I am interested in politics, and even tho i am not a communist, i am interested in what can be learned from it and i also want to learn more about political ideologies as a whole, instead of speaking out of my ass whenever someone mentions communism and potentially say some bullshit. What do you think?
Edit: thanks for all the answers! I swear i read them all, i just don’t know how to answer to each of them, but thanks for all the recommendations!
But there is basically 0 criticism of these states that declare themselves socialist. It’s all defense and national pride which is exactly what Marx wasn’t about. Regardless of what you believe and how it could be used against these movements, that’s not what Marx was about.
Personally I completely disagree. It’s like arguing to build a bridge you have to flood the river first, you’re making it more difficult. Marx never believed in anything about nations having self determination he believed states and borders were constructs.
I definitely agree about Palestine but there are other atrocities I won’t mention because people get really mad about them which are completely glossed over, ignored or even demonized because it will paint certain states in a certain light and cause that whole nationalistic mindset to rear it’s ugly head from certain groups here. So yeah they support Palestine but I’d argue it’s more about the adversary for a lot of these activists, not the workers themselves, or we’d have a lot different conversations appearing on lemmy.
People will be mad at me again but that’s not happening. Like I said, states across the world continue to amass power. This is just not something Marx would ever be in support of.
I’m speaking solely from the perspective of what he wrote he believed in not my personal beliefs so passerbyers don’t rage at me about this. Marx believed in the international socialist, workers uniting regardless of borders and was heavily against the concept of the state or borders as those are tools of the bourgeoisie. I think it really boils down to, if you find yourself championing a state or defending a state without also expressing criticism you’re not really embracing Marx.
You have a dogmatic view of nationalism, ironically. Nationalism, when resisting colonialism and imperialism, is progressive. The national struggle is a class struggle. Nationalism can easily turn into something reactionary when it is done to reinforce colonialism and imperialism as well. Marx absolutely did agree with this, evidenced by his support of the Polish nationalist movement for independence. The working class is an international class, but this does not mean they are without nations. To erase the national struggle is class reductionism.
As for socialist states, they have indeed been developing and growing. The development of the dictatorship of the proletariat is not something Marx opposed, you seem to fundamentally misunderstand Marx’s theory of the withering of the state in the transition from lower-stage communism to higher-stage communism. The economic basis of this is one where class struggle has ended, and in a world where imperialism is dominant socialist states cannot wither away entirely. They must react to the siege they exist in.
Okay that’s fine to believe. But again I’m talking about Marx. He was never supportive of nationalism he was specifically internationalist and simultaneously believed states and borders were bourgeoisie constructs. So trying to claim he is supportive of those just is not true. It’s absurd to say he agreed with that, he didn’t support the Polish nationalist movement because it was nationalist. He supported a revolution that would break up the Russian dominance.
So if your nationalist support is to a very large, rich and established nation. He wouldn’t support that.
I’m not erasing a national struggle. The socialists I’m speaking of tend to be of some of the richest nations on the planet who are supporting their continued growth in one way or another. That is not a revolutionary faction working to undo the dominance of a powerful state. He would not support that.
As for the second part of what you said I think this is exactly where Marx conversations end because he lived in such a different world, the idea of these structures existing wasn’t something he would be familiar with. What his opinions are on these fronts is never going to be clear. But the idea that he would ever support a powerful state is pretty inaccurate. There’s also the whole side that the reason you have Leninism and Stalinism is because Marx didn’t really talk about the structure of a state or outline what it would look like. He believed it would come about naturally. So once you start talking about the actual structure, what makes a socialist state and if you can say it is a socialist state that Marx would support you’re stepping away from Marx and moving towards more modern socialist thinkers which is a more broad conversation and leans away from what I’m talking about.
No, you’re fundamentally incorrect about Marx’s position, and you’re butchering mine. Marx, like the Marxists that took after him, understood the national struggle as a struggle for sovereignty, the basis of which is in internationalism. Internationalism and nationalism are not contradictory, nor did I or Marx ever say that Marx supported the Polish because they were nationalist. This is reductive, as is collapsing the entire working class into one without nations. Marx did not see nations as bourgeois constructs, in fact he explicitly stated that communism would bring about the end of exploitation of nation by nation, not just man by man.
Lenin developed the national question further, as did Stalin. However, the basis of the national question as Marxists understand it today, as one where internationalism can only exist in practice between sovereign nations, and that therefore the quest for sovereignty is a progressive struggle, was with Marx from the onset, hence why he supported Poland against Russia, not just for the sake of Russian revolution but also for Polish independence. The same again happened with Marx supporting the freeing of the Statesian slaves.
As for Marx, he never bothered charting what a socialist state would look like, correct, but he always supported the dictatorship of the proletariat, the absolute rule of the working class against reactionary classes. This is a historically necessary process, one where he made the famous quote:
This isn’t because Marx was a marvel villain, but was because he supported the absolute power of the working class as a historically necessary process.
The point isn’t simply that Marx disliked nationalism and I am not saying nationalism is the opposite of internationalism. It isn’t that supporting any state automatically makes someone anti-socialist. It’s that Marx’s idea of the state is tied directly to class antagonism. The state isn’t a neutral entity.
So when a socialist or their movement makes defending its nation a political end in itself I think Marx would view a problem there. If the state is a byproduct of class struggle then preserving and legitimizing that state without criticism will create the exact relationship Marx thought socialism was meant to overcome. The question is what class relations exist, who exercises control and whether the political institution themselves are being transformed or merely preserved. This applies not just to socialists from the US and Chinese socialists, I’m speaking of most nations we’d consider rich; basically all of Europe, Russia. I’m saying loyalty to these nations and being uncritical of them is against what Marx’s internationalist and antistate theory was about. But that is where you’ll find most of these people talking about socialism.
Marx frames the proletariat movement as international and calls for workers from all countries to unite. So when I talk about modern socialists adopting a nationalist/socialist mindset, I’m not saying that any form of national identity is inherently anti-Marxist. I’m talking specifically about defending the state and its national interests over criticizing the class relations that exist within it. All of these countries have immense wealth disparity and private institutions especially in the manufacturing, tech, retail which in Marx’s time were the major institutions he was talking to when he talked about the workers, they were the ones being exploited and in these nations that is still happening. So being defensive and nationalistic about them is not the type of nationalism he would support as they are upholding what he’s against. That is what I am talking about when I say how most socialists have embraced a more nationalist/socialist mindset.
States and nations are not the same thing, and I think you are confusing me and Marx by conflating the two. Nations are historically constituted, stable communies of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and culture. Nations seek sovereignty, through the establishment of a state in their interests. The abolition of the state can only be done once a nation is sovereign, and this is intrinsically tied to the class struggle between workers and the bourgeoisie.
Secondly, regarding private ownership within socialism. The economic basis of markets is in decentralized production. The economic basis of social production and distribution is large, centralized production. Trying to force one into the other forces antagonistic contradictions. The very same contradiction that gives rise to the proletariat taking power through revolution, the centralization of markets creating a new economic basis for social production, also works against socialist construction if this economic base does not exist yet and a socialist state dogmatically collectivizes even decentralized production. This is the basis for the marketization that exists in socialist countries in secondary and underdeveloped industries.
But that is not how Marx used the terms in his writing, you are the one confusing Marx here. A state was a political organization they ruled the economy, established because of the class struggle. In his eyes it is a weapon. A nation was a political boundary created by capitalism to define a market.
Basically one was internal, one was external although I don’t think he ever expressed it that simply.
Marx famously believed the working person had no country which you could argue was the combination of a state and nation as he viewed them. It is a massively important part of his view.
So no. The idea Marx supported the idea of nationality isn’t true it’s completely the opposite of what he believed which is why it is very important to push his international socialist mindset because once you don’t, you fall into the nationalism trap and begin moving away from his writing. Which is what most modern socialists do, which is what I’ve been saying.
I’ve grown over this discussion as you continue to push away from talking about what Marx wrote and his beliefs and continue to push your own idea of what socialism should be and your support of nationalism which isn’t what this conversation is about.
I repeat my point, socialists today are more national socialists than what Marx wrote in support of. Whether that’s good or bad is a different conversation but Marx would not have supported that mentality as it is completely the opposite of his international socialist opinion. By embracing nationalism socialists today reaffirm class disparity which is very visible today across most nations especially visible here on lemmy.
Nations are not states. I am not confusing Marx, here, you continue to vulgarize his views. Marx was an internationalist, on this we agree, but because you do not understand the concept of a nation you vulgarize what that internationalism means. Looking at Marx’s view of Ireland, Marx stressed that the national liberation of Ireland from British colonialism was in fact the correct step towards proletarian internationalism, and that therefore the primary task was liberation from colonialism before liberation from capitalism could be achieved.
Marx indeed said that the international working class has no country. This is indeed true, the overall goal is not individual national supremacy, but international solidarity towards an interconnected future. However, Marx also understood colonialism and the struggle for national liberation, and supported these movements. Lenin and Stalin would go on to develop these ideas further, but they did not divert from Marx on this point.
Socialists today are not more nationalist. You fundamentally misunderstand how internationalism actually works according to Marx himself. Marxists today have a more developed theory of the national question than existed with Marx, but this does not make socialists today “more nationalist.” You’ve fundamentally confused the national question as it existed in Marx’s time, and vulgarized him into a class reductionist, one that does not understand primary and secondary contradictions.
The embrace of proletarian internationalism, which includes support for the national sovereignty of all peoples, is what’s common on Lemmy. Not these bourgeois ideas of national supremacy of nations, which you have inserted into the equation. Marx and Engels themselves stated that no nation can be free while it oppresses other nations, meaning even in Marx’s time national liberation was a core aspect of proletarian internationalism. You turn him into an idealist that does not recognize the real, material process of nations.
Uh huh.
No it is not. If this were true you would see more sympathy for certain smaller nation’s plights. You don’t. You see dogmatic support for “my flavor” of socialism and a strict aggressive nationalistic mentality towards one brand of imperialism over another.