Talk:Communist Manifesto

"interesting video" - I think EL's like this should say why. What is it about? What does it mash up? ħuman 03:10, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I love the comment on YouTube that the communist should read Ayn Rand, one political fundamentalist meets another. - π 05:29, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Marx and Stalin

@GR As I understand the history, Marx and Engels wrote several works, which were later adapted and altered by Lenin,(who Marx is on record as praising, though said praise is somewhat lukewarm) who added several things, including the idea of a vanguard party and the idea that there is first socialism and then communism, when Marx and Engels made no such distinction, whose work was later in turn adapted by Stalin for his political and propaganda ends. Thusly, we have a bit of a game of telephone here, where the original message (which is flawed by the way, with one example being the idea that history moves towards a fixed end point, which Marx and Engels believed to be Communism) is distorted over time, thusly resulting in the propaganda used to justify atrocities. For another example, ideas from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations are used to justify reckless capitalist policies that Smith himself criticizes in that very work. With Marx and Engels' work, the timeline is shorter, but the telephone game no less visible. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 14:31, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for pinging me and debating me on this. @GrammarCommie In regards to the section I made, I had things like these in mind, that Stalin said about Marx(ism):[1]

We are in favour of the withering away of the state, and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents the most powerful and mighty of all forms of the state which have existed up to the present day. The highest development of the power of the state, with the object of preparing the conditions of the withering away of the state: that is the Marxist formula. Is it "contradictory"? Yes, it is "contradictory." But this contradiction is a living thing and wholly reflects the Marxist dialectic.

Re: Vanguard party: The Communist Manifesto, Chapter II, "Proletarians and Communists" [2]

The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

Re: Socialism vs. Communism: The Communist Manifesto, Preface to The 1888 English Edition [3]

Thus, in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”; communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself,” there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating it.

— Godless Raven ^talk_stalk^walk_balk 🌹 15:40, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I am going to try to be very patent with you on this matter. However, quoting Stalin, as if anything the man said was trustworthy or representative of his actual views, is quite stupid. In that regard, you might as well quote Trump on how much of a Christian he is. (hint, he isn't, and he's likely never read the bible before in his life). The second quote does not advocate for a vanguard party, only the organization of the working class, which, per your own quote, are mentioned as members of existing parties. Finally, the preface is fluff, and not relevant to the actual work itself. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 17:56, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

"However, quoting Stalin, as if anything the man said was trustworthy or representative of his actual views" Ok, then how can I verify (or falsify) that Stalin was influenced by Marx? Give me conditions to satisfy that claim of fact. — Godless Raven ^talk_stalk^walk_balk 🌹 02:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

The best way would be to look at what kind of policies he implemented, and then try to figure out what inspired them. In this regard you'd probably have to go beyond the Communist Manifesto, and look at Das Kapital (volumes one through three) and Critique of the Gotha Program, to name all the relevant works I'm aware of. Alternately, you could argue that Lenin and later Stalin were inspired by a superficial reading of these works (After the Paris Commune Marx put a bunch of footnotes in later editions of his works stating that he didn't believe that statism would be useful on the path to communism), though I suspect the matter is more complicated than that. Finally, please stop hyperfocusing on Stalin, Lenin helped pave the way for Stalin's rise to power, albeit unintentionally, and does deserve some of the blame here. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 13:31, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Updated by including Lenin in there. Also, you don't object to the claim that Marx inspired Lenin and Stalin, then? — Godless Raven ^talk_stalk^walk_balk 🌹 13:35, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

The way you added Lenin there makes it seem that he was involved in Holodomor as well, despite having been dead for almost a decade by then. And since the point of the sentence is to compare Holodomor and Holocaust, I don't think Lenin should be included there.Coigreach (talk) 13:50, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Oh yeah, that's fair. Changed it to specify Stalin for being directly responsible for it. — Godless Raven ^talk_stalk^walk_balk 🌹 14:27, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

It is my position that the ideological basis for the Russian Revolution, as well as its actual ideological tenants in practice, is more complex than you seem to want to believe. I also think that hyperfocusing on the soviets ignores several ideas in Marx and Engels' work that are not logically sound, such as the idea that history moves in a fixed continuum towards communism, or the flawed philosophical assumptions underpinning dialectical materialism as a whole. And instead of actually going into that, you seem to be intent on "red scare red scare!" type rhetoric, and not actually digging into the meat of the matter. In short, yes duh, Marx and Engels inspired Lenin, who in turn inspired Stalin (Stalin was more fond of quoting Lenin than Marx) who inspired others, but none of that really goes into the alterations made along the way, and is certainly not as simple as "Marxism leads to genocide", the implication you seem intent on. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 17:10, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@GrammarCommie I don't agree at all, I do think Marxism did have it's contribution to the Holodomor as a genocide (see the material I quoted), but I'm gonna retreat on that one and just remove that paragraph. I want to use my energy for better/useful projects and this ideological resistance to anything critical is fairly boring. — Godless Raven ^talk_stalk^walk_balk 🌹 02:24, 6 August 2020 (UTC)