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this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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I wish I lived in a place where everyone had to learn Marxism-Leninism, lol. I literally get called a Stalinist several times a week by people who don't know a damn thing about communism and don't call me an ML because they literally don't know that term. Even revisionists in the federal government worse than Gorbachev was might suck less than what I have to deal with. At least if people understood the basics of Marxism-Leninism as a social sciences analysis tool, maybe I'd get called more accurate terms for "filthy commies" as my dad calls us. And maybe I wouldn't be the only ML I know. And maybe my dad wouldn't be so destroyed by the Cold War and rabidly anti communist. And maybe there'd be some possibility for the nation to build socialism, better than anywhere in the fucking West anyway.
Trust me it wasn’t that fun. It’s a lot of “writing 3000-character essays about why the party is great” lol. It’s mostly patriotism classes these days. Maybe if you’re lucky and you get a very engaging lecturer, but these people are very rare. Chances are you end up with a lecturer who’s half-assing it and you end up hating the entire thing lol.
I know numerous party members who couldn’t even provide the most basic arguments with Marx lol. I literally don’t know how they passed the exam because the party membership selection process is very stringent (you need to know the right people who can write the recommendation letters for you, and you have to take mandatory ML courses and pass the exams etc. It’s very elitist, at least for those recruited from the academia and high schools)
What I’m getting at is that China calling itself a socialist country and promoting a “Marxist-Leninist ideology”, even though very superficially, is already priming at least some of its people to think about it.
Well, at least some people are thinking about communism as a positive or neutral thing. At least you guys don't have the residue of the Red Scare making that first step like wading through molasses.
Huh. Party members who don't understand communism. I guess people in power who couldn't tell you what a ML is, whether they claim to be communists or to be able to tell you why communism is bad, are a problem everywhere.
I do wonder what ends up more effective in preventing communism in the ordinary people, Western Red Scare methods, or teaching Marxism-Leninism as a science so badly that people hate it. I take back what I said about Gorbachev, at least all he did was kill the USSR in a blaze of glory, the revisionists in Beijing might be doing a lot worse to the global communist movement.
I think you’re too harsh on the Chinese government. A lot of good has been done, and the rapid development of the Chinese economy is evident to anyone.
The real major contention here is whether this NEP/neoliberal model can continue to work in the coming era?
Read my comment here in the news mega this week for detailed discussion.
A lot of people who China’s development from the outside (which is really the outcome from the development started 10+ years ago) and think that the current model can persist forever. But those who live inside it knows that a change is long overdue. Like a kind doctor who refuses/incapable of keeping up with the times and new medical advances, and insists on his traditional methods, eventually he’s going to do more harm than good to the patients.