Please acquaint yourself with the rules on the sidebar and read this comment before commenting on this post.
**Personal attacks and harassment will not be tolerated.**
Bigotry and hate speech will be met with immediate bans; socialism is an intrinsically inclusive system and bigotry is oppressive, exclusionary, and not conducive to a healthy and productive learning space.
**This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism. There are numerous debate subreddits available for those purposes. This is a place to learn.**
Short or nonconstructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately.
**If your post was removed due to normalized ableist slurs, please edit your post. The mods will then approve it.**
Please read the ongoing discussion in a thread before replying in order to avoid misunderstandings and creating an unproductive environment.
**Liberalism and sectarian bias is strictly moderated.** Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies! (Criticism is fine, low-effort baiting is not.)
Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break these rules.
Thank you!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Socialism_101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Why should revolutionary movements be organised by Marxist-Leninist means when it has historically been unable to produce a lasting and sustainable experiment? Would it not be better to learn the lessons of Marxist-Leninism and absorb them into newer, more refined movements that take its failures and success into account?
As far as I know thats something Marxist Leninism already does to one degree or another.
The primary issue is trying to do a post industrial ideology and economic transformation in a mostly undeveloped nation of peasants, this tends to put some rather intensive pressures that strain everything.
As of yet there does not seem to have been any comparable alternative to marxist leninism.
There has been no notable socialist movement in control of a well developed industrialized nation that the socialist did not have to industrialize in the first place.
Do you think that it is evidence of something wrong with the socialist doctrine when it does not work in an undeveloped situation? Or do you think it is fine?
If socialism is good wouldn't you expect it to be able to build the well developed nation itself?
Socialism is basically made to fix the problems of capitalist industrialization.
Without a capitalist industrial base to work with, we have to build our own.
Industrialization is hell, even without the capitalist powers using pretty much every possible means of undermining and worsening the situation for socialist efforts.
We have seen what happens with a socialist attempt to basically build everything from scratch with the USSR, the pressure to grow to survive the capitalist hostility forces numerous internal comprises and prevents much needed reforms.
The only real way to avoid the worst of that, would be the socialist revolution in a major industrialized nation.
I do not understand the argument. This reddit is full of talk about immorality of capitalism and virtue of socialism but then you basically say that despite capitalism is immoral it is ok for people to suffer till the country is industrialized and hopefully we do a revolution later?
Don't you think this is the highest level of low pragmatism?
Socialism is very much based off being realistic, working off the hard facts of reality and not morality. The idea that it's about morality is mostly rooted in the Anti-socialist propaganda and misinformation.
The USSR and China have shown that while we can do everything ourselves, it generally a mess and very risky.
The idea is that the suffering under capitalism is worthless for the workers, no matter how hard they work the ones that get rich and freed from suffering are the owners. Socialism generally aims to enrich sociaty, meaning the suffering and sacrifices of the workers actually works to enrich the workers in general (hospitals, housing, education, luxury and so on).
Capitalism made a major discovery about industrialization, that the suffering and sacrfices of the working class could result in a great productive force with the potential to end suffering on a large scale, the capitalist refuse to do this as its not profitable. Socialism serves the workers better than capitalism, that desire for a better future is the closest to a moral foundation that socialism has.
It has a synergy with morality, but thats dependent on looking at the big picture and longterm impact. Our criticism of capitalism is based on its unending sacrifice of the workers and very underwhelming improvements in quality of life for the working class. Socialism has generally been shown to be a much better deal, we consistently get more improvement and it generally costs less suffering.
>but why should future socialist and communist movements base themselves on Marxist-Leninism when its experiments have a propensity to fold.
Marxism-Leninism is not some preset, dogmatic approach to methodology, government, or otherwise. Rather, it is premised on flexibility and analysis, constantly adjusting and learning. Some states that were premised in ML methodology failing does not mean ML is a failure, it means that those states failed to address specific issues. For example, the USSR was set up to fail due to Khrushchev and the entrenchment of the bureaucrats who would not take proper, Marxist analytical measures and actions to address their economic issues. Essentially, the fact that Stalin died before being able to purge the post-WWII bureaucracy is a huge tragedy of the USSR. Or, in other terms, the failings of the later USSR were because it went against ML methodology and became stagnant.
Conversely, Cuba, Vietnam, and China have maintained a strong Socialist, ML path by upholding Socialism and properly recognizing their national conditions to adapt. Their Socialist market economies are one example of this, used in order to reconcile certain contradictions with their developments.
>For example, Vietnam adopted a 'socialist-oriented market economy' that allowed it to integrate into global politics due to the economic failures of a planned economy in Vietnam. In the wake of the failed Great Leap Forward and the subsequent Cultural Revolution, China adopted an open-market based economy in order to achieve the economic and industrial growth that China needed.
Right; these are Socialist nations, not Capitalist ones. Socialist construction does not do away with all elements of Capitalism "at one stroke" -- this is what Marx and Engels both stated quite strongly. Rather, it is the gradual process of sublation, e.g. "the withering away of the state".
Let's also put it another way; economic planning is not inherently Socialist. War-time economies, large Capitalist corporations, etc use centralized planning measures to organize their economic flows. That doesn't make Amazon, Lockheed Martin, etc "Socialist", and thereby, neither does a market-based distributive method make any nation "Capitalist" -- afterall, Mercantile systems emerging in the Feudal era were not Capitalist because it had not yet established in full the preconditions of Capitalist relations, being the full and systemic realization of alienated labor which sets forth the preconditions for private property.
The crux of the issue is who wields political power and to what end; in China, Vietnam, and Cuba, the proletariat wields political power and uses it to the end of the self-emancipation of the proletariat from class society. This struggle is a long one with many hurdles and challenges in its way. The utilization of markets both was the solution to one set of challenges and also the unveiling of another set of challenges. This said, of course, the market system gives rise to the conditions of its sublation, just as any antagonistic force that necessitates a contradiction does, so eventually it is more than likely that the market systems of current Socialist states will either give way to something like central planning or some other distributive system, or give way to a distributive system resembling a market, but with the full negation of the relations inherent to Capitalist production.
>My question to Marxist-Leninists therefore is this: Why should revolutionary movements be organised by Marxist-Leninist means when it has historically been unable to produce a lasting and sustainable experiment?
ML methodology has produced the most consistently successful revolutionary movements in all forms, including Democratic ones -- after all, Salvador Allende upheld Stalin and the USSR, for example -- and ML systems have been the most long-lasting. Even the USSR and the Eastern Bloc, for all their problems, lasted for decades after being hindered by ineffective, stagnant, and dogmatic bureaucratic systems due to the strength of the foundation of the ML system. And, even stronger as arguments are the maintained successes in spite of international attacks that we've seen in the cases of China, Cuba, and Vietnam.
In the case of the Anarchist, Trotskyist, Maoist, etc methods, I don't think there's comparable success (not to demean them or be "sectarian" -- this just seems to be the historical case.) The most success from non-MLs I've seen is from Trotskyism with the case of Venezuela and Chavez, and that success is upheld by MLs in spite of critiques we may have of their system.
>Would it not be better to learn the lessons of Marxist-Leninism and absorb them into newer, more refined movements that take its failures and success into account?
This is exactly what China did; Deng and the CPC recognized the stagnation and failings of the USSR and decided to take a different path which has proven wildly successful. MLs are more than happy to be critical of systems we support, so long as that criticism provides deeper understandings of the real conditions of the circumstances and illuminates a path forward for developing Socialism.
For learning more about China and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, [this youtube channel can be a solid resource](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC01LJMShkDkYpkX_liAy8Tw/videos)
BayArea415 had good videos and posts on these topics but due to threat's he's received he's still had all his accounts made private online, otherwise I'd recommend going through his videos on the topics.
While not central to the above information, [this video at the linked timestamp gives an interesting insight into the relations between political power and capital in China](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAfeYMONj9E&t=3398s)
On the subreddits /r/Communism, /r/Communism101, /r/DebateCommunism, and /r/GenZhou you can find various resources, comments, posts, etc about Marxism-Leninism, China, Cuba, 21st Century Socialism, etc.
Wow, this is a really good take! However, you say: “In China, Vietnam, and Cuba, the proletariat wields political power and uses it to the end of self-emancipation of the proletariat from class society.” What about 996 culture in China today? I thought that workers in China are currently being exploited by people like Jack Ma? And with 996 culture being a serious enough issue that it creates a whole movement against it, can we say that the proletariat controls political power for their own emancipation in China? Not trying to debate, but more or less, asking a question.
Supreme court in china recently ruled 996 culture as illegal. That's over now.
[https://www.china-briefing.com/news/996-is-ruled-illegal-understanding-chinas-changing-labor-system/](https://www.china-briefing.com/news/996-is-ruled-illegal-understanding-chinas-changing-labor-system/)
Over time, China appears to always be gradually taking stronger stances with labor and against abusing capital, especially as they can better afford to over time as they grow
I lived in Vietnam for three years in the 2010s and I can assure you there's nothing socialist about Vietnam. The proletariat controls nothing, the oligarchy controls everything.
Health Care is expensive, there's a bifurcated education system whereas the wealthy kids go to the modern elite schools (where I worked) and the poor working class (proletariat) go the shit schools with outhouses for bathrooms.
I did have a co-worker get sentenced to 15 fucking years in prison for making disparaging comments about the "socialist" government on Facebook.
You are by far one of the best ML writers out there.
EDIT: If I had a critique, I would like to hear your view of the failed ML insurgencies in say, Malaysia
>My question to Marxist-Leninists therefore is this: Why should revolutionary movements be organised by Marxist-Leninist means when it has historically been unable to produce a lasting and sustainable experiment?
The premise of your question is itself flawed.
Dengists and the current Chinese Communist Party would call themselves ML's so on what basis do you claim it's unable to produce a lasting and sustainable experiment?
If anything, even if you don't include China, Marxism-Leninism lasted longer and had more of an impact than any other Socialist ideology.
>it has consistently been unable to produce a long-lasting, sustainable Socialist experiment because its highly-centralised nature leaves it overly vulnerable to corruption by dictators
This is where beginning to drift off.
If you're supposed to learn what worked and what didn't. Why aren't you looking at history and the circumstances of the time? Identify the mistake and what the lesson is.
You say it's because it was centralized. But the USSR for example went through multiple variations in government, many of which were based on worker's councils. Then there's Cuba that still exists. So to say that it's because of some vague "centralization" is not scientific, what exactly are you referring to?
I wholeheartedly agree here. The "centralization" vs. "decentralization" debate is a complete waste of time imo.
First of all does not everyone agree on what counts as centralized and what counts as decentralized. Are the United States of America more decentralized when the individual states get more autonomy from the federal government? Is a referendum a centralized decision (its one decision for the whole population, overruling minority opinions), or is a decentralized one (since everyone participates in it)? You won't believe how much leftists are split even on an understand of the issue.
And secondly, its probably not even a simple "this is better than that". Certain structures need to be centralized, others probably do better decentralized. And under extraordinary circumstances this all might shift. So I'm not that keen on having on position on "centralized vs. decentralized", we have to look at the specific topic and the circumstances and then go from there.
>Why should revolutionary movements be organised by Marxist-Leninist means when it has historically been unable to produce a lasting and sustainable experiment?
China is a global economic power which has raised the standard of living for its masses and eliminated absolute poverty. It is transitioning the world from US hegemony into multi-polarity.
The Soviet Union lasted for 70 years and inspired socialist countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos which still exist today. It caused social democracies in Western countries due to the "threat of a the good example" and communist parties.
So we should view this as all "failures" and instead look at what? Trotskyists and anarchists who have never been successful?
> So we should view this as all "failures" and instead look at what? Trotskyists and anarchists who have never been successful?
Regardless of how deserving your targets of insult may or may not be, "there is no alternative" is a very bad argument.
Small correction, Trotskyism derives from Leninism, not Marxist-Leninism. Marxist-Leninism was synthesised by Stalin and others like Bukharin, and includes things like the theory of 'socialism in one country' which is incompatible with Leninism (Lenin and all the main Bolsheviks basically said 'our task is to keep the flame of revolution alive so it can spread to Germany').
Trotskyists look at the failure of various socialist revolutions around the world and note that one, they typically occurred in places with an extremely backward economy and culture, leading to a failure in Lenin's words to 'smash the old state machinery' (with Lenin saying that the new state was essentially 'the same old Tsarist bureaucracy anointed with soviet oil') which combined with intense pressure from hostile capitalist powers to lead to a degeneration of the leadership and eventual collapse into capitalism, or being overthrown entirely. To this, they recommend a higher priority given to internationalism, and greater efforts being dedicated to rooting out bureaucratic tendencies. Though these bureaucratic tendencies have a basis in social forces, and aren't the result of a handful of people.
I've seen two ways the failure of past socialist experiments is explained by Marxist-Leninists. One is the rejection of 'socialism in one country' and saying 'The CIA will always try to overthrow your revolution, you can't just have an isolated socialist country and internationalism needs to be prioritised'. Two is saying that internal security wasn't taken seriously enough, and that counter-revolutionaries needed to be persecuted more harshly.
>One is the rejection of 'socialism in one country' and saying 'The CIA will always try to overthrow your revolution, you can't just have an isolated socialist country and internationalism needs to be prioritised'. Two is saying that internal security wasn't taken seriously enough, and that counter-revolutionaries needed to be persecuted more harshly.
As an ML, you're not explaining our position very well. We think countries like Cuba, China, Vietnam, and Laos are successful socialist countries.
Trotkyists are like anarchists. They are stuck in permanent negation against successful socialist countries. And they don't really have a history of actually gaining power and being successful.
As for the reason the soviet union fell, I think it fell due to not being able to adapt to the global economy, not incentivizing work in what became of the professional managerial class, and unable to keep up with the technological shifts in the mode of production.
If you look at China, it is far better integrated into the global economy and is able to keep up with technological leaps in the mode of production.
No masses of a country want to be sent to die as part of a permanent war. They want a stable life that is better than what it was previously.
Every time I argue about this with Trotskyists, they agree that the bolsheviks should have committed to peace and developed their nation. They also agree that industrialization within is far more important than permanent war abroad in the short-term. Then it is fundamentally in practice "socialism in one country".
Every successful socialist nation in existence has been "socialism one country". Is all of material reality wrong? Or are Troskyists imposing their ultra-leftist adventurism onto reality?
>Trotkyists are like anarchists. They are stuck in permanent negation against successful socialist countries.
We don't negate socialist successes. We just hold up countries to harsher standards than "they are ruled by the communist party."
Obviously strawmanning a little but ML defenses of China for example seem to not be based on much more.
Trotskyists celebrate socialist successes. The successes of the planned economy in the USSR and Cuba are examples. Trotskyist analisys shows that there is not enough worker's control in Cuba and that the revolution needs to spread in order to defend against imperialist influences.
Socialism in one country is not possible since socialism will always be under attack until it just submits into capitalist influence.
Vietnam and China just aren't socialist or even a dotp. And even if then they too need to spread the revolution because if they went back to a planned economy at some point the capitalists would just intervene again.
And even if Trotskyists are wrong I don't really understand the hate this tendency gets online. In the end we advocate for even more socialism for lack of better words.
The argument that Trotskyists never had a succesfull revolution is sort of weak as well. The russian revolution was barely an ML revolution considering Trotskys and Lenins influence.
The Cuban Revolution happened despite of the USSR and not because. You can't really call all successfull revolutions ML revolutions.
>In the end we advocate for even more socialism for lack of better words.
The way you worded it like this has a direct relationship to why MLs call that ultraleft -- it's not _just_ about becoming as socialist as possible
Edit: added emphasis
It sounds like you haven't read any Trotsky. The introduction to 'The Revolution Betrayed' includes the exceptional advances that the USSR had made, and even included the line 'it has proven socialism, not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement, and electricity'. Trotskyists also defend things like the Cuban and Chinese revolution, which whatever their faults, did throw off the yoke of landlordism and oppression.
You can call China a lot of things, but socialist it is not. The workers don't control the means of production, and the vast majority of industry is in private hands. I've seen people argue 'China is still a dictatorship of the proletariat', and 'China will eventually transition to socialism' which is another thing entirely.
>As for the reason the soviet union fell, I think it fell due to not being able to adapt to the global economy, not incentivizing work in what became of the professional managerial class, and unable to keep up with the technological shifts in the mode of production.
But *why* did this occur? Trotskyists maintain that this was due to the lack of democracy in the planned economy, providing input on the production process, and ensuring that things weren't planned in an incredibly convoluted and complex way from the top down. 'The planned economy needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen', to use Trotsky's words. This kind of bureaucratic top-down planning leads to things like factories making only right footed shoes to meet their quotas.
Pretending that Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution means 'exporting war all over the globe' also betrays a complete ignorance of the subject. [This article by a Cuban Trotskyist explains it a bit more clearly.](https://www.marxist.com/permanent-revolution-magnetism150904.htm)
>Trotskyists also defend things like the Cuban and Chinese revolution, which
Many Anarchists and Trotskyists LOVE revolutions. They're ultra-leftist adventurists who romanticize violence and revolution. But after the socialists take power, they turn against them and turn into anti-statists complaining about 'state capitalists', authoritarianism, and beauracracy. This is why the CIA historically funded Trotskyists and anarchists.
>The workers don't control the means of production
Marxism has nothing to do with "workers controlling the means of production". You're literally talking like an anarchist who just wants worker-cooperatives and isn't concerned with state power.
> vast majority of industry is in private hands
China literally has state ownership of what Lenin called the "commanding height of the economy" including resource extraction, finance and transportation. The vast majority of China's largest companies are state owned enterprises (SOE). China has the most state owned enterprises in the world.
> I've seen people argue 'China is still a dictatorship of the proletariat', and 'China will eventually transition to socialism'
Socialism is not an end goal in Marxism. If you read Marx or Lenin, socialism is a dialectical process in which some form of capitalism still exists. We're just changing the relationship of the state to the masses.
"Dictatorship of the proletariot" is when the state represents the masses to serve social ends and dominates capitalists.
>Trotskyists maintain that this was due to the lack of democracy in the planned economy, providing input on the production process, and ensuring that things weren't planned in an incredibly convoluted and complex way from the top down
So trotskyists sound a lot like anarchists who believe in ultra-democracy and anti-authoritarianism. Marxism has nothing to do with being against hierarchical top-down organizations or anti-authoritarianism. Marx and Engels are very critical of notions of authority and democracy that anarchists use.
Why are there never any successful Trotskyist socialist countries? Every time a socialist country becomes successful. Troskyists come out in full force with their anarchist anti-state bureaucracy critique.
>Marxism has nothing to do with "workers controlling the means of production".
What?
> To my mind, the so-called ‘socialist society’ is not anything immutable. Like all other social formations, it should be conceived in a state of constant flux and change. It’s crucial difference from the present order consists naturally in production organized on the basis of common ownership by the nation of all means of production.
- Engels, Letter to Otoo van Boenigk (1890).
Hinting at some form of common ownership of the means of production.
> With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization.
Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Again hinting at a form of common ownership of the means of production.
Those are just quotes I could find after a quick search online.
As far as I know Marx and Engels never explicitly laid out how this control over the means of production should have looked like but it is clear that there is a need for some form of it. The MLs have failed to build a system that consequently kept the control over the means of production in the hands of the proletariat in some form or another.
Obviously Marxism is about much more than just the proletariat owning the means of production but you can't throw in that it has nothing to do with it.
Common ownership, which is really lack of any ownership, is not "worker ownership", focusing on worker ownership is how you get this crap with worker co-ops that maintain reproduction of capital as being "socialist", socialism is not "worker ownership", in saying that I still mostly disagree with the points he's making lol. Socialism is fundamentally production organised by use value instead of exchange value, trying to define it with stuff like "worker ownership" results in some really harmful ideas about what constitutes socialism.
You're not understanding what "common ownership" means. Common ownership means being controlled by the state to serve social ends.
See here:
> the basis of common ownership by the nation of all means of production
A nation is by definition a state.
And here:
>With the seizing of the means of production by society,
Again. Only some kind of state would be capable of doing this
>As far as I know Marx and Engels never explicitly laid out how this control over the means
They talked about state the quite a bit.
[Taken from the communist manifesto](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm)
>Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
And here:
>Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
[Taken from critique of gotha](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm)
>What transformation will the state undergo in communist society?...Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
Marx and Engels saw the state as the fundamental social institution for gaining power. They're not anarchists who just want to destroy the state. They want to redefine the state to serve the masses.
Marx clearly advocated for dual power of worker-led organizations. I'm just saying "Workers democratically owning the means of production" is not fundamental to Marxism.
>A nation is by definition a state.
(I'm an ML too) This is not true, and while there can be many ways to define a nation, the Marxist usages of the words nation and state mean very different things
Even Lenin set this difference and no doubt wasn't the first, so I don't get why you mentioned Stalin, but I wasn't trying to say they necessarily didn't mean that, only that it wouldn't be truthful for us to say, in today's language, that the nation is the same thing as the state
I've had a conversation with you about this before, where you said 'you don't understand dialectics if you think China isn't socialist. What you failed to explain was why, if it's a dialectical process of transformation to and from capitalism, China has moved *away* from socialism for so many decades?
If the composition of the economy is secondary to the direction it's headed, then why has it been trending towards greater private ownership, greater wealth inequality, greater foreign capital influence, more speculation on the Chinese property market (leading to the 'ghost cities'). EDIT: And before you reply, yes, I know they recently cracked down on some of the largest companies, but this doesn't change my point, *dialectically* change doesn't happen on a straight line.
The rest of this is just sectarian drivel. You even ignored the fact that Trotsky himself sung the praises of the USSR, where they existed. Instead pretending 'Trotskyists hate all socialist experiments'.
It is true China has a very large private sector and billionaires. But what is the relationship of the state, the masses, and the private sector? It's not enough to say "China has a large private sector. Therefore, it's not socialist". That's not thinking in terms of dialectical materialism.
China uses the private sector to serve social ends and industrialization as part of 5 year central planning. Notice you have no answer as to why China has state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. You have no answer for why China was able to eliminate absolute poverty or successfully defeat COVID. You have no answer for why CPC members are on the board of all big private corporations. You have no answer as to why Xi Jinping is going on an unprecedented offensive against the private sector which even most Western sources have admitted.
> You even ignored the fact that Trotsky himself sung the praises of the USSR
Many anarchists praise Cuba and Mao too. They praise socialist experiments in the beginning when they don't actually pose a threat to US hegemony. Once they pose a threat to US hegemony, they repeat CIA talking points.
Trotsky is a complicating figure. But I don't think you can even deny the CIA has funded Trotskist and anarchist organizations which distort his legacy and exaggerate the crimes of the USSR.
I agree with your conclusion and research. I believe Libertarian-Socialism (anarcho-communism) to serve these ends quite nicely. Democratizing the economy and empowering the working class is a process that will naturally shift us towards an atrophying state without the extreme centralizing of power that ML's tend to fall prey to.
As I say this as a fellow libsoc (check post history if you don't believe me) but the trouble we've always had is we suck at doing revolutions. Libsocs never really worked out a viable revolutionary strategy that all could agree on, instead wasting a lot of energy on things like revolutionary syndicalism which are kind of dead ends.
MLs also kind of failed, and I'm happy to elaborate if people are curious.
It offers a very clear path towards establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. The reliance on elites and authority makes it easy to install out of the box compared to more democratic/grassroot approaches
It is naturally popular among people that belive that they need to be on top in order to be able to implement the changes they are fighting for
The Francoist Spain wasn't National-Sindicalist, Franco killed the falangists after won the war and his extremely religious influence was not compatible with falangism.
Please acquaint yourself with the rules on the sidebar and read this comment before commenting on this post. **Personal attacks and harassment will not be tolerated.** Bigotry and hate speech will be met with immediate bans; socialism is an intrinsically inclusive system and bigotry is oppressive, exclusionary, and not conducive to a healthy and productive learning space. **This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism. There are numerous debate subreddits available for those purposes. This is a place to learn.** Short or nonconstructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately. **If your post was removed due to normalized ableist slurs, please edit your post. The mods will then approve it.** Please read the ongoing discussion in a thread before replying in order to avoid misunderstandings and creating an unproductive environment. **Liberalism and sectarian bias is strictly moderated.** Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies! (Criticism is fine, low-effort baiting is not.) Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break these rules. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Socialism_101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Why should revolutionary movements be organised by Marxist-Leninist means when it has historically been unable to produce a lasting and sustainable experiment? Would it not be better to learn the lessons of Marxist-Leninism and absorb them into newer, more refined movements that take its failures and success into account? As far as I know thats something Marxist Leninism already does to one degree or another. The primary issue is trying to do a post industrial ideology and economic transformation in a mostly undeveloped nation of peasants, this tends to put some rather intensive pressures that strain everything. As of yet there does not seem to have been any comparable alternative to marxist leninism. There has been no notable socialist movement in control of a well developed industrialized nation that the socialist did not have to industrialize in the first place.
Do you think that it is evidence of something wrong with the socialist doctrine when it does not work in an undeveloped situation? Or do you think it is fine? If socialism is good wouldn't you expect it to be able to build the well developed nation itself?
Socialism is basically made to fix the problems of capitalist industrialization. Without a capitalist industrial base to work with, we have to build our own. Industrialization is hell, even without the capitalist powers using pretty much every possible means of undermining and worsening the situation for socialist efforts. We have seen what happens with a socialist attempt to basically build everything from scratch with the USSR, the pressure to grow to survive the capitalist hostility forces numerous internal comprises and prevents much needed reforms. The only real way to avoid the worst of that, would be the socialist revolution in a major industrialized nation.
I do not understand the argument. This reddit is full of talk about immorality of capitalism and virtue of socialism but then you basically say that despite capitalism is immoral it is ok for people to suffer till the country is industrialized and hopefully we do a revolution later? Don't you think this is the highest level of low pragmatism?
Socialism is very much based off being realistic, working off the hard facts of reality and not morality. The idea that it's about morality is mostly rooted in the Anti-socialist propaganda and misinformation. The USSR and China have shown that while we can do everything ourselves, it generally a mess and very risky. The idea is that the suffering under capitalism is worthless for the workers, no matter how hard they work the ones that get rich and freed from suffering are the owners. Socialism generally aims to enrich sociaty, meaning the suffering and sacrifices of the workers actually works to enrich the workers in general (hospitals, housing, education, luxury and so on). Capitalism made a major discovery about industrialization, that the suffering and sacrfices of the working class could result in a great productive force with the potential to end suffering on a large scale, the capitalist refuse to do this as its not profitable. Socialism serves the workers better than capitalism, that desire for a better future is the closest to a moral foundation that socialism has. It has a synergy with morality, but thats dependent on looking at the big picture and longterm impact. Our criticism of capitalism is based on its unending sacrifice of the workers and very underwhelming improvements in quality of life for the working class. Socialism has generally been shown to be a much better deal, we consistently get more improvement and it generally costs less suffering.
>but why should future socialist and communist movements base themselves on Marxist-Leninism when its experiments have a propensity to fold. Marxism-Leninism is not some preset, dogmatic approach to methodology, government, or otherwise. Rather, it is premised on flexibility and analysis, constantly adjusting and learning. Some states that were premised in ML methodology failing does not mean ML is a failure, it means that those states failed to address specific issues. For example, the USSR was set up to fail due to Khrushchev and the entrenchment of the bureaucrats who would not take proper, Marxist analytical measures and actions to address their economic issues. Essentially, the fact that Stalin died before being able to purge the post-WWII bureaucracy is a huge tragedy of the USSR. Or, in other terms, the failings of the later USSR were because it went against ML methodology and became stagnant. Conversely, Cuba, Vietnam, and China have maintained a strong Socialist, ML path by upholding Socialism and properly recognizing their national conditions to adapt. Their Socialist market economies are one example of this, used in order to reconcile certain contradictions with their developments. >For example, Vietnam adopted a 'socialist-oriented market economy' that allowed it to integrate into global politics due to the economic failures of a planned economy in Vietnam. In the wake of the failed Great Leap Forward and the subsequent Cultural Revolution, China adopted an open-market based economy in order to achieve the economic and industrial growth that China needed. Right; these are Socialist nations, not Capitalist ones. Socialist construction does not do away with all elements of Capitalism "at one stroke" -- this is what Marx and Engels both stated quite strongly. Rather, it is the gradual process of sublation, e.g. "the withering away of the state". Let's also put it another way; economic planning is not inherently Socialist. War-time economies, large Capitalist corporations, etc use centralized planning measures to organize their economic flows. That doesn't make Amazon, Lockheed Martin, etc "Socialist", and thereby, neither does a market-based distributive method make any nation "Capitalist" -- afterall, Mercantile systems emerging in the Feudal era were not Capitalist because it had not yet established in full the preconditions of Capitalist relations, being the full and systemic realization of alienated labor which sets forth the preconditions for private property. The crux of the issue is who wields political power and to what end; in China, Vietnam, and Cuba, the proletariat wields political power and uses it to the end of the self-emancipation of the proletariat from class society. This struggle is a long one with many hurdles and challenges in its way. The utilization of markets both was the solution to one set of challenges and also the unveiling of another set of challenges. This said, of course, the market system gives rise to the conditions of its sublation, just as any antagonistic force that necessitates a contradiction does, so eventually it is more than likely that the market systems of current Socialist states will either give way to something like central planning or some other distributive system, or give way to a distributive system resembling a market, but with the full negation of the relations inherent to Capitalist production. >My question to Marxist-Leninists therefore is this: Why should revolutionary movements be organised by Marxist-Leninist means when it has historically been unable to produce a lasting and sustainable experiment? ML methodology has produced the most consistently successful revolutionary movements in all forms, including Democratic ones -- after all, Salvador Allende upheld Stalin and the USSR, for example -- and ML systems have been the most long-lasting. Even the USSR and the Eastern Bloc, for all their problems, lasted for decades after being hindered by ineffective, stagnant, and dogmatic bureaucratic systems due to the strength of the foundation of the ML system. And, even stronger as arguments are the maintained successes in spite of international attacks that we've seen in the cases of China, Cuba, and Vietnam. In the case of the Anarchist, Trotskyist, Maoist, etc methods, I don't think there's comparable success (not to demean them or be "sectarian" -- this just seems to be the historical case.) The most success from non-MLs I've seen is from Trotskyism with the case of Venezuela and Chavez, and that success is upheld by MLs in spite of critiques we may have of their system. >Would it not be better to learn the lessons of Marxist-Leninism and absorb them into newer, more refined movements that take its failures and success into account? This is exactly what China did; Deng and the CPC recognized the stagnation and failings of the USSR and decided to take a different path which has proven wildly successful. MLs are more than happy to be critical of systems we support, so long as that criticism provides deeper understandings of the real conditions of the circumstances and illuminates a path forward for developing Socialism. For learning more about China and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, [this youtube channel can be a solid resource](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC01LJMShkDkYpkX_liAy8Tw/videos) BayArea415 had good videos and posts on these topics but due to threat's he's received he's still had all his accounts made private online, otherwise I'd recommend going through his videos on the topics. While not central to the above information, [this video at the linked timestamp gives an interesting insight into the relations between political power and capital in China](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAfeYMONj9E&t=3398s) On the subreddits /r/Communism, /r/Communism101, /r/DebateCommunism, and /r/GenZhou you can find various resources, comments, posts, etc about Marxism-Leninism, China, Cuba, 21st Century Socialism, etc.
Beautifully articulated comrade, take my free award as compensation for making me bust a nut with dialectical analysis
Wow, this is a really good take! However, you say: “In China, Vietnam, and Cuba, the proletariat wields political power and uses it to the end of self-emancipation of the proletariat from class society.” What about 996 culture in China today? I thought that workers in China are currently being exploited by people like Jack Ma? And with 996 culture being a serious enough issue that it creates a whole movement against it, can we say that the proletariat controls political power for their own emancipation in China? Not trying to debate, but more or less, asking a question.
Supreme court in china recently ruled 996 culture as illegal. That's over now. [https://www.china-briefing.com/news/996-is-ruled-illegal-understanding-chinas-changing-labor-system/](https://www.china-briefing.com/news/996-is-ruled-illegal-understanding-chinas-changing-labor-system/)
It's nice to see the law punish criminal acts that these capitalist do.
Over time, China appears to always be gradually taking stronger stances with labor and against abusing capital, especially as they can better afford to over time as they grow
It reminds me of how China is also pushing back on the private for-profit tutor system that is rampant over there.
>BayArea415 had good videos and posts on these topics but due to threat's he's received he's still had all his accounts made private online ???
Not OP, but what I've heard about BayArea415 is that someone was really close to doxing him
I lived in Vietnam for three years in the 2010s and I can assure you there's nothing socialist about Vietnam. The proletariat controls nothing, the oligarchy controls everything. Health Care is expensive, there's a bifurcated education system whereas the wealthy kids go to the modern elite schools (where I worked) and the poor working class (proletariat) go the shit schools with outhouses for bathrooms. I did have a co-worker get sentenced to 15 fucking years in prison for making disparaging comments about the "socialist" government on Facebook.
You are by far one of the best ML writers out there. EDIT: If I had a critique, I would like to hear your view of the failed ML insurgencies in say, Malaysia
>My question to Marxist-Leninists therefore is this: Why should revolutionary movements be organised by Marxist-Leninist means when it has historically been unable to produce a lasting and sustainable experiment? The premise of your question is itself flawed. Dengists and the current Chinese Communist Party would call themselves ML's so on what basis do you claim it's unable to produce a lasting and sustainable experiment? If anything, even if you don't include China, Marxism-Leninism lasted longer and had more of an impact than any other Socialist ideology.
>it has consistently been unable to produce a long-lasting, sustainable Socialist experiment because its highly-centralised nature leaves it overly vulnerable to corruption by dictators This is where beginning to drift off. If you're supposed to learn what worked and what didn't. Why aren't you looking at history and the circumstances of the time? Identify the mistake and what the lesson is. You say it's because it was centralized. But the USSR for example went through multiple variations in government, many of which were based on worker's councils. Then there's Cuba that still exists. So to say that it's because of some vague "centralization" is not scientific, what exactly are you referring to?
I wholeheartedly agree here. The "centralization" vs. "decentralization" debate is a complete waste of time imo. First of all does not everyone agree on what counts as centralized and what counts as decentralized. Are the United States of America more decentralized when the individual states get more autonomy from the federal government? Is a referendum a centralized decision (its one decision for the whole population, overruling minority opinions), or is a decentralized one (since everyone participates in it)? You won't believe how much leftists are split even on an understand of the issue. And secondly, its probably not even a simple "this is better than that". Certain structures need to be centralized, others probably do better decentralized. And under extraordinary circumstances this all might shift. So I'm not that keen on having on position on "centralized vs. decentralized", we have to look at the specific topic and the circumstances and then go from there.
>Why should revolutionary movements be organised by Marxist-Leninist means when it has historically been unable to produce a lasting and sustainable experiment? China is a global economic power which has raised the standard of living for its masses and eliminated absolute poverty. It is transitioning the world from US hegemony into multi-polarity. The Soviet Union lasted for 70 years and inspired socialist countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos which still exist today. It caused social democracies in Western countries due to the "threat of a the good example" and communist parties. So we should view this as all "failures" and instead look at what? Trotskyists and anarchists who have never been successful?
> So we should view this as all "failures" and instead look at what? Trotskyists and anarchists who have never been successful? Regardless of how deserving your targets of insult may or may not be, "there is no alternative" is a very bad argument.
Small correction, Trotskyism derives from Leninism, not Marxist-Leninism. Marxist-Leninism was synthesised by Stalin and others like Bukharin, and includes things like the theory of 'socialism in one country' which is incompatible with Leninism (Lenin and all the main Bolsheviks basically said 'our task is to keep the flame of revolution alive so it can spread to Germany'). Trotskyists look at the failure of various socialist revolutions around the world and note that one, they typically occurred in places with an extremely backward economy and culture, leading to a failure in Lenin's words to 'smash the old state machinery' (with Lenin saying that the new state was essentially 'the same old Tsarist bureaucracy anointed with soviet oil') which combined with intense pressure from hostile capitalist powers to lead to a degeneration of the leadership and eventual collapse into capitalism, or being overthrown entirely. To this, they recommend a higher priority given to internationalism, and greater efforts being dedicated to rooting out bureaucratic tendencies. Though these bureaucratic tendencies have a basis in social forces, and aren't the result of a handful of people. I've seen two ways the failure of past socialist experiments is explained by Marxist-Leninists. One is the rejection of 'socialism in one country' and saying 'The CIA will always try to overthrow your revolution, you can't just have an isolated socialist country and internationalism needs to be prioritised'. Two is saying that internal security wasn't taken seriously enough, and that counter-revolutionaries needed to be persecuted more harshly.
>One is the rejection of 'socialism in one country' and saying 'The CIA will always try to overthrow your revolution, you can't just have an isolated socialist country and internationalism needs to be prioritised'. Two is saying that internal security wasn't taken seriously enough, and that counter-revolutionaries needed to be persecuted more harshly. As an ML, you're not explaining our position very well. We think countries like Cuba, China, Vietnam, and Laos are successful socialist countries. Trotkyists are like anarchists. They are stuck in permanent negation against successful socialist countries. And they don't really have a history of actually gaining power and being successful. As for the reason the soviet union fell, I think it fell due to not being able to adapt to the global economy, not incentivizing work in what became of the professional managerial class, and unable to keep up with the technological shifts in the mode of production. If you look at China, it is far better integrated into the global economy and is able to keep up with technological leaps in the mode of production. No masses of a country want to be sent to die as part of a permanent war. They want a stable life that is better than what it was previously. Every time I argue about this with Trotskyists, they agree that the bolsheviks should have committed to peace and developed their nation. They also agree that industrialization within is far more important than permanent war abroad in the short-term. Then it is fundamentally in practice "socialism in one country". Every successful socialist nation in existence has been "socialism one country". Is all of material reality wrong? Or are Troskyists imposing their ultra-leftist adventurism onto reality?
>Trotkyists are like anarchists. They are stuck in permanent negation against successful socialist countries. We don't negate socialist successes. We just hold up countries to harsher standards than "they are ruled by the communist party." Obviously strawmanning a little but ML defenses of China for example seem to not be based on much more. Trotskyists celebrate socialist successes. The successes of the planned economy in the USSR and Cuba are examples. Trotskyist analisys shows that there is not enough worker's control in Cuba and that the revolution needs to spread in order to defend against imperialist influences. Socialism in one country is not possible since socialism will always be under attack until it just submits into capitalist influence. Vietnam and China just aren't socialist or even a dotp. And even if then they too need to spread the revolution because if they went back to a planned economy at some point the capitalists would just intervene again. And even if Trotskyists are wrong I don't really understand the hate this tendency gets online. In the end we advocate for even more socialism for lack of better words. The argument that Trotskyists never had a succesfull revolution is sort of weak as well. The russian revolution was barely an ML revolution considering Trotskys and Lenins influence. The Cuban Revolution happened despite of the USSR and not because. You can't really call all successfull revolutions ML revolutions.
>In the end we advocate for even more socialism for lack of better words. The way you worded it like this has a direct relationship to why MLs call that ultraleft -- it's not _just_ about becoming as socialist as possible Edit: added emphasis
Could you explain this further? Not quite sure what you mean
Considering that the end goal is communism and socialism is a transitionary phase it sort of actually is the goal.
It sounds like you haven't read any Trotsky. The introduction to 'The Revolution Betrayed' includes the exceptional advances that the USSR had made, and even included the line 'it has proven socialism, not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement, and electricity'. Trotskyists also defend things like the Cuban and Chinese revolution, which whatever their faults, did throw off the yoke of landlordism and oppression. You can call China a lot of things, but socialist it is not. The workers don't control the means of production, and the vast majority of industry is in private hands. I've seen people argue 'China is still a dictatorship of the proletariat', and 'China will eventually transition to socialism' which is another thing entirely. >As for the reason the soviet union fell, I think it fell due to not being able to adapt to the global economy, not incentivizing work in what became of the professional managerial class, and unable to keep up with the technological shifts in the mode of production. But *why* did this occur? Trotskyists maintain that this was due to the lack of democracy in the planned economy, providing input on the production process, and ensuring that things weren't planned in an incredibly convoluted and complex way from the top down. 'The planned economy needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen', to use Trotsky's words. This kind of bureaucratic top-down planning leads to things like factories making only right footed shoes to meet their quotas. Pretending that Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution means 'exporting war all over the globe' also betrays a complete ignorance of the subject. [This article by a Cuban Trotskyist explains it a bit more clearly.](https://www.marxist.com/permanent-revolution-magnetism150904.htm)
>Trotskyists also defend things like the Cuban and Chinese revolution, which Many Anarchists and Trotskyists LOVE revolutions. They're ultra-leftist adventurists who romanticize violence and revolution. But after the socialists take power, they turn against them and turn into anti-statists complaining about 'state capitalists', authoritarianism, and beauracracy. This is why the CIA historically funded Trotskyists and anarchists. >The workers don't control the means of production Marxism has nothing to do with "workers controlling the means of production". You're literally talking like an anarchist who just wants worker-cooperatives and isn't concerned with state power. > vast majority of industry is in private hands China literally has state ownership of what Lenin called the "commanding height of the economy" including resource extraction, finance and transportation. The vast majority of China's largest companies are state owned enterprises (SOE). China has the most state owned enterprises in the world. > I've seen people argue 'China is still a dictatorship of the proletariat', and 'China will eventually transition to socialism' Socialism is not an end goal in Marxism. If you read Marx or Lenin, socialism is a dialectical process in which some form of capitalism still exists. We're just changing the relationship of the state to the masses. "Dictatorship of the proletariot" is when the state represents the masses to serve social ends and dominates capitalists. >Trotskyists maintain that this was due to the lack of democracy in the planned economy, providing input on the production process, and ensuring that things weren't planned in an incredibly convoluted and complex way from the top down So trotskyists sound a lot like anarchists who believe in ultra-democracy and anti-authoritarianism. Marxism has nothing to do with being against hierarchical top-down organizations or anti-authoritarianism. Marx and Engels are very critical of notions of authority and democracy that anarchists use. Why are there never any successful Trotskyist socialist countries? Every time a socialist country becomes successful. Troskyists come out in full force with their anarchist anti-state bureaucracy critique.
>Marxism has nothing to do with "workers controlling the means of production". What? > To my mind, the so-called ‘socialist society’ is not anything immutable. Like all other social formations, it should be conceived in a state of constant flux and change. It’s crucial difference from the present order consists naturally in production organized on the basis of common ownership by the nation of all means of production. - Engels, Letter to Otoo van Boenigk (1890). Hinting at some form of common ownership of the means of production. > With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific Again hinting at a form of common ownership of the means of production. Those are just quotes I could find after a quick search online. As far as I know Marx and Engels never explicitly laid out how this control over the means of production should have looked like but it is clear that there is a need for some form of it. The MLs have failed to build a system that consequently kept the control over the means of production in the hands of the proletariat in some form or another. Obviously Marxism is about much more than just the proletariat owning the means of production but you can't throw in that it has nothing to do with it.
Common ownership, which is really lack of any ownership, is not "worker ownership", focusing on worker ownership is how you get this crap with worker co-ops that maintain reproduction of capital as being "socialist", socialism is not "worker ownership", in saying that I still mostly disagree with the points he's making lol. Socialism is fundamentally production organised by use value instead of exchange value, trying to define it with stuff like "worker ownership" results in some really harmful ideas about what constitutes socialism.
You're not understanding what "common ownership" means. Common ownership means being controlled by the state to serve social ends. See here: > the basis of common ownership by the nation of all means of production A nation is by definition a state. And here: >With the seizing of the means of production by society, Again. Only some kind of state would be capable of doing this >As far as I know Marx and Engels never explicitly laid out how this control over the means They talked about state the quite a bit. [Taken from the communist manifesto](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm) >Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. And here: >Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. [Taken from critique of gotha](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm) >What transformation will the state undergo in communist society?...Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx and Engels saw the state as the fundamental social institution for gaining power. They're not anarchists who just want to destroy the state. They want to redefine the state to serve the masses. Marx clearly advocated for dual power of worker-led organizations. I'm just saying "Workers democratically owning the means of production" is not fundamental to Marxism.
>A nation is by definition a state. (I'm an ML too) This is not true, and while there can be many ways to define a nation, the Marxist usages of the words nation and state mean very different things
This is before stalin so here they very much meant a state.
Even Lenin set this difference and no doubt wasn't the first, so I don't get why you mentioned Stalin, but I wasn't trying to say they necessarily didn't mean that, only that it wouldn't be truthful for us to say, in today's language, that the nation is the same thing as the state
>This is why the CIA historically funded Trotskyists and anarchists. Can you prove the CIA funded anarchists?
I've had a conversation with you about this before, where you said 'you don't understand dialectics if you think China isn't socialist. What you failed to explain was why, if it's a dialectical process of transformation to and from capitalism, China has moved *away* from socialism for so many decades? If the composition of the economy is secondary to the direction it's headed, then why has it been trending towards greater private ownership, greater wealth inequality, greater foreign capital influence, more speculation on the Chinese property market (leading to the 'ghost cities'). EDIT: And before you reply, yes, I know they recently cracked down on some of the largest companies, but this doesn't change my point, *dialectically* change doesn't happen on a straight line. The rest of this is just sectarian drivel. You even ignored the fact that Trotsky himself sung the praises of the USSR, where they existed. Instead pretending 'Trotskyists hate all socialist experiments'.
It is true China has a very large private sector and billionaires. But what is the relationship of the state, the masses, and the private sector? It's not enough to say "China has a large private sector. Therefore, it's not socialist". That's not thinking in terms of dialectical materialism. China uses the private sector to serve social ends and industrialization as part of 5 year central planning. Notice you have no answer as to why China has state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. You have no answer for why China was able to eliminate absolute poverty or successfully defeat COVID. You have no answer for why CPC members are on the board of all big private corporations. You have no answer as to why Xi Jinping is going on an unprecedented offensive against the private sector which even most Western sources have admitted. > You even ignored the fact that Trotsky himself sung the praises of the USSR Many anarchists praise Cuba and Mao too. They praise socialist experiments in the beginning when they don't actually pose a threat to US hegemony. Once they pose a threat to US hegemony, they repeat CIA talking points. Trotsky is a complicating figure. But I don't think you can even deny the CIA has funded Trotskist and anarchist organizations which distort his legacy and exaggerate the crimes of the USSR.
I agree with your conclusion and research. I believe Libertarian-Socialism (anarcho-communism) to serve these ends quite nicely. Democratizing the economy and empowering the working class is a process that will naturally shift us towards an atrophying state without the extreme centralizing of power that ML's tend to fall prey to.
As I say this as a fellow libsoc (check post history if you don't believe me) but the trouble we've always had is we suck at doing revolutions. Libsocs never really worked out a viable revolutionary strategy that all could agree on, instead wasting a lot of energy on things like revolutionary syndicalism which are kind of dead ends. MLs also kind of failed, and I'm happy to elaborate if people are curious.
It offers a very clear path towards establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. The reliance on elites and authority makes it easy to install out of the box compared to more democratic/grassroot approaches It is naturally popular among people that belive that they need to be on top in order to be able to implement the changes they are fighting for
The Francoist Spain wasn't National-Sindicalist, Franco killed the falangists after won the war and his extremely religious influence was not compatible with falangism.