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.
Leninism
Christian Lee
Ryan Morales
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.
Lincoln Martinez
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
Ryan Young
Hey if Mussolini could start out as a socialist and become a fascist I don't see why the opposite can't be true
Angel Gray
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
Anthony Lewis
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
Kevin Carter
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
Chase Long
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.
Jordan Bell
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.
Angel Morgan
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.