Essay:A model for a Digital Age Marxist-Leninist Society
Introduction
As with all technologies, there exist both beneficial and harmful uses for them, as well as beneficial or harmful groups who use said technology. A thermonuclear warhead - something that can be used for the ultimate defense of the revolution - as seen in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea - or something that can be used as the last resort of imperialism - as seen with the United States of America. Advance Chemistry - something that can be used to create food to feed more workers - or something that can be used to destroy food for the workers - as has the United States of America done. So many things, or in this case, technologies, can be used for good and bad, for the betterment of the revolutionary state, or for the betterment of people such as George Bush or Adolf Hitler.
We have collectively created new technologies - advance surveillance systems, highly complex computing, and abundant digitalization - and all of these technologies - put together - can be used to create a great means for societal alteration - social engineering.
Social engineering; the usage of various social programmes and governmental actions, commonly in a clandestine manner, to “engineer” something in society. Like things such as nuclear fission and fusion, that can be used in both a good and a bad way: it can be used by Fascists to install a capitalist despotism forevermore, or it could be used by the revolutionary party to help the proletariat fight fascists - reaction - and capitalist restorationism.
We have what great leaders such as Stalin or Lenin did not; the ability, via technology, to ensure that not only the people are protected from Fascists, Class Traitors, and Reactionaries via the usage of internal security forces, but also - and perhaps in a much more potent way - protect the people from the malicious forces of reaction via correcting the whole social and educational environment in which a person is born and lives their day, to the degree to which reaction we be, to the people, a thing eternity away.
As such, we must bring about the digital age on the working masses, not to cognitively negate them, such as what the modern capitalist megacorporations do to the workers, but to cognitively augment them; to set them free from reaction.
Education; a seed
The education of a worker, from the time to which they are small children to when they are concluding with adolescence, can be viewed much like that of a seed. In this seed metaphor, when the proletarian first goes into primary school, this can be viewed as the seed being first planted - planted unto the soil of enlightenment. As the very youthful proletarian male or female progresses into the education system - the metaphorical seed in the process of germination - it will nonetheless prove that external factors are needed in the education of a youngster, in the seed metaphor, think of this as the fertilizer - that is - something to aid this metaphorical seed grow.
The most important part of the intellectual development of the youth is early on, when their (likely to-be) reactionary parents and elders have yet to infect their mind with bourgeois and otherwise regressive ideas, yet also when they are still open to new ideas. It is there, where the metaphorical fertilizer must be placed on the youth. We can further think of the reactionary and bourgeois social and ideological forces that will run rampant during the newly-born days of the proletarian dictatorship, namely the petit-bourgeois parents, the clergy and theologians, and others, as being harmful to the development of the metaphorical seed, similar to a organic parasite, killing off the roots of a new plant. Therefore, we must put in particularly special labour in ensuring that our metaphorical seedling stays safe and harmonious from parasites. To quote comrade Enver Hoxha on this matter:
"Our socialist school demands of teachers and educators a new, revolutionary method and style of work; and for this to be so, the teachers themselves should be revolutionaries, should be educated in this way so that they may educate also the school children and students. The programs and textbooks built in this spirit and on new methods, will teach the teachers and educators themselves in this way. There is no doubt about this, but this will be insufficient if they confine themselves within their own castle, to their school world, and fail to feel and temper themselves as active members of the vigorous revolutionary development of our socialist society. It they fail to live and work in this way, regardless of texts and programs, they will not be shock workers, innovators and revolutionaries in the method and style of their work, they will be overcome by routine, formalism, red-tapism and the method and style of their teaching will be inert, lifeless, they will turn to that style and method of the bourgeois school which is ready at prescribing recipes and which, pretending to be “didactic” or of an “experienced pedagogy”, are anti-dialectic, non-revolutionary, reactionary and static." (Enver Hoxha, Towards Further Revolutionizing Our Schools)
In order to ensure the protection of the youth from the forces of reaction, we must separate the youths from the parents in various ways. One of these could include the abolition of the “family”, and its replacement for a system of communal creches. Under this creche system, the youths will be looked after by members of a particular community, who are of trusted revolutionary character, and who will be able to encourage the development of the youths’ feelings of curiosity, awareness, and will be further able to protect them from the reactionary “atomic family” or holy-men. Contact from the parents with children under the creche system will be permitted, of course, but it must be made clear to the parents that reaction will not be allowed.
We must further apply our digital technology to the education of the youth. Let us use technology, such as virtual reality software and hardware, to enlighten those within education via a much more -direct- means. Virtual reality technology will permit the person who is in their education to achieve a much more didactic environment.
Early on, before the student is able to understand basic philosophical information, we shall limit the virtual education to that of instilling certain values into the child, communitarianism, friendship, sharing, and such. This shall enlighten the nascent person in the values needed in the construction and protection of Socialism, and someday, Communism.
Later on, this virtual reality technology will be employed in a much more specialized capacity. We shall use this technology to create an environment for the youths to understand a great many tasks, as well as educate them about history.
History, as taught in the imperialist core, has been warped; degenerated, into nothing but an instrument for the capitalist ruling class to maintain their power and Liberal ideology. This is not unexpected however, for we are all sapient that history, or rather, the teaching of history, is itself a part of the superstructure, and is therefore deeply altered according to the base - the economic mode of production - which, in the immediate time after the proletarian revolution and the establishment of the socialist state and mode of production, will still be that of a capitalist superstructure. In other words, the archaic, rapine, and crass culture, ideas, and traditions of the old capitalist society will still remain even after the socialist revolution, and so long as bourgeois ideas, bourgeois culture, bourgeois customs, and bourgeois habits persist in our new socialist society, the threat of a capitalist restoration shall remain ever-looming.
Therefore, what is needed is a revolutionary cultural advancement, one that will rid our socialist society of the remaining bourgeois superstructure.
The first target for this ought to be history. Many people in the imperialist core have been militantly indoctrinated into reactionary, ultra-individualist, and anti-communist ideology, to the point where this regressive bourgeois ideology bears an abundant degree of similitude to that of a theological dogma, as such, we must preform, with the youth as the target, a grand and organized counter-indoctrination effort. This counter-indoctrination effort will include activities such as Marxian education, historical correcting, atheisation, and teaching about the wondrous works given to us by great leaders of their respective revolutions, such as Iospef Stalin, Luxembourg, and Enver Hoxha. We shall further educate the youth about the mistakes of past revolutions, particularly in regards to revisionism, flunkyism, deviationism, and so on. Hopefully, this should greatly reduce the possibility of capitalist restorationism or social-fascism, for the working class will have the means to understand the threats and depravities that come with capitalism, in comparison to socialism.
Safety is freedom
What is freedom? Free is the ability to perform things; to be “free” to do something. However, freedom itself has many forms; there are bourgeois freedoms, such as the freedom to exploit, the freedom to imperialize, the freedom to steal, and there exist proletarian freedoms. Furthermore, there exists both freedoms for the individual, and freedoms of the collective. To quote V. Lenin:
"The capitalists have always use the term "freedom" to mean freedom for the rich to get richer and for the workers to starve to death. And in capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to shape and fabricate so-called public opinion. In this respect, too, the defenders of "pure democracy" prove to be defenders of an utterly foul and venal system that gives the rich control over the mass media. They prove to be deceivers of the people, who, with the aid of plausible, fine-sounding, but thoroughly false phrases, divert them from the concrete historical task of liberating the press from capitalist enslavement." (V. I. Lenin, First Congress of the Communist International)
Under slavery, feudalism, and capitalism - economic systems where only a small minority of the people in a society are a part of the ruling class - the primary freedom that could be found in that society where the freedoms for the individual, the freedom of individual members of the ruling (be it the patricians, slavers, nobles, capitalists) class to be unacountable to anybody. Meanwhile, the freedoms of the collective were greatly suppressed under the rule of a minoritarian ruling class. Capitalism is the final form of social and economic development where the freedoms of the bourgeoisie and individual are the primary freedoms in a society. Under socialism, these bourgeois-individualist freedoms have no place, for they are unfree for the vast majority of the populous - the proletariat - and will therefore need to be rid of.
Under socialism, the collective will be free, humanity will no longer be negated by the bourgeois ideal of “human rights” (which are merely a term used to describe bourgeois freedom), for now we will prioritize proletarian freedoms, and freedoms for the collective.
One of these proletarian and collective freedoms include the freedom to be safe, and not have reactionary and harmful ideas and ideology put into the conscience of somebody. While the freedom to speak is something which ought to be preserved, one shall not have the freedom to instill reactionary and harmful ideas, as such, reaction does not count as the freedom to speak - and must be eliminated.
It is further freedom to have a society where the security of its people is guaranteed, from death, from hurt, and from suffering. As such, we must ensure that every proletarian is made safe, and ready for a life of contentment and productivity.
Let us use the wonders of the digital epoch to install an entire system of safety and security, our cities shall be converted into smart cities, filled with surveillance and internet networks to keep the proletariat safe, and counter-revolutionaries and their regressive ideas away. We must further create a system of social credit. This social credit system will permit the revolutionary comrades, and loyal members of the proletariat, to enjoy the benefits of a socialist (and someday, communist) society, and assist them in achieving a greater amount of productivity. This social credit system will also be able to assist the revolutionary socialist state in preventing counter-revolutionaries, class traitors, and other enemies of the people from potentially subverting the revolution and construction of socialism.
Conclusion
The socialist state must be a state for and by the people, therefore, the communist party - the vanguard of the international working class - must aid the people, from the evil of reactionary thought, from capitalist restorationism, and from bourgeois freedoms.
We have the technology to make the preservation and construction of socialism many times more easy, and if we implement the correct social engineering methods, we can cement proletarian democracy and socialism so much more. And reaction will die out within a few generations.
"Why wail over broken eggs when we are trying to make an omelette!" -Lazar Kaganovich