‘With regard to Russia, it is incontestable that Stalin has raised living standards. The Russian people weren't being starved. Overall we must recognise that workshops of the scale of the Hermann Göring Werke have been built where two years ago there were only unknown villages. We are discovering railway lines that aren't on the maps.’
August 26, 1942 - A. Hitler, transcribed by notebooks keepers Heinrich Heim and Henry Picker
The interests of Nazi Germany were diametrically opposed to those of the USSR who posed a threat to their eastern border. The Soviet army was presumed to be weak and rotting from the inside out, but posed a significant challenge to the German invasion.
The enemy of the Soviet’s had to acknowledge the strength of their opponents if they were to come up with successful military strategy.
The Soviets were not under equipped or poorly trained. They were guided by considered strategy as Stalin was not a bumbling fool, described as a ‘great strategist’ even by his American contemporaries.
(I am not going to spend my time condemning or venerating Stalin, I simply wanted to dispel the idea that he was unprepared for German invasion or simply throwing bodies at the front line. If you’re not going to listen to nuance, me a Stalinist or tankie, etc etc.)
tankie is genuinely the hottest insult you could ever call me. matter of fact, i hope everybody on this app views me as a secret communist spy sent by the spirit of joseph stalin to brainwash them into joining the red army
Literature on the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR)
There has been a lot of anti-communist propaganda spread about the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, particularly the 1968 Prague Spring and subsequent Warsaw Pact invasion, so I'd like to offer some more sources about Czechoslovakia which cover these topics well, are in English (unfortunately, not much socialist Czechoslovak literature has been translated into English, though I have been trying to translate some things from authors such as K. Gottwald, the first communist president, and other Czechoslovak theorists/economists) and are fully available online for free.
Most of these I have read to the end, and for the ones I haven't (I'm not really big on English-language sources), I still checked to make sure they're not actively hostile to communism, of course.
I will very likely add more, but finding communist-aligned perspectives on Czechoslovakia online is quite hard
ABOUT THE PRAGUE SPRING
Czechoslovakia and Counter-Revolution: Why the Socialist Countries Intervened
Czechoslovakia 1968: The Class Character of the Events
HISTORY
Socialism and democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1945-1948 (describes the lead-up to the February 1948 takeover)
ECONOMY
Central Planning in Czechoslovakia
Urbanization Under Socialism: The Case of Czechoslovakia
ECONOMIC REVISIONISM
(The lead-up to the Prague Spring saw the rise of many economic "reformists", in particular Ota Šik. I believe his works are important to properly understanding economics in 60s Czechoslovakia, despite my own disagreements.)
Czechoslovakia: The Bureaucratic economy
The Communist Power System
Plan and Market Under Socialism
The Third Way: Marxist-Leninist Theory and Modern Industrial Society
CRITIQUE OF ŠIK'S ECONOMIC THEORIES: From Revisionism to Betrayal: A Criticism of Ota Šik’s Economic Views
It is very clearly documented that what voters want does not translate into policy. Time and time again it reflects the interests of large donors.
This is a common point by US Marxists, but is consistent globally - the only difference is that our lobbying over a certain amount is not legalised. We circumvent this legal process with under-the-table bribery (not to say this does not happen in the US too).
But the point is, capitalism and democracy are, in fact, at odds with each other. The two cannot coexist, and we are all well aware of which one is prioritised by states.
Liberal democracies are foolish and a pretty veneer over their economic bases. The only way we can get policy that voters, workers, the people, want, is change the economic base - and we cannot dismantle that economic base by playing by the rules of liberal democracy.
(Basically, everyone should read Reform or Revolution)
On the ideological differences between tumblr Marxist-Leninists
I know it’s a bit silly, but I wanted to spend a little time talking about the variation in positions between self-identified Marxist-Leninists on this website. Because this is a social website with all the dynamics and cliquish tendencies that come with it, the political content of arguments between MLs on specific issues has a tendency to blend with interpersonal issues and ends up being obscured to the point that it may all appear to be interpersonal drama to an outside observer. To be sure, there is no shortage of interpersonal drama among tumblr communists, and I think all of us at some time or another have taken things very personally and handled disagreements without much grace. I don’t expect that to stop any time soon, but I do find it frustrating to see people from different ML perspectives and traditions write off other positions as uninformed nonsense only driven by internet cliques. I will admit I’ve been guilty of this myself, but I’ve been thinking about it more carefully recently. So, I want to get into the substance behind some of the disagreements we see here, not because I think it will stop any disagreements but out of hope that it can help us all at least understand where the different perspectives here come from. I’m going to try to portray this as objectively as I can, and I’ll follow up with my own position later. For now, I’d just like to establish an overview of this subject.
To start, we have to acknowledge that Marxist-Leninism is not a specific set of positions, but an organizational and analytical scheme based on democratic centralism and dialectical materialism. It entails some underlying assumptions — for instance, that all states are dictatorships of the ruling class, that socialism must follow from a dictatorship of the proletariat, and that revolution is required to overthrow the ruling class, etc. — but ML organizations may reach different conclusions on strategy, priorities, and partners based on their specific conditions, organizational histories, and analyses of the current correlation of class forces. This results in a natural variation of stances between different MLs, especially those who belong to different organizations or organize in different countries. On tumblr, we see a lot of examples of such variation, and of course many users who do not participate in ML organizing who attach themselves to one or another version of ML analysis. (That’s totally fine by the way, I don’t mean that as a criticism of tumblr communists who don’t belong to an org — it’s good for the analysis of a would-be vanguard org to reach beyond its members!) The reason I am saying this is to clarify that neither of the positions I will explore is more or less ML than the other — both are conclusions that ML parties have reached through democratic centralist application of dialectical materialism, even though they aren’t necessarily being directly advanced on tumblr by the parties themselves.
So, let’s get to the substance.
The subject that causes the most conflict between tumblr MLs is internationalism, and what it means to be anti-imperialist. This reflects a very real split in the global communist movement. Here, we see most tumblr MLs (and most real-life ML organizations!) adhering to two different tendencies, which I will here refer to as Orthodox MLs and Tricontinental MLs. (These are not established terms, but I don’t know of any better names for these tendencies.) Of course, there are more tendencies than just these two, but they are two of the dominant currents among communist parties globally, and certainly the two most represented here on tumblr.
Orthodox MLs
The Orthodox ML position, as I understand it, essentially extends Lenin’s 1916 definition of imperialism to the present. Imperialism is viewed as a global economic system defined by monopoly capitalism, finance capital, and the territorial/logistical division of the world among rival imperialist camps. This position acknowledges the US-led camp as dominant, but still considers powers like Russia, China, and Iran to be imperialist competitors who should not necessarily be supported in opposition to the US (there may be conditional or tactical exceptions, but they are rare). Typically, Orthodox MLs will condemn the US camp’s aggression, but are either agnostic or hostile to the governments and organizations that lead resistance to such aggression if they are not communist themselves. For instance, they will typically affirm the right of the Palestinian people to resist Israeli aggression, and they will support the PFLP, but they will oppose Hamas as an organization and consider its Islamist character to be incompatible with working-class internationalism.
Orthodox MLs also have strict standards of what ruling communist parties are deserving of support based on whether or not they are pursuing purely socialist economics. The use of state-regulated market economies — which is the line pursued by most surviving communist-led states — is viewed as an unacceptable distortion of communist thought. In this view, current conditions are adequate for implementing a planned economy, which they view as the fundamental expression of anti-imperialism. When states like the People’s Republic of China turn to market economics for strategic purposes — including the presence of monopoly capital, finance capital, the export of capital — and compete for influence abroad, Orthodox MLs view this as a surrender to and endorsement of the imperialist system. The PRC is considered a capitalist state, regardless of the Marxist-Leninist political structures of the ruling party.
In this view, there is no anti-imperialist camp of states. The primary contradiction remains capital versus labor; national liberation struggles are important, but only insofar as they are led and waged by the working class. Anti-imperialist action only exists in the form of struggle against the ruling classes. The only enemies of the US-led camp that are viable allies are those that oppose any kind of internal capitalist development. It is important to maintain diligent criticism of any participant in the global system of imperialism and be vigilant to oppose bourgeois nationalist or state capitalist tendencies.
Tricontinental MLs
The other tendency present among tumblr MLs is what I’m here calling Tricontinental Marxism-Leninism (I am using this name to note this tendency’s roots in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, which gathered anti-colonial and anti-imperialist forces from across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The Tricontinental Conference is really the historical root of this tendency, and it is already frequently invoked by proponents of this framework.) (Shout out to comrade Vijay Prashad and the Tricontinental Institute.) These MLs view imperialism as substantially changed since Lenin’s definition in 1916. In this view, imperialism is no longer simply defined by the struggle for dominance between rival powers, but rather is defined by the hegemony of the United States and its allies/subordinates since 1945 (and intensified in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR). Rather than a competition of rival capitalist peers, global finance and military power are dominated by the US-led camp. This amounts to a single imperial core extracting surplus from the vast periphery (alternatively framed as the Global North which extracts wealth from the Global South). The imperial core’s control of global finance creates unequal conditions for competition, such that even other capitalist economies are burdened by structurally unequal currency exchange, crises of debt, and vulnerability to economic sanctions. States and organizations that oppose this US-led hegemonic world order are thereby considered at least tactically anti-imperialist regardless of their internal contradictions or economic structures. Support is extended to opponents of the US-led world order whether or not they are communist or socialist themselves. Any state that attempts to nationalize its resources and industries and develop them outside the direction of the US camp, even through capitalist means, is resisting the global imperialist system as it exists today.
Given this framework of imperialism, Tricontinental MLs are more sympathetic to the strategic employment of state-controlled market economics and capitalist development by communist parties in power as a means of surviving this era of imperialism defined by the singular hegemony of the US-led camp. In fact, this tendency’s stance is that doing so has proven to be an effective strategy for maintaining state power under constant assault from the imperialist camp. They see this as strategy developed by ML parties that has proved more effective at not only surviving but internally developing to the point of reducing reliance on the international economic and financial systems under the control of the US-led bloc. This option maintains communist control of state power such that a transition to planned economics can be made when US hegemony over global economics and finance does not represent such an existential threat to socialist development. In this view, even where physical and logistical conditions exist to create a centrally planned economy, geopolitical conditions may not yet exist to maintain one, as the US capacity for asymmetrical warfare is perceived as a significant threat to states openly defying the capitalist world economy. This is not to say that all MLs of the Tricontinental tendency agree completely with every aspect of such an analysis, but they see it as a viable strategy and an acceptable retreat from planned economics.
In this tendency, there is a clear imperialist camp upholding and controlling the exploitative global economy that extracts wealth from the periphery. The organizations and states that resist this camp do not necessarily make up a single camp themselves, but they are natural allies in the struggle against the imperialist system as it exists today. This means that MLs following this line of analysis will more freely support national liberation movements and economic frameworks that oppose US-led imperialist extraction, even if this means support for bourgeois nationalist or religious actors. These MLs will maintain critical support for Hamas, the People’s Republic of China, the Sahel States, the Islamic Republic of Iran, etc. etc. and treat them as allies in the anti-imperialist struggle. Internally, Tricontinental ML organizations will not shy away from critical analysis of allies, but they are highly averse to doing so in public, as they want to present themselves as reliable allies as well, who can be trusted not to slander or weaken the rhetorical position of other anti-imperialist forces. While often perceived as knee-jerk and uncritical cheerleading by Orthodox MLs, Tricontinental MLs would argue that such criticism is better handled internally, through party channels and in conversation with comrades, rather than aired on social media.
A geographic note on these tendencies
These tendencies are dominant among MLs in different geographies. The Orthodox ML tendency is particularly dominant among communist parties in Europe and parts of the former Soviet bloc. The KKE (Communist Party of Greece) is arguably the most influential party promoting this tendency, and most ML parties in Europe follow this line, with few exceptions. Outside of Europe, however, its influence is small and diminishing. By contrast, most influential Marxist-Leninist organizations in the global periphery tend more toward the Tricontinental approach. In these contexts, the US-led world order is experienced as a more immediate and significant threat than the national bourgeoisie or clerical forces. This makes sense: communist parties operating under the shadow of direct US intervention, neocolonial debt structures, or military occupation are more likely to see anti-imperialism as the immediate priority, while parties in the imperial core — where class struggle is less directly mediated by national oppression — are more inclined to focus on the capital-labor contradiction as the priority. The Orthodox tendency used to be dominant among USAmerican MLs as well, but that has been upended by the sustained growth of the PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), which adheres very closely to the Tricontinental framework and is driven by solidarity with comrades in the periphery. This is unusual for a party based in the imperial core, and it reflects a conscious political alignment with national liberation movements both in the Global South and within the borders of the United States.
How all of this plays out among tumblr MLs
Because nobody really uses this language to describe these tendencies, a given ML’s position may be extremely unclear — someone who describes themselves as “Marxist-Leninist” or “anti-imperialist” may well fall into either camp, but they are essentially working with different models of imperialism and conflicting levels of flexibility versus doctrinal rigidity. On a site like tumblr, where users are anonymized and generally not open about specific party affiliations, this leads to many misunderstandings between MLs working from these very different analytical viewpoints. These are usually accompanied by arguments that completely misunderstand the other position and write them off as “left communists,” “campists,” or other such thought-terminating refrains that miss the substance of the disagreement. We should continue to disagree about this — such dialogue is healthy — but I think we need to come at it from a clearer understanding of the traditions and analyses at play. I’m hoping this post will, at the very least, help clarify and contextualize some of the arguments we see around here.
I sincerely thank you if you’ve read this far! I’d like to know what you think about this framing and I welcome feedback and criticism♡
Excellent write-up! I would add that regardless of where specific ML organizations stand on this debate (which is by no means a small issue as it informs on ones collective strategy), all ML parties I know of are engaged in educating those they can reach and forming themselves for the tasks to come.
So regardless of how ugly debates and disputes can get on this platform or IRL, it is important to remember that we are closer to each other's lines than we would like to admit. And the work we have before us will unite us in some ways in the coming years and decades. So leniency and good faith exchanges will be necessary for us to get anywhere.
Fascinating read and very reflective of Marxist debate in the global south - whether following orthodoxy is suited to the material conditions of the global periphery nations or not.
Eventually you come to realise that capitalism is contrary to basic human empathy. I recall being quite young when I first realised that if you do not work, you essentially die.
This has fairly obvious implications for people who are unable to work, but if you simplify it even further, your ability to survive should not be contingent on your ability to work. People deserve to have more than that.
What is life if you’re living to work for your next meal, sleeping, and doing it all over again? We are a resilient species and find joy in these bleak scenarios, but education, travelling, new foods, and so much more is out of reach. Higher needs are not met.
Is that just supposed to be the way things are? That’s incredibly stupid. You can call me idealistic for that, but the current economic system is so fundamentally anti-human that stripping it down to its core reveals it.
Time for some more discourse but this time I’m just contemplating the things I’ve seen people say about “tankies”. Allegedly we’re mostly just rude and nasty people, like apart from political reasons, which kind of mystifies me because of course I’ve seen rude tankies but the community I have found on here is very lovely. I don't know what kind of tankies these people are meeting but it's sure not the tankies I know lol
But the main thing is that I think even many other leftists seem to misunderstand our politics, not to mention liberals and conservatives
One particular issue is the issue of imperialism. I say this because I saw a communist on here talk about how tankies support Russia’s “imperialism” because we believe it’s not as bad as US imperialism. I have problems with that assumption and framing ofc, but I think much of the imperialism discourse comes from the fact that we are operating on different definitions
To most people, imperialism refers to the exertion of political or military or economic influence by any nation. This is the wikipedia definition, it is the mainstream definition
Marxist-Leninists of course use Lenin’s definition, which is entirely different. We may understand a country’s foreign policy as exploitative, aggressive, or generally problematic, but that does not necessarily equate to the Leninist definition of imperialism. If we claim it’s not imperialism without specifying that, it just sounds to others like we condone everything basically
I think us tankies have got to get better at clarifying our theory and our perspectives, because a lot of the hate comes from severe misunderstandings of what we’re talking about
Sometimes just out of curiosity I look up anti tankie tags on tumblr and 99% of the time the criticism is targeted at things that most of us don’t believe
I think we need to become more receptive and conscious of the way we are perceived by the general left as well as the average person if we wish to have effective communication about our politics
Today is a good day to remember Salvador Allende, the democratically-elected President of Chile, who died in September 1973. Allende most likely shot himself in the La Moneda Presidential Palace in Santiago when he could no longer fight off the forces of General Augusto Pinochet as they executed a violent coup heavily supported by the United States and Henry Kissinger. Pinochet then ruled Chile as an American-supported "anti-communist" military dictator for nearly two decades in which tens of thousands of Chileans were killed, jailed, or simply disappeared.
Allende, a socialist, was popularly elected as Chile's President with promises to strengthen democracy in Latin America and institute significant economic, education, and health reforms in order to dramatically improve the social welfare of the Chilean people. Some American leaders, like Henry Kissinger, saw him as a potential threat -- a South American version of Fidel Castro -- and the CIA begin laying the groundwork for eventual regime change.
The biggest problem with Allende, in Kissinger's mind, was the very fact that he was freely and democratically elected. In a memo to President Nixon that is still somewhat shocking to read, Kissinger wrote that "Allende was elected legally...He has legitimacy in the eyes of Chileans and most of the world; there is nothing we can do to deny him that legitimacy or claim he does not have it." Kissinger then reminds Nixon that "We are strongly on record in support of self-determination and respect for free election; you are firmly on record for non-intervention in the internal affairs of this hemisphere and of accepting nations 'as they are.'" Then he spends several pages outlining ways in which to undermine, delegitimize, and potentially eliminate "the Problem." After all, as Kissinger wrote shortly before Allende was elected, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."
The US will never allow a communist threat, whether it be through democratic election or violent revolution. Democratic election is already so rare, and when they happen, the United States swoops in and denies the so called democratic freedom they adore so much.
Let it be known that no matter how a project came to be socialist, it will always be undermined by the leading capitalist hegemon. Democratic elections will not save us, and Salvador Allende had to learn through him being violent usurped by a US backed Pinochet.
He is a tragic lesson that ‘the fates of Chile are too important to leave up to the Chilean people’. The fate of any nation is too important for its people to decide, if said choice is socialism. Reformism will get us nowhere - no one knows that more than a disenchanted reformist.
(Quote regarding Chilean fate paraphrased from Kissinger)
Franz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth described an underdeveloped intermediary bourgeois class that succeeds the colonial one. I can only speak to Sourh Africa, but if his observations then still apply now, I have no doubt that people across the global south would resonate with his writings.
He describes the new national middle class as business people, not industrialists. They desire nationalisation, not for the purposes of resource distribution, but be the ones who hold the materials. “To them, nationalisation means the transfer into native hands of those unfair advantages which are legacy of the colonial period.”.
This lack of originality extends into their investments. They’re not interested in the development of their own country, instead placing their securities in Western markets and spending their weekends in Paris. They are useless and harmful – not even able to create the conditions for the development of the industrial product. take centuries to have even an embryonic industrial revolution.
They are a greedy caste, get-rich-quick, content to accept dividends from the old colonial power, and incapable of inventiveness. They are “not even a replica of Europe, but it’s caricature” and they conceal their mediocrity with cars and holidays on the Riviera. 
Fanon outlines the nature of the post-colonial bourgeois with such scathing, incisive language that I sometimes cannot believe he was not a contemporary writer observing our present circumstances.
Every single one of the 599 refugees the US admitted last month was a white South African, according to data the State Department’s Bureau of Population released Friday.
In fact, so was every other refugee admitted this year. Since October 1, 2025, the US has accepted 6,668 refugees. Of those, 6,665 were white South Africans. Three—admitted last November—were from Afghanistan. No other refugees were admitted.
The white ‘refugees’ from my country are cowardly and snapping up the opportunity to live in the mythicised ‘greatest place on earth’ because of how they are being ‘victimised’ by farm murders and land redistribution. More black employees have been murdered on farms than their white owners and practically every country in the world redistributes that that is not being used.
When they arrived, they were forgotten and left to the hall that is American capitalism. This was a PR stunt for the American administration who see a false plight of minority whites and rush to their ‘aid’. Now that they are there, the Afrikaner ‘refugees’ can bear their cross.
Marxism is about changing the current state of things in practice, not about mental masturbation. this is why liberal institutions view Marxism-Leninism with such hostility. it's fine to teach sophisticated seeming versions of Marxism in the university when they're detached from revolutionary practice. it's fine to give their authors air time on your shows or write ups in your magazines. the same goes with platforming anti-communist socialists who condemn Marxism-Leninism, and with it all the countries in the world that have made significant steps towards building socialism. the construction and reproduction of this compatible left by liberal institutions is a powerful weapon for making sure that imperial core socialists are anti-communist, and are detached from practices that actually threaten to overthrow capitalist rule. don't fall for their bullshit when Marxism-Leninism is right there
Israel has once again cut off all aid to Gaza and closed all crossings into the strip, intensifying its genocidal blockade as the population
Israel has once again cut off all aid to Gaza and closed all crossings into the strip, intensifying its genocidal blockade as the population faces widespread disease and malnutrition.
The move, announced by the Israeli military’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), comes after Iran launched missiles at Israel on Sunday in retaliation for its strikes against Lebanon.
Israel has repeatedly violated its ceasefire agreements with Hamas and Hezbollah, killing hundreds in both Gaza and Lebanon in recent months as it seizes control of more land.
The apartheid state last cut off all entry to Gaza in late February following the outbreak of the US and Israel’s illegal war on Iran.
...
Cogat said in a post on X on Monday that crossings into Gaza would be closed “until further notice”. It falsely claimed the move “will not affect the humanitarian situation” in Gaza.
only 150-200 of the 550-600 needed trucks of aid were allowed to enter each day anyway. this is going to kill so many people
The historic collaboration between the USSR and the ANC is a fascinating one.
South Africa under apartheid was a stalwart US and British ally and proxy, despite international divestment campaigns. It fought against the MPLA in Angola and Frelimo in Mozambique for that very reason (alongside those countries harbouring revolutionaries).
The USSR provided weapons, financial aid, and diplomatic pressure in support of the end of apartheid. In fact, they introduced the resolution in the UN for international sanctions against the apartheid government. The ANC, SACP and other forces would not have survived had it not been for this aid.
There is plenty to criticise the USSR for, yet ignoring its role in ending apartheid would be a disservice to its policy of aiding leftist revolutionary forces all around the world.
It birthed a culture of leftism in this country that is unfortunately underrepresented. In fact, some of the earliest communists in South Africa existed before the Soviet Union even existed.
In much of Africa, Marxism appeals to this day for its policies of nationalisation, representative governments, and an expansion of economic rights, not just social ones. It has morphed into African Marxism with the likes of Mbembe, Fanon, First, Hani, La Guma and so many others proposing how the scientific method can be applied to the material conditions of a particular nation.
snowghoul
titsay
yousharknotpass
