We are traversing one of capitalism’s biggest crises since the great depression. We are seeing the imperialist tactics of the USA boomeranging back into the empire with unfathomable state repression, reactionary nationalism is taking hold of electoral politics in Québec and most of Europe in the face of a global systemic crisis, and the masses are quickly getting riled up without a clear direction to crush the oppressive state apparatus. Years have gone by with a constant dismantling of the labour rights and social safety nets that workers fought for in violent uprisings. The only thing protecting them in the last century was the “threat of the communist boogieman that will make us all use the communal toothbrush and send Uncle Stalin to eat all our grain with a comically large spoon if we don’t give our citizens free healthcare” but now – since 1991 - that the union has been destroyed by Yeltsin and his clique of capitalist ghouls, the era of reform and parliamentary social democracy are over. We must act in a united and organised manner to face the problems of our generation and beyond. As Albert Einstein put it: The profit motive of a capitalist society, paired with competition among capitalists, leads to unnecessary cycles of booms and depressions, and ultimately encourages selfishness instead of mutual aid, cooperation. […] I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. ALBERT EINSTEIN. “WHY SOCIALISM”. MAY 1949.

First, what even is socialism? Let’s establish these bases. It is vital to our understanding of these ideas to differentiate Socialism, Communism and Marxism. These are all intertwined but the notions given here are incredibly simplified and I heavily suggest you read up on “The Principles of Communism” by Engels, and “The three sources and three components of Marxism” by V. I. Lenin, both available on the Marxists Internet Archive.

First, Marxism is a tool that enables us to analyse and understand the world around us as well as the development of societies, through a materialist lense. It makes use of historical and dialectical materialism to explain the rise, development and/or fall of certain economic systems, as well as the contradictions within them that cause these developments, notably and most importantly within the capitalist system. It is also a critique of capitalist political economy, the theory of scientific socialism, opposed to the idealist utopians that preceded Marx. I suggest taking a look at “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific” by Engels, or to the broader work containing it: “Anti-Dühring: Herr Dühring’s revolution in science”. By extension, Leninism is Marxism applied to the era of imperialism, and theories on revolution, the vanguard party, and the national question. Again, good reading recommendations for understanding Leninism are “What is to be Done”, “The State and Revolution”, and “Imperialism: The highest stage of capitalism”, all by V. I. Lenin.

Then, Socialism as described in Marxism is a stage of social development where the organization of the armed proletarian has crushed the bourgeois state apparatus and replaced it with a transitional mode of production, socialism, where the proletarian collectively owns the means of production, through a council-based state which provides free healthcare, schooling, housing, and most notable of all organizes labour and production to fulfil an economic plan. The 21st century adaptation of this economy was described by Paul Cockshott as a direct democratic, centrally planned economy based on computers. Again, it is a transitional period to high-stage communism, involving a dictatorship of the proletariat – where the armed workers supress the resistance of the oppressor capitalists and the imperialists - the collectivisation of farms, factories and other places of work. Obviously, there have been multiple interpretations and real-life applications of socialism, with varying levels of successful accomplishments. Today, they have either been destabilized to the point of collapse by the imperialists or gave way to huge market reforms thanks to entryism by bourgeois capitalists. More on that later. Marx never himself distinguished socialism from communism, rather using lower and higher stage communism to describe the development of a communist society. At the time, only utopian socialists existed, basing their worldview on moralist principles rather than material analysis, and the worker’s movement was social-democratic if not ana rchist.

To reiterate, Lenin then expanded on Marx’s ideas and described Socialism as the transitory stage to achieve communism, where workers have seized state power through a revolution, crushed the bourgeois state apparatus and have established a dictatorship of the proletariat - a worker democracy with a planned economy where the proletariat is the ruling class, instead of the bourgeoisie. The development of socialism will be further described later.

Finally, Communism refers to high-stage socialism, when the political state withers away to give place to a solely administrative function, and is no longer necessary; when workers observe the development of their society without ‘fear of a tyrannical, bureaucrat state’. Money as we know it is abolished in favour of labour-time accounting, or a gift economy – we don’t really know what it looks like since it is a stage of historical development which has not yet been reached and cannot be reached while capitalism still holds power globally. Classes are fully abolished and there is no longer a worker-bourgeois antagonism, negating the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat since everyone is proletarian. To re-iterate, communism is the end goal, a society organised horizontally, made of workers councils without a political state, governed by the masses. Again, it is not something that is achievable right away, and no communist thinks that unless they’re an idealist anarchist and reject scientific socialism. It will take many, many years before arising, and even more if people feel satisfied with an only ‘socialist’ status quo and fall victims to market delusions. Socialism is a stage of development of society, just like feudalism and capitalism. More on this and capitalist restoration in past socialist countries is very well put by Michael Parenti in his book “Blackshirts and reds: rational fascism and the overthrow of communism”. [Transition graphic] So, this seems great. But how do we achieve it? Well, let’s settle down and observe the ways to achieve this society by analysing the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg and Stalin.

First and foremost, the way of achieving Socialism would vary a lot depending on whom you may ask, and which place in the world is in question. Material conditions and the stage of development vary greatly from place to place. In the global south, there are insurgent worker revolutions like in India and the Philippines. Revolutionary movements were built by educating the masses on Marxism-Leninism, taking advantage of deepening crises, military juntas, takeover of anti-imperialist, the list goes on. Many struggles have happened with different methods, material conditions, vanguard parties, guiding lines, the list goes on. However, this video is mainly addressed at the western left living either in settler colonial states or elsewhere in the imperial core. How do we reach socialism? Well, it’s surely not as simple as an immediate worker’s revolution (with no one to guide it) or parliamentary reform. We have seen that the latter has made slight concrete changes pushed by mild social-democrats and forced by looming threats of revolution and strikes. We must first form strong communities, practice mutual aid and spread class consciousness in our worker unions. What we have seen so far from electoralism, running in elections and building a socialist party is definitely a slide back to the right every time we don’t seem acceptable to the ruling class. As Audre Lorde said: For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Lenin expanded on this notion: if the state is a product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, if it is a power standing above society and alienating itself from it, it is thus clear that the liberation of the people is impossible without a revolution and the destruction of the state apparatus which was created by the ruling class, and is the embodiment of this alienation.

We can also further examine the “Critique of the Gotha Program” by Marx as a defense of a revolutionary project within the United Worker’s Party of Germany, explaining he dictatorship of the proletariat, the transitional stage, the phases of communist society, the production and distribution of social goods, and so on. This is part of a broader analysis taken from my friend Parker who wrote a pretty insightful document on the matter a few years ago. If you are convinced or don’t want an in depth theoretical analysis, feel free to skip to the chapter on What is to be done, at [20:44] We have radical liberals and “socialists” whose only political project is to alter the distribution of goods and resources, whilst rejecting the claim that people need to hold the means of production. That’s where these issues originate. People that are like this spend all their time focusing on bourgeois democracy, which never gets them anywhere and recycles history over and over again and simply for so-called progressives, who then betray their very views.

They are utopians who think that they can push a neoliberal further to the left. They don’t understand a thing about capitalism’s modern functions and haven’t read any theory. They are utopians who don’t have a formulated understanding of capitalism and the psych. These people reject all forms of violence. Marx shows us social democracies can never be efficient and that distribution will always be tied to the dominant mode of production. To move to socialism, a confrontation with the ruling class and their property is a must. The working class strives for its emancipation first within the framework of the present-day national states, conscious that the necessary result of its efforts, which are common to the workers of all civilized countries, will be the international brotherhood of peoples. This sentiment in nationalism opposes the manifesto and all forms of socialism; it conflates the necessity of fighting first at home with the sufficiency of fighting at home.

It is altogether self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, the working class must organize itself at home as a class and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle – insofar as its class struggle is national, not in substance, but, as the Communist Manifesto says, “in form”. But the “framework of the present-day national state”, for instance, the German Empire, is itself, in its turn, economically “within the framework” of the world market, politically “within the framework” of the system of states. Every businessman knows that German trade is at the same time foreign trade, and the greatness of Herr Bismarck consists, to be sure, precisely in his pursuing a kind of international policy.

This view is too narrow; it reduces proletarian internationalism to a near consciousness that the result of its efforts will be the international brotherhood of all people. It does nothing to lay out the international functions of the german working class, instead adding awareness and suggesting a future brotherhood. This stands below the bourgeois brotherhood as the bourgeois also assert that their efforts will be the international brotherhood of all people. This internationalism is imperialist and cosmopolitan culturally and embraces free trade. This international does something whilst the social-democrat’s is just a mere idea. Marx argues that the international workingmen’s association was at least an attempt to create a central organ for proletarian internationalism despite its flaws. The german working party had sworn off international trade.

“The German Workers’ party, in order to pave the way to the solution of the social question, demands the establishment of producers’ co-operative societies with state aid under the democratic control of the toiling people. The producers’ co-operative societies are to be called into being for industry and agriculture on such a scale that the socialist organization of the total labour will arise from them.”

The program fails to understand revolutionary needs. Instead of arising from the revolutionary process of transformation of society, the “socialist organization of the total labour” “arises” from the “state aid” that the state gives to the producers’ co-operative societies and which the state, not the workers, “calls into being”. It is worthy of Lassalle’s imagination that with state loans one can build a new society just as well as a new railway!

This reveals social-democrats’ failed views of the state. They view it out as a form of bourgeois control but rather an entity that can be manipulated by the proletariat. The Gotha programme ends up calling for government funded cooperatives and then says these cooperatives can in some way abolish capitalism and capitalist social relations. This is not the organized proletariat but rather the impartial state. The state has bourgeois control then and now. The demand claims that the state aid will be placed under the control of toiling people but this language is superfluous because at the time the toilers were peasants not proletarians. This bad language angers Marx. If the toiling people make demands to the state there is an inherent concession that the state rules not the toiling people hence there is no way to create power for the masses since they need to rely on the state to organize and move on. Marx doesn’t reject cooperatives and says that the workers desire to establish the conditions for co-operative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to revolutionize the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid.

Henceforth, under the social democrat program the control is sanctioned by and achieved by a state that is not a friend of the people. But as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not proteges either of the governments or of the bourgeois. There might be room for developing cooperatives but it cannot be funded by the state and has to be created by the workers as a movement. Vaush is always talking about pushing Biden left and rejecting revolution but of course this would never work.

Marx rejects the Lassalian free basis of the state. It is by no means the aim of the workers, who have got rid of the narrow mentality of humble subjects, to set the state free. In the German Empire, the “state” is almost as “free” as in Russia. Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it; and today, too, the forms of state are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the “freedom of the state”.

The idea of setting the state free doesn’t make sense from a socialist demand. There is a certain sense in which the state was set free by bourgeois revolutions such as the collapse of feudalism and such. Marx argues the socks misunderstand the function and role of the state because it treats the state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical, and libertarian bases.

The state for Marx is not an independent rule but is an identity expressing class rule and conflict. It cannot express free from class rule but rather a representation of it.

More than one issue in capitalism to focus on and rather than putting your action on one we need to dismantle the system. The different states of the different civilized countries, in spite of their diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed.

The state has to exist to represent the class conflict. The present bourgeois state can be contrasted with a future state when capitalism fades away. Marx explains there must be a communist capitalist phase the DOTP. Marx says the program does not note the stage of development or state features that would develop under communism but rather reiterates bourgeois rights. Because the party wants to work with the state the demands are mainly pointless because at the time Germany was an empire without a liberal democracy. This may have made sense in a different framework to expand a democratic republic but not for the left.

Marx critiques their view on education. The socdems support universal education equal on all levels and compulsory by the state. He questions whether equal education can exist as long as a state and class and property exist. The project attempts to seek equality but does not analyze the thighs that compound equality and inequality. And compulsory education has been achieved in Germany and such and isn’t really a socialist demand. Universal education isn’t a socialist demand as it makes no sense that the state got to educate the people as the state represents class rule and it will and can inherently form our ideology. This is why I view freud lacan althusser and adorno as so important. Education is the job of the people not the state. State regulations on education are ok but not state education.

Workplace democracy still fails to address all of the main issues and hence cannot be a valid solution to dismantle oppression, hence combatting syndicalism. Marx says there should be no free state and the state should help the workers get their hands on the means of production and with worker control the state will seize. Between capitalism and communism there relies a transition of revolutionary movements and political in which we have a dictatorship of the proletariats

Our biggest conclusions from this are as follows:

  1. A revolutionary program needs to be specific in its material demands conditions and ideals and political power

  2. With the sociological base and superstructure you can’t keep the production capitalist while improving consumption to help the workers

  3. Because without the power in worker hands changes in distribution and consumption are subject to roll back

  4. We need to be incredibly careful think purposefully and tactically and critically Then, what are the applications of this work?

Marx deals with the fact that scientific socialism is built out of capitalism. Socialism isn’t about burning everything down and starting over but reviving and fixing the current society in a scientific revolutionary matter. There won’t be an instant transformation to communism. Users both faced the question on how to deal with the capitalist nature of society and had to adapt some capitalist fractions to survive and evolve out of it. Same applies to Cuba and Vietnam; they need to fight with the lingerings of capitalism and the new emerging capitalism, and ideologically escaping capitalism which lays down the principles of a dotp. Capitalism is a necessary starting point. Even post dotp ideology will still linger which is why anarchism is insanely idealist.

Marx’s critique of nationalism: Proletarian internationalism is essential. Class struggle starts in the nation state. We need to link up materially with other class struggles across the globe. Fanon’s argument gestures towards this direction. We need to take real material steps for our internationalism. Capitalism is already internationalist so we must be too. The bourgeois nation state is an obstacle. We need to organise more. In the US we have no large organisations or parties to donate or support foreign relations because we failed to organise. We down[lay imperialism and attack proletarian leaders abroad. We need to combat leftcoms.

Socialism must be a transition. To suggest otherwise is utopian and will fail because of ideology. Being a socialist but anti communist is a new type of liberalism. Social democracies democratic socialism market socialism helps the bourgeoisie and isn’t a threat to capitalism. Understanding that socialism is the transition helps us understand scientific socialism and historical context. Marx talks about the absurdity of ignoring the transition.

Regarding worker cooperatives: Marx combats the idea that worker control can exist in capitalism, that the program views as a way of escaping. This represents a new form of reformism. Coops make lives more sustainable but do not threaten capitalism. They still exist in markets and do not threaten the bourgeois power as it is exercised through the capitalists. Reforms don’t threaten capitalism but they may help lives. Mutual aid organisations and coops may switch into bourgeois reformism. This dual power can not be a pure strategy or sole form of action as they don’t threaten the state or capitalism. Worker cooperatives can’t replace revolutionary struggles. There needs to be a broader debate within party conventions.

[How to Revolution]

How do we do revolution? Well, something Lenin exemplified in “What is To Be Done?” is that we see massive spontaneity of the masses whenever dramatic events occur. General strikes, anti-war peace protests, and more recently the Minneapolis General Strike in the US, spontaneously called 3 days before it happened. But we must not fall in the trap of endless movementism that benefits the bourgeoisie. Disorganised and without direction, these spontaneous movements fizzle out and fail, crushed by the state thugs. As Lenin put it: “The struggle must be organised, according to “all the rules of the art”, by people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity. The fact that the masses are spontaneously being drawn into the movement does not make the organisation of this struggle less necessary. On the contrary, it makes it more necessary.” (The Primitiveness of the Economists and the Organization of the Revolutionaries. 1901.)

But what does this mean? It means that the class-conscious part of the working class must dedicate themselves to the struggle, read up on the literature, investigate class relations and revolutionary doctrine. “Professionally engaged”, in this sense, means being principled, truly believe in the movement and evidently act in a professional manner inside the party.

Talking about the party, Lenin says : “Attention, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not at all our task to descend to the level of the “working masses.”” (Lenin, What Is To Be Done?. “The Primitiveness of the Economists and the Organization of the Revolutionaries”. 1901.) “In the beginning we had to teach the workers the ABC, both in the literal and in the figurative senses. Now the standard of political literacy has risen so gigantically that we can and should concentrate all our efforts on the more direct Social-Democratic objectives aimed at giving an organised direction to the revolutionary stream.” (Lenin, New Tasks and New Forces (1905))

This is a very important part of Lenin’s writings. The vanguard party, AKA the most class-conscious section of the working class, is not a secretive subversive clique of 5 individuals seeking to overthrow the system in a coup. This is utter idealism. The Bolsheviks in the begginings of the USSR were comprised of upwards of 200 000 of these “advanced class-conscious sections of the working class”. We educate and train the masses to crush the state apparatus and establish a dictatorship of the workers over the bourgeoisie.

This, in the settler imperial nations, must be a struggle waged shoulder to shoulder with the indigenous nations who were colonised, in a manner which promotes their struggle as proletarian. For the time for decolonization is well past its necessity and we absolutely need to be accomplices. To organize to destroy the bourgeois state, help the cultural revival of your local indigenous comrades, of their languages, arts, modes of governance. True decolonization removes the privilege of the settlers and the bourgeois, putting everyone on a shared standing of equality, removing native-settler distinctions and negating the capitalist elements of our society, giving rise to a union of nations. The bulk of this work, as class-conscious workers, is thus to find a principled Marxist-Leninist organization, to read up on important materials, spread class consciousness and most important of all have the capacity to be a directing line to the spontaneous workers when the time arrives. Inside the party, revisionism and reaction must be struggled out of the line. At the same time, go to protests, talk to people about class and capitalism, spread the word! Suggested readings for this section are “What is to be Done” and “State and Revolution” by Lenin, “Critique of the Gotha Program” by Marx, and Hakim’s video on revolution.

Also, stop engaging in mindless internet arguments and organize on the ground. Still, make communist propaganda.