Ontology:Q29,21
Core characteristics[edit]
- pronounced [P] alias (en) [string]
- What is the difference between a non-Marxist theory and a theory which is anticommunist?
- QID references [Item] 1-1-1
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Usage notes[edit]
The question of whether any particular theory is anticommunist might seem like a simple one. From the perspective of mainstream Marxism-Leninism, it might seem as if diagnosing anticommunism is as simple as labeling which kinds of theories promote the widespread unity of workers, or have clearly originated from the owning class. However, the real world is not quite this simple, often fracturing into multiple contradictory pieces and shattering the dream of a widespread mass movement into multiple competing movement-populations that can only help workers in ways that create mutually-exclusive borders between them.
Liberal-republicanism is an anticommunist theory. Lacanianism is debatably an anticommunist theory, depending on who is practicing it and how it is applied. The general consensus is that Trotskyism is an anticommunist theory relative to mainstream Marxism-Leninism, although if you ask any Trotskyists about this, they will quickly tell you something to the effect that mainstream Marxism-Leninism is an anticommunist theory relative to Trotskyism. From here things only get increasingly worse: Western Marxists may try to effectively label mainstream Marxism-Leninism as an anticommunist theory while mainstream Marxist-Leninists label Western Marxism anticommunist, Trotskyists label both of them anticommunist, and anarchists label all three theories anti-anarchist. Despite the main focus of all workers' movements being the workers, having the wrong answer to which theories are anticommunist can lead to a lot of needless fighting between movement leadership which is not making movements any more effective. Thus, it is worth setting out criteria for determining which theoretical frameworks and models are most likely in and of themselves to be anticommunist. As much as this sort of logical deduction on concepts is not absolutely guaranteed to capture the fine details of which demographics and practices of real people will correspond to them, it can still serve as an early warning that turns evident problems obvious.
In order to end up with the most universally sound model of anticommunism which will equally apply to mainstream Marxism-Leninism and any honest Trotskyist party, we can begin with a simple question: is topology a threat to Marxism? If any particular non-Marxist theory of something is not anticommunist, then what is the difference between that theory and an anticommunist theory? What is the difference between Trotskyism and topology? What is the difference between Trotskyism and set theory? What is the difference between Trotskyism and surreal numbers? If you are a Trotskyist, what is the difference between Stalin's Marxism and graph theory? What is the difference between Stalin's Marxism and quantum mechanics?
Arguably, this question actually gets a bit easier from the Trotskyist vantage point. History has shown that Trotskyism is not defined by whether it ultimately gets results; whether a Trotskyist rejects a theory as being against Trotskyism is not directly connected to whether that theory does or does not promote strategies for successfully organizing workers into a workers' state. Thus, the question of whether Trotskyists can be predicted to reject a theory is something more of a sociological question, based on the inner material processes which attempt to build a history of Trotskyism. Trotskyism is approximately based in a Leninist structure. If Trotskyists are faced with a non-Marxist theory such as surreal numbers, they will have to consider whether that non-Marxist theory is specifically a threat to any material Trotskyist organizations that already exist or could exist. If surreal numbers do not do anything to threaten the possibility of Trotskyist parties forming which are not loyal to Stalin's Marxism, they will probably be tolerated. If Trotskyists are trapped in the middle of the Soviet Union and they think they can build a Trotskyist party, they will take action based on the assumption that that party will eventually exist at some time in the future, and thus they will label Stalin's Marxism as anti-Trotskyist.
What this reveals is that the question of what is anticommunist is inherently relative to the existence of separate plural groups. It is impossible to properly define anticommunism without first clearly observing that people forming into a workers' movement must form into a subpopulation, and if that subpopulation has theorists (which is not always the case historically) the theorists will likely belong to a particular ideology, or at least an ideology which is separate from others inasmuch as it is inherently affected by emerging within a separating subpopulation. This is not to say that it is historically necessary for the concept of anticommunism to be appropriated by specific movements in order to clash with other movements — in fact, nobody currently has enough information to say that is inevitable. All this inherently means is that in order to end up in a world where different Marxisms either merge together or become allies, it may be most helpful to conceptualize anticommunism in terms of things which are threatening to the existence of a hypothetical larger group containing all Marxisms. If no one can escape Marxisms being countable material objects, then the key to unity is to describe the larger material object.
From here, we can begin to fairly judge all ideologies relative to the best outcome for all Marxisms. For one example, we can analyze psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is obsessed with bettering individual lives based on the effort or knowledge of the same individuals. Despite some attempts to combine Lacanian psychoanalysis with science[1], it still comes across as saying that when individuals physiologically experience trauma and are not properly acknowledged by society it is the responsibility of small groups of people to ensure their own freedom. Psychoanalysis does not provide room for individuals and a larger workers' state or local groups and a Communist International to come together and integrate into each other. This suggests that to some degree psychoanalysis is inherently anticommunist. If Trotskyists or anarchists are experiencing trauma within a workers' state, psychoanalysts would not try to heal that relationship. Likewise, if a mainstream Marxist-Leninist workers' state existed next to a Trotskyist workers' state, and the Trotskyist workers' state started claiming its neighbor was mistreating it, there is no guarantee psychoanalysts would not apply the concept of psychohistory to naïvely assume that the mainstream Marxist-Leninist workers' state was deviating from the ideal way to be a group of humans and needed to be quarantined for its trauma rather than the Trotskyist workers' state. Psychoanalysis tends to be blind to the presence of plural ideologies and sometimes even to the presence of countable cultures in general, assuming that there is a single set of bad behavior patterns which belong to all human individuals and any report of a bad behavior must mean that a person is actually bad. However, this is a terrible assumption in the context of conflicts between ethnic subpopulations inside countries, global empire, or even any war that has ever existed. Whenever any two populations do not like each other, or sometimes even any two individuals, they tend to each hurt each other in both directions as their relationship gets worse; one report of a bad behavior can very easily represent a cornered victim, or a mutually abusive relationship in which both parties should have been reported. At the same time, populations do not experience the same kind of ability to consent or not consent to relationships that individuals do. Individuals typically end bad relationships by moving away from where they were, but as long as two populations keep existing, they are obligated to interact with each other, and if they have a bad relationship they may continue to harm each other whether there is a border between them or whether there is not. Being fundamentally rooted in the concept that societies are made of free-floating individuals with some kind of individual will, psychoanalysis is not equipped to understand a relationship situation where there is no consent. It will only be able to respond to the non-consensual nature of historical processes with disgust and confusion, rather than a real solution.[n 1]
The difference between a "topology" and a "psychoanalysis" may be complex, but should be a useful guide to figuring out whether any particular theory belongs in the red color swatch or the blue color swatch. Some "bad" theories can still be marked with the orange Trotskyism swatch or the strawberry Western Marxism swatch if they have a strong affiliation with the core concepts of Leninism, or alternatively with the charcoal anarchism swatch if they have strong consistency with any identifiable anarchist theorists.
Swatch color[edit]
This Item was assigned the red ML swatch color because the overall concept of Marxist versus non-Marxist versus anticommunist theories has to some extent appeared in the works of Marx and Lenin.[2]
Notes[edit]
- ↑ If there comes a day when psychoanalysts spontaneously turn over to the side of Marxism and start labeling Trotskyist attacks on mainstream Marxist-Leninist workers' states as morally wrong and in need of rehabilitation, then this criticism no longer stands.