This isn't intended to close the debate on what counts as socialism. It's a comment I wrote in one of the federated instances that I suspect will be deleted. So I'm posting the text here as I thought it might generate some good discussion:

It's okay for us to disagree on our assessments of AES, but these disagreements must be based on some common understandings. I don't think we're there at the moment. Partly this comes down to the way language has shifted in the last 200 years.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is to be contrasted with a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It means 'dictatorship' in the way that liberal democracies are dictatorships because they are governed by consistent (class based) institutions that hold executive, legislative, and judicial power.

The meaning of dictatorship has changed. Back then it more clearly meant something like 'governance by', and Marx's contemporaries would have inferred this meaning.

A dictatorship of the proletariat means the workers, not the capitalists, control the state and the means of production. In the words of one scholar, it means something like:

… either state-controlled [where the state is controlled by the proletariat] or private-but-worker-controlled economy with a democratically elected government and not necessarily single party.

The idea being that capitalism is a class-based political economy, and communism is the abolition of classes. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the stage of history where the workers have control of the state/means of production. Once the workers have such control, the distinction between bourgeois and proletariat falls apart. At that point we have reached communism.

You might even challenge the way that this has been tried so far. I would say to look again, if so. But either way, it doesn't change the theory. One can detest the way that an idea has been put into practice without rejecting the theory. As Kwame Ture advises, an ideology should be judged by it's principles, not it's practicioners.

No state has yet reached communism. The very idea is an oxymoron as communism is stateless. What some few states have begun to achieve (but no state has quite got there yet, as the class struggle is ongoing, although China, at least, is close) is socialism.

Marx used different terms in different works to discuss all this. As primarily a critic of capitalism, he didn't really flesh out a theory of socialism or communism in the way that you suggest. For that, we must look to Engels and to Lenin's State and Revolution. Nonetheless, a birds eye view of Marx's work reveals that he advocated for socialism (a dictatorship is the proletariat) as a stepping stone to communism. The logic of this progression grows directly out of an historical materialist analysis of class society.

At the same time, there is another sense of the Marxist concept of communism, but I don't think this is the one you mean. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels wrote:

We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. Further, in the Communist Manifesto, they wrote: Communists everywhere support any revolutionary movement against the existing social and political conditions.

In this sense, Marxist-Leninists are 'literally communists' but Marxist-Leninist states cannot be 'literal[] communism' but they are socialist (or trying to be).

If you want to read a short text about socialist governance, you might enjoy Roland Boer, Friedrich Engels and the Foundations of Socialist Governance. His Socialism with Chinese Characteristics may also be of interest for giving a detailed analysis of governance in China.

You can still disagree with MLs, AES, and the above definitions and propose other definitions, but that would involve speaking at cross purposes. It might also involve idealism because throughout history the only revolutionary socialist projects to have succeeded for a significant time have been guided by Marxism-Leninism. It's okay (albeit idealist) to have a different concept of socialism but a definition based on concrete examples must look to Marxism-Leninism.

And one cannot simply dismiss the experience of the attempt of billions of people trying to build socialism as not socialism because it doesn't match an esoteric and contrasting definition of socialism.

Edit: the scholar referred to in the text is the person I was replying to, who criticised the DotP but gave a definition of socialism that could describe a DotP.

It seems there are a lot of propaganda arising on certain lemmy instances parroting propaganda that lemmygrad and Communists support human rights violations, and equating Communists to the alt right.

This is an extremely ridiculous assertion, given the historical context of the left being the main force fighting Nazism and fascism. But I write this post as there are probably many people misled by all the dishonest propaganda out there, who may be accepting of reason before seeking to silence us.

Please link this post in other instances if they are parroting propaganda about Communists to justify demonizing us. Reasonable people will understand and oppose these motions.

What is NOT Communism? in short, communism is NOT:

• "when the government does stuff"
• "capitalism but everyone gets paid the same"
• an incursion on personal freedom, or forcing people to do what they don't want (unless the thing they don't want is not exploiting others and not wishing mass murder on ethnic groups, etc).

Then what is communism? in simple terms, it is the belief that the working class (i.e. the people, the masses) must own the means of production (factories, work places, etc) and control the direction of production in society, so that we produce for our own needs rather than to fulfill profits.

Why? we spend most of our lifetime working, so why should we cater it towards profits of a minority class of capitalists rather than our own and out community's needs and wants? Why shouldn't we be masters of our own destinies?

You may not agree with this, but this is not an excuse to silence us or lump us with genocidal ideologies

This thread is not meant to convince you with communism, but to demystify it and break the cold war era propaganda that some of you continue to parrot.

you support USSR? What about their human rights violations? (applies to Cuba, China, etc)

We do, but we do not support human rights violations as we believe there are tons of propaganda surrounding this. Equating this with Nazism is EXTREMELY DISINGENUOUS. The prevailing propaganda against the USSR is even acknowledged by NATO countries themselves. Nazism is an ideology founded on genocide, and this is easy to verify from Hitler's writing himself.

Maybe in the end, we are wrong and despite the propaganda, there are human rights violations. But our support for the USSR comes from their achievements to better the human condition, and we hope to build on it. There are no human rights violation that inspires our ideology like it does for fascism or Nazism.

Disclaimer: I am just a random Communist. I have no authority over lemmygrad or connections to the admins, just to make sure I don't upset the admins saying this.

This is an outrage.

This has huge implications.

One of the commonly-referenced triumphs of the USSR is their commanding lead throughout most of the Space Race - first launched satellite, first man in space, first woman in space, first rover on Mars, etc. And that's with half the economy of the US - as the saying goes, feudalism to space age in forty years.

But I'm not here to discuss the past. I'm here to discuss the present and the future - unfortunately, one in which the USSR no longer exists. What do we think of space exploration and eventually colonization before the next revolution?

First, on colonization. On Earth, the problem with colonization is that there are people already living there. On Mars, on Europa, on the Moon, finding current intelligent life is unlikely. (It's not impossible, but I doubt it, as do most scientists. If intelligent life is discovered, ) And in a case where there is no intelligent life already there to repress, kill, and steal land from, colonialism is not necessarily a bad thing.

The exploration of space is almost inarguably a good thing. The best argument I've heard about it is that it draws resources away from Earth. Which, under a liberal view, is a valid argument. However, neither the government nor the capital-holders will contribute their capital to anything useful for the workers.

Regardless, space exploration is nearly always useful. It expands our understanding of the greater universe at very little cost to workers. Space colonization, however, is far less clear-cut.

(A note here: A manned mission to Mars is possible as of 2005. Building a liveable city on Mars is possible within a few decades if we dedicate ourselves to it. Terraforming Mars, with our current level of technology, is also possible, but would take approximately a thousand years. For more information, see The Case for Mars, by Robert Zubrin. As such, most of this post will be focused on the impact of Martian colonies.)

A common metaphor for the Cold War is a map in which countries turn red and blue. Nowadays, the capitalists have mostly won - China and Cuba remain holdouts, but until the next revolution, the map of Earth is mostly blue.

There's another planet out there. The Red Planet. Turning the Red Planet blue would be a major victory for any capitalist nation. And in any future where the only surviving governments are competing capitalists, it would also represent a major triumph over other capitalists, which makes it likely that colonization of space will eventually happen. The wealth from their colonies in the New World made Spain one of the richest powers in Europe - there is no reason to think anything will be different.

Colonization of space by a capitalist power would likely change the balance of power significantly in favour of that capitalist state, and in favour of capitalism in general.

Some would argue that the colonies open up a new battleground for the revolution. "No rich person would move to Mars, so it makes a prime ground for revolution."

Earth's bourgeoise will not move to Mars. However, there will likely be a bourgeoise class homegrown on Mars.

This avoids the biggest problem, however. A Martian colony will not be self-sustaining for centuries. If Mars and only Mars were to revolt, creating a truly "Red Planet," they would immediately be embargoed by ever capitalist country on Earth. Such embargoes are quite effective on Earth, where we do not require advanced technology to survive. Martian colonies for centuries will be reliant on Earth for advanced machinery, which makes any solely Martian revolution destined to fail.

If, however, a revolution begins on Earth and then spreads to Mars, surely the Earthen country could support a Martian colony? This method of revolution has been done before - notably, the relations between the Soviet Union and Cuba. And yes, this would likely work. If an established socialist country were to support a revolution on Mars, that revolution would have a chance at succeeding.

However, this leads to no benefit of a capitalist colony on Mars. It becomes simply another capitalist government that needs overthrowing. The far simpler and better solution would be to first revolt on Earth and to leave the building of colonies for a socialist government.

As per always, my personal notes on the piece in question:

""Republican" politicians"

No, it's every capitalist politician not affiliated with the US democratic party. Even in Russia we see clowns championing this culture war nonsense. When I am not on here or another leftist space, I am on Russian spaces monitoring the war in the Ukraine. I see Russian chauvinism on a constant basis and I believe it only hides the damage and the nature of the true actors if we constrain this issue to simply an American political issue. Many populist right factions in many countries in the west and in Russian space as well are also employing this strategy.

"Sure, Chip, that’s what’s been causing all that vital resource expenditure in the US military: the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion. Can’t possibly have anything to do with all that extremely expensive military equipment you’ve been moving into every corner of the earth now, can it?" Exactly.

"This idea that “wokeness” is hurting the US military’s ability to prepare for war with China"

I have to say this is nothing new, just a further step forward for the populist right's scapegoating of the LGBT for the abject failures of capitalism.

"Do you see how fake and stupid this is? "

Those who's economic position under American neoliberalism are not swept up consumption of the latest pile of garbage (whether commodity or media) and who do not economically benefit from said garbage will see this for what it is and avoid this. Those who do benefit or whose economic position predicates consumerism (the labor aristocrats) will also see the stupidity but will do as they've been - eating the garbage and rolling in it's filth. If this comes to pass as the mainstream as the populist right desires, make no mistake and do not feel betrayed, the middle class were never allies, the bourgeois never cared about the LGBT to begin with.

"And it’s a good illustration of the function that both of the major “populist” strains serve in US politics, both on the Bernie Sanders/AOC “progressive” side and the Trump/MAGA side. Both branches appeal to the anti-establishment sentiments of their respective bases, and then herd their adherents into support for America’s two mainstream political parties — both of which are designed to serve the interests of the same depraved establishment these “populist” factions supposedly abhor."

"The oligarchs and empire managers who pull the strings of the US government not only control both parties, they control both of the major factions which purport to fight the mainstream establishment in those parties. It’s a redundant security measure designed to protect the globe-spanning power structure which depends on keeping everyone marching in accord with its interests. They control the opposition, and they control the opposition to the controlled opposition. ** Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are designed to take power away from the people and feed it to the empire. Every attempt to draw you into supporting them is designed to disempower you, even when it flies the flag of “populism” and claims to oppose the same interests you oppose. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to turn you into a tool of the powerful."**

💯👏

The populist right is quite lame, agreed. This reminds me of the sub The Right Can't Meme 😁 Well, in America at least, the right can't relate to the working class. In social democratic Europe and Russia consistency is easier to constitute, however this is not the case in America. As well, the global south (save for India) is not in love with Russian chauvinism either which is Russia's populist right, despite being momentary allies in the struggle against American imperial capital.

As such, the populist right is confined to the social space which is filled by Europe, Australia, parts of America, parts of Canada, parts of Russia, and much of India. Predominately social democratic spaces and those in the middle class of their respective countries otherwise. As well, those are the same countries the neoliberal imperial capitalists are attempting to steal capital from in this conflict as their assault against Russia had failed. Europe is deindustrializing and profits are flowing towards American bourgeois.

The pette bourgeois being shaken down by the big bourgeois and rallying against social issues in place of capitalism, together they seek a revolution of sorts where capitalism remains in place however the pette bourgeois "get a better deal"..where have I seen this before? 🤔

American capitalists have attempted to make capital gains in both South America (Brasil, Venezuela) as well as India since this conflict began as well. This follows the path of development American neoliberalism has followed since it's birth upon the corpse of American social democracy in the 70s, eating social democracies and leaving confused fascists in it's wake is nothing new. Russia represents a superpower for these individuals of reaction and so this will be something we must face moving forward into the multipolar world order.

There are many Marxists who look at the US/NATO war against Russia without historical materialism. They condemn Russia and the war in Ukraine as an "inter-imperialist war" between Russia and the US, but this is wrong mainly because they ignore the historical aggression movement of the "traditional" imperialist countries.

One such movement was the expansion of NATO, where the EU and the US were funding NATO and EU membership campaigns, especially in former socialist republics. They took advantage of nascent states and low institutional complexity to spread propaganda in these countries, initially through television and today through the Internet. They manipulate the public opinion of an entire nation, just to serve their interests.

And worse, NATO demands from these countries "political reforms" in order to enter NATO, which eventually resulted in extreme right-wing governments in these countries.

NATO has been expanding eastward into Russia, settling in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, then Estonia, Latvia, Romania, and Bulgaria, with Estonia and Latvia bordering Russia. Furthermore, NATO has already stated if I'm not mistaken since 2008 that it intended to host Ukraine and Georgia, and not only that, it has frequently held military exercises with these countries. Both Ukraine and Georgia border Russia, Ukraine being the country that has the longest border with Russia.

In Ukraine, a government has been in place since 2014 that has openly advocated neo-Nazism and incorporated Nazi militias into its army. It promoted the persecution of ethnic Russians within the country and for 8 years the Ukrainian army assaulted the population of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. School children were taught to hate Russians with children's stories portraying the Russian nation and its people as barbarians, monsters, as every government does with its enemies.

And now, with the Russian invasion, Finland, which also has a long border with Russia, has joined NATO. We already know what the historical trend of this will be. In addition, NATO has an indirect presence in Asia, mainly in South Korea and Japan, due to the presence of US troops in these countries (more than 80,000 soldiers in all).

It is very clear that NATO has been expanding toward Russia since the late 1990s, setting up governments hostile to Russians in its member countries for the sole purpose of generating a conflict with the country. In this way, it becomes possible to fragment the whole of Russia, to facilitate the plundering of that country's natural and human resources, and especially to prevent a competitive country from outgrowing the USA.

The idea that Russian aggression is part of an "inter-imperialist" conflict attempts to equate the US with Russia, as if both countries are waging war for similar reasons, or as if both are in the same position. The US/NATO has been hostile to Russia for decades, it's decades of constant aggression. To any Russian, who has seen it up close all these years, the war was a surprise, but everyone knew it was inevitable.

Marxists who defend the thesis of "inter-imperialist war" to condemn Russia and the US on the same "level" ignore all this historical development, and on top of that they use the argument that in Russia there is a right-wing conservative party in power. Or worse, they say that Russia is a bourgeois state and therefore does not deserve support.

It is true. In many aspects the Russian government is anti-communist, even. But all over the world we have bourgeois dictatorships or conservative governments. To take only this criteria of support would result in condemning the "inter-imperialist" war between the U.S. and Iraq, equating aggressors and aggressed. Because both are bourgeois dictatorships, therefore they do not deserve special consideration.

In the case of the war in Ukraine the "aggressor-aggrieved" relation is more subtle, because in the immediate appearance Russia invaded Ukraine. The aggressor-aggrieved relationship is between Russia-Ukraine, right? That seems to be the view of our Marxists, apparently. Losing sight of the background of NATO's actions, this war becomes a meaningless thing, as if Russia is wanting to take Ukraine for itself, to export its capital and control Ukraine's markets. It is a very similar discourse to the one NATO reproduces, of the invader Russia.

So who does the "imperialist Russia" discourse serve? Exactly the NATO side. Exactly the usual imperialists, which we are sick of knowing, the imperialists of the North Atlantic, the US and Europe. This discourse is aimed at undermining support for Russia in other nations, and gradually manufacturing a consensus that justifies a war against Russia.

The two sides of the war are not equal, and they do not wage war for equal reasons. Russia is a bourgeois dictatorship, as in much of the world, but it is part of a positive movement regarding the world market, an alternative movement to the US hegemony that for decades has plagued the countries of the world with its political and economic interference. Russia's partnership with China also adds strength to this alternative movement to the US-dominated institutions, the domination of the dollar, and the arbitrary interference in other countries.

I don’t need to know exact companies, no need to unnecessarily expose yourself or anything, but as we are a workers rights instance of Lemmy, I safely assume we are all proletarians. I for example work at a unionized grocery and I work outside. I have many complaints but I try my best to work as little as possible while getting my paycheck. Customers are usually fine but occasionally just dumb af to the point where it’s annoying(I have millions of stories) managers are very kind, only ones who were dicks left(unfortunately they probably got promoted if I remember correctly) and my coworkers are eh. Some are great to confide in and joke with, while others are rude or annoying, some are very nice but have garbage politics (libertarians who don’t understand their benefits from being in a union/don’t care enough about the differences to advocate for it). I plan on becoming a firefighter, not only for the pay, job security and union benefits, but it’s also an essential job that doesn’t exist just to create capital (no judgement to those who work in corporate environments, I’ve never done it and can’t judge it). I like my job overall but Goddamn the weather. Edit: Kinda cool to see so many people who are in tech.

Title is self-explanatory. The benefits of this would be tremendous, if correctly trained and perfected, it would be the greatest tool to democratize knowledge about Marxism.

There are already several open-source large language models on the internet out there, but I think the biggest bottlenecks is the knowledge on deploying such models and computing power to run such a thing.

Thread to discuss about this subject

well...dprk actually has cartoons, and they're pretty cool...a butterfly wants revenge against a big cock for destroying their village (of course, without sexual implications)

When I mean "more radical" I mean much greater worker ownership of society and less bourgeoisie. More social benefits such as free healthcare, free school, guaranteed employment, free housing, etc.

Basically like Mao but without the dumb mistakes.

You probably know how this basically went.

So this guy was in class and he had a shirt of Karl Marx. I said "Based!" and told him that he should get a Lenin shirt next. He said that Lenin was authoritarian, so we argued about whether Lenin was good or not and whether "authoritarianism" was required to succeed in a socialist revolution. I even told him to read "On Authority" and he still didn't agree with me.

Some gems:

1. "He (Engels) is saying that authoritarianism is required DURING the revolution, not after." I tried to explain to him that such "authoritarianism" was also required to SECURE the proletarian state after the initial violent revolution, but apparently that went over his head.

2. "You're not a leftist, you're far-right. You just use leftist rhetoric. You're just like Nazis." The classic red fash tankie line.

3. "Killing fascists is bad because killing people for their different political beliefs is always bad. You are basically doing genocide." He literally (if I recall) said that violence is required in a socialist revolution but all of a sudden if we do violence against fascists, which are harsh enemies of workers, that's bad and us letting them off the hook totally isn't going to lead to them becoming stronger. He said Lenin was bad because he "murdered political opponents." (I assume he is referring to the Red Terror.)

4. "Wouldn't all the killing done in a Leninist nation cause similar destabilization as when the USA does imperialism such as in Iraq?" I have yet to see such destabilization in socialist nations, only exceptions being in Cambodia and when the Warsaw Pact nations fell to capitalism.

5. "You aren't fighting the bourgeoisie, you are fighting the workers."

6. I defined fascism as socialists define it: an open terroristic capitalist dictatorship in response to workers' movement. Therefore, former AES nations and not even the current USA (yet) can be considered fascist. But he said "You're just playing the definition game" or something like that.

This young man is very intelligent, I've got to admit. I can only hope he shares his wisdom with the socialists of the third world, to tell them why the evil Leninist line is just far-right and that they need to embrace his enlightened version of Marxism in order to succeed.

Ya know like the people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris? The "facts and logic" people who absolutely hated religion and blamed it for everything bad?

What's a material Marxist analysis of this?

i ain't even sure if this is some kind of elaborated shitposting or not: "lovenkchildren" sounds like a weird cp page, but it's about bakeries in DPRK

shitpost or not? you be the judge...

Not gonna lie, being in good faith, the Chinese government having a 90% approval rate looks sus, at least to a Westerner. The West looks at this and shouts "That means they are brainwashed!" which I don't buy into. Yet that idea that all these anti-imperialist people are just brainwashed really, well, brainwashes a lot of people. How can this be countered?

So if you try to go to the Party of Communists USA website, you get a relatively short document by former members accusing the part of really bad stuff like reporting members to bosses and defending pedophiles.

Said members split and formed the American Council of Bolsheviks. As the Party of Communists USA is essentially dead due to these shenanigans, is the new organization worth working with? And can anybody give any perspective about this whole controversy?

https://a-z.ru/women/texts/zalkinr.htm Залкинд А. Б. Двенадцать половых заповедей революционного пролетариата

Family, Family Planning. Zalkind A. B. The Twelve Sexual Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat // Philosophy of Love. In 2 vols. 2. M., Politizdat, 1990. С. 224-255.

Zalkind A. B.

The Twelve Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat

Collectivism, organization, activism, dialectical materialism - these are the four main powerful pillars underpinning the building of proletarian ethics which is now under construction, these are the four criteria by which one can always see whether one or another action is expedient from the point of view of the interests of the revolutionary proletariat. Everything that contributes to the development of the revolutionary, collectivist feelings and actions of the workers, everything that best promotes the planned organization of the proletarian economy and the planned organization of discipline within the proletariat, everything that increases the revolutionary fighting ability of the proletariat, its flexibility, Everything that removes the mystical, religious film from the eyes and brain of the workers, that increases their scientific knowledge, their materialist acuteness of analysis of life,-all this is moral and ethical from the standpoint of the interests of the developing proletarian revolution, all this must be welcomed, cultivated by all means.

On the contrary, everything that contributes to the individualistic isolation of the workers, everything that brings disorder into the economic organization of the proletariat, everything that develops class cowardice, confusion, stupidity, everything that fosters superstition and ignorance among the workers,-all this is immoral, criminal, such behavior must be ruthlessly pursued by the proletariat.

Hence, a critique of the individual rules of bourgeois ethics now becomes available to us. We can replace any rule of behavior of exploitative ethics with a very concrete, practical consideration aimed at the protection of the class interests of the proletariat...

... "Thou shalt not create adultery" - to this commandment some of our youth have tried to contrast another formula - "sexual life is everyone's private affair," "love is free" - but this formula is wrong, too. The sanctimonious prohibitions on sexual life, insincerely imposed by the bourgeoisie, are, of course, ridiculous, because they presuppose some sinful beginning in sexual life. Our point of view, on the other hand, can only be revolutionary-class, strictly businesslike. If this or that sexuality helps to separate a person from his class, reduces the sharpness of his scientific (i.e., materialistic) curiosity, deprives him of a portion of the productive-creative capacity for labor that the class requires, and lowers his fighting qualities, then fuck him. Sexuality is permissible only in that content which promotes the growth of collectivist feelings, class organization, production-creative, militant activity, acuteness of knowledge (these are the principles on which the sexual norms given by the author in the article below are built), etc., etc.

From these examples, we see that an organized, active and materialistically-conscious collectivism is the moral touchstone on which we can unmistakably test the revolutionary sharpness and class correctness of one or another of our actions. Our entire life, our entire way of life, must be based on these principles.

...Every area of proletarian class behavior must be based on the principle of revolutionary expediency in working out its norms. Since the proletariat and the masses of workers attached to it economically constitute the overwhelming part of humanity, revolutionary expediency is thereby also the best biological expediency, the greatest biological good (as we shall see below).

Consequently, the proletariat has every reason to intervene in the chaotic unfolding of modern man's sexual life. Being now in the stage of initial socialist accumulation, in a period of pre-socialist, transitional, heroic poverty, the working class must be extremely calculating in the use of its energy, must be frugal, even stingy when it comes to saving strength in the name of increasing the fighting fund. Therefore, it will not permit itself the unbridled drain of energetic wealth that characterizes the sexual life of modern bourgeois society, with its early excitement and licentiousness of sexual manifestations, with its fragmentation, its atomization of sexual feeling, with its insatiable irritability and excited weakness, with its frantic flitting between eroticism and sensuality, with its crude intervention of sexual relations in intimate intra-class relations.

The proletariat replaces chaos with organization in the field of economics, elements of systematic expedient organization it will bring to modern sexual chaos as well.

Sexuality for the creation of healthy revolutionary class progeny, for the correct, combative use of all the energetic wealth of man, for the revolutionary and expedient organization of his pleasures, for the combative formation of intra-class relations - this is the proletariat's approach to the sexual question.

Sex as an integral part of the proletariat's other martial arsenal - this is the only possible working class perspective on the question of sex now: all the social and biological assets of the revolutionary proletariat are now its martial arsenal.

Hence: all those elements of sexuality which are harmful to the creation of a healthy revolutionary shift, which rob class energy, which fester class joys, which spoil intra-class relations, must be ruthlessly swept away from class life, swept away with all the more implacability that sexuality is a habitual, sophisticated diplomat, cunningly creeping into the smallest cracks - of assent, weakness, short-sightedness.

I. There must be no too early development of sexuality among the proletariat-the first sexual commandment of the revolutionary working class.

The communist children's movement, seizing all children's interests from an early age into its mainstream, creating the best conditions for the development of children's independence, for children's physical self-healing, for the bright flowering of inquisitive, social, adventure-heroic aspirations, confines all children's attention to itself and does not allow the parasitic spider of early sexual excitement to appear.

There is physiological training, and combat training, and bright class ideology, and early equal camaraderie between the different sexes - premature sexual development has nothing to grow on under such conditions. Therefore, the first task of the proletariat is to prevent early infantile

We shall direct parents and schools to the necessity of a correct approach to the social and biological interests of the child, we shall assist in this approach and expend all our energy as a class in the organization of the mass communist children's movement and its introduction into all corners of children's and school and family life. The sanitation of child sex life will make the now so difficult struggle against the sexual confusion of adulthood unnecessary in the future.

II. Sexual abstinence before marriage is necessary, and marriage only at full social and biological maturity (i.e., 20-25 years of age) is the second sexual commandment of the proletariat.

And what is harmful, they will tell us, in sexual activity before marriage? What is harmful is that such sexual activity is unorganized, connected with a casual sexual object, unregulated by a lasting sympathy between partners, subject to the most superficial excitements, that is, characterized by precisely those traits which, as we shall see below, must be unconditionally and ruthlessly eradicated by the proletariat in its environment. This kind of chaotically developed sexual content is never limited to the narrow sphere of purely sexual existence, but impudently invades all other areas of human creativity as well, stealing them with impunity. Is this permissible in terms of revolutionary expediency?

III. Sexual intercourse is only as the final consummation of deep, comprehensive sympathy and affection for the object of sexual love.

Purely physical sexual desire is unacceptable from a revolutionary proletarian point of view. What distinguishes man from all other animals is that all of his physiological functions are imbued with a psychic, i.e. social, content. Sexual desire for an object which is morally repugnant, dishonorable, hostile to the class is just as perverse as human sexual desire for a crocodile or an orangutan. The sex drive of a properly developing cultured man absorbs a mass of valuable elements from the life around him and becomes inseparable from them. If one is attracted to intercourse, it must mean that the object of sexual attraction is also attracted to other aspects of his being, not only the width of his shoulders or hips.

In fact, what would happen if the sexual partner were a class-ideally deeply alien person? First, of course, it would be an unorganized, extramarital affair, driven by superficial sensual sexual excitement (only people who are oriented toward a long life together enter into marriage, i.e. secondly, it would be sexual desire in its roughest form, not moderated by feelings of sympathy and tenderness, not regulated by anything social: such an attraction would stir up the basest sides of the human psyche, would give them full scope; thirdly, the child who might nevertheless appear, despite all preventive measures, would have parents deeply alien to one another and would find himself divided, split mentally from an early age; Fourthly, this connection would distract from creative work, for, built on purely sensual lust, it would depend on accidental causes, on minor fluctuations in the moods of the partners, and, satisfying without any creative effort it would greatly depreciate the very meaning of creative effort-it would rob creativity of one of its major exciters, to say nothing of the fact that the great frequency of sexual acts in such a connection, unmoderated by moral motives, would also to a large extent deplete the brain energy that should go to social, scientific, and other creativity.

Such sexual behavior is certainly out of the way with revolutionary expediency.

IV. The sexual act must be only the final link in the chain of deep and complex experiences that bind the lovers at the moment.

It is not only a "simple attraction" to the act of intercourse: it is to be preceded by a heightened feeling of all-round intimacy, deep ideological and moral fusion, a complex deep mutual impregnation, the physiological completion of which can only be the act of intercourse. The social, the class ahead of the animal, not vice versa.

The presence of this social, moral, psychological premise of the sexual act will lead to the most valuable results: first, the sexual act would become much rarer, which, on the one hand, would increase its content, the joyous saturation it gives, on the other hand, would prove to be a major saving in the general chemistry, leaving to creativity a considerable amount of unspent energy; Secondly, such sexual acts would not separate, as is usually the case with frequent sensual closeness, up to disgust for each other (Tolstoy gives a brilliant, quite realistically correct illustration of this in his "Kreutzer Sonata"), but would bring them even deeper, even stronger; Thirdly, "this kind of sexual intercourse would not oppose the creative process, but would coexist harmoniously alongside it, nourishing it and feeding it with added joy (meanwhile, the hunger sensual intercourse steals also the very creative mood, withdrawing from creativity's subjective fund almost all its emotional material, almost all its "passion", for quite a long period, emptying, depleting, "creative fantasy; this refers, as we see, not only to the chemistry of creativity, but also to its mechanics).

V. The sexual act must not be repeated often.

This is already sufficiently evident from the above points. However, the motives of the fifth "commandment" are not exhausted.

There is every scientific reason to claim that really deep love is characterized by infrequent sexual intercourse (although infrequent sexual intercourse itself does not always mean deep love: sexual indifference may be hidden under it). In deep real love, the formalized sexual desire matures as the final stage of the whole series of rich, complicated experiences of mutual intimacy preceding it, and such processes proceed, of course, for a long time, requiring for themselves a large quantity of nourishing material.

VI. Do not change the sexual object frequently. Less sexual variety.

VI. Do not change the sexual object frequently. Less sexual variety.

If the above points are fulfilled, this "commandment" will not be necessary, but it should still be substantiated.

a) the search of a new sexual, love partner is a very difficult care, which takes away from creative aspirations a large part of their emotional power; b) even when finding this new partner a whole series of experiences, efforts, new skills for comprehensive adaptation to it are required, which is just as a robbery of other creative-class forces; c) when conquering a new love object it is sometimes required an intense struggle not only with it, but also with another "conqueror" - a struggle that has quite a distinct sexual character and coloring

VII. Love must be monogamous, monoandrous (one wife, one husband).

This is clearly evident from all of the above, but, in order to avoid misunderstandings, we must nevertheless emphasize this point.

It may be pointed out to us that it is possible to observe all these rules when there are two wives or husbands. "Ideal intimacy, infrequent sexual intercourse, and other directives are also compatible with being twice-married, twice-married." "Well, imagine that one wife (husband) makes up for in me ideologically and sexually what is lacking in the other (other); one cannot find in one person the full embodiment of the love ideal." Such considerations are too transparent a stretch. The love life of the two-woman(s) is extremely complicated, captures too many areas, energy, time, special interest, requires too many special adaptations, no doubt increases the number of sexual acts, to the same extent the class creative activity loses in the corresponding area, because the sum of forces diverted toward an inordinately complicated sex life, even in the most brilliant state of the latter, will never pay off with a creative effect. Creativity under such conditions always loses rather than wins, and moreover loses not only quantitatively, but also in a gross distortion of its quality, since it will be continuously burdened by an excessive and special sexual, love" interest.

VIII. In every sexual act one must always be mindful of the possibility of conceiving a child, and generally mindful of offspring.

No prophylactic remedy, except the grossly harmful ones, guarantees fully against possible pregnancy - and abortions are extremely harmful for women - and therefore the intercourse should catch both spouses in a state of full biological and moral well-being, since the indisposition of one of the parents at the time of gestation seriously affects the child's body. The same consideration, of course, once and for all excludes the use of prostitution, since the possibility of contracting a venereal disease is the most terrible threat both to the biological heredity of the offspring and to the health of the mother.

IX. Sexual selection must be along the lines of class, revolutionary-proletarian expediency. Elements of flirtation, courtship, coquetry, and other methods of specifically sexual conquest must not be introduced into love relationships.

Sexuality is seen by the class as a social function and not as a narrowly personal one, and therefore it is social, class virtues, and not specific physiological-sex lures, which are in the vast majority either a relic of our pre-cultural condition or developed as a result of the rotten effects of exploitative living conditions, that should attract and win in love life. The sex drive itself is biologically strong enough that there is no need to excite it with additional special methods.

Since the revolutionary class, which saves all of mankind from destruction, has exclusively eugenic tasks in its sexual life, that is, the task of the revolutionary-communist recovery of mankind through progeny, obviously it is not those traits of class-less "beauty," "femininity," and grossly "muscular" and "mustached" masculinity, which have little place and are of little use under the conditions of industrialized, intellectualized, socialized humanity, that should reveal themselves as the strongest sexual stimuli.

The modern human fighter must be distinguished by a subtle and precise intellectual apparatus, a great deal of social flexibility and sensitivity, class courage and firmness, whether male or female. The powerless, fragile "femininity," which is the product of thousands of years of servitude to women and at the same time the only supplier of material for coquetry and flirtation; Just as the "mustachioed," "muscular-boned" masculinity, more necessary for a professional loader or a knight of the pre-armed period than for the dodgy and technically educated modern revolutionary,-all these traits, of course, correspond minimally to the needs of revolution and revolutionary sexual selection. The notion of beauty and health is now being radically reconsidered by the fighting class in terms of class expediency, and the class-futile so-called "beauty" and the so-called "strength" of the exploitative period of human history will inevitably be pulverized by bodily combinations of the best revolutionary device, the most productive revolutionary expediency.

It is not without reason that the ideals of beauty and power differ deeply in various social strata, and that the aesthetics of the bourgeoisie, the aesthetics of the bourgeois intelligentsia, are far from appealing to the proletariat. But the proletariat does not yet have its own aesthetics; it is in the process of its victorious class struggle, and, therefore, it would be a terrible mistake on its way to forming the methods of new class sex selection to use the old, putrefied methods of sex enticement, as far as their class validity is concerned. What will the offspring be like in class terms, created by parents whose main virtues, which were the main sexual stimulants, were: the powerless and coquettishly lively femininity of the mother and the "broad-shouldered muscularity" of the father? Revolution, of course, is not against broad shoulders, but it is not by them that it ultimately wins, and it is not on them that revolutionary sexual selection should be built at its core. The powerless fragility of women is of no use to it at all: economically and politically, that is, physiologically, the woman of the modern proletariat must approach, and is increasingly approaching, the man. It is necessary to achieve that harmonious combination of physical health and class creative values which is most expedient from the point of view of the interests of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. The embodiment of this combination will be the ideal of proletarian sexual selection.

The basic class-values should be the basic sex-bait, and only on them will the sex-union be built in the future. It is not without reason that not only the concept of beauty, but also the concept of the physiological norm, is currently the subject of such passionate scientific discussion.

X. There must be no jealousy. Sexual love life, built on mutual respect, on equality, on deep ideological closeness, on mutual trust, does not allow for lies, suspicion, jealousy.

Jealousy has several rotten characteristics about it. Jealousy, on the one hand, is the result of mistrusting the person you love, fearing that he will hide the truth; on the other hand, jealousy is the product of mistrusting yourself (a state of self-deprecation): "I am so bad that she or he does not need me, and he or she can easily cheat on me. Further, there is an element of the jealous person's own lies in jealousy: Usually those who are not trustworthy in matters of love are not trustworthy themselves; from the experience of their own lies, they assume that their partner is also prone to lie. Worst of all, in jealousy, its main content is an element of rude possessiveness: "I don't want to give her (him) up to anyone," which is completely unacceptable from a proletarian-class point of view. If my love life, like my entire life, is a class asset, if my entire sexual behavior must be based on considerations of class expediency, it is obvious that my choice of sexual object as well as the choice by others of me as a sexual object must, in the first place, be based on the class utility of this choice. If my sexual partner's departure from me is associated with an increase in his class power, if he (she) has replaced me with another object that is more valuable in the class sense, how anti-class, shameful does my jealous protest become under such conditions? The question is different: it is difficult for me to judge for myself who is better: me or the one who has replaced me. But appeal, then, to comradely, class opinion, and be firmly reconciled if the evaluation was not in your favor. If you have been replaced by the worst one(s), you are left with the right to struggle to win back the one(s) who left you, or, if you fail, to despise him or her as someone who is not class-minded. But this is not jealousy.

Jealousy is the fear of others' lies, that is, of one's own lies as well, the feeling of one's own nothingness and powerlessness, the animal-proprietor approach, that is precisely what a revolutionary proletarian fighter should not have in any case.

XI. There must be no sexual perversions. No more than 1-2% of contemporary sexual perversions are genuinely intra-biological, inborn, constitutional; the rest are in fact acquired conditioned reflexes produced by a pernicious combination of external conditions and require the most resolute class struggle against them. Every sexual perversion, weakening the central sexual content, is reflected at the same time on the quality of the offspring and on the entire development of sexual relations between partners. Sexual perversions always indicate a gross inflection of sexual life toward naked sensuality, a severe lack of social and loving stimuli in the sex drive. The sexual life of the perverted lacks those creatively regulating elements which characterize normal sexual relations: the demands of more and more diversity, the dependence on random stimuli and random moods become really enormous in the perverted; the difficulty of finding a partner fully satisfying the needs of the perverted, the fear of losing the partner already found, the difficulty of the task of the perverted adjusting him to himself (that is actually mutilating the partner for his pleasure), frequent jealousy, suspicion of the perverted, and the need to make his own choices.

The class must try with all its might to bring the perverted one back into the mainstream of normal sexual experience.

XII. Class, in the interests of revolutionary expediency, has the right to intervene in the sexual life of its members. Sexuality must be subordinated to class in everything, not interfering with it in any way, serving it in everything.

There is too much chaos in contemporary sexual life, too many ridiculous conditioned reflexes in the field of sexuality, created by exploiting sociality, for the revolutionary organizing class to accept this bourgeois inheritance without struggle. Ninety percent of contemporary sexual content has lost its biological spontaneity and is subject to the corrupting influence of a variety of factors, from under whose power it is necessary to liberate sexuality by giving it a different, healthy direction, by creating for it expedient class regulators. Sexuality ceases to be "the private affair of the individual" (as Bebel once said, but he did not live in the militant era of the proletarian revolution or in the country of the victorious proletariat) and becomes an area of social, class organization. Of course, we are still far away from a truly exhaustive class-normalization of sexuality among the proletariat, since the socio-economic preconditions for this normalization have not yet been clearly studied, and there is also a great deal of fetishism in the biological interpretation of sexuality. Attempts to rigidly normalize sexuality now, of course, would lead to tragic absurdity, to the most complex misunderstandings and conflicts, but nevertheless there are general introductory milestones for the class correction of the sexual question, for the creation of a basic sexual direction.

By sensible advice from comrades, by organizing class opinion in an appropriate direction, by giving valuable artistic images of a certain type in art, by intervening even in cases that are too crude, even by the professional court, by the narsu, etc., etc., class can now give major impulses along the lines of sexual selection, along the lines of saving sexual energy, of socializing sexuality, ennobling and eugenicizing it.

The further on, the clearer the path on this issue becomes, the more firm and clear, the more detailed the class's demands regarding the sexual behavior of its fellow-men will become. But it will not only make demands, it will build an environment conducive to the fulfillment of these demands. The measure of its demands will correspond to the possibilities of the new environment, to the degree of its maturity and strength. Being determines consciousness. The sexual must submit entirely to the regulating influence of the class. An environment corresponding to this is already taking shape.

Of course, our "12 commandments" do not at all exhaust all the norms of behavior of the revolutionary proletariat. The author only poses the question in its original form, trying to fix the first milestones. In doing so, he has tried to hold consistently to the three criteria indicated above for the class-appropriate sexual behavior of the proletariat: 1) the question of progeny; 2) the question of class energy; 3) the question of relations within class. One of the preconditions for this was, among other things, the consideration that in the transitional period of the revolution the family had not yet perished.

A healthy revolutionary progeny with the most productive use of his energy and the best possible relations with his other classmates will be realized only by the worker who begins his sexual life late, who remains a virgin before marriage, who creates sexual relations with a person close to him as a class-lover, who will skimp on sexual acts, performing them only as the final discharge of a deep and comprehensive social-love feeling, etc., etc.

This is how the author thinks of the "sexual platform" of the proletariat.

A few words about "robbed," about human joys emasculated by my norms. All joy, in its class use, must have some valuable productive purpose. The larger this joy, the fuller its productive value must be. What, then, is the productive value of the whole vast sum of man's modern "sexual joys"?

This value is purely parasitic for a good 3/4 of the time. The organs of the senses, not receiving proper impressions in the rotten modern environment, movements not receiving proper space, social instincts, inquisitive aspirations, squeezed, flattened in the chaos of our exploitative and post-exploitative modernity, give up all their remaining unused energy, all their free motor fund, their excessive activity to the only reserve factor - the sexual, which becomes the hero of the day, the willy-nilly spider. Hence the early awakening of sexuality, hence its early spreading through all branches of human existence, hence its impudent impregnation of all pores of human existence, even science. Is it really that much use for revolutionary, pre-communist culture to cultivate this spider-like existence of our sexuality? Is it not better to give the robbed their goods back to them? Is it not better to "degrade", "usurp", and "suck" the swollen sexuality with the corresponding hard influences (the class anti-pump, revolutionary sublimation) in order to squeeze out of it and suck out the values it has stolen from the body, from the class? Soviet conditions facilitate this as much as possible.

How much new, unmediated, not dampened by sexual lust, vivid, heroic, collectivist, militant class aspiration will man then receive anew! How much acute scientific research, materialistic curiosity, no longer chained to the sexual organs alone, will man then gain! Are these joys less joyful than sexual joy? Is their productive value less than the value of a carefully guarded sexual intercourse or sexual dream? Especially since, by right, this wealth, both socially and biologically, does not belong to the sex, - it was only stolen by the latter in an atmosphere of ridiculous exploitative energy turmoil.

Soviet society is most favorable to our radical reform of sexual behavior, from which we proceed in the construction of our milestones.

Whereas the bourgeois order created an enormous biological excess in the ruling classes, a great part of which was spent on sexual arousal, while on the other hand it flattened the working masses by squeezing out a great part of their unused creative activity in the direction of the sexual, Soviet society has just the opposite characteristics: it expelled the slackers with biological excess and unleashed the compressed forces of the working masses, thereby liberating them from sexual captivity as well, giving them ways to sublimate. The sublimational possibilities of the Soviet public, that is, the possibility of translating sexualized experiences into creative ways, are extremely great. All one needs to do is to become well aware of this and skillfully reorganize sexuality, regulate it, place it in its proper place. Much of this, of course, depends on the speed of the creative deepening of the Soviet public itself, that is, of our socialist economy in the first place.

But there is also the broadest scope for special activity.

Indeed, what a tremendous desexualization (detachment from the sexual) is the full political emancipation of women, the increase in their human and class consciousness. Women's emancipation and uncultivation play a very large role in the condensation of sexual experience, since for women under such conditions the sexual is almost the only sphere of spiritual interests. For the grossly sensual man, however, such a powerless woman is especially tasty prey. The liberated, conscious woman withdraws a large lump from this too "rich" sexual fund of both sexes, thereby freeing up a large portion of the creative forces bound up to that sexual purpose.

Also of tremendous desexualizing, sublimating significance is the general creative emancipation of the working masses of the USSR, whose entire compressed forces, which were also spent on excessive sexual nutrition, are now being liberated for businesslike, productive public exposure. Here we must also include the emancipation of the nationalities and other gains of the revolution in freeing the masses from the exploitative yoke. Of great importance is also the separation of the population from religion. Trying to reconcile with a sordid reality, religion destroyed martial impulses, belittled and squeezed a number of bodily and social aspirations, thus flattening most of them in the direction of the sexual content. The dying religion of the masses weakens their sexual squalor; it revives their martial qualities (although religious preachers lie to the contrary: without religion, sexual licentiousness will appear).

The distraction of our old intelligentsia also fostered a lot of sexual debauchery.

The stronger the detachment from martial reality, the more extra-real fiction it contains, i.e. more sexual fiction. Attached now to the Soviet chariot of rigidly practical construction, the most socially healthy part of the old intelligentsia is being re-educated, losing piece by piece and its extra sexual weight, not to mention the fact that it is gradually being more and more insistently replaced by a newly growing, quite materialistic, worker-peasant intelligentsia.

The communist children's movement will save children's age from early puberty (isn't it the product of our October Revolution), etc., etc.

Obviously, now is the time for an organized restructuring of sexual norms. Our public allows this readjustment to begin, demands this readjustment, greedily awaits the creative forces which will be set free from sexual captivity after this readjustment. Does a true friend of the revolution, a true citizen of the USSR have the right to object to the rehabilitation of sexuality?

But how to begin, how to conduct this "sexual reform"?

What is needed is an initiative, an example, a demonstration. The spearhead in the sexual rehabilitation of workers and all of humanity, as in everything else, must be our red youth. Raised in the heroic sublimating atmosphere of our revolution, stuffed with bright class creative joys in a way that young people have never been stuffed before, they will more easily get rid of the rotten sexual inertia of the exploitative period of human history. It is she who owes it to herself to be an energetic pioneer in this field, showing the way to the younger generation, her successor.

Amidst the variegated and heated discussion that our red youth is currently engaged in, among the most varied, partly ridiculous sexual ideals - in the style of at least Kollontay's Zhenya or in the ascetic spirit of Tolstoy - a trickle of class regulation of sexual desire, a trickle of a scientifically organized, revolutionary-appropriate, businesslike approach to the question of sex begins to break through more and more distinctly.

There is no doubt that this stream will steadily grow, absorbing into itself all the healthiest revolutionary-ideological quests of youth in the field of sex.

Here and there, individual, brave, strong groups are already trying to bind themselves to certain firm directives in the field of sexuality. Here and there, setting an example for others by their behavior, they try to draw the attention of other comrades to the sexual misbehavior going on around them. Sometimes in contact with the domestic and NUT local cells, always in close contact with the Party cell, with the Komsomol cell, they also try to find a method of practical influence on those who are too grossly violating the class equality in the area of sex. Our revolutionary, proletarian art is also searching hard in this field.

Every now and then, the professional court, the party committee, the control committee cut through public attention with the message that the boundary of sexual permissibility ends there, and young people reel this information in, using it in case of strategic necessity - to suppress too unbridled impulses around them. Thus, gradually, from below, the experience is accumulated by energetic searches, and a system of business rules is formed. The author has no doubt that the system of sexual norms, created by this mass practice, groped from below, mostly coincides with the scheme given by him above. There may, of course, be changes in detail, additions, variations, but the scheme does not pretend to exhaust the whole problem, it only tries to give direction.

Our children, the pioneers, will be the first to bring the matter of sexual health improvement to really serious results. They are the ones to begin with.

A few more words about the responsibilities of red youth in the sexual field. Much is given to them, and therefore much is demanded of them. The October Revolution was forged by a heroic Bolshevik underground cadre which pulled the masses behind it, which gave an enormous number of heavy sacrifices to the proletarian good. This is the heroic-revolutionary fund with which the proletarian revolution, which is unfolding and will continue to unfold for a long time to come, is nourished. What heroic fund has our youth contributed to the revolution? Of course, they have not yet been able to do much with their age, but, at any rate, their fighting heroic accumulations are not so great in the short term as the revolution has been a few years in a relatively peaceful period. Therefore it is not a sin if the heroic, sacrificial revolutionary fund, among other parts of this fund, also includes a rich contribution of sexual modesty, of sexual self-organization by the youth. It will improve our morals, it will help us form strong, creatively saturated class fighters, it will enable us to give birth to a healthy, new revolutionary shift, it will save a lot of precious class energy, which already unproductively flows away too much, due to our ineptitude.

In order to build, we must learn to save in an organized way.