“Imperialism in the 21st century” was a very eye opening read for me and I was surprised to see this from Smith in an interview, comrades please help me understand:
“Marxist-Leninist” refers to the ideology espoused by the bureaucratic rulers of the former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China and all those around the world who look to them for leadership, but in my opinion, there is no Marxism or Leninism in so-called “Marxism-Leninism”. We cannot get anywhere until we call things by their true names, so I insist on describing both the Moscow or Beijing varieties of these ideologies as Stalinist. This might upset some people or be misinterpreted as factional name-calling, but the alternative is to perpetuate an extremely harmful falsehood—one which is energetically promoted by bourgeois politicians and opinion-formers of all types, from the liberal left to the far right, all of whom are aware of how much damage they can do to the revolutionary workers’ movement by identifying socialism, communism and the liberatory ideas of Marx and Lenin with the disgusting brutality and corruption of the bureaucratic castes which once ruled the Soviet Union and which continue to rule over China (indeed, the capitalist ruling class presently in power in Russia is almost entirely composed of former “Marxist-Leninists”).
“Marxism-Leninism” served the rulers of the USSR and PRC not as a guide to action, but as a cloak of deception, a means of legitimizing their rule. They claimed allegiance to the same theories and philosophies as do I, but their doctrine of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism stands in the clearest possible contradiction with everything that Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin stood for.
https://mronline.org/2019/03/19/john-smith-on-imperialism-part-1/
[Edit] Following from this I looked to my other eye-opening author, Zak Cope (Divided World, Divided Class) and found this where he disavows his entire work and all anticapitalism, just read the abstract and note 1:
https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-031-25399-7_82-2
What the fuck is happening?
Great points! Aside from what you and comrades loathsome dongeater and thedarkernations said, I’ve also been thinking about Smiths assertion that the fall of the USSR, DDR, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and the entire Eastern Bloc was not a victory for imperialists but actually weakened imperialism, and the only reason we see the very opposite in reality around us is that we lack “revolutionary leaders of the caliber of Lenin, Che, Fidel, Grenada’s Maurice Bishop, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso and others, and political movements inspired by them, able to take advantage of the imperialists’ growing weakness and disarray.”
This hinges on the great man theory. There are in fact plenty of talented and charismatic organisers throughout the global South and beyond and when the material conditions are right there will be no shortage of people perfectly capable of taking the lead. There’s never a shortage of leaders, what’s lacking is conditions under which the overthrow of imperialism is possible. I think it’s blatantly clear the conditions for fighting imperialism are more difficult now than they were when the Eastern Bloc was strong, as it’s clear that the recent advances in Burkina Faso and elsewhere wouldn’t be possible without China and it’s allies weakening western imperialist powers.
Same to you. That’s a good catch, it does sound a lot like great man theory, now you mention it. And yeah, with Burkina Faso, it makes me think of a video I watched at one point about assassination attempts made on Ibrahim Traoré and how supposedly there was one that was spotted with the help of Russian intelligence. There was also that confirmation about Russia getting some military assistance from the DPRK in Russia’s territory, IIRC on the details. Or just Russia’s allying with China in general. So what I’m getting at it is considering there are indications of today’s Russia collaborating with anti-imperialist AES states, it wouldn’t make much sense if we were to believe the Russia under the USSR did not do so, but Putin’s Russia does. It makes more sense to believe that Russia’s prior history as an AES state and a force for anti-imperialism would make it more trustworthy to AES states now, even though it is currently not one itself. Whereas if it had been overall complicit in imperialism as this person insinuates, even when being one of the strongest socialist powers in history, it would be odd for AES states to trust it at all.