this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
30 points (100.0% liked)
Ask Lemmygrad
1342 readers
26 users here now
A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Lenin waged fierce ideological struggles against all manner of leftist strains that he considered to be wrong. He would 100% be accused of being sectarian today. But Lenin says (and Stalin agrees) that it was precisely that ideological struggle and refusal of the Bolsheviks to compromise on their Marxist principles or fall to opportunism that honed the Bolshevik line, steeled their party discipline, and let the Bolsheviks succeed where other more ideologically lax socialists in Europe failed.
Hell, that is basically what my former conservative professor criticized Lenin for: no freedom of speech within the party and a inability to agree with others. They would rather have him be some lazy person that did nothing to prevent the degradation of the party's values (which makes sense because they were conservative).
Two common and intertwined tactics used are the heightening of every weakness a communist figure has alongside the twisting of every strength the same figure has into sharp points to criticize.
This part is especially insidious because it pushes aspiring revolutionaries to self-sabotage and choose ineffectual weakness over strength because they have been tricked into believing that strength is morally reprehensible.
Every time that anti-communists throw accusations of "authoritarianism" at communists and at socialist states they do so in order to dissuade aspiring communists from emulating strategies that are exceptionally dangerous to capital because they have a track record of success. The more successful a socialist state is, the more its methods must be denounced as authoritarian and dictatorial. Ideological laxity, opportunism, revisionism are instead praised under the guise of "democracy" and "freedom of speech".
Socialists must not fall for this tactic and must not accept the framing pushed onto them by reactionaries, we must not apologize for or be quick to disavow the actions of socialist states under public pressure as soon as some shallow accusations are leveled at them and say things like "if we were in charge, we would be much better, we would not do all those terrible things", because that is already in itself an ideological retreat, a concession and capitulation to anti-communist narratives.
Yes, sometimes being "dictatorial" is exactly what is needed.
Mao Zedong, "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship"
Mindless unity and unprincipled compromise is not for the best:
Vladimir Lenin, "Unity"
Anti-communists will always seek to use liberal ideological-rhetorical weapons to deceive people:
Vladimir Lenin, "Deception of the People with Slogans of Freedom and Equality"
Well said, comrade. It is just disappointing to see communists that understand how capitalism is an exploitative system that does not benefit the oppressed strata of society, yet end up bending to the will of capitalist propaganda and doing exactly what you said: self-sabotaging to appeal to those that do not even appreciate them beyond being useful obstacle to principled application of communism. It is honestly like seeing a civil rights protestor listening to what a white supremacist has to say about the Civil Rights Movement in general and going: "Oh, you are right, I am not like those people that want to inflict violence against those that want to expel me from this country illegally, nor am I the type to desire taking over the entire country and establishing non-white supremacy" (the pattern here is that they are forced to keel to falsities like what the white supremacist would say about them so that they become "acceptable" propaganda to be used against their potential allies).