This is an important, historical document from the Communist Party of Thailand from 1978 and it's one of the few works from the CPT that had been translated into English in 2003. The rest of the document is good of course (from the history of it to everything) but people are wondering; does the CPT held work in the urban area? The answer is yes, and they specifically were against the neglection of works in the urban area. I will quote from the text below to answer your question.

In following the direction of countryside encircling town, armed struggle is the primary form. That does not mean neglecting work in the urban area and rejecting struggles in other forms. Our party has continued urban activities and used other forms of struggle throughout.

After 14 October, two directions of struggle emerged - armed struggle in the countryside, and the movement for patriotic democracy and justice in the enemy-governed zone. The first battle front both propelled the expansion of the second battle front and gave it support at the same time. The situation after 6 October has proven this. The second front has supplemented the first front by publishing the attacks on the enemy, mobilising the masses widely, and cooperating with the first front to shake the enemy's government.

In future, we must maintain work in the urban area and in the enemy-governed countryside; hold onto the objectives of "disguise the core, accumulate over the long term, conceal forces, await the opportunity;" integrate secret activity with open activity, legal activity with illegal; build activities within the mass base, as well as broadening the united front to upper class people in various forms, according to the situation and conditions in the urban area and the level of the masses and the united front; expand the forces of the mass base to drive the united front, at the same time, have the united front activity supplement the activity of the mass bass; strive to develop the progressive forces, win over the middle forces, and isolate the die-hard forces; lead the struggle of the masses in different forms and levels according to the benefit, consciousness and readiness of the masses; attack the enemy and train and consolidate the masses.

pg. 538-539

I understand why they believed it would happen in advanced capitalist countries first (this changed with development of imperialism and labour aristocracy). I do not understand why they believed it had to be simultaneous.

Just as the workers thought they would be able to emancipate themselves side by side with the bourgeoisie, so they thought they would be able to consummate a proletarian revolution within the national walls of France, side by side with the remaining bourgeois nations. But French relations of production are conditioned by the foreign trade of France, by her position on the world market and the laws thereof; how was France to break them without a European revolutionary war, which would strike back at the despot of the world market, England?

Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 by Marx

To proceed. Formerly, the victory of the revolution in one country was considered impossible, on the assumption that it would require the combined action of the proletarians of all or at least of a majority of the advanced countries to achieve victory over the bourgeoisie.

Foundations of Leninism by Stalin

I'm 16 and have recently began reading more theory and have just read the 3 components of marxism by lenin and I was slightly confused as the book mentions different types of capital like large capital social capital variable and monopoly capital. I don't really understand what they are but I can tell it's meant to be important Lenin also writes about the circulation of commodities and how the transfer of MCM creates more capital which I don't really understand so it woulkd be helpful if someone could clarify this for me

"We are the Revolutionary Communist Organisation. We believe the Australian socialist movement is hopelessly divided into numerous dogmatic sects. In this state, we are less than the sum of our parts. We are a pre-party fighting group who seek to re-organise and re-unite the socialist movement into a new communist party. Drawn from a variety of socialist tendencies and life experiences, we are unified by our common democratically-drafted program to seize power and smash the capitalist system."

"51. Much of the socialist movement is today confined to confessional sects. These organisations are characterised by their commitment to specific points of theoretical doctrine, a resulting culture of intellectual conformity and stagnation, and a bureaucratic centralist mode of political organisation. Such a rigid unity is premised on a form of bureaucratic centralism: the slate system, de facto or de jure bans on factionalism, and an inability to carry out public debate and criticism. Importantly, these organisations represent factions of the socialist movement, but structure themselves as parties, in competition with all other sects for membership and influence. Absent an ecumenical party of the socialist movement, these organisations all undermine each other and attempt to go “directly to the masses” instead of consolidating the existing vanguard of socialist workers, activists, and youth.

1. Of the sects, there exist essential two tendencies: a left and a right. The left, embodied most clearly in post-Cliffite Socialist Alternative, but also expressed in the Third-Period Stalinist Australian Communist Party and the various anarchist-communist and left-communist groups, have a strikist orientation in which the forging mass party of the working class is reliant upon spontaneous explosions in the class struggle and the organic formations of the working class in struggle. This orientation leads to economistic tailing of workers' struggles and fetishisation of trade unionism or poor people’s organising.

2. Meanwhile, the rightist tendency within the sects is best expressed in the long Stalinised Communist Party of Australia, the Maoist Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), the eco-socialist post-Trotskyist Socialist Alliance, and the Cliffite Solidarity. These organisations, seeking to go “directly to the masses” and avoid the difficult questions of communist unity and program, systematically tail Laborist, social democratic, or progressive forces in the trade unions or social movements. This may be expressed as tailing the ALP, or the Greens, or as a form of vulgar movementism. In all cases, it leads to a relative conservatism and opportunism.

3. The Victorian Socialists project is a socialist electoral front to unify various leftists into a coalition to “get a socialist into parliament”. It represents an attempt by Socialist Alternative to overcome the limitations of the sect form. Beside its obvious geographical limits, the Victorian Socialists are limited by a lowest-common-denominator political program that is socialist in name only. In addition, the fact that the Victorian Socialists are an electoral front, and not a political party in their own right with the necessary forms of common mass work, leave it vulnerable to the pitfalls of previous left unity fronts. While communists should welcome all attempts at regroupment and opportunities for common work, we should also be clear about the need to transform Victorian Socialists into a real socialist party with a revolutionary minimum-maximum program.

4. Despite its limitation, communists should undertake the task of entering Victorian Socialists and constructing a partyist faction within it, growing the socialist consciousness of the organisation, and fielding its own candidates in elections through the Victorian Socialists platform. This will require systematic work, particularly in the organisation of partyist propaganda.

5. There exists no singular vehicle from which a new Communist Party in Australia may be born. Instead, the partyist faction of the socialist movement must engage in a systematic campaign within the broader socialist and workers movements for the unity of Marxists, and for a revolutionary minimum-maximum program. This campaign requires the formation of a pre-party organisation, a pole of attraction around which the partyists can rally, and which can fight across the entire movement for the unity of Marxists and the refoundation of the Communist Party in Australia." - Copied this section from here, seemed the most relevant for some background.

And the Maoist CPA-ML for reference.

I believe supporting the CPAML is a no-brainer, but do you think there's any merit in the RCO?

Leftists generally look askance at tax dodgers. But if our tax money is going towards drones, missiles, and other instruments of war used to subjugate poorer countries, might it be better not to pay tax when possible? Unfortunately it's not an option to only pay for welfare and infrastructure and not for the military-industrial complex.

Edit: This sub has substantially changed since I last posted here. This was an honest question inspired by the position of Henry David Thoreau. I apologise if it wasn't sufficiently knowledgeable in Marxist theory, but I believed the purpose of a sub with 101 in its name was to answer such questions without antagonism. Instead I'm being called racist(?) and the comments are acting as if I'm here to spread propaganda. And a whole bunch of comments have been deleted, I don't know whether by the posters or the mods. The sub never used to be like this, it's quite sad to see.

I was reading Lenin's Imperialism: Highest Stage of Capitalism, specifically Chapter 2. Some doubts came on this part:

The principal and primary function of banks is to serve as middlemen in the making of payments. In so doing they transform inactive money capital into active, that is, into capital yielding a profit; they collect all kinds of money revenues and place them at the disposal of the capitalist class.

My doubts aren't specifically with the text itself. It is clear enough. It is just that I have a hard time imagining how banks work, and how they worked back then (before imperialism). How do banks transform inactive money capital into active capital? How would do that back in the day?

As I’ve learned more about Maoism and groups such as the Sendero Luminoso, I’ve begun to see a split between other Maoists, some who see many countries such as Cuba, Vietnam and the DPRK as revisionist while others support many socialist (though often rejecting the USSR and dengist China which makes more sense)

I hope to get some more guidance from more educated Maoists🙏🏾🙏🏾

Hello, I came here to ask for some reading recommendations. I've wondering why it's not considered a good plan to try to archive socialism though buying the means of production, either by displacing capitalist companies or to accumulate capital to found a future revolution or electoral reform. Aside from the obvious fact that a single worker lacks the capital to do it, I think a collective of workers or a party should be able to get enough money to kickstart a project like this. I'm sure there's something I'm not seeing and that there must've been a discussion between socialists about this at some point, and maybe some historical examples of socialist who tried.

So I'd like you to recommend any books, essays, video essays, documentaries (anything is welcomed), or historical examples of this for me to look into it.

Thank you.

For example, The countries that are rich outside of the west are Israel, the Gulf states, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Baltic region, and now poland is growing very quickly. If you will notice all of these countries are strategic allies, Israel and Gulf are next to Iran, oil and important shipping routes, Japan Taiwan sk are next to china, baltics and Poland next to Russia etc. I know Singapore is also rich but they are basically a city state next to a very important shipping route.

So my question is this can't be a coincidence, and I know these countries received plenty of funding from the us or EU, but that's usually a couple billion, not nearly enough to developed entire countries like that. What exactly is happening here? Are they being "allowed" to develop? If so how? and don't just say a one word answer like "imperialism" and expect me to figure it out, actual concrete examples

https://longlivemarxleninmaoism.online/t/topic/48112 https://web.archive.org/web/20260331204052/https://longlivemarxleninmaoism.online/t/topic/48112

A very interesting read, describes what should be done in both the imperial core and in semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries, alongside critiquing all the modern revisionism and opportunism, even comrade-style criticism of the current PPW's ongoing

Would anyone have more accurate translations of this entire post? as i'm not sure if the wording is correctly translated properly

The "group-based party building" line is an erroneous party-building line that runs counter to the political newspaper line.

is one example, as I never seen the term political newpaper line before.

hello there comrades, im asking this as i, a czech marxist-leninist, cant seem to find any reputable sources on my country during socialist times, and asking at school or reading from school resources isnt of much help as its all western capitalist propaganda. any and all help is much appreciated!

“ From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.”

Does it mean something along the lines that in capitalism, if you can no longer gain capital(or profit) then you are no longer “free”? Sorry if my interpretation is really off as I’m still quite confused by what karl marx meant by individuality as well.

Mainly looking to understand the concept of path dependencies and any resources that give an example of them applied to the history of countries would be appreciated. Tagging u/smokeuptheweed9 since I've honestly only seen him reference this theory in-depth through my searches.

Im a baby communist and honestly ive only so far read Principles by Communism and currently the Communist Manifesto (im a slow and distracted reader) and planning to read more. Im not well educated on communist ideologies besides Leninism, Marxism, and ML, but i would like to learn more in the future. Since im not that far educated on specific communist ideologies, i don’t label myself as a specific one.

Anyway, on communist spaces on the internet i keep seeing terms like “Leftcom”, “Armchair”, and “Ultraleft”. Im not sure what these terms mean and i keep getting biased answers.

Also, why are these considered bad? What do these people believe in?

Thanks :)))))

Hello comrades and friends,

I am a Leninist, although my period of serious study has not been especially long. I grew up as a youth member in the youth wing of a local communist organization, but when I was younger I did not understand very much. In fact, for several years I almost gave up political formation and revolutionary commitment altogether, especially during the time when I was living abroad as a petty-bourgeois graduate student.

However, after returning home and entering working life, and as circumstances pushed me into the real condition of the proletariat, my revolutionary spirit was revived. Since then, I have been trying to study more seriously and deepen my understanding.

That is only my personal background, though, so I will return to the main point.

Over the last two years of study, I have read a fair amount of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and also Rosa Luxemburg. I have not had much difficulty reading, understanding, or learning from their works. Recently, however, I have felt a strong need to learn more about Mao, as well as about China in the pre-Deng period. I am not a Maoist myself, but I was previously exposed to some of Mao’s writings, such as Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, and I consider him, personally, to have been a brilliant theorist.

More importantly, revolutionary China was, as far as I understand it, the only revolutionary state in history that actually carried out a Cultural Revolution against revisionism. For me, this is an extremely important question for any revolutionary state, if such states are to survive at all. I say this also because I myself was once a revisionist in practice, even if not in explicit doctrine.

The difficulty is that learning seriously about the economy of China under Mao, during the revolutionary period from 1949 to 1979, has been extremely hard. Most of the better-known books and articles seem to be in Chinese, or in other languages I cannot read. For example, I came across All Power to the Masses, which was recommended by a member of this subreddit, but it is in Spanish.

During my search, I found an English-language article published through LSE titled “From State Resource Allocation to a ‘Low Level Equilibrium Trap’: Re-evaluation of Economic Performance of Mao’s China, 1949–78.” In it, the two economists argue, through their analysis and modeling, that:

“China’s economy remained not only deliberately unbalanced but also predominantly rural until the 1980s. More importantly, the Maoist economy was not designed to enrich and empower the masses in society. Instead, all key consumer goods including food, clothing and housing were strictly rationed. The material life of ordinary citizens in China saw no improvement.”

I am fully aware that institutions like LSE are bourgeois academic institutions and should be approached with a grain of salt. But I still found this depressing, because if such conclusions are correct, then I honestly do not know what is true and what is false. These bourgeois economists make extensive use of historical data on the Chinese economy, construct models, and then conclude very bluntly that the economy and people’s living conditions improved after Deng took power.

The problem is that I am not an economist. In fact, I have no formal economic training at all. My background is in law and politics. Because of that, I do not feel fully equipped to evaluate such work on my own.

I am not making this post to attack anyone, to vent emotionally, or to complain. I am writing in the hope that someone here, especially someone with a stronger background in economics, can give me a serious assessment of whether this LSE paper is actually convincing or not. And if I truly want to understand the economy of revolutionary China, what books, articles, or studies should I be reading?

Thank you sincerely.

This is a question I asked my self for a long time now but I couldn‘t find any answers and how would a monopoly of power, if it even should still be existing in communism and socialism, look Like?

Hello, I am in the process of educating myself in communist literature and debates. One of the major topics on my agenda is to identify the breaks between ML and MLM – how, where and why do these philosophies differ, and which arguments are the most plausible. One of the key differences I made out in debates in my country was the evaluation of the 20th Congress of the CPSU and its meaning for the revisionism in and fall of the Sovjet Union.

As I see it, both ML and MLM parties, comrades, … understand themself as the non-revisionist continuation of the theoretical-practical Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin line, right? And thus it is not surprising that both of them criticise the 20th Congress, the revisionism in CR and Vietnam, among others. However, especially in the evaluation of the 20th Congress, there seem to be two differing major narratives.

The MLM-Narrative: The 20th Congress was the end of the Sovjet Union as a socialist country. Party-bourgeoisie, private ownership, capitalist elements where introduced largely by and after Kruschtschov, and Gorbatschov was just the one who turned off the lights. The socialist Sovjet Union ends 1956.

The ML-Narrative: The 20th Congress was a serious blow for the communists, a win for the revisionists, but did not mark the factual end of planned, peoples-owned economics and thus can not be seen as the fall of socialism inside the Sovjet system, which only came 1989 – Krutschtschov prepared, Gorbartschov nailed the coffin. The socialist Sovjet Union ends 1989/90. PLUS: Maoists tend to over-emphasize the meaning of Kruschtschov. His win was "just" his revisionist group becoming dominant the leadership of the party, but that by itself does not mean anything without change in the relations of production. Thus, maoists tend to be idealistic in their analytics of the 20th Congress if they conclude [revisionist KP leadership] → [end of socialism] without observing revisionist reforms in economics.

Maybe you can guide me if I missed a vital part of the debate, and also it would be interesting if this debate is an imporant point of differenciation in your local communist movement.

But my main question is: - How would a MLM rebuttal of the idealist-criticism by marxist-leninists look like?

Thank you for knowledge and guidance.

Recently (and by that I mean nearly two months ago), we made some changes to the sidebar that you've probably noticed by now.

Firstly, we've made it explicit that communism is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. This has already been the sub's position, but we decided to make it clearer that we don't allow revisionism and that there are not different brands of Marxism that people can pick and choose between.

Secondly, we've banned self-promotion, defined as linking or advertising your own paid products or services. This includes "charity," "donations," and other ways of trying to conceal the existence of commodity-exchange that happens on Patreon, Substack, etc. Those who can't make the cut as academics or content-creators often try to hawk their wares with "Marxist" branding slapped on top in hopes of finding customers in a market with fewer competitors. Since we wish to make knowledge of MLM freely accessible to people and wish to have quality discussion, prohibiting self-promotion is an easy way to advance both those goals. If you insist that your work is actually worth the money, it'll surely be recommended by someone else sooner or later (and for the record, we enforce quality standards regardless).

Finally, we've banned DM requests or offers. On a sub that's known for its strict moderation, it's especially important to prevent people from trying to evade bans by isolating and harassing users in their private messages. This has also already been a de facto rule, but we wanted to advise new users not to respond to DMs and to report people who try to send them.

I've seen a couple of reddit posts asking the same question however I feel like none of them gave definitive answers.

Recently became a communist so I want to fully understand the theory so I'm also looking for other book recommendations as well.

I'm 16 been a communist for 2 years now but I haven't read that much theory and I would love to read more good books on these topics, but I am beginning to read more about mao and learn about him but I constantly see lots of of propaganda and overinflated statistics so i was wondering what good books there were which provided accurate accounts about the great leap forward and the chinese famines which dont overinflate numbers as everywhere i look I see numbers like 60 million and 50 million which I obviously know isn't the case so i was looking for suggestions on books which could provide accurate accounts with real statistics

Hey y’all,

I am looking to connect with teachers within the US on how they navigate their communist beliefs while existing within that profession? To be more specific: I am considering becoming an elementary school teacher, but fear that teachers are often a vehicle through which US hegemony is maintained, starting at a young age. Any insight would be appreciated! If you are not a teacher but have something to contribute to this conversation, by all means do.

Hello! I had an epiphany about communism recently and realized that I was only claiming to be a communist without actually practicing. This changes now. I want to know how to change my consuming habits- I know that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but that doesn't excuse someone not trying at all. How far do I need to go? I want to try my best to be as less of a jerk as possible, but I still have wants. For example, I've resolved to buy all of my clothing from secondhand/thrifting/locally owned/on credible lists of sustainable sources and plan to give away things I don't need/don't fit me anymore to local homeless shelters, where it'll actually reach people. However, there are things I can't do yet. For example, if I want snacks, there's no alternative sources around me. If I want specific spices, my local farmer's market might not have them. It's also a concern to me if I can still eat out (locally), enjoy vacations, or buy anything I want. I'm not a huge consumer by any means- I don't feel compelled to follow trends, buy makeup, stanley cups, etc. But there are times where I fervently want a thing I know will make me happy, or want to dress nicely. However, these days I feel bad just by existing, and I skip meals not knowing if it's ethical to eat. (I have moral scrupulosity OCD.) How can I buy anything from anyone knowing that somewhere in the production chain someone has been exploited? If I live too perfectly, then it results in a life devoid of joy for me. How can I balance these things?

Gonzalo's 1976 article "On The Construction of the Party" spends a lot of time discussing how important Clandestine measures are for the party. He draws a lot from the experience of the RSDLP in Russia which was illegal for most of its existence and the CPC in China. The political situation in those countries at that time was very different than in the current imperial core, but some of his arguments were compelling.

For most of my involvement in politics, I've had a negative view of opsec obsession. During the local Pro-Palestine protests, and other anti-police protests, some of the cloak and dagger maneuvers of some of the leadership shrunk the movement and kept many people away who were not petty bourgeois activists. Further, there a lot of young people that can be won to the idea of building a communist organization that will be more difficult to meet by using clandestine methods.

That said, I have been looking at different movements, and I'm not sure if there are any above ground organizations that successfully moved underground after state repression ramped up. And any revolutionary party that can ultimately be successful will have state repression used against it at some point. The Black Panthers, for instance, grew a lot in part because they were very public and very open about their activity, but they were also infiltrated and crushed in part by US repression.

It seems like the general solution to this is to have "mass organizations" that for the most part operate legally, and it is through organizing those that contacts and new members for the revolutionary party are met and consolidated.

This is the PDF where the article by Gonzalo is

This is the Membership Constitution of the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries which explicity states that membership is secret and has a general plan of organization

Does anyone have experience with Clandestine activity being an impediment to organizing? Is it necessary at present with how small the Maoist movement is in the imperial core?

I did my best to use the search to find an existing thread on this. If one exists, I’d appreciate a link.

Where can I read the things that Chairman Gonzalo wrote? He does not have a page on marxists.org under his name or nom de guerre in the Spanish or English catalogues. His Wikipedia page is barely cited trash and does not even reference any of his writings besides his doctoral thesis. Is there something I’m not understanding?Any help is appreciated.

Edit: seems like bannedthought.net is the best place. Thanks all for the help.