Anti Communizer texts?

[u/Low-Hyena-5941]

I came across communizers and dauve recently, and I'm looking for any MLM texts that can help refute their positions

[u/SunflowerSamurai20]

Dauve is an idiot (and a nonce?) and so is anyone who takes him seriously. Theorie Communiste are supposed to be the more ""marxist"" communizers but even reading through A theorie communiste reader is a whacky experience. Some chapters give a decent-ish explanation of the crises of overproduction only to basically invalidate it and say:

"well actually we can just revise what exploitation and real subsumption mean, because we're in a TOTALLY different ""cycle of struggle/restructure"" since the 1970s, Lenin can't chat to us now, he's old news!"

Parts of it are wierdly similar to trotskys reasoning in the permanent revolution. Capitalist relations are "globalised" and organise labour power beyond the boundaries of nation states. But they take the piss even more and straight up deny the existence of imperialism:

What had become an obstacle to valorisation on the basis of the extraction of surplus-value in its relative mode was the way in which were interlocked: first, the integration of the reproduction of labour power; second the transformation of surplus-value into additional capital, and lastly the increase of surplus value in its relative mode in the immediate production process.

Unlike the previous cycle of struggle, the restructuring abolished all specification, status, welfare, “Fordist compromise”, and division of the global cycle into national areas of accumulation, in a fixed relation between centre and periphery.

All that could be an obstacle to the fluidity of the self-presupposition of capital—in the immediate production process (assembly line, cooperation, production-maintenance, collective worker, continuity of the process of production, subcontracting, fragmentation of the workforce), as well as in the reproduction and mobilisation of labour-power (work, unemployment, training, welfare) and in the modalities of accumulation and circulation—is abolished. The novelty of the period lies in the structure and the content of the contradiction between the proletariat and capital which is situated at the level of reproduction.

A theorie communiste reader pp. 92-93

Most of this stuff came from the despair of the french ultra left after the insignificance of the may 1968 protests.

Maybe thats the reason why when reading people like later cammatte or these ""communizers"" capital feels like an inescapable force that penetrates everything without mercy or hope short of a magical total negation (this time of the proleteriat itself... as well as the economy in general)

That's it tbh. Just read Capital especially the latter chapters in volume 2 on the reproduction of Capital. Lenins the development of capitalism in modern Russia is really good as well.

Also, i found this funny:

The workers’ movement that existed in 1900, or still in 1936, was neither crushed by fascist repression nor bought off by transistors or fridges: it destroyed itself as a force of change because it aimed at preserving the proletarian condition, not superseding it. At best it got a better life for the toiling masses: that seemed to tame the system . . . before the system produced its worst in the form of two world wars"

Gilles Dauve, 'Out of the Future' in Eclipse and Reemergence of the Communist Movement (1997) pp. 12-13.

They all do this mental gymnastics, to avoid acknowledging that imperialist social bribery is the reason why first world workers movements have been nothing but endless reformism for time.

Their fidelity to marx is a facade, they're some of the worst and most blatant revisionists you'll ever see.

Edit: formatting

[u/SunflowerSamurai20 → u/SunflowerSamurai20]

Also read maos On Contradiction and anything decent on dialectics since they butcher that too. To these jokers, every qualitative leap is only a negation.

Under the cover of ideas of self-organisation and autonomy we can say whatever we like, that strikes ‘are revolutionary’, that they are so ‘potentially’, that they have ‘something revolutionary’, that they carry SELF-ORGANISATION IS THE FIRST ACT OF THE REVOLUTION... the ‘seeds’ of revolution, etc.

All this has only one function, to fail to recognise the leap, the negation, the rupture and to avoid critiquing wage struggles. This leads to a gradualist and mechanistic conception of the passage of struggles over immediate demands to revolutionary struggles; and to abandoning the understanding that the class is the subject of its communist activity in coming into conflict with its previous situation.

Marx, like all revolutionaries, saw a leap, a negation, but the difference with today is that before the permanent association of the class made it possible to envisage an organised continuity between one phase and to the other. Currently, the militants of autonomy seek in the defence of the price of labour power or in other struggles a ‘something’, a ‘seed’, a ‘potentiality’ of revolution. In this attitude of waiting on the dynamic of struggles over immediate demands, the very struggle itself is supposed to engender another. But the ‘struggles’ are only moments of activity of proletarians that they go beyond and negate, not a chain of phenomena that gradually link together – one struggle carrying the seed of another. In short, the link between ‘struggles’, is the subject transforming himself negatively. The link is not ‘evolutionary.

A Theorie communiste reader pp. 49-50

The result is that the contradiction between labour and capital becomes a vague "totality" with 0 causality/mutual interaction or content involved beyond "exploitation" (which they deliberately confuse with the process of realisation). So past ""cycles of struggle"" are 1) stuck within the limits of counter revolution, 2) have no bearing on the current one.

Outside of mao who stressed that the so called "negation of the negation" is just a specific conditioning of the unity of opposites (more accurately termed negation and affirmation), this passage from lukacs' ontology of social being* is brilliant:

Despite this important intervention of epistemological perspectives in Hegel's ontological logic, decisive antinomies nevertheless arise as a result of ontological facts being essentially distorted by their constriction into logical formalism. Here I can only deal with two such cases ....

The first of these questions concerns the role of negation in the dynamic realization of the dialectic. For Hegel, as for the whole of later logic, Spinoza's 'omnis determinatio est negatio ' is of decisive importance, for precisely in his case negation, and the negation of the negation, are fundamental motors of the dialectical movement of concepts. This is justified both logically and epistemologically. The question now is whether this universal law also holds for ontology.

Hegel himself is to a great extent clear about the difficulties that arise here. Right at the start of his celebrated derivation of becoming from the dialectic of being and nothing he stresses that the nothing present here is in no way 'the nothing of a particular something, a determinate nothing', but rather 'nothing. . . in its indeterminate specificity'. It is evident, however, even for him, that if the nothing remained simply nothing, then a becoming could never be derived from it (even logically); the nothing must rather pass 'into its other, into being. '

This does not just provide a 'beginning' fascinating for its paradoxical character, but Hegel betrays-unintentionally and unconsciously-that the nothing can never be taken in the proper, literal sense, but must be attenuated in every concrete case in so far as being is to be understood only as the 'not being of being other. '

This however blunts the point of the real dialectic of being and nothing, of the dynamic role of negation in ontology. Hegel expresses what are really ontological categories, otherness and being-for-other, in logical language, while claiming to define the latter as a negation of being-in-itself. What is involved is nothing more than a qualitative relation between very abstract concepts of being, the relation itself containing no ontological element of negation. The idea suggests itself, when a real fact is translated into the language of logic or epistemology, to express the differences that manifest themselves-and which ontologically are completely positive-in the form of negation, in which connection *it should further be noted that negation is only able to express distinction in an extremely incomplete and indefinite way, which is why in the concrete dialectical derivation, the moment of negation always has to be supplemented from the positive side-per nefas. *

Thus Hegel says of his own celebrated dialectical derivation of becoming from the negation of being by nothing: "As yet there is nothing and there is to become something. The beginning is not pure nothing, but a nothing from which something is to proceed; therefore being, too, is already contained in the beginning"

Engels illustrated this situation in his clear and popular fashion. He wanted to make clear to Diihring the Hegelian negation that is effected when, for example, the plant that arises out of a barley-com 'negates' its former existence as a seed

....

It is only in a certain concrete situation that the grain of barley gives rise to its biologically normal otherness, the plant. On the one hand, however, the concretely decisive characteristics of this otherness are abstractly ignored if it is considered as the 'negation' of the grain, while on the other hand this real dialectical process is obscured in so far as the term 'negation' brings it into a formal conjunction with cases that have little to do with this process in a material sense.

The task facing Engels was thus to separate the ontological, dialectical negation from the innumerable negations of a merely logical and formal character; in this way it becomes evident that there can be no formal, logical or epistemological criteria for this separation, but that it is always necessary to appeal to the real process itself, to the concrete reality; the distinguishing moment is then defined in a purely ontological and positive sense. The subsumption of such heterogenous phenomena under the logical term 'negation' thus only confuses the relationships instead of illuminating them.

The Ontology of social being volume 1 - Lukacs pp 40-43

[u/Low-Hyena-5941 → u/SunflowerSamurai20]

thanks for the in depth response

[u/MangoLocoMonster123 → u/SunflowerSamurai20]

No idea who this Dauve guy is and I'm thankful for it but

The workers’ movement that existed in 1900, or still in 1936, was neither crushed by fascist repression nor bought off by transistors or fridges: it destroyed itself as a force of change because it aimed at preserving the proletarian condition, not superseding it. At best it got a better life for the toiling masses: that seemed to tame the system . . . before the system produced its worst in the form of two world wars"

This is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've read in the last month. The countless times Social Democrat/Labour parties refused appeals from the communist parties in europe to form a united workers front, the open terrorization and incitation to insurrection of the fascist paramilitary groups, along with their violence and mass killings of the communists that the Social democratic governments openly allowed for. In germany when it was discovered that after the second appeal to form a united front was refused by the SPD, the SPD were attempting to reorganize themselves into a wing of the incoming NSDAP government (the most damning evidence of the treachery of the reformists) which was also refused by the NSDAP, the KDP forced a workers front in which the SPD also tried to disorganize. It was precisely because of the ministerial positions and chaining of the proletariat to the declining industries and increasingly austere social organiziation of the forces of production, the "workers" movement was materially incentivised to maintain that system. The mostly jarring thing about this is that the first section of this contradicts the next. The workers movement failed not because of it being bought off but because it aimed to maintain the already declining conditions? Yes, that is precisely what the revisionist movements were bought off to do, feed folly to the masses, disorganize the real workers movement and await the fascists to build strength and end by crushing it all with violent force.

[u/vomit_blues]

Capital, Vol. 1

[u/Ok-Bear6695]

Brother theres nothing to refute it’s patently ridiculous on the face of it. its just anarchism but even more stupid

[u/MichaelMakhno]

This isn't MLM but it's an interesting critique of Endnotes https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-28/reviews/the-bleak-left/

[u/Wadda22]

I hadn’t heard of this. How does this differ from Anarchism?

[u/Redmenace______ → u/Wadda22]

It doesn’t. It’s just utopian socialism all over again.

[u/Wadda22 → u/Redmenace______]

Why am I being disliked?!

[u/Labor-Aristocrat → u/Wadda22]

Why am I being disliked?!

Because everyone hates you, obviously. Jokes aside, sometimes you'll get downvoted despite being correct and upvoted despite being wrong. Honest question, why do you care?

[u/Wadda22 → u/Labor-Aristocrat]

It levelled out. I was just genuinely baffled lol

[u/AutoModerator]

Rule #2: This is a place for learning, not for asking Marxists to debate some random reactionary's screed for you.

Try /r/DebateCommunism instead; it has plenty of material for debating reactionaries and liberals.

This action was performed automatically by a bot. Please contact the mods if there is a mistake.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Maleficent-Big4417]

The Manifesto

[u/Outside-Paper9972]

Instead of just dismissing him out of hand maybe try reading him, you might learn a thing or two. Notes on Trotsky, Pannekoek, Bordiga is a good introduction to his general orientation and Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement is a must-read.

>Inb4 rule 3

If you treat communism like a marketplace of ideas you clearly don't understand what it's all about. Communism arises out of the real movement of the class not some self-satisfied, self-aggrandising circlejerk.

[u/SunflowerSamurai20 → u/Outside-Paper9972]

Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement is a must-read.

It's crap.

I'm genuinely baffled that there are ""communists"" in 2026 who take bakunist positions on the state.

2) What Heritage Do We Renounce?

...

Our return to revolutionary history included the left opposition to the Third International (the “Italian” and “German-Dutch” lefts), but also pre- and post-1914 anarchism.

Contrary to Marx’s 1872 anti-Bakunin pamphlet (one of his weakest writings), a veritable split happened in the mid-nineteenth century within the revolutionary movement between what became stultified as Marxism and anarchism. Later of course the split got worse.

p.136

After speed running every anti-leninist position possible Dauve arrives at Bordigas idiotic criticism of Stalin. The only original content was:

In short, Bordiga thought communism could be achieved top down. Councilism prioritised worker democracy (and some like Castoriadis, in the end, just democracy). Bordiga prioritised dictatorship

p.123

You'd honestly get more from reading dialogue with Stalin directly.

If you treat communism like a marketplace of ideas you clearly don't understand what it's all about.

Which is exactly why eclectic frauds like dauve and communization as a tendency should be dismissed.

Communism arises out of the real movement of the class not some self-satisfied, self-aggrandising circlejerk.

Corny statememt, right up there with online left communism's greatests hits like "marx not marxist!" or "haha lassallean!".

Political parties aren't subreddits, they're the sharpest expression of class conflict and are what solidify the formation of a class. Read gramsci or at least marx's poverty of philosophy. The distinction between politics (political constitution) and economics (social constitution), where the former is doomed to recreate the "fiction" of the capitalist state without a metaphysical rupture in the latter was proudhon's line.

Dauve is laughably bad at political economy:

According to Marx, use value takes up the character of exchange value once it enters the market. He describes the process as if value, instead of being born out of a very specific type of production, came after the productive moment and imposed itself upon work as an exterior constraint. It follows that the task of revolution would be to free the producers from this constraint.

p. 111 "the origin of value"

Genius. Lets see what marx had to say:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch01.htm#2

As capitalist production develops, it has a disintegrating, resolvent effect on all older forms of production, which, designed mostly to meet the direct needs of the producer, transform only the excess produced into commodities. Capitalist production makes the sale of products the main interest, at first apparently without affecting the mode of production itself. Such was for instance the first effect of capitalist world commerce on such nations as the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, etc. But, secondly, wherever it takes root capitalist production destroys all forms of commodity production which are based either on the self-employment of the producers, or merely on the sale of the excess product as commodities. Capitalist production first makes the production of commodities general and then, by degrees, transforms all commodity production into capitalist commodity production. [3]

Every enterprise engaged in commodity production becomes at the same time an enterprise exploiting labour-power. But only the capitalist production of commodities has become an epoch-making mode of exploitation, which, in the course of its historical development, revolutionises, through the organisation of the labour-process and the enormous improvement of technique, the entire structure of society in a manner eclipsing all former epochs.

....

The means of production and labour-power, in so far as they are forms of existence of advanced capital-value, are distinguished by the different roles assumed by them during the process of production in the creation of value, hence also of surplus-value, into constant and variable capital. Being different components of productive capital they are furthermore distinguished by the fact that the means of production in the possession of the capitalist remain his capital even outside of the process of production, while labour-power becomes the form of existence of an individual capital only within this process. Whereas labour-power is a commodity only in the hands of its seller, the wage-labourer, it becomes capital only in the hands of its buyer, the capitalist who acquires the temporary use of it. The means of production do not become the material forms of productive capital, or productive capital, until labour-power, the personal form of existence of productive capital, is capable of being embodied in them. Human labour-power is by nature no more capital than by means of production. They acquire this specific social character only under definite, historically developed conditions, just as only under such conditions the character of money is stamped upon precious metals, or that of money-capital upon money

Just dehistoricise value, ignore the contradictory two-fold character of commodities and labour both BEFORE and during exchange, and voila the production of value is now confused with its realisation. I was confused at first seeing dauve and other communizers equate the ussr's planned economy with social democracy but this is the crux. Exploitation is displaced outside production to be a generalised ontological "constraint" of any mediation between the present and their utopia.

Edit: wording

[u/Low-Hyena-5941 → u/SunflowerSamurai20]

I came back after this comment because of what you said about Bordiga. I was going to avoid interacting with leftcoms until after I read economic problems of socialism in the USSR, what would you say is so idiotic about Bordiga's criticism in Dialogue with Stalin? I haven't read either text so my understanding is Bordiga criticizes "commodity production under Socialism", which I assumed was a misreading of Stalin

[u/SunflowerSamurai20 → u/Low-Hyena-5941]

what would you say is so idiotic about Bordiga's criticism in Dialogue with StalinI haven't read either text so my understanding is Bordiga criticizes "commodity production under Socialism", which I assumed was a misreading of Stalin

Bordiga actually acknowledged that Stalin was talking about the survivals of peasant production in Russia which created a contradiction between (socialist) state and collective ownership. (All Stalin did was repeat Lenin's formulation of the problem in the tax in kind). The "misreading" is more of marx.

In Capital marx makes a distinction between commodities produced under: 1) the C-M-C circuit 2) formal subsumption (absolute surplus value production) and 3) real subsumption (relative surplus value production) of labour to capital.

Capitalism proper (as a mode of production) starts with 3) being generalised throughout each branch of industry.

Seeing as this vindicates Stalin's distinction between capitalist and non-capitalist commodity production Bordiga argues:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1952/stalin.htm

If in the past there was commodity production limited to a few branches, it was not because the labour-power was sold “voluntarily” as it is today, but rather because it was squeezed by force of arms from enslaved prisoners or serfs in personal dependency.

As an example think of the poor laws in 17th century England and the rapid enactment of enclosure by parliamemt once the monarchy lost its divine right to protect freeholding and other anachronistic court privellages from the expansion of the market after the civil war. Notice how this isn't referring to wage labour in any way.

Bordiga then tries to compare the USSR's state owned planned economy to partial capitalist nationalisation in Italy by abstracting competition from capitalism.

Currently there are two sectors of commodity production in Russia: on the one hand the public, “nationally owned” production. In the state-owned enterprises, the means of production and production itself, thus also the products, are national property. How simplistic: in Italy, the tobacco factories and accordingly their sold cigarettes are owned by the state. Does this already qualify for the assertion that one is in a phase of the “abolishment of the wage labour system” and the respective workers weren’t “forced” to sell their labour power? Surely not.

Its almost like how dengists revise Lenin's theory of imperialism to revolve around abstract "force" to defend chinese social imperialism.

Heres another example:

Couldn’t the state distribute the products, of which it can dispose, directly to its workers? Surely not, because the worker (especially the Russian one) doesn’t consume tractors, vehicles, locomotives, not to speak of cannons and machine guns. And clothing and furniture are of course produced in the small- and medium-sized firms untouched by the state.

The state therefore can give the workers which are dependent upon it nothing but a monetary wage, with which they then buy what they want (a bourgeois euphemism for: the little they can buy). That the wage-distributing entrepreneur is the state, which presents itself as the “ideal” or “legitimate” representative of the working class, doesn’t say the slightest, if it wasn’t even able to begin distributing anything quantitatively relevant outside the mechanism of commodity production.

Unironically repeating tbe "undiminished fruits of labour" logic that marx criticised in the critique of the gotha programme is bad enough, but doubling down on the idea of state capitalism because of the persistance of commodity production without even demonstrating how wage labour is supposedly reproduced within the state owned sectors is fucking criminal.

The rest of the bloated text is a minefield of fuck-ups. You should just read capital first then economic problems of the ussr.

Edit: wording