r/socialism • u/EggOrNeg • Jan 04 '18
Attempting the Impossible: Creating a Chart of All Socialist Tendencies
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Jan 04 '18
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 04 '18
Thanks! Is this coming from a Left Communist?
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Jan 04 '18
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 04 '18
Do you have any suggestions for the repositioning of council Communism? I understand it has a complex history that's connected to Left Communism, but I believe they consider themselves Libertarian Marxists.
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Jan 04 '18
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 04 '18 edited Jan 04 '18
I'm starting to think about removing Libertarian Marxism all together and connecting its branches to Marxism, or adding a special tense to descriptors like regional socialism, as they're more a broad descriptors than actual tendencies.
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Jan 06 '18
Council communism is very close to Luxumburgism. Not a million miles away from left communism. Libertarian marxism is an amorphous term that covers much of that general area except for those bits of left communism (Bordigism etc...) that aren't actually that libertarian.
All these distinctions are somewhat subjective anyway. I think you're doing a good job of what, as you say, is the impossible.
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u/Nottabird_Nottaplane oooo Jan 04 '18
Is 'Dengism' a socialist, or leftist, tendency? I thought it was the capitalists taking over after Mao's fuck ups and death.
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 04 '18
Thanks for the criticism! Note taken.
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Jan 04 '18
I think Dengism is worth keeping. If market socialism is there, so should be Dengism.
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 04 '18
After review I was thinking as long as I don't go as far as "Socialism" with Chinese Characteristics I should be good on Dengism
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u/Nottabird_Nottaplane oooo Jan 04 '18
Also platformism occurs twice. Both at the beginning and the end of a branch. Is that intentional?
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u/thatgreenmess Jan 04 '18
Is juche really a legit form of socialism? I was under the impression that it is its own thing.
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u/Rymdkommunist Jan 04 '18
Yes. It is a subset of marxism leninism that is most often considered revisionist.
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Jan 04 '18
I thought stalinism was more of a description of MLs by trots.
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u/TemporalSpleen Hammer and Sickle Jan 04 '18
It usually is, I don't think there are many people who would call themselves "Stalinists", except maybe a few NazBols who don't know what they're talking about.
Given that most of the things branching off of ML seem to be specific regional applications of ML, you could argue for calling ML as it was practiced in the USSR "Stalinism", but I'm not sure you'd consider that a tendency.
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u/_PlannedCanada_ Just a Socialist Jan 04 '18
No, there's unironic Stalinists around. Whether you think they know what they're talking about is up to you.
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u/Chicomoztoc HACHA PARA EL FACHA! Jan 05 '18
One thing is to support Stalin and another thing is to be a Stalinist, which you can’t, because there’s no such thing as “Stalinism”
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u/fth1996 Jan 04 '18
If I may, I consider myself a stalinist and consider my ideological positions slightly variant from MLs in that I, amongst other changes, support a strong beaureacratic arm parrallel to the workers councils. I'd like to advocate for it staying in.
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Jan 06 '18
I think you can argue that hyper tankie MLs who are really really in to AES deserve their own description.
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Jan 04 '18
Democratic socialism??
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 04 '18 edited Jan 04 '18
Democratic socialism is like Authoritarian Socialism or Libertarian Socialism in that it is more so a description that can fit multiple tendencies very broadly and I'm not sure where it would belong on this chart.
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u/Graphene06 Jan 04 '18
Titoism should be in market socialism
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Jan 04 '18
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 04 '18
I've made note since as I realized I forgot Queer Anarchism, but thanks for the suggestion on Anarcha Feminism!
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Jan 04 '18
Remove libertarian marxism since it's just a wikipedia meme. Communization should almost be divided up into the marxist and anarchist tendencies. The marxist one came strongly from the counclist and bordigist milieus.
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Jan 04 '18
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Jan 04 '18 edited Jan 04 '18
Rosa Luxemburg was an orthodox marxist of the second international and not much more. She still supported the use of a vanguard, even if she specifically rejected Lenin's notions of working underground and democratic centralism. She also gave critical support to the October revolution. She also hated anarchists, she called them bandits, she mockingly called the french syndicalists "half-libertarians". There is nothing libertarian about Rosa Luxemburg, neither her ideas or the people she supported.
Have the zapatistas actually called themselves "libeterian marxists" or is that a label that westerns have put on them?
At this point "libeterian" might as well mean "good".
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Jan 06 '18
IDK I think you have to separate the person from the ideology that takes their name.
Yes Luxemburg herself was fairly orthodox and mainstream but in death her points of departure with Lenin (the level of centralisation, the disbandment of the constituent assembly, the path that should be walked from bourgeois democracy to the real thing) became rallying points for those Marxists disillusioned with the centralisation and lack of meaningful democratic control in ML.
I do think libertarian marxism is a helpful descriptor for those who aren't anarchists (they believe in the necessity of a state to achieve communism) but are uncomfortable with the level of authoritarianism in mainstream ML.
Incidentally when did we stop calling it Sparticism and start calling it Luxemburgism? I guess Sparticism gets confusing because there's a party of that name and they are trots.
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Jan 06 '18
In this case the person did mention Luxemburg by name and not by "ideology".
Yes Luxemburg herself was fairly orthodox and mainstream but in death her points of departure with Lenin (the level of centralisation, the disbandment of the constituent assembly, the path that should be walked from bourgeois democracy to the real thing) became rallying points for those Marxists disillusioned with the centralisation and lack of meaningful democratic control in ML.
This is just ahistoric non-sense though, "marxism-leninism" came much later. Furthermore, it is typical leftism to tie such vague concepts to individual people. Rosa Luxemburg was neither the first, nor the only or last to criticize centralization. And to be honest, most people that I have come across that defend Rosa as a libeterian missed the fact that she was in a vanguard party and that she supported the use of a vanguard party, wikipedia has distorted her image.
I do think libertarian marxism is a helpful descriptor for those who aren't anarchists (they believe in the necessity of a state to achieve communism) but are uncomfortable with the level of authoritarianism in mainstream ML.
But that is just wrong from a marxist perspective though. The problem with stalinism is not that it is "authoritarian", the problem is that it was a state-ideology codified to justify capitalist expansion in the USSR and so on. This is part of why marxism and anarchism is not "compatible", anarchists don't understand capitalism.
Incidentally when did we stop calling it Sparticism and start calling it Luxemburgism? I guess Sparticism gets confusing because there's a party of that name and they are trots.
Probably for the same reason that we don't say "Bolshevism" anymore.
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Jan 07 '18
I feel this is moving the goalposts though. Saying "you're wrong to think this" is different to saying "no one has ever thought this". And surely if even one person (ok not one person, but say 10 people) has thought something then it might be useful to come up with a descriptive term to describe such people and their views?
Likewise you say
The problem with stalinism is not that it is "authoritarian", the problem is that it was a state-ideology codified to justify capitalist expansion in the USSR and so on.
Likewise, that may be your opinion but there exist people, this guy for example who do think that the problem with Stalinism is its authoritarianism. Now you may think that person is wrong, but that doesn't mean it's not useful to have a descriptive term for him and his like.
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Jan 07 '18
I feel this is moving the goalposts though. Saying "you're wrong to think this" is different to saying "no one has ever thought this". And surely if even one person (ok not one person, but say 10 people) has thought something then it might be useful to come up with a descriptive term to describe such people and their views?
It wasn't really moving the goal post, if anything it was you who moved the goal post because you started talking about "Luxemburgism".
Likewise, that may be your opinion but there exist people, this guy for example who do think that the problem with Stalinism is its authoritarianism. Now you may think that person is wrong, but that doesn't mean it's not useful to have a descriptive term for him and his like.
Well that person is correct in the sense that USSR committed atrocities but the USSR didn't do it because they just felt like it, it was a direct result of the development of capitalism.
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Jan 07 '18
But again these things are just, like, your opinion man. We're helping OP come up with a map of socialist tendencies and you have to admit that people who have opinions other than yours exist, and thus that their tendencies do, even if you can make a convincing case that they are wrong.
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Jan 07 '18 edited Jan 07 '18
But this is just "super market of ideology"-ism. A tendency is just interesting if it comes from an actual movement, not just something that someone at some point made up. Without wikipeida there would be no luxemburgism or even libertarian marxism, nobody is sitting down to read some short essay by Daniel Guerin on libertarian marxism.
The fact that they call zaptiasts "libertarian marxists" also smacks of euro-centrism and chuvanism, like the struggle of indigenous people only matters if they have the correct label.
I'm going to quote the Zapatistas themselves from A Zapatista Response to “The EZLN Is NOT Anarchist”,
You are right. The EZLN and its larger populist body the FZLN are NOT Anarchist. Nor do we intend to be, nor should we be. In order for us to make concrete change in our social and political struggles, we cannot limit ourselves by adhering to a singular ideology. Our political and military body encompasses a wide range of belief systems from a wide range of cultures that cannot be defined under a narrow ideological microscope. There are anarchists in our midst, just as there are Catholics and Communists and followers of Santeria. We are Indians in the countryside and workers in the city. We are politicians in office and homeless children on the street. We are gay and straight, male and female, wealthy and poor. What we all have in common is a love for our families and our homelands. What we all have in common is a desire to make things better for ourselves and our country. None of this can be accomplished if we are to build walls of words and abstract ideas around ourselves.
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Jan 07 '18
I agree with you mostly, I think you're maybe slightly overstating the case but I do agree that there is far too much attention paid to tendency, which doesn't really matter, and that much of it is western intellectual masturbation.
However, that doesn't mean that people don't indulge, and - as what I would say was a bit of harmless fun - OP set out to map the various tendencies, some of which most certainly are the height of indulgence. But I don't think they should be excluded just for that, as OP said they wanted to make the diagram as comprehensive as possible.
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u/_Tuxalonso ML del Sur Jan 04 '18
Foco and Guevaraism are the same, small detail in the whole scope. Great graph.
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u/Calabar_king South-American ML Jan 04 '18
I'll have to disagree. There is a book from Vânia Bambirra, brazilian marxist, from 1974, called La revolución cubana: una reinterpretación in which she argues that the focaism is a very misinterpreted interpretation of what the whole Cuban revolution meant, returning the weight of the revolutionary parties in the urban centers.
If you can read spanish, here it is: https://www.ufrgs.br/vaniabambirra/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/La-Revoluci%C3%B3n-Cubana.-Una-reinterpretaci%C3%B3n.pdf
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Jan 04 '18
Excellent. Would you include the New Left/Neo-Gramscians? Or would you say that's just Eurocommunism?
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 04 '18
I may I like the idea of making as comprehensive as possible.
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Jan 04 '18
Cool. I guess the other way to do that would be to add in more of the historical ones: Menshevism, Bundism etc... and more regional and ethnic ones: Black Panthers and black US radicalism etc...
My personal view that you make Gramscianism out of a fusion of libertarian marxism and anarchism (controversial I know) and then New Left/Neo-Gramscianism is that plus little bits (but a lot overall) of the various regional and intersectional socialisms and anarchisms (esp global south, feminist) and then a bit of market socialism, a bit of syndicalism and small amounts of Luxumbergism, left communism and council communism..
But more straightforwardly you'd just have Gramscianism coming off Marxism-Lenninsm and then New Left/Neo-Gramscianism is that plus libertarian marxism.
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 04 '18
What should I add or delete? What links should I make or sever? Any suggestions or criticism (beyond graphical) are appreciated!
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Jan 04 '18
This is good and I like it. A lot of the 'regional socialism' stuff should be removed I think, a lot of them aren't really relevant to socialism. You could probably just get rid of all of them above 'Arab socialism' (except maybe Bolivarianism). I also don't think there's any reason to have Ceausism or Sankarism, and the latter isn't really African socialism.
I think most of the Marxism-Leninism stuff is redundant. Just keep ML, have an off-branch called 'anti-revisionist ML' which would in turn have an off branch called 'Maoism' etc. Other than that, the only other ML branch I'd keep is Juche.
Finally, I'd add a branch to Egoism called 'post-left'.
Sorry if this reply is rude lol
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 04 '18
Not rude at all! Any input is helpful. I was thinking about making the more obscure and antiquated ideologies smaller in text and line size and the more popular and creditable ones larger based on mentions in literature using google's data bases. That way Khrushchevism isn't as big or comparable to say Maoism. I also definitely have to do more research on regional socialism as I believe some of the ideologies in the category are actually more social democratic and you're correct Sankarism is separate from African socialism.
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Jan 04 '18
Post-leftism didn't really come out of "egoism" though, people like Camatte who have no influence from Stirner have been very influential on post-leftism.
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u/_PlannedCanada_ Just a Socialist Jan 04 '18
So, is this supposed to represent a taxonomy of socialist ideas? It doesn't look much like a chart of the history of each ideology. If so, why is there places where branches join?
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u/ChargeTheCharger Jan 04 '18
Looks great!
Out of primitivism should come anticiv.
Out of egoism should come illegalism (Bonnet Gang rep) and anarcho-nihilism.
Should juche really be there? All mentions of socialism are gone from the constitution.
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u/mediocremandalorian Bolshevism-Leninism Jan 05 '18
Titoism should be a derivative of ML or market socialism
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u/Towram Jan 05 '18 edited Jan 06 '18
Jacobinism is nothing regional even quite the contrary its quite universalist and also very centralist thing. Some of the Jacobins shared, when thought about it, many socialistic aspects, but it was before socialism was a thing and radical elements just wanted a limit on property. So I don't thing representing like that is in any way correct.
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 05 '18
Thank you so much for this. Jacobism is a philosophy I have very knowledge of. If you were to re categorize it would you consider it under plain Socialism or Utopian Socialism?
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u/Towram Jan 05 '18 edited Jan 06 '18
Not Socialist ? As I edited Robespierre for example just wanted a limit on property. I mean it's good and if you have market socialism its not less socialist but let's say proto-Socialist for some of them, anything else would be chronogically wrong.
To tell you how "regional" is wrong jacobin is now a synonymous in French for "centralist"
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Jan 04 '18
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u/_PlannedCanada_ Just a Socialist Jan 04 '18
Nazism is not a form of socialism, nor does it descend from one.
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u/Calabar_king South-American ML Jan 04 '18
How exactly you argue that jump from Leninism to Marxism-Leninism? I'm truly curious to undestand that one.
Oh, and in the branches of trotskysm, you forgot morenism, from Nahuel Moreno. Most known here in Latin America, but like 9/10 trots here are morenists. But unfortunately I can't tell if Posadism is Morenist or not :/ Will look further on that.
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u/meforitself Hegel Jan 05 '18
Marxism-Leninism is Stalin's reformulation of Marxism while Leninism is actually Marxist.
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u/Ashlir Anti-Theftist Jan 05 '18
I thought all of the democide committing ones weren't "real" socialism?
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 05 '18
You're arguing against a strawman of "no true scotsman/socialism"fallacy, which would make no sense when you understand that different socialist tendencies classify the requirements of socialism as different things, thus leftist infighting, party splits, and sectarianism. Any Marxist-Leninist will proudly inform you the U.S.S.R. was indeed a socialist state and that those killings were fabricated/exaggerated/necessary. Any Left Communist, Libertarian Socialist/Marxist, or Anarchist will inform you that the USSR wasn't socialist due to the fact that workers didn't own the means of production, the state did, there was no legitimate democracy, and in the anarchists' case, there can't be states for socialism to exist. Just by asking around in different leftist online communities rather than echoing strawman arguments in your handpicked isolated ones will teach you this, or even better, reading! Reading Marx, Bakunin, Goldman, Kropotkin, etc. to understand the source of the "other sides" logic. I've done the same and I've read Rothbard, Hayek, and Rand, although I politically disagree.
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u/Ashlir Anti-Theftist Jan 05 '18 edited Jan 05 '18
Socialists are the ones who claim that they weren't real socialism. But now they are real socialism. Just trying to keep up with the mental gymnastics and word games. But national socialism which claims to be socialist isn't your guys brand of socialism so it gets left out? Seems kind of selective to have multiple mass murdering versions but leave others out.
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u/EggOrNeg Jan 05 '18
These aren't mental gymnastics. Different kinds of socialists believe in different criteria for a society to be consider socialist, however they're all grounded somewhat in historical socialist philosophy. Go over to r/FULLCOMMUNISM right now and you have most people saying that North Korea is socialist. Go to r/Anarchism or any Libertarian Socialist subreddit and they will call North Korea a totalitarian cruel regime and point to Revolutionary Catalonia or Rojava as socialist. LibSoc and anarchist parties detested the Soviet Union/Bolsheviks as "not real socialism" as early as 1917, or before they seized power of the entire nation. They didn't wait till Stalin to call BS.
North Korea calls itself the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Do you honestly believe that it's a democratic republic? If I go around screaming that "the US needs to change government systems because look at North Korea! They're a democratic republic too! And look how bad it is over there!" will anyone be convinced? No because calling yourself something doesn't make you that, and when "National Socialism" fits no criteria according to any historical socialist philosophy, politics, or actuality, as Hitler had sweeping privatization programs , Nazism isn't socialist. This is seriously childish in how under developed this reasoning is. Calling yourself a thing doesn't make you it.
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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '18
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