Comrade:BenWelkins

DISCORD: welkins392

1. I found out about Prolewiki through the Deprogram subreddit. After that I took a look to find that the site had little content about historical events and figures, especially those of the Third world.

2. I would only casually call myself a Socialist, though when it comes to thorough ideological positions, then I identify myself as a Marxist-Leninist by principle. My family had a very tulmotious revolutionary history in Vietnam and now I wish to build upon that and share my knowledge to foreign comrades.

3. Honestly I feel that I don’t have any criticisms at all regarding the principles.

4. The gender field is quite a novelty for me as I haven’t read up on those theories as I have for the other fields. That said, I know that gender rights and the broader LGBTQ+ movement should be celebrated and defended as Marxists who fight for a better world.

5. Regarding the 2 leaders of both the USSR and China, I view them as historical figures and a place to learn from past success and failures. In Vietnam, it is not widely known who Stalin or Mao was but rather what the state they represented stood for. For our country, they are known for standing shoulder to shoulder by our sides when we were fighting for our independence as well as for the building of world peace.

6. As said before, I have a close perspective as I currently am living in Vietnam. Vietnam is socialist and not socialist. Socialist in the fact that it has a vanguard communist party, a unitary government of the legislature, executive and judiciary and that socialist education is taught to everyone, etc. It is not socialist in the fact that it proclaimed itself to be a socialist-orientated economy - not yet developed enough to become socialist but not too regressive nor decadent to be considered capitalist. The current party uses more nationalistic rhetoric to garner support,etc. The terminology is in flux here and the situation could well be changed in the upcoming years as we grow our productive forces. It’s called praxis!

7. Settler colonialism is a systematic process of displacement, oppression, exploitation and dehumanization of a native, indigenous population by a foreign, occupying force that seeks to establish itself in said land of the indigenous for reasons such as to extract valuable resources, to become bulwark for capitalist imperialist states to expand their influence, markets. The most notorious case is of Israel and America. But the settler colonialism label can be extended to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico. As for my country, we have 54 ethnic groups with equal rights for them. Although inequalities still exist the problem is frequently discussed on all levels and has seen significant improvements in recent years.

8. The genocide currently being waged against the Palestinian people by the Zionist settler colonialist is an abhorent to humanity itself. Nowhere in history has the level of brutality been broadcasted and livestreamed to such a large number of people and yet 10 months in, the killings are still ongoing. The resistance groups in Gaza and the West Bank have every right to defend themselves and liberate their homeland from invasion until their homes are theirs’.

9. Regarding national liberation, the concept itself is embedded in my mind due to the terrible history of our country. Without the basic rights to our existence, we cannot healthily develop our identity as a people and a culture. If we don’t have an independent homeland, we would depend on foreign powers to dictate our every sovereign decisions. What we have now is not perfect but it is still OURS.

10. The current Communist party is not an underground force trying to overthrow colonialism anymore but a governing entity with connections to masses of people of every walk of life. The main goal of the party now is to grow the country without losing its ties to the people by not letting corruption run loose, or letting opportunists undermine the system. In this it has learned a lot.

11. Dialectical materialism is a philosophical approach to recognise and see contradictions in a materialistic and scientific way. By analyzing the components of contradictions and their relationship in a continuously changing world, we can predict and resolve said contradictions, thus changing our world (for the better).

12. The core idea of Marxism is not only the liberation of the working class but of humanity itself from class society. Thus one way other anti-capitalist movements are different is that they lack the language and theory to confront intersectional issues regarding race, national liberation, gender,… One more pressing matter is that they are spontaneous and thus can easily be co opted by capitalist forces. I’m not suggesting that Marxist movements don’t get co opted but they are more organized and have a firmer stance on a broad array of issues.

13. By far one of the most famous Marxist writers is Ho Chi Minh. I personally have read the books and articles written by him but haven’t seen them published on any online English sites. His writing in Vietnamese is concise, straight to the point and uses a lot of Vietnamese idioms and maxims that would sound clunky and even too simple if translated.