No? China alone has 100 million CPC members, Marxism-Leninism is still dominant as a leftist ideology globally. Are you referring purely to western leftists?
The overwhelming majority of practicing communists are Marxist-Leninists, and genuinely carry out Marxist principles. When this runs counter to liberal narratives, liberals assume communists must be brainwashed.
Marxism-Leninism was synthesized by Stalin, but like the name suggests, is over 90% Marx and Lenin. Stalinism is typically used coherently to describe the policies of the Stalin-Era of the USSR. Those calling Marxism-Leninism "Stalinism" typically are trying to use Stalin's name as a way to bash Marx and Lenin's theories and practice.
The anarchist conception of communism is more like communalism, while the Marxist conception is more like collectivism. When I say “communalization,” I mean anarchists propose horizontalist, decentralized cells, similar to early humanity’s cooperative production but with more interconnection and modern tech. When I say collectivization, I mean the unification of all of humanity into one system, where production and distribution is planned collectively to satisfy the needs of everyone as best as possible.
For anarchists, collectivized society still seems to retain the state, as some anarchists conflate administration with the state as it represents a hierarchy. For Marxists, this focus on communalism creates inter-cell class distinctions, as each cell only truly owns their own means of production, giving rise to class distinctions and thus states in the future.
For Marxists, socialism must have a state, a state can only wither with respect to how far along it has come in collectivizing production and therefore eliminating class. All states are authoritarian, but we cannot get rid of the state without erasing the foundations of the state: class society, and to do so we must collectivize production and distribution globally. Socialist states, where the working class wields its authority against capitalists and fascists, are the means by which this collectivization can actually happen, and are fully in-line with Marx’s beliefs. Communism as a stateless, classless, moneyless society is only possible post-socialism.
Abolishing the state overnight would not create the kind of society Marxists advocate for advancing towards, and if anything, would result in the resumption of competition and the resurgance of capitalism if Marx and Engels predictions are correct.
None of this was specific to Marxism-Leninism, but Marxism in general. In this sense, Marxist communism does believe in using state authority to oppress the bourgeousie and reactionaries, just like capitalists use the state to oppress the working classes and revolutionaries. The major difference is that socialist states are working class authorities, not owning class, and as such the class interest points to negating class and therefore the basis of the state. This is why dialectical materialism is core to Marxism.
MLs aren't "fans" of Russia or Iran, but value their geopolitical opposition to the west, the imperialist hegemony. MLs do tend to be fans of the PRC, as it's a socialist country. The idea that a country has to be 100% ideologically aligned in order to get even critical support from a communist just plays into the idea that communists are obsessed with purity testing, but that's not the case.
Supporting communists is not the same as worship. The devs and mods are certainly ideologically committed, but not out of sheer blind religious adherance.
Marxist-Leninists have a few takes that draw major friction between liberals who enjoy the idea of socialism/communism but haven't really engaged with the theory and history of Marxism, such as:
This is why MLs and liberals tend to clash. If you want to learn more about Marxism-Leninism, I made an intro reading list you can check out.
Political power does flow from the barrel of a gun, but a revolution is doomed to fail without popular support, including a socialist government. The working classes were not oppressed by socialist states but instead uplifted, dramatically more than capitalist peer countries. The only countries that supercede socialist ones are ones that rely on imperialism.
The implication that Marxism-Leninism is a religion is baseless, the purpose of Marxism-Leninism is to abolish classes, not to maintain a ruling class like liberalism is.
Why are you going through old comments of mine to reply to?
Again, you are confusing how propaganda works. Propaganda doesn't "create" sentiment, it appeals to underlying sentiment. The working classes aren't morally just, nor gullible, nor intelligent, but instead rational, and therefore generally seek narratives that conform to their felt conditions.
It's not that I confuse cause for effect, it's that I go deeper, the cause is actually the devastation in capitalism compared to socialism resulting in rising socialist sentiment, the effect is that the nationalists take notice and are trying to twist it into Russian nationalism, causing a struggle between Russian nationalism and socialist nostalgia playing out in the Russian Federation, the effect of which is large increases in CPRF membership and restoration of soviet monuments and nomenclature. Cause and effect do not exist in a vacuum, but are instead the result of endless spirals. Dialectics at work.
Further, the CPRF supports Russia United against Kiev in the war, and has taken a stance of critical support. The fact that United Russia is doing better electorally right now doesn't mean communism is falling out of favor, but that communist analysis is rallying around the nationalists in Russia, and partisans aren't willing to advocate for overtaking the current system at the moment.
This also explains why polling suggests that sympathies for the Soviet Union mostly (not fully) consist of cultural and military pride.
Polling does not suggest this, it suggests that the increase in poverty, austerity, sex work, drug abuse, homelessness, and overall devastation of capitalism wasn't worth it for the broad majority of society. You seek to explain sentiment derived from real, material economic conditions via culture and vibes, when the culture and vibes are a reflection of the economic base. You did it earlier with the idea that the nationalists are creating soviet pride in a vacuum, ignoring economic conditions, and you do it here again.
As for Ukraine, it's very convenient that you skip over the Banderite coup in 2014 where the nationalists took political power. Ukraine did used to be more pro-communist, especially in the Donbass region, but after the western-backed Euromaidan coup the nationalists took political supremacy and started punishing communists. Same for East Germany, after reunification the communists were punished in show trials and purged, leaving the right-wing West German political force with supremacy. This purge of leftists created a vacuum for far-right populists and nationalists, as capitalist devastation combined with a lack of leftist organizing results in the faf-right having free-reign.
Overall, when we take your convenient framing of trends and insistence on explaining demographic shifts not by real, material conditions but instead by a battle of vibes and ideas alone, we have to question your entire thought process. It's clear that you view history not as a long process that progresses in spirals, but as static snapshots, and the ideas held by the people not as coming from their real conditions economically but instead as beamed from above, and these failures in analysis are why you come to incorrect conclusions.
A rise in party membership in the CPRF does indeed suggest that they are growing, and further establishing legitimacy. National election results in war-time aren't a major indicator of popularity of the CPRF. Further, no, the nationalists are not creating soviet sympathies, but trying to take advantage of them. Capitalism has been devestating for Russia, and people yearn for the old days when their needs were better taken care of. The nationalists are appealing to that and trying to turn it into Russian pride.
The idea that the nationalists are just beaming sympathies to the heads of the citizenry, rather than the citizenry longing for a working system after the devastation of cspitalism and the nationalists are trying to take advantage of that, is absurd. That's not how propaganda works, you have to identify actually felt beliefs and leverage them.
And much more. At the end of the day, the Russian Federation is a bourgeois dictstorship, so it isn't going to just accept rising communist sympathies at a state level. The nationalists have a balancing act to play, trying to take advantage of rising soviet smpathies without legitimizing socialism.
Gorbachev had also implemented Perestroika, and his policy of Glasnost had weakened the soviet system. The seeds for radical change for the worse and instability were already there. My point isn't that there was 0 discontent and it flipped to 100% discontent, but that people, despite the various nationalist movements in some of the member-states, overall did support the socialist project up to the end. After the vote, there was the hardliner coup, dramatic sharpening of contradictions, and the internal, anti-democratic dissolution by Yeltsin claiming legitimacy from the rising nationalist movements.
You have no evidence supporting your claims other than the idea that there was some discontent, which I never denied, and that people ultimately lost faith in the stabilty of the soviet union right at the end itself. Further, support for returning to socialism doesn't simply "evaporate," and again, it depends highly on the political fuckery in the region, the purging of communists by westerners, and the sheer devastation these countries went through. Trying to chalk it all up to simple pride in a stronger nation instead of the actual material benefits is an extraordinary claim.
Russia and Belarus, for example, are seeing rising waves of socialist sympathy among the populace. The CPRF is rising rapidly, and people fundamentally feel that capitalism should not last any longer. This represents the large majority of the post-soviet population.
People did have a massive swing in opinion. I'm aware that dissolution was not an option, but your claim that people didn't change their opinion in light of the immense political turmoil between that vote and the second vote requires more evidence than "people don't change their minds that quickly." Rather, to the contrary, large shifts in opinion do happen more swiftly than gradually.
Further, the fact that the large majority regret the fall of the soviet union is relevant in showing that it clearly wasn't as simple as saying everyone hated living in the soviet union, but realized how good they had it afterwards. Polling is often inconsistent not because of bad polling, but political instability caused by the immense fuckery of capitalism and imperialism in these countries, and forces like NATO.
No problem! The material is great, but unfortunately it needs to be formatted on Prolewiki, haha.
Not nearly as in-depth due to time limits (and mostly focused on the Xi Jinping era) but Red Pen's A Summary of Xi Jinping's Governance of China can be a good primer! There's also This is how China's economic model works: Explaining Socialism with Chinese Characteristics by Geopolitical Economy Report.
Really, in order to understand the PRC, you at least need to understand Mao, the Gang of Four, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping. There were other leaders, but these have perhaps had the largest impact on the PRC of today. Xi Jinping Thought upholds Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, while believing the Gang of Four to have been left-deviationists and the Cultural Revolution to have contained more excess than was worth.
Also, the Prolewiki page for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners is pretty poorly formatted, and extremely lengthy, so I recommend either going to the anna's archive link and downloading the source directly, or reading these:
I'm aware that after the votes, crisis in politics caused a dramatic swing in faith in the system. The question of viability of the socialist project wasn't unclear, however. The dissolution of the USSR was something that happened not due to some inevitable death clock in socialism. Contrary to what you believe, popular opinion can swing that fast, such as in the US Empire, where within a single month sentiment on Israel flipped from overwhelmingly positive to majority negative.
Further, as I already showed, the large majority of people in post-soviet countries feel worse off and/or regret its fall. Socialism was an effective system at meeting the needs of the people, and though liberalization and a harsh recovery process from World War II strained the system, it was not on the way to collapse.
Rogue unions aren't simply "workers trying to organize against unfair labor practices," though, which is my point. There are already unions, and the state already punishes bad actors. There's extremely minimal grassroots opposition to the socialist system in China, so recognizing this context is important.
And no problem, let me know if you have any questions!
The US taking over Tik Tok isn't "PRC style domestic policy," though. The PRC has knowledge transfer agreements with any company that does business with China, I think this may be what you're hinting at, but this is just the standard "sell it to us or we'll ban it" style of US policy.
The PRC isn't committing ethnic cleansing nor is it enslaving Uyghur peoples in Xinjiang, just like South Africa wasn't committing "white genocide," nor is there "christian genocide" in Nigeria. These are all examples of atrocity propaganda, where the west heavily distorts and often fabricates narratives in order to foment resistance and to give their own populations free excuses to not support anti-imperialism, in essence supporting it.
In the case of Xinjiang, the area is crucial in the Belt and Road Initiative, so the west backed sepratist groups in order to destabilize the region. China responded with vocational programs and de-radicalization efforts, which the west then twisted into claims of "genocide." Nevermind that the west responds to seperatism with mass violence, and thus re-education programs focused on rehabilitation are far more humane, the tool was used both for outright violence by the west into a useful narrative to feed its own citizens. I highly recommend Qiao Collective's Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation for more on this subject.
In the context of tighter control between the state and business, it's important to understand the class dynamics. The US Empire is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the large firms and key industries are privately owned, and the state entrenches their power. In the PRC, public ownership is the principle aspect, and the working class is in control of the state. The commanding heights of industry in China are all SOEs, and the bourgeoisie that controls small and medium firms are kept in check by the socialist state. You're confusing form for essence, by only looking at similarities and ignoring the differences, you come to false conclusions.
Here's more on the SOEs governing the commanding heights of industry in China:
As for surveillance, the US Empire has a far deeper level, the PATRIOT Act makes that clear. The US never copied China on this, they've always been worse. Further, in China surveillance is largely used against capitalists, while in the US Empire it's used against the working classes.
On to the PRC side.
The PRC is expanding trade, but not dominance, nor does its trade deals come at the barrel of a gun. The PRC recognizes territory that has been consistent with what China had while the ROC held the UN seat for China, until it was transfered over to the PRC, leading to territorial disputes, not naked piracy and invasion like the US Empire does. They also are not "exporting surveillance and censorship systems." They trade with pretty much everyone, and support their allies, but this is not imperialism.
To the contrary, the PRC is acting against imperialism.
And many, many more sources back this up. It's no secret that imperialists have been trying to smear China into being "no better" than the west, but the reality on the ground is that partnering with China results in mutual development and cooperation, while partnering with the west results in stripped autonomy, underdevelopment, and exploitation.
What you called "clear worker rights violations," was just the fact that unions are required to be a part of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and aren't allowed to be independent from that federation. This isn't a violation of worker rights, though, as the only purpose rogue unions would serve is undermining the socialist system, and would be vulnerable to foreign backing (such as from the US Empire).
The socialist state is already run by the working classes, I recommend Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the Theory and History of Socialist Governance to get a better idea of how and why socialist countries hold the structures they do. Roland Boer also has a good book called Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners, which is more specifically about the PRC and goes beyond the structures of governance to the more broad system of socialism in China.
Regarding your participation in MeanwhileOnGrad, you should know that EmoPunker cut off the final replies, where they called defenders of Pol Pot "genuine socialists." These are the kinds of posts on that comm, they selectively remove context that makes themselves look worse, deliberately misframe reasonable comments, and the comm itself is run by a zionist. This kind of anti-communist bar is a gathering spot for genuine fascists, but it seems you're fine with participating there.
Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the working classes control the state in China, it's therefore socialist. Socialism isn't the absence of private property, it's the gradual transformation of capitalism into communism, and as such the growth of secondary and medium firms creates new billionaires in China. What happens over time though is that these firms, as they grow, are folded into the public sector.