This is a continuation of a discussion I had with Mambabasa, but thought it would be interesting to discuss the topic here so that others can add their own thoughts.
As the title suggests, I'm curious to learn what aspects that proponents of communism find compelling, specifically, what would an Anarchist find useful or insightful from the various forms of Communism?
Lately, I've been watching and reading into the history of Marxist based communist attempts. After discovering What Is Politics? videos on the subject, such as his video on the history of communist revolutions, and the second part going into why the Russian Revolution failed to produce socialism (Btw, I began watching his vids thanks to your post in BreadTube, Mambabasa. So thank you for sharing! ^^)
What is Politics' reading of history seems to be inline with what I've learned in the past; I.E, that the bureaucracy and centralized nature of the various Marxist ideologies tend toward less than ideal results. This is what generally put me off delving deeply into Marxist derived theory.
However, I try to have an open mind. When Mambabasa mentioned that, had they experienced a different set of circumstances, these other forms of socialism may have been the logical choice, my curiosity was piqued.
So if you have any insight into some aspect or incident of Communism that you believe Anarchists should take note of, I'd very much like to hear it. :)
I was not expecting such thorough and wide-ranging response. I appreciate you taking the time to write all of that out and sharing your knowledge.
These past two days I've been slowly tackling the references you've given, and so far I'm about half-way through, trying to wrap my head around all of it with a surface investigation.
So far, the common thread I seem to be getting is that the more positive forms of communism, like Left Communism and Libertarian Marxism, are, as you say, a more true vision of what Marx seemed to espouse in his later years, which tends more towards Anarchism in its outcomes. So far, my opinion of Marx himself has certainly changed to a more positive perception.
I did read and listen to a couple critics of those forms of communism, and their critique was that, while better, Anarchist theory takes into account power dynamics/hierarchies in areas that Marx either didn't talk about or occur to him. Though part of that may have been his ego stopping him from trying to repair the rift he'd created with Anarchists in his younger days? Hard to say.
So far I've only briefly looked into what you wrote on Mao, but so far it seems like his main contribution was ignoring Marx's older stuff and Lenin's stance that the peasants aren't useful in a revolution, and then allied with capitalists until they were no longer useful for their rapid industrialization, and then, as you say, ultimately couldn't bear to lose his grip as Chinese society began to become egalitarian, and swiftly nipped it in the bud.
I will continue researching, though so far I haven't stumbled across anything that jumped out at me as something that would be useful for Anarchists to adopt, specifically. Only warnings of what to avoid.
I still have yet to look into Western marxism, post-trotskyism, and a few others. Posadism is absolutely bonkers from what I saw on the wikipedia page, lol.
You mention having more of a positive interest in Maoism. Is there anything from it that you would point to and say "This is something Anarchists should do, this is useful."? The aspect I'm most interested in is the idea that there may be some action or practice that Anarchists may be overlooking that may bring us toward our end goal, without it introducing a corrupting element that sent them down the dark roads they did.
But thank you again for taking the time to engage with me! ^^
Well, the thing about Mao allying with the national bourgeoisie is that it's historically-specific to the material conditions of interwar and WW2 China. China was literally fighting against literal genocide and extermination. Like Rojava, sometimes we do have to bite the bullet to fight against our own extermination. What becomes problematic about Maoism's consistent insistence in working with the national bourgeoisie today (as in Nepal and the Philippines) is that they're not fighting against extermination, only merely despotism and Western imperialism. Even if we accept the thesis that the national bourgeoisie exist (which I have reservations against as I think the bourgeoisie has fully internationalized), the national bourgeoisie have no real material interests in fighting despotism as long as their business interests continue. Besides, imperialism today is nothing like what the Chinese national bourgeoisie experienced in China where their property and persons were plundered and executed. Rather, the national bourgeoisie no longer exist as "national" due to the truly international nature of their class and imperialism to them is merely cosmopolitanism.
I think what's useful about Maoism isn't their sketchy stuff about sketchy alliances, but rather how they are able to mobilize large sections of society for self-activity as best exemplified in the Cultural Revolution. People autonomously acted on their own initiative to expand their own degrees of freedom. With Maoism outside China, this happened as well with the Black Panther Party during their decentralized period before they imploded due to authoritarianism. We saw similar in Nepal and the Philippines. Sure, the Communist Party eventually co-opt these autonomous movements (called fellow travelers) into their apparatus, but that they existed autonomously and independently is something. That's quite valuable for any anarchist project.