My roommate has been educating himself on communism, and we have been having many great conversations on theory and what have you. He says he is a communist. However, he has come to some very different conclusions to me, and I have been going back and forth on his talking points a lot. I was wondering what you guys would think of his talking points since I have to hear them and discuss them with him a lot.

  1. Vanguardism/council republics are inherently flawed and undemocratic. He admits that there is democracy within a Marxist-Leninist government, but says it is not good enough because you don’t vote directly for the president, etc…

  2. Says that vanguardism is “elitist” and that the core of the idea is that the working classes are stupid and only the intelligentsia knows right. He said he liked Lenin but he was too “mean” and didn’t speak as kindly of the peasants as he wanted. (lol)

  3. Attributes the fall of the USSR entirely to the democratic organization of the government. Says that if the Soviet Union had allowed a more “libertarian” “democratic” structure what happened wouldn’t have happened. I’ve also notice he attributes a lot of China’s problems historically to the way their government is structured.

  • Magnolia_Marxist [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    3·
    5 days ago

    I wish I knew how to tell bro he’s an idealist and has brain worms in real life person language. He says revolutionary governments should work to oppress the bourgeoisie, but if the vanguard party isn’t abolished/dissolved/weakened within a certain amount of time its “authoritarian”. I keep trying to address external pressures on these entities and what I feel like is a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept by him, but it’s to no avail.

    • ChicagoCommunist [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      Ultimately it’s not a matter of him coming to the “right” conclusion, it’s whether he can answer the questions posed by material conditions. So rather than saying his conclusions are wrong, describe some of the problems the USSR faced and ask how he would have dealt with them. Both of the sources I mentioned go through this in detail, I strongly recommend them to everyone.