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First Set (1) I found Prolewiki through Lemmygrad more than half a year ago, and I’ve been reading it on and off as I became more familiar with communist thought. I requested an account when I first found Prolewiki, but I wasn’t particularly well read and didn’t have any plans to contribute. I’m requesting an account now because I want to contribute to the topic I’m most familiar with, which would be the history of the colonisation of southern Africa.
(2) I’m a Marxist-Leninist, and a member of the EFF. I come from a white land-owning family in South Africa (Boer), so I was relatively conservative for most of my my life. I’ve been steadily moving left ever since adulthood with the first proper break being when I joined a local Trotskyite party earlier this year. I didn’t really understand what Trotskyism meant at the time, and I left within two months when it became clear how ideologically twisted, historically ignorant and ineffective they were. In an effort to dispel the myths the Trotskyites told me, I read up about the history of the pre-war USSR and the period of reform and opening up in China, and that cemented my orientation as a Marxist-Leninist. Since then I’ve joined the EFF, which is an ML party that recognises China as AES and a guideline for our own development.
(3) I have read your principles and I agree with them fully, don’t really have any other comments.
(4) My understanding of gender is pretty limited since I haven’t read much about it, except stuff to dispel the standard homophobic and transphobic arguments you come across. In a nutshell, gender is a social role that is not directly tied to biological sex. Personally it’s never been necessary me to interrogate why one should support non-conforming identities in general. Accepting people on the basis of love for a neighbour is enough for me.
(5) Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were both great socialist leaders. Here I also don’t have much to say since I’m not particularly well read on Soviet and Chinese history, but I’ve read enough to know most of the criticisms against Stalin are outright lies or historical distortions. Mao committed some leftist errors with the Great Leap Forward and jeopardised the Chinese Revolution as a result.
(6) They’re all socialist countries because they are governed by the dictatorship of the proletariat. China and Vietnam have a capitalist class but they’re actively oppressed by their vanguard parties of the CPC and CPV respectively.
(7) Settler colonialism is the historical act of replacing an indigenous society with a compliant settler society. In places like North America and Australia, the settler population were able to outright exterminate the indigenous population through acts of genocide. In countries like South Africa, the settler population didn’t have the means to commit genocide, with the exception of the genocide of the San, so the indigenous population were incorporated into the settler society through paternalism and a reproduction of feudal modes of production.
(8) Hamas and other formations like the PLF are continuing the armed struggle against colonialism and should be supported. The primary contradiction in Palestine is their oppression by the the Israeli settlers, and not the oppression of the working class, so the liberation movement is correctly taking an anti-colonial form.
Second Set (1) Dialectical materialism is the philosophical outlook of Marxist-Leninists, and it rests on the twin assumptions that knowledge doesn’t exist outside of material substance, and that development happens in a dialectical fashion. Materialism is best understood in contrast to it’s opposite idealism, which posits that all of reality is in some way mental, spiritual, or otherwise existing outside of the senses, whereas materialism asserts that reality exists only as matter without any external influence. Dialectical reasoning, on the other hand, is method of analysis that is based upon recognising that the nature of a thing is always changing as a result of it’s internal contradictions. When applied, one might say dialectical materialism is the study of the world as it really is, and the contradictions that drive it to change.
(2) National liberation is a necessary stage in the emancipation of any colonised people, without which they will be unable to exercise self-determination, but it does not necessarily mean the end of working class oppression. South Africa achieved national liberation with the victory of the armed struggle against apartheid, but the continuation of capitalist property relations means that wealth and power have remained concentrated in the hands of the same white monopolists who created apartheid, and the settler population in general. In South Africa ‘land back’ has taken the form of the popular demand of land expropriation without compensation, which would transfer all land into the ownership of the people through the custodianship of the state. This would in effect mean the destruction of the capitalist property relations, and the next step towards socialism.
(4) I don’t think the abolishment of the nuclear family should be an outright goal of the communist movement, but we should recognise that it will be an eventual side-effect of communism. The nuclear family came into existence to facilitate private property transfer through inheritance, and thus it will lose it’s material base for existence with the abolishment of private property.
(5) The largest communist party, the SACP, is thoroughly revisionist and supports the neoliberal ANC government along with the largest trade union federation in what’s called the “Tripartite Alliance”. In 2024 the ANC has formed a coalition government with the liberal DA and far-right FF+, and the SACP still supports them, which is baffling. The party I’m part of, the EFF, is part of a progressive caucus in parliament that is anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-colonial. Our main aim is the removal of the neoliberal alliance in government, which would allow us to pursue the expropriation of land without compensation and the massive development of our industrial capacity. As I mentioned above, South Africa is country that has been decolonised in name only, and the primary obstacle faced by our people is abject poverty which can only be solved by rapid industrialisation.
(8) I’ve read the classics: Marx & Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky (regrettably), Mao, Fanon (here he is considered a classic). Loved it all, shaped my thinking as a person. Further I’ve read Nkrumah’s ‘Neocolonialism’, Huey Newton’s autobiography, Parenti, a wealth of articles by the pre-revisionist SACP, and some others. My favourite is still Capital Vol. I, since it’s the first communist book I read, but in terms of real world contribution I don’t think you can top Imperialism. It’s cliché, but it’s crazy how relevant the chapters on finance capital are, and I think it’s still the single most important book when it comes to understanding the current geopolitical situation.
Optional questions (1) It’s rather time consuming to answer the questions, but I guess it’s necessary to prevent infiltration. It might be a good idea to add ones that will catch some of the MAGACommunist types.
(2) Yeah I’m software developer by profession, not familiar with MediaWiki in particular, but I did more or less a year of PHP development.