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this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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I think one thing that's confusing is that there's Marxism, communism, Leninism, MLM, etc. Different communist countries try to learn from other countries and each one has its own implementation based on its own material conditions.
From what I've heard, Lenin's vanguard party and violent revolution thing was basically theorized to be required basically because of the long history of more peaceful movements being squashed by violent capitalists, the difficulty it is to wrest power from the old dictatorship, that of the rich, and the difficulty it is to change a country's culture (see the super brainwashed US that might re-elect Trump let alone ever be able to get affordable health care). It's not really required for communism so much as seen as a working theory of what's required to achieve it in a pragmatic way due to the US trying to destroy it in every country that's gone near it from its very inception and their full corporate-owned media blitz on people like Bernie or the democratic socialist in the UK.
A lot of the authoritarian nature of these countries is due to the material conditions from which they arose (usually poor, rural non-industrialized dictatorships, often colonized) and from which they had to stay alive (which is usually in a siege mentality as the US or other Western countries continued to sanction and undermine them). I'd definitely prefer to live in a Nordic country than any communist one, but they also started off in very different contexts, so I'm not sure if that will always be true. Like the other commenter, I'd be curious to see more data. I'd give the point to socialist countries right now though, because the experiment of capitalism has the entire global south counting against it.
Anyone can call any other group "brainwashed." If that's all it takes for you to justify violence in order to change a system, you yourself are the fascist. Regardless of how wrong or deluded you think a people are, democracy requires that you rely on debate and conversation to change their minds in order to accumulate the support needed to change the system. If you resort to violence, you are enacting authoritarian rule, plain and simple.
That's the thing, often the rulers resort to violence even before the people. You can't talk or debate your way into power against a dictator or monarch. They'll shoot your peaceful protestors and kidnap and torture your leaders. They will blacklist your writers and artists. Talking and other avenues should always be the first step, and if you're already in a democracy probably your only step, but if violence is used to enforce an unjust system I'm not sure how else you think it could be changed.
I could see a vanguard party providing for more than just defense or violence, too. It provides a way to organize and spread your thoughts and ideas, a way to provide mutal aid, a way to focus your demands, a way to teach political theory, etc. The rich always have class solidarity while they are masters of splitting up the poor intos different factions based on race, sex, gender, etc. Finding a way to foster solidarity into a big group where the proletariat can get their needs met seems like a worthy goal.
In the case of a dictator or a monarch, I agree there's a case to be made for necessary violence, but in actual examples of communist revolutions, the violence has never been contained to the ruling governing body and its enforcers; it always expanded to "the bourgeoisie," which often meant anyone who made beyond a certain amount of money, including small businessmen, teachers, doctors, etc. You talk about this process in the nicest possible terms, but that's never how it actually plays out. It's a violent revolution, people--often innocent people--get hurt and killed, and the whole point is to establish a new authoritarian system of government that explicitly denies the right for any other body to contest its right to rulership.
I'm sorry, but you are either a very subtle troll or extremely naive in my opinion. I don't think we have much more to talk about. Good-bye.
And you like to take the nicest part of the pre-revolutionary history, where often rulers perpetrated violence against the poor as well for years, and ignore that as well. You also seem to be taking the worst examples. There's been socialist revolutions where nothing happens to teachers, doctors, or small businessmen. Most of them, actually. China and it's Cultural Revolution is the only one I can think of that went out and hurt a bunch of unrelated civilians.