10/22/2026
"The Infancy of 21st Century Marxism"
—by Jesser Valentine (August 1st, 2026)
"[A] critique of the 21st century “Marxist-Leninist” (or perhaps more properly, Dengist) ideological program in an effort to outline the course of action of the 21st century’s movement toward communism. The 21st century working class demands an approach capable of liberating itself, and this comes with the understanding that the revolutions of the past century have failed. This much should be obvious. But contained within their failure is the basis for the construction of a new revolutionary movement, and it will soon become abundantly clear that the crude nationalism that the so-called “Marxist-Leninist” proposes is simply not capable of properly doing so. But before we are able to clarify exactly why, we must murder some of the first, most moralistic protests of the MLs in their cradles. First, that the political programs of state capitalist development employed by various party-states have “lifted billions out of poverty,” rendering the ML approach above criticism.
Precisely no one worth listening to is arguing that managed state capitalism has done nothing to make certain people’s lives better. It must first be clarified that it is possible for us to truly and genuinely acknowledge that certain policies, including market liberalization and pragmatic class collaborationism can in fact improve the material conditions of a suffering population and constitute a positive impact on certain segments of a particular nation’s working class. However, we must do so with the clear-headed recognition that these efforts have done exactly nothing to achieve the ultimate aim of the communist movement: to erase the social relation of capital in all of its forms, to liquidate class entirely, and to bring about an absolute and global abolition of the present state of things.
To confuse every instance of political decision making by a government that proclaims itself to be socialist, even in the cases where it objectively raises living standards for those who it governs, with an advancement toward communism is utterly ridiculous. Such a position could only come from an interpretation of Marxism so thoroughly revised that it has entirely ceased to be Marxist altogether.
"Why ..., when a pragmatic material analysis of the “Marxist-Leninist” approach leads directly to the conclusion that the revolutions of the 20th century failed, that no socialism actually presently exists, and that this approach to building revolution has gotten the global working class precisely no closer to establishing it, is this analysis taken as some sort of moral affront against the people whose struggle for liberation was unfortunately unsuccessful? Is it not, if anything, a betrayal of the efforts of our predecessors to defend the counterrevolutionary husks that took the places of the movements that they had struggled to establish?
"Scientific socialism is not an idealistic set of moral principles. It does not simply emerge through state ownership, or somehow emanate from any event that improves the lives of workers. Scientific socialism is the methodological approach to constructing a particular movement that brings about a particular transformation of social relations. When the transformation of those relations ceases to exist, so does anything that could be described as socialist.
"Another argument levied against supposed “left-communists” (a term which is so vague that it now basically means “anyone who criticizes any ML about anything ever”) is that they are more concerned with “purity” than actively working to build a movement. But this rigorous struggle for the proper course of action is exactly the process of building a movement in the first place! In the process of building a communist movement, is it not necessary to ensure that this movement is actually toward communism? Is that not quite literally the bare minimum? This constant whining about “moral condemnation” and “obsession with purity” is nothing more than a flimsy attack against scientific material analysis that is inconvenient to the programs of the bourgeois states that these so-called “Marxists” are content to worship. We do not seek any sort of “moral purity.” That would be absurd. We simply seek a political approach capable of building socialism.
"These moralistic lines of argument align perfectly with the dominant ML rhetorical strategy of completely forgoing any sort of actual defense of their arguments whatsoever. Instead, they attempt to distort and obfuscate any made against them, and blindly assert that no Marxist should be allowed to criticize either their conception of revolutionary praxis, or any state that serves as an example of “actually existing socialism,” insisting that since they are “resisting imperialism,” or “actually doing something,” (what an accomplishment!) any criticism of their “anti-capitalist capital” whatsoever is basically tantamount to joining the IDF. So much for Marx’s “ruthless criticism of all that exists!”
"The entire “Marxist Leninist” movement as it has materialized in the 21st century has shifted so far rightward to accommodate for and cope with the failures of past revolutions that it has ceased to be any sort of communist movement altogether. The entire ideology revolves wholeheartedly around clutching corpses that have already rotted, and insisting not only that they are alive and well, but that the maggots of capital that have begun wriggling inside them represent the only form of socialism that is compatible with the 21st century.
"To the contemporary ML, accumulation of capital and movement toward socialism are actually one and the same, as long as that accumulation is conducted under a “socialist government” that is “making capitalism work for the people.” Of course this means that class struggle has completely been thrown to the wayside as well, turned into an abstract slogan and replaced by the delusion that a ruling party will somehow impose a global transformation of the mode of production without any actual self-organization of the proletariat to bring about its abolition. The very concept of a “socialist” government of a bourgeois state, presiding over wage labor, protecting private property, and working toward the preservation of domestic capital (all to build socialism, we promise!) would have made Marx roll his eyes with so much ferocity that it k!lled him instantly.
"Is there any presently existing state that has abolished class, capital, the extraction of surplus value, wage labor, the commodity form, the money form, and the circuits of exchange that facilitate them? The answer is plainly no! To pretend like the existence of the commodity form - literally the “germ of capitalism” in Marx’s own words, that constitutes the foundations the present mode of production is even possible under socialism is to have abandoned any coherent materialist understanding of capitalism altogether.
"[P]recisely no[. . .] capitalist social relations are addressed whatsoever by the ownership of this capital or of the management of production by the state. Engels believed that the model of state owned industry actually made the state even more directly coercive, and both he and Marx were incredibly and consistently precise in their delineation that state ownership alone constituted precisely no movement toward socialism . . .
"By what possible metric could the capitalist mode of production be considered to be abolished in any of these nations? Are we not participating in the total degradation of the meaning of scientific socialism by baselessly equating the blatant enforcement and reinforcement of the social relations of class and capital, the production of commodities - and in short, the capitalist mode of production itself - with it? What utility in describing the social relations of the 21st century is to be gotten from calling any state or the other socialist? Absolutely none, unless one’s goal is to completely derail the emerging working class movement.
"Any bureaucratic governing structure whatsoever that includes members of the bourgeois class themselves or their representatives immediately undermines the working class dictatorship, and thus the ability for the working class to implement the proper programs necessary to eliminate the bourgeoisie and lay the groundwork for the subsequent liquidation of the capitalist relation. . . Engels further clarifies the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat to involve, of course, the direct rule of the revolutionary proletariat itself - not merely some representatives of it . . .
"[T]he ML’s call of simply endorsing and adopting a present “actually existing socialist state’s” method of political rule is ridiculous. There is simply no existing structure of working class dictatorship whose structure is capable of bringing about socialism. What would qualify? Where are the organs of management controlled exclusively by proletarian workers’ councils with the immediate ability to recall representatives? Where on earth are union councils responsible for the self-management of production? Certainly not in any of our “actually existing socialist” countries, whose unions are all subordinated to the state, which collaborates closely with the national bourgeoisie and allows them into its ranks. What possible definition would qualify a particular current state apparatus as a proletarian dictatorship that would not also immediately apply to any liberal democracy? The answer is not a single one.
"This is not simply an indictment of these supposedly “actually existing socialist” regimes - this is the exact structure that the ML intends to direct the emerging socialist movement toward establishing! A party-state that allows the bourgeoisie and their dogs into the highest levels of bureaucracy, rendering it completely incapable of acting as an organ of proletarian power? A bureaucratic clique standing above the proletariat deluded by dreams of class harmony? Directly substituting a disconnected bureaucratic regime for the self-organization of the working class? Is this seriously our shining model for establishing communism? Any proletarian dictatorships established over the 20th century have been thoroughly crushed by the exact counterrevolutions that the MLs of the 21st are happy to defend.
"The ML now lashes out: “Okay fine! It would still represent a bourgeois state, not a dictatorship of the proletariat. But the ruling party is socialist, which means that the programs of state capitalism are still directed toward building socialism, even if they are not currently socialist or operating under a dictatorship of the proletariat. The party is using capitalism as a tool to develop the productive forces so that communism can eventually emerge. Capital subordinated to the people through the state is socialism! It’s fundamentally different from the accumulation of capital for its own sake.”
"We will start against this by dismissing the very idea of a “socialist party of a bourgeois state” out of hand. To be clear, the “socialism” of this party exists and would exist in name only. It is the same as the “socialism” of the Social Democrats. After all, the abandonment of a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of a single party inheriting a bourgeois state to incrementally build socialism was the very basis of the departure of the social democratic movement from scientific socialism.
"What would be socialist about a party like this? Not the current mode of production that they preside over, and not its role as a component to a proletarian dictatorship, so surely the ML believes that the “socialist” nature of such a party would come from their capacity to make socialism occur at some point in the future. But again, this is totally false. The idea that a party, even one with genuinely socialist ideas, can simply inherit the machinery of the bourgeois state and establish socialism on behalf of the working class not only represents a total misunderstanding of what socialism even is, but a total abandonment of class struggle altogether!
"Have we forgotten that class struggle is not simply an empty slogan? It is literally the struggle for liberation waged by the working class itself to seize, for itself, its own liberation. This is the very essence of the victory of the proletariat over the present stage of history! How could even an incremental transition to socialism be achieved while the organs of rule over production are not directly in the hands of the working class?
"Of course, we are not the only ones to take issue with the childish assumption that a “socialist” party at the helm of a bourgeois state could ever bring about an eventual transformation into socialism.
"A party presiding over a bourgeois state obviously cannot single-handedly impose socialism upon that state’s working class. This fact really could not be any more clear. But still, in direct insult to Marx and Lenin both, the “Marxist-Leninist” (are we beginning to realize how hilarious this term is?) insists beyond all reason that such parties, socialist in name but totally bourgeois in form, constitute the real movement toward communism.
"Even if one of these 21st century Marxist-Leninist party-states somehow found themselves in possession of some mystical alien productive device that completely outstrips anything within the human imagination, we have already established that they have no possible method for then magically employing it to impose a new set of social relations upon the working people. This is the case no matter how developed the productive forces have become. Speaking seriously, what even is the basis for this idea? The state develops its productive forces, sure… and then what? What comes next? Communism simply occurs? . . .
"The defense espoused by MLs that “China or whatever country cannot simply decide to abolish commodity production immediately” now becomes even more ironic. It seems that this is, in fact, exactly what the ML expects to happen: for a party-state to simply declare that socialism is now the state of affairs after a period of expansion of commodity production and mechanistically reshuffling the terms under which class society operates, without any struggle or organization on the part of the actual proletariat itself.
"[T]he claim about capital being “a tool subordinated to the interests of the people through the state.” We are seriously treading on some dangerous territory here. We can start with the “tool” segment. Money capital is not a “tool” for anything other than the production and reproduction of commodities and the commodity form, and the subordination of the proletariat to a circuit of accumulation. To describe it as such is to completely abandon the scientific view of history altogether, and flagrantly ignore essentially everything that Marx ever wrote across his three volumes on the subject.
"With even the most basic understanding of Marx’s critique of money capital, the view of this social relationship in which the bearers of labor power are subordinated to the constant accumulation of exchange-values, and the further reproduction of that relationship as simply a tool of wealth creation is utterly ludicrous. (Notice that this conception of capital is the exact one held by the most ghoulish neoliberals.)
"Now, as if this could not possibly get any worse: on to the wholehearted endorsement of “capital subordinated to the party-state.” We can again be satisfied with the reminder that no matter how completely subordinated capital is to a party, employing the organs of the bourgeois state alone can bring the proletariat no closer to socialism. But this is perhaps the most common justification for why these supposedly socialist states retain a national bourgeoisie, so we best check some proper sources that provide an ironclad endorsement of this policy! After all, the fate of all “actually existing socialism” hangs in the balance!
"The abandonment and outright suppression of organized working class struggle to abolish capital in favor of establishing a party-state that “subordinates the interests of capital to the advancement of the nation” is quite literally the foundational conception of the fascist economy. The desired form of the party-state, idealistically and foolishly understood as a body somehow mystically standing above class relations, forcing a “collaboration” between the national bourgeoisie and the proletariat in pursuit of some unachievable political aim is shared perfectly between both the ML and the fascist. When many of these “socialists with ‘national’ characteristics” inevitably join forces with their self-aware fascist brethren in the coming years, exactly none of us should be surprised.
"This support for and campaign to establish “socialist states that make capitalism work for the people” is, unsurprisingly, nothing but a call for corporatist class collaborationism that suppresses working class struggle while simultaneously wearing it as a mask. The ML wants nothing more than to make the struggle against capitalism synonymous with capitalism itself, so long as that capitalism is adorned with enough hammers and sickles. Far from representing an application of socialism to the 21st century, this “socialism with ‘national’ characteristics” (A sort of national socialism, perhaps?) represents capitalism’s newest, most flexible, and potentially most dangerous iteration. It is a capitalism whose proletarians are made to think that their class liberation has already occurred.
"Some MLs are even so bold as to directly admit that they have abandoned Marx altogether, claiming that the material conditions of the 21st century have evolved in such a way that worker’s self organized revolution to abolish commodity production are no longer necessary to bring about socialism. At least they are being honest about abandoning socialism entirely! It barely needs reminding that this exact line of argument was the basis for the concept of revisionism as it first began to appear after Marx’s death. . .
"The modern ML has, in the most direct possible sense, completely abandoned class struggle in favor of endorsing the accumulation of capital, insofar as that capital is accumulated in “socialist” hands; or at least hands that call themselves socialist. They are content to actively tell the international proletariat to uncritically (literally, remember their stance on criticism) support and work to emulate the bourgeois state apparatuses that still retain a chipping layer of red paint, insisting that they sit silently and simply allow socialism to happen, carried out by a state that is eternally “developing its productive forces.”
"To the ML, communism is not a particular movement carried out by the organized proletariat to abolish capital and itself, but a completely immaterial abstraction, a thing that a state apparatus, completely divorced from any dictatorship of the proletariat, constantly “advances toward,” all while rigidly maintaining bourgeois relations. One has no choice but to be reminded of [Eduard] Bernstein’s famous maxim: “the goal is nothing, the movement is everything.” The productive forces will never be developed enough. Actual proletarian struggle will always be suppressed in the name of socialism. To the ML, simply reshuffling the bounds of empire and the capital that it enables is the true struggle. The ultimate aim of the movement, once clear as day in October, has been completely buried under a century of coping and justifying capital in the name of “building socialism.”"
["The Infancy of 21st Century Marxism". Jesser Valentine. J.V. Pilato Published Works. (August 1st, 2026)]
