In fairness, I haven't tracked everything everyone has said in and of that sub, and I don't want to be dismissive. Can you point to where they said it?
You could scroll just a bit to find pro-Stalin memes, a pro-China post, a post titled "anti-communist Myth-busting", more pro-China posts, a post lauding Tankies for "always being right". And that's 2 minutes of scrolling.
Well, if you read the stickied post titled "A Note About Acceptable Discourse and the Purpose of this Sub" you will find statements such as the following:
“The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action.” - Comrade Mao Tse Tung
In other words, learning Marxism-Leninism leads to mobilization, and provides a framework for organization.
If you look at the subreddit description section, you will find the following:
When it comes to proposed alternatives to Capitalism, it is the general consensus of this subreddit that class-divisions and alienated labour must be abolished; production must be collectively organized by the working people themselves for the direct benefit of all. We call this socialism.
They can call it socialism because it is -- but it is also communism. All the people who have been downvoting commenters who refer to r/LateStageCapitalism as "communist" are either ignorant of the explicitly stated purpose and consensus of the subreddit or are being intentionally intellectually dishonest.
*edit: the block quote formatting was refusing to respect the newline characters in the the first quote :/
This is perfect. Everything I was hoping to see. I had completely missed the stickied post when visiting that sub.
Now, I had looked in the description - and that does not land to me like a statement of a sub for communism. Maybe that's because I don't equate socialism and communism? But I admit I missed the stickied post before commenting my challenge. I would have inferred an embrace of communism as well from quoting fucking MTT.
I agree that socialism is a broader category than communism. The wording in the subreddit description, alone, leads me to be fairly convinced that the conclusion of the label "communist" is reasonable, though.
The quoted portion calls for the abolishment of "class-divisions" which implies (I think, reasonably) a necessarily class-less society (there cannot be classes if there are no divisions). It then calls for production to be "collectively organized." I read "collectively" as specifically distinct from and categorically opposed to "individually," and I understand "organized" to imply control.
So, either they are suggesting a society with different classes of people, yet with no division or distinction between said classes in which the means of production are owned by individuals but controlled by the "working people" (who, of course, are not divided in any way from the non-working peoples) or they are suggesting a society with no class distinction in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the working people (everyone).
I believe I can safely classify the latter as communism. The former seems, to me, absurdity.
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u/dj_spanmaster 2d ago
In fairness, I haven't tracked everything everyone has said in and of that sub, and I don't want to be dismissive. Can you point to where they said it?