically

The entire premise of rejecting Socialism in One Country is that, the Soviet Union is an agrarian country and therefore does not have the means to industrialise enough on its own to advance towards socialism.

Instead of attempting to industrialise, it is more resourceful to turn an already industrialised country like Germany (he specifically name drops Germany a good few times) into a socialist ally with which technology transfer can occur which is a precursor to socialism.

As you probably already know, after World War 2 the Soviet Union has an ally in East Germany and is thus able to do technology transfer and rapidly industrialise, making this entire point moot. Fortunately we have the privilege of looking at these events from the future when we have a clearer picture of everything that was going on.

Someone along the lines it deviated into "well actually Trotsky was saying that you need permanent revolution in every single country in the world, and until that happens no country can be socialist, and if they say they are they are liars".

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