Update: they have ascertained that Parabola was Wisconcom lmao. In that light, if correct, it's more of a wrecker doing what he does than the project failing. We still don't have a lot of info though. They've written about it here: https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Leftypedia:Community_hub
Earlier today, the new rendition of Leftypedia finally imploded. Going off the block list, it's a real mess.
Leftypedia was brought back from its last incarnation in early 2023. If you remember (or not), it had issues with Wisconcom then who latched onto it. The problem is because they had no active admins and couldn't find them, they couldn't ban him indefinitely.
Eventually, they did find new admins who kicked the project back into gear, or at least they tried to.
Earlier today though, it seems there has been a split and one of the admins (Parabola) basically banned all the others as well as several other users. Where it gets weird is that another admin (Aussig) then banned Parabola, but didn't undo the bans Parabola issued. Aussig also banned me and Forte's account, which we used back when Wisconcom was on there, for "ideological deviations", but Aussig calls themselves a Marxist-Leninist on their user page.
From what I understand there was a split between the different tendencies. So anyway that's how the "left unity" wiki is going lol sorry but this is funny.
Wisconcom
This guy again, or rather still?
I wonder why he stopped posting to his Substack; maybe to focus on wrecking other people’s sites.
Edit to add that it looks like he’s active on Blogger: https://wisconsincommunist.blogspot.com/
I added an update, it seems Parabola was a Wisconcom alt -- at least that's what the leftypedia staff believes. I tried to warn them over a year ago about him but they didn't seem to care, so to be honest I don't really feel bad. But this is of course only my personal impression.
This however also shows two things:
- Wisconcom has made it clear his problem is not with ProleWiki specifically, he just has a weird fixation on hoxhaism, and has shown himself to be a wrecker to marxism and an enemy of marxists once and for all,
- He didn't go away and will likely never go away, he just pivoted from ProleWiki and Lemmygrad to Leftypedia. We can never let our guard down around him, not as long as "Wisconcom" exists.
The man, the legend, the running gag of Lemmygrad, Wisconcom.
first article, near the top I made the mistake to read this shit
It is important to note that the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc, with the exception of Albania, beyond the year 1956 will not be accounted for, as that period contained the abandonment of the construction of Socialism, de-Stalinization, and other economic, political, and ideological deviations.
(https://wisconcom.substack.com/p/totalitarianism-truth-or-propaganda)
All I can say is
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lets just ignore one of the most sucsesfull era of soviet communism (space, showing american hegemony can be challenged, eliminating the gender pay gap, rent being 2-3% of a workers wage etc)
Ah, sounds like he just went back to doing what he loves...
Another win for the policy of unity among Marxists, not among liberals, opportunists, and distorters of Marxism (yes that includes especially ultras).
I had a conversation with one of the members of the Leftypedia discord server before my ban yesterday (whom I will not reveal the identity of), and they stated that Parabola has stepped down as administrator.
I thought there would've been more chaos at the discord server, surprisingly it was the opposite. It seems everything happened at either the editor's side or at the admin's side.
What is clear is that Aussig states through paraphrasing their words that:
They said they don't want Leftypedia to be for all Leftist peoples.
In other words, Aussig has directly stated that leftypedia does not want to be leftypedia. They have banned all "revisionist" tendencies including 3 prolewiki accounts that only existed to tackle the issue with Wisconcom existing on the server.
Leftypedia has become a failed experiment it seems. The split between the Hoxhaites and Maoists (Aussig was a maoist when she entered the server* and I know it from my days in that discord server) is real. I'm not surprised at the very least. Parabola kept shitting on anarchists, even banned an anarcho-egoist (or minarchist, doesn't matter) because they were reactionary and espoused anti-marxist views.
In the short amount of time I've been on that server (which is a month I think, a few days after the server's creation) it was clear that this server would break down. It's a funny coincidence that breakdown happened the day after I was banned for being "hostile".
EDIT: Made corrections, see points marked by a *.
For what its worth, the leftypedia staff have just removed the discord server from their site, as being "no longer affiliated with Leftypedia users". I'm not sure what to make of that since I stay away from discord like plague.
This is because Parabola (Or Wisconcom perhaps) originally introduced the idea of a leftypedia discord server in the matrix server, and so Parabola was the official owner. That means that Parabola has all official access to the discord server since he is at the top.
In my month staying in there, it is a gold mine of bullshit, I have amassed a collection of screenshots which clearly show that leftypedia is a place where left unity cannot happen.
Also, you have posted that link about Harrystein linking it to Wisconcom. I think Parabola is actually Wisconcom, given he made sock puppet accounts after his ban, and I'm one of the few people who can judge his tone and voice in voice chats since I heard it before when I was a part of the study group.
Since Aussig and Parabola are banned, I doubt Leftypedia would stand up again.
Since Aussig and Parabola are banned, I doubt Leftypedia would stand up again.
Aussig, apart from whatever they did on the discord, was pretty irrelevant to the actual wiki. Account created April 30, made a dozen edits, then for whatever reason RedParabola promoted them. I don't know if they're a sockpuppet, or friends or negotiated something on discord, whatever, but they're a "literally who?" before today.
As for Parabola, they made a bunch of contributions but the wiki won't be much different without them, just a bit slower. It's not like they were critical to the site. Like you and that admin said, probably Wisconcom anyway.
In my month staying in there, it is a gold mine of bullshit
I believe that. An archivism project I was in a while back was victim to petty discord drama causing two different coups and ending up getting the whole thing nuked. I can't help but see it as a drama site for any project-based chat, attracting people who just want to climb to the top and become lords of tiny fiefs.
Aussig is irrelevant in general, but her contributions had lead to the Prolewiki accounts being banned. She just took advantage of the vandalism and used it for her own purpose. I can personally confirm that Aussig is not a sock puppet account, especially given she was participating in the discord server not in the same way as Parabola (Wisconcom). She was a part of the scandal but for different reasons.
I think Parabola made a larger dent into Leftypedia that will take harder to scrub off compared to Prolewiki. Especially given at the rate the articles are being changed (Literally productivity has been cut in half since Parabola is gone, only leaving Harrystein to edit the wiki), we won't see Leftypedia recovered.
The reputational damage is a good point, its extent is kind of lost on me as I'm not very involved in the wiki circles but obviously this is gonna hurt it and isn't easy to scrub off as the vandal banned ProleWiki users like you, Forte and OP, doing so as a supposed authority of Leftypedia.
I think they'll recover from the reputation damage. I hope they learn from this that you can't trust just anyone and you have to be careful about who you let in. They seem to have responded rapidly too and the vandalism and blocks have been undone. I hope now they can reorganize, because imo this is really what they were missing, especially for a project that wants to allow all/most leftist currents.
It was also unclear, in my opinion again, that Parabola was only an admin of the project since yesterday. From how active they were, you wouldn't have thought so. This is why I think they need to first develop organizational methods, to be more effective down the line.
I’m neither of the stated. I was promoted first as the result of elections held by leftypedia and then as part of my plan to go out with a boom. Idk what parabola’s plan was for whatever he was doing but he was helpful lmao
What sense of "Maoist" do you mean here? Like Shining Path or just anti-Deng?
Aussig supports the Shining Path.But I don't think the distinction matters much in this case. She claimed to be a maoist in the discord server.Edit: This statement is corrected because I've later learned that this isn't true from Aussig. However as I stated earlier, the distinction doesn't matter much. She's still an ultra. Everything else is correct.
Aussig supports the Shining Path.
Disgusting, they should talk to socialists alive in Peru so they can slap the shit out of them for being so guilable.
I made an account just to reply to the “shining path Maoist” bs but it’s already gone
So anyway that’s how the “left unity” wiki is going lol sorry but this is funny.
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The in-fighting leftists of the west are a deeply unserious people.
I don't follow this sort of drama and i am perfectly happy that way. But when I hear about this sort of stuff i do wonder how it is that i have never heard of these sorts of problems in or around Lemmygrad. It's not as if we all agree on everything, i know there are definitely some ideological as well as tactical disagreements now and then, but for some reason it never devolves into this kind of sectarian drama.
I've noticed that, too. I think it's thanks to the mods and us having an actual line, like a direction that is consistent, coherent and adjusts itself as events unfold. Because we're not dogmatic. What is that line? What Comrade, darkcalling mentioned down here, the unity of Marxists. We're clear on what we think, and new people either come in already clearheaded or they slowly see what we're like, and join in. We have good people, and I mean that. I come here to learn and laugh everyday. I guess we're just that cool, that we don't start beefs with each other or with our Hexbear friends.
I think it is many factors:
- The actually existing project(s) that a community latches onto affect the community culture. Imagine us trying to be sectarian with each other when our supported factions are constantly making the news for making alliances between completely opposed ideologies. This also affects the liberals, which is why even they aren't too sectarian.
- Any real project will be full of imperfections, and no faction will appeal to you 100%. If you can already tolerate this for the projects that actually impact the world, you can tolerate it for the random internet users.
- Ultras and Anarchists are united/defined mostly on the basis of hating AES and revisionists. This does not build any strong community unity, or even sensible theory. Instead, it builds the mentality of accusing the other members of being too much like their boogeymen.
Looks like the site staff have banned Aussig and made an update post: https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Leftypedia:Community_hub
edit: And disavowed the Discord server.
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I hate to say this but I don't know what any of this is. I tried reading this but I am still clueless. Sorry.
The admins and mods of a wiki type website basically all got into pointless arguments and everyone tried to ban everyone else from the website, leading to the website being basically useless as there is no one around to edit it anymore.
Leftypedia never worked because the ideological disagreements are so big that it’s only possible to make contradictory articles. That’s why I went away from the project but yknow might as well leave with a boom
Strictly speaking, the most common sentiment in GZD and HB is highly revisionist. I don't really mind since it's still progressive and splitting over that would be absurd, but their claim of deviation makes enough sense to be comprehended if they're a hardliner in the vein of either Mao or Hoxha.
China is plainly revisionist since the Deng reforms, it went from a uniquely (sometimes chaotically) democratic ML state to a capitalist state run with some amount of propriety and discipline (perhaps owing to both its Marxist immediate past and its Confucian past before that) and that unusually "adult" behavior for such a powerful country I think contributes to confusion, because people expect capitalist states to be rotten from skin to core like the US or Occupied Korea or something.
I still think, mainly for reasons already expressed, that China is the biggest historically progressive force in the world right now (the most progressive force among established countries is Cuba, of course), the average westerner knows nothing but lies about it, etc.
But I basically think every AES state is revisionist in some respect -- Vietnam is similar to China here, Cuba is on the road to joining them, the DPRK has reactionary nationalism, Laos is just a fucking mess -- but I still support them all, not just on anti-imperial grounds but also because this isn't all-or-nothing, you can be revisionist in some respects and correct in others, and even massive revisionists in this backward word can still be historically progressive forces.
This isn't me mindlessly lionizing Mao either, I think he was (by the end of his life) a left deviationist who nonetheless failed to pull the trigger on Deng, but his ideas were definitely more sincere in their aspirations Marxism over economism or however you'd like to characterize Deng.
It might be nice to have better discussions on these topics, but I'm not going to pretend its a George Orwell 1909043 wrongthink issue, I mostly come here for the news aggregation and comments thereon, not to refine the new vanguard.
it went from a […] democratic ML state to a capitalist state
China is not a capitalist state, because the capitalists have not gotten control of the state, though the possibility of them getting control should not be ignored.
It certainly is not a liberal capitalist state as such, though the bourgeoisie represent a real force as you imply, but there is also capitalism in state industries when they are run for profit, which currently is the bulk of China's economy.
there is also capitalism in state industries when they are run for profit
Are any of the state run industries actually run for profit? Because if so, I wonder why, because I can think of no reason why they’d need to make a profit. The Chinese state can and does print as much of its sovereign fiat money as it pleases. They might run some things “for profit” as a form of taxation. The purpose of taxation at the sovereign state level is not to accumulate money but to destroy money, removing it from the economy.
I never really thought about what if any foreign currency-denominated profits the Chinese state might be trying to make. I guess I just assumed that all state industry is for domestic use.
The rightly-praised train system is not for-profit, but they make a killing on oil, for example.
I'm not an economist, I can't really tell you why that's what they do, but I'm pretty confident they do it.
I'm not an economist, I can't really tell you why that's what they do
I'm not an economist either but this one isn't that hard to figure out. A socialist state won't require all its SOEs to operate that way but it also obviously won't object if some of them do make a profit, since that can be used to offset some of the losses of the unprofitable SOEs.
This has always been a part of how socialist economies work. Even the USSR had some form of this iirc. The idea was that consumer goods industries were more "naturally" profitable and could be used to prop up the essential but less profitable heavy industries. (I'm simplifying here as i don't necessarily want to get into a whole discussion about the Kosygin reforms.)
This is a core idea of economic planning, that one part of the economy can balance and support another for the good of society rather than forcing every element of the economy to function as its own isolated entity competing against all others.
This is one of the features that distinguish economic planning from liberal market economies which require each individual enterprise to turn a profit (and ideally more so than it's competitors if it wants to survive long term).
I’ll preface this with IANAE either, but I have been following Michael Hudson for the last few years.
I don’t think it’s strictly necessary for the profitable SOEs to prop up the unprofitable ones. In principle anyway (and if one ignores international trade), all of the SOEs could be run at a loss. The state creates Yuan out of thin air to pay for things. The prices they set for SOE goods & services don’t necessarily have to reflect the costs at all. This allows them great flexibility in using prices to influence the consumption of each good & service. The only real limit is to not print too much money too quickly without destroying some of it through pricing/taxation.
Edit to add: In practice you can’t completely unmoor prices from costs. For instance, if you do that without also imposing rationing, you’ll get gray market arbitrage.
The state creates Yuan out of thin air to pay for things. The prices they set for SOE goods & services don’t necessarily have to reflect the costs at all. This allows them great flexibility in using prices to influence the consumption of each good & service. The only real limit is to not print too much money too quickly without destroying some of it through pricing/taxation.
While it's true that money is created out of thin air, you're missing that it is backed by production. The limit to printing money is related to production growth. While is technically true monetary problems can be managed through taxation, it is the wrong policy to make. Increasing/creating taxes only leads to social unrest, no one likes paying more taxes.
The biggest challenge for economists is to accurately project production growth, something they havent been able to do.
Yes, production growth/shrinkage is another factor. In the case of SOEs, this is another case where the state has enormous control compared to in capitalist states, especially neoliberal ones that avoid SOEs like the plague.
Calling AES as revisionists is wrong, they're developing their productive forces and are using the tools they seem fit to do it.
The main thesis of historical materialism is that production is the chief determinant force in the development of society. In order to reach a higher stage of development, the productive forces and the relations of production must be developed accordingly. Capitalism historical task, as marx pointed out, is to develop the productive forces, so these countries use capitalism to develop their productive forces.
The key difference between AES and other states is the role of the goverment, AES are held accountable by the people not the capitalists. We could argue about the degree of consolidation of power, the efficiency of their tasks, and many other things, but calling them revisionists? That's just silly.
The key difference between AES and other states is the role of the goverment, AES are held accountable by the people not the capitalists. We could argue about the degree of consolidation of power, the efficiency of their tasks, and many other things, but calling them revisionists? That's just silly.
If we took as granted the claim that they are truly democratic rather than bureaucratic or some other antidemocratic form of government, including ones with populist paint like the liberal democracies we are so familiar with. What evidence do you have that they are democratically controlled? High approval ratings don't cut it, kings can also be popular. I look at Xi's speeches and, contrary to what we like to get out of his claims about democracy, most of his speeches are notoriously filled with pablum and dogmatism (mostly "Deng was right" a thousand different ways), not at all the way that you address an engaged populace that you have the slightest degree of intellectual respect for, much less one that has been given an effective Marxist education. You can make a very good argument for Cuba being democratic by pointing to various types of civic engagement, but I'm not confident that you can make the same claim about China.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems like the term "revisionist" becomes all but meaningless when you apply it in this way, like a sort of "no true scotsman" style analysis. I'm not sure I understand what your expectation is for AES states.
That there would be some amount of revisionism is precisely my expectation of AES states. It's not like I said they weren't socialist -- and from a practical standpoint we can say pretty confidently that they all are, most especially the DPRK and Cuba.
"Revisionist" is basically shorthand for "deviating in some way from fundamental Marxist principles" which is a subset of "erroneous from a Marxist perspective".
"No true scotsman" isn't just a vibe, it's a specific type of fallacy. If I say that "No X is Y" and you say "I know John, he's an X and he is Y" and I reply "He's not really X then, because no true X is Y," I am performing the fallacy in its most archetypal form. Basically, it is asserting that no member of a group has some (usually negative) trait and, when confronted with a counterexample, saying that the presence of the trait in that example means the example wasn't really a member of the group.
Dumb college kids do indeed do "no true scotsman" all the time when reactionaries say "reds killed trillions" and they say "but that wasn't real communism, man" to preserve their ignorant idealization without really understanding either Marxist theory or the actual evidence around AES history.
I don't have anything that I'm trying to disavow, and in fact am making claims of various kinds against these states (though I might have been unfair to Cuba, admittedly) without any interest in protecting some group of "true scotsman".
I can try to get into more detail on this another time (I need to wind down for sleep) but I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that when you point at basically all states thought of as AES (maybe I missed one?) and call them revisionist in one form or another, it can end up sounding exactly like the "that wasn't real communism" trope or in another way, end up sounding like "that was real communism and see how it sucks and fails actually in practice." I'm trying to word this carefully because it could go in the other direction too if presented thoughtlessly, where it sounds like I'm saying that criticisms of AES projects are bad (criticism is important). The point that I hang on is, making sure we're not de-legitimizing the theory and practice as a whole by being unfairly dismissive of how closely practice aligns with the goal, where it is on the developing path. And also just making sure we are clear on tactics vs. corruption mindset. That to use a rough war analogy, sometimes you have to retreat in order to regroup, but that doesn't mean your army has taken a step backward in its ideological goals. Retreating has the risk of leading to giving up and compromising on what you intend, but the one doesn't automatically follow from the other. So making sure in the weeds of it, we are clear on when something is dangerous compromising on an ideological center and when something is a more complicated tactical development that undoubtedly contains some risk of losing the ideological center, but still has that center and has a specific plan in mind for how to develop past the "retreating" into an advance.
Edit: wording
Deng was definitely playing with fire, though as you suggest the PRC was much more in control of the burn than the other capitalist powers. Had I come into communism about 5-10 years earlier than I did my position would be much closer to yours. However, it seems to me the Xi administration has been doing a good job cutting the excesses and purging capitalist roaders. They have a lot more work to do, but they seem best equipped to fight the class struggle, both domestically and internationally, of any country.
I suppose then the question is if it's just a very-disciplined capitalist power or a socialist one, because Xi is doing a great job of maintaining and developing the state, but I don't think anything he is doing is incompatible with just being a responsible capitalist politician running a tight ship.
There's should never be shame about ruthless criticism of all that exists.
Yeah, I just wanted to make it clear that it's not a "the authoritarian mods are silencing me" issue and just that I don't feel like arguing about this most of the time, though I decided to here.
A capitalist state without a bourgeoise class in control? Maybe do not lose yourself in abstract stuff when you do not have the basics down...
You can split hairs and say that it's a bureaucratic state, but all you'd be doing is splitting hairs. It's still fundamentally oriented around commodities being sold for profit, a common definition of capitalism.
Sorry, a Dictatorship of the Prolatriat is not "splitting hairs". Without a bourgeoisie holding state power it flatout can not be capitalism.
You're sidestepping most of what I said. If the ruling class is not the proletariat but in fact a smaller group that controls the MoP, and does commodity production to pursue maximized profits, paying the broader population wages, etc., then it's still capitalism whether the nominal position of the MoP is the monopolistic control of private entities or of state entities, in the case of the state not being controlled by the people. It's only a DotP if it's actually a democratic state.
oh we are revisionists and that is precisely the point of Marxism. dialectical materialism is about development and change.
Revisionism in the Marxist context explicitly and precisely means modifications to theory that make Marxism compatible with liberalism. The Kruschevites were revisionist, but Lenin and Stalin were not. Both of the latter developed Marxist theory but we're not revisionist. Mao also developed Marxist theory but was not revisionist.
That's not the typical context in which the term "revisionist" is used, though. Usually it's used to claim that someone is diverging from the foundations of Marxism itself- that they are betraying core principles such as the dictatorship of the proletariat, the integrity of the one-party system and/or the revolution, class struggle, etc...
As such, I think it's only good practice to distance ourselves from the term, despite what "revision" means in the English language. It's enough simply to say- we're not dogmatists.
eh to each their own, i've always found it as a silly word thrown around by purity fetishists so it doesn't particularly offend me.
Agreed. To say 'we are revisionists because we revise' is ultimately a semantic gotcha which ignores the history and context of an established term. Of course we revise, how else would we add all these other names onto "Marxism-" in the first place!
