Leninism

Okay. So it's not a set/semi-set strategy?
Like one of the things I took from that Soderbergh Che is that the same strategies that liberated Cuba wasn't ever going to work in Bolivia.

I dont know about Sankara but Castro most definitely was not a Marxist Leninist. Initially Castro even denied having ties to communism and was reportedly an admirer of fascists like Mussolini and Primo De Rivera during his youth. You have to realize that when he first achieved revolution Castro directly tried to set up an alliance with the USA and tried to receive foreign aid. When that failed, only then did he turn to the USSR, and suddenly the former admirer of fascists became a "Marxist Leninist"

Castro was ultimately a pragmatic character who did want the best for his people but he was at the end of the day a middle class nationalist, not a marxist revolutionary like Lenin. Castro would be better categorized as a social democrat.

yeah that's generally how revolution works, you can't expect the same thing to happen in every single country.
the biggest factor is material conditions, a revolution in an underdeveloped country is going to be a whole different ball game from one in a first world country.
you also gotta consider who the masses are. i'm pretty sure one of Hoxha's many (and probably his stupidest if it's true) criticisms of Mao was that he was a revisionist since he put a huge emphasis on the peasantry over the industrial working class.
Marxism is about liberating the masses, and in China they didn't have a huge working class, hence why Mao focused on peasants since they were the masses.
revolution is never dogmatic, and has to be adapted to the conditions at hand, otherwise you're doomed to fail.

Sankara most likely self-identified as just a Marxist and never a "Marxist-Leninist', but he ran Burkino Faso closest to the Leninist model, and from what I understand he had read Lenin when first getting involved in politics.
i don't think it's fair to call Castro a "social democrat" or a fascist admirer. regardless of what he was like in his youth, when it came down to it he was a revolutionary and a socialist.
this can be applied to people like Ho Chi Minh as well, considering he started off as just a patriot who wanted to liberate the Vietnamese, but ended up becoming a communist when he realised that it was the only true way to liberate his people

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Hey if Mussolini could start out as a socialist and become a fascist I don't see why the opposite can't be true

was he actually ever really a socialist though
i find that it's harder for genuine well-read socialist to abandon their ideology over some feels>reals bullshit than it is for fascists to realise that they're retarded and to become socialist

I have no idea honestly. But either way I don't care where people come from if they end up in the right place. I was a friggin neocon

I will say though there have been a lot of socialists who have given up on Leninism. You can't deny. I've met some and they lived in Leninist states. Still call themselves communists but had some problems with the model

There were no Soviets built under Castro's leadership and workers were not trained to be revolutionary. It cannot be called a Marxist-Leninst model and also there were almost a non existent emphasis on the pressing need for international proletarian revolution which was a question that long haunted the Bolsheviks…till Stalin killed them all. Castro also effectively acted as a puppet for the Soviet Union under Stalin and even went around in Chile in 1971 praising the "parliamentary road to socialism" when fascists and military were preparing to crush the working class. He hailed the military regimes of Peru and Ecuador as "anti-imperialist" and embraced the PRI in Mexico, after it had overseen the massacre of students in 1968. Castro was not a Marxist Leninst, he was a practitioner of "realpolitik"

A telling sign is the statement by Barack Obama when Castro died,“History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him,” and assuring that ”the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America.” Tbh, Castro should have just read some Marx and Lenin before getting into politics.

Stalin died before the Cuban Revolution even happened.
and is that Obama quote supposed to prove anything? simply pointing out how much of an impact Castro had in the world, and then offering his hand to the Cuban *after* his death, is about the opposite of praising.
not even going to touch on your "muh stalin purges" shit.

Not in the first-world or any third-world nation that an imperialist power has interests in/near, no.
Regardless of the merits of Leninism in the 20th century, its time has long since past.

Given how trivial it would be for a modern military to utterly crush any mass revolutionary 'army' and how fully integrated into the spectacle the average prole is, we have past the era of mass uprisings.
At this point, I honestly think only a Blanquist military coup that establishes a socialist state in the name of, but without the support of the proles to be the only realistic path to socialism in the 21st century.

No.
Leninism is an ideology that has a tremendous amount of baggage due to the events of the 20th century.
Because of this (plus COINTELPRO if your group ever becomes notable), any Leninist group will eventually succumb to factionalism and be subsequently rendered harmless.

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Then as socialists, should we even bother organizing the proles?
What should be the strategy for a socialist revolution if Leninism isn't the answer?

tfw everyone is too obsessed with the past and those figures to try and organize today by the modes of production that are current to us rather than those that were prevalent to Tsarist Russia and some various third-world nations.

It can succeed in African,Asian and Latin American country.

Revolution in the first world would most likely look like a color revolution, and the military isn't gonna mow down people on the street if there's literally millions marching.

do you mean military coup or just an unpolular revolt? could military entryism work?

As for an unpopular revolution I think we're approaching a point at which such a thing will become, at least temporarily, impossible

Ah yes castro was secretly a fashist thats why he build one of the most progressive socialist states in the world with worker control and no capitalist production (as much as he could)

ok I lol'd

Lmao, they will if they feel threatened enough. Non violent "revolution" will never happen

I read the article. Not sure if anyone else did.

1. It seems like the IMT, like virtually all Marxist groups, suffers from sectarianism and dogmatism. These are indeed problems. Theoretical arguments tend to be suppressed until the moment of a split, and then party members air their disagreements. It would be better if there were more internal discussion (real discussion) within a party without needing to suppress ideas until the situation reaches a boiling point.

2. The article also mentioned democracy and electoral politics.
In general, however, there is a basic fact that the revolutionary left needs to come to peace with: It needs to win power by convincing a majority of a population to support its vision.

This is a dubious proposition, especially when followed by:
Democratic conditions can actually offer an excellent opportunity for socialists: Build support for our vision; convince a majority that we can offer a workable, real socialist alternative; and come to power and start implementing it!

The events of the past hundred plus years offer ample evidence that only on rare occasions will a popular socialist movement be able to take power by means of electoral politics within a bourgeois state. Even when it happens, these socialist parties are often at best reformists trying to fix the capitalist system to be more equitable for the working class and not aimed at overthrowing the entire capitalist structure. Even these limited aims are often frustrated by political maneuvering and sometimes armed resistance, a la Allende's Chile.

A gambling casino establishes rules and odds that always favor the house. Likewise, even in the most liberal of liberal democracies the electoral process is a creation of the bourgeoisie and is meant to serve their interests. The state apparatus is not some neutral thing that exists above society but is a creation of that society. This is Marxism 101.

But let me go back. I don't disagree with the idea that for a socialist revolution to be successful one must engage with and win over the masses of working people. They are the ones who will build socialism and no Marxist sect can do so for them. The disconnect between this idea and what is proposed in the article is the insinuation, or implication, that socialism will win by engaging in a popularity contest against bourgeois parties and politicians. Politics is not a popularity contest - it is a struggle that is ultimately decided by the application of force. We can't fall victim to the lie that community organizing and voting in bourgeois elections will somehow put a socialist movement into power and create the basis for a socialist society.

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This is one of the dumbest things I've seen here. Castro was allied with Mandela. Do you really think he was a fucking secret Fascist?

You can be a fascist and be against euro-centrism.

Do you have any evidence of this brainfart?

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Mandela was a neoliberal clown.

The IMT is a typical extremist Trot organization.

Without support from the Soviet union or some powerful group No.

They'll collapse immediately from US backed groups

Dude, have a look at this guy's Twitter.
twitter.com/pplswar
This guy believes in Russiagate, calls Zizek a fascist, Corbyn an antisemite, wants the US to intervene in Syria, pretends to be a Berniecrat and a Marxist while calling himself "people's war". If this guy isn't COINTELPRO I am drinking bleach.

he's right about that one, the rest is shit. that guy is absolutely awful.

you are dumb as hell if you think zizek is a fascist

...

I genuinely wanna hear what's behind this take

Castro was first and foremost a nationalist, which gives way to sympathy for fascism. Castro is not unique in this regard; you can contrast him with other latin american and arabic nationalists such as Nasser, Gaddafi, or Peron.

People should remember that nationalism is always inherintly bourgeois. This does not make nationalism evil (socialism itself evolves out of the imminant logic of capitalism after all), but inhibits its radical potential and enables itself to flirt with positions antithetical to the Left. Even if a Communist is to take a nationalistic stance, that position must always be placed at a certain distance, conceeding its bourgeois nature. Bourgeois demands are not in themselves wrong; the very demand for “equality” itself is bourgeois for example, arising from the legal formal equality of the modern capitalist state. We shouldn’t, like anarchists, dismiss reforms to ameliorate existing conditions or to set up preconditions for a future revolutionary transformation, but neither should we, like Social-Democrats, see these reforms as socialism or an end-in-itself. In both cases, we capitulate and leave the field of politics to the bourgeoisie, flirting with Rightist tendencies we should be nowhere near.

Pretty sure Max is not a cop. Just a typical Trot.

facebook.com/maxwirwin

Read Red Kahina
alphonsevanworden.tumblr.com

Small reading groups which call themselves Leninst Vanguard Parties are like some of the embarrassing institutions of the left.

We should do a better job of hiding them from the public.

Did the immaterial hope really part the consist?

There is only one way.

Hide your power-level and get into the CIA. Do whatever is needed until getting into the position where you can use the CIA to PURGE THE WORLD OF PORKIES. MAKE THEM PAY FOR WHAT THEY HAVE DONE.

Seriously the only way that a world wide socialist order could ever emerge is if the US military, CIA, and police were co-opted over time by hardcore dogmatic leftists and overthrew the government in a coup and began conquering the rest of the western hemisphere.