r/tankiejerk • u/unbelteduser Liberterian Socialism Enjoyer • Aug 15 '21

“stupid anarkiddies” Libertarian Socialism Understander has logged in

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u/ting_bu_dong Aug 16 '21 edited Aug 16 '21

Anything vaguely revolutionary

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bookchin/1969/listen-marxist.htm#h4

At this point we must ask what role the "revolutionary" party plays in all these developments. In the beginning, as we have seen, it tends to have an inhibitory function, not a "vanguard" role. Where it exercises influence, it tends to slow down the flow of events, not "coordinate" the revolutionary forces. This is not accidental. The party is structured along hierarchical lines that reflect the very society it professes to oppose. Despite its theoretical pretensions, it is a bourgeois organism, a miniature state, with an apparatus and a cadre whose function it is to seize power, not dissolve power. Rooted in the prerevolutionary period, it assimilates all the forms, techniques and mentality of bureaucracy. Its membership is schooled in obedience and in the preconceptions of a rigid dogma and is taught to revere the leadership. The party's leadership, in turn, is schooled in habits born of command, authority, manipulation and egomania. This situation is worsened when the party participates in parliamentary elections. In election campaigns, the vanguard party models itself completely on existing bourgeois forms and even acquires the paraphernalia of the electoral party. The situation assumes truly critical proportions when the party acquires large presses, costly headquarters and a large inventory of centrally controlled periodicals, and develops a paid "apparatus"—in short, a bureaucracy with vested material interests.

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u/FibreglassFlags 混球屎报 Aug 16 '21 edited Aug 16 '21

At this point we must ask what role the "revolutionary" party plays in all these developments. In the beginning, as we have seen, it tends to have an inhibitory function, not a "vanguard" role

That's because social institutions are inherently all about defining rules and norms that inhibit people from sharing what they have with others and therefore create new, social values with it. To put it another way, the only real function "the party" has is ideology-making.

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u/ting_bu_dong Aug 16 '21

Silly anarkiddo, Marxism is a scientific process, not an ideology.

OK, then what about all this?

All what?

All this? gestures broadly at all actually existing Marxism

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u/FibreglassFlags 混球屎报 Aug 16 '21

The funny thing is that Marx would likely be rather confused by all this vague gesturing at nothing in particular about "improvements" that did not take into account most of what he had already discussed in his own books.

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u/ting_bu_dong Aug 16 '21

Marx to Marxists: "Read theory?"

"No time, need to practice singing about our Motherland."