The dialectical interrelation between collective illusion and self-imposed illusion- Conclusion
Conclusion
Marxist-Leninist parties,
organizations, and the individuals who make them up do not exist in a political
vacuum immune to the narratives and illusions of capitalism. There always will
be those who internalize the illusions and echo the narratives in different
forms with Marxist jargon. Unfortunately, in our era, however, this is not an exception but the general. Desertion of the Leninist principle of “analysing the existing concrete conditions and
situation has been replaced by rote and sloganized theories and ready-made
schemas, shifting theory and practice to either liberalism or sectarianism.
Drastic changes in the concrete conditions within the last decades brought
about a vacillation from one extreme to the other without being able to make a
dialectical balance between them.
The refusal to restudy and
research as practice with the assumption that “I already know” is not
intellectual failure but sectarian practice; objectively, it serves the enemy.
The self-imposed illusion is not a personal failing. It is the product of a system of ideological cultivation that has been operating for decades. It operates at the level of theory itself — not as ignorance, but as a framework that makes the wrong conclusion inevitable. Breaking requires three conditions: theoretical clarity, practical contradiction, and a comradely alternative. The sectarianism that dominates the contemporary left removes the third condition. That is why the fight against sectarianism is not a matter of being nicer to each other. It is a matter of making the dissolution of the illusion possible.
The refusal to objectively re-study,
research the existing conditions, and either produce a counterargument or make a
self-critique is not an intellectual failure. It has become a general
sectarian practice. And that practice, regardless of subjective intention,
objectively serves the enemy's ideological warfare. The person who rejects
facts in the name of Marxism is not defending Marxism; they are defending
the self-imposed illusion that has captured their Marxism. The form
is Marxist; the function is bourgeois.
This is where sectarianism and
rote, sloganized theory connect. They are not excesses of revolutionary
commitment. They are forms of ideological disarmament.
The anti-Stalinist narrative is
the original template, and its reproduction in the current left's
approach to actually existing socialism. The argument is not that this or that
socialist state, or anti-imperialist struggle, is without error. The argument
is about method — about how judgments are made, from what standpoint, and
whose interest. The method is the subject. The conclusions follow from
it. When the method is the label, the conclusion is predetermined. And
when the conclusion is predetermined, the left reproduces the
bourgeois conclusion regardless of its intentions.
The left that had internalized
the first application reproduced the second. Thus, using the same method, all the judgments made subjectively by label,
not based on objective concrete analysis .
The anti-Stalinist corpus is
massive, well-funded, institutionally embedded, and appears in thousands of
variations across every medium. The alternative corpus is fragmented, often
marginal, and requires archival access that most people do not have. This
asymmetry is not accidental. It is the material basis of the collective
illusion.
The method by which these
judgments are made is anti-dialectical, anti-Leninist, and structurally
identical to the method by which the anti-Stalin narrative was constructed.
The conclusion is secondary. The method is the target. Yet, all the
conclusions arrived at in one way or another merge into the Trotskyite
theories of “socialism cannot be built in a single country” and “anti-imperialist
wars are a thing of the past”.
The geography of the sectarian
narrative is not accidental. If we examine the sources of the loudest
denunciations of the socialist countries — the countries that won their
independence through bloody wars against imperialists and fascists — we find
that they come overwhelmingly from the countries that are either puppets of
imperialism, or possess racist-fascist state apparatuses, or both. These are
not countries whose own bourgeoisie is being combatted. They are countries
whose bourgeoisie is being served. And the denunciation is carried out under
the guise of "internationalism" — the very word that Lenin defined in
the opposite way:
"Socialists
in every country must expose their own government and their own bourgeoisie...
Lacking that, all talk of socialism, syndicalism, internationalism is a sheer
deception of the people... He is an internationalist who, in a really
internationalist way, combats his own bourgeoisie, his own social-chauvinists,
his own Kautskyites." — Lenin, Theses for an Appeal to the
International Socialist Committee and All Socialist Parties
By Lenin's standard, the
pontificator who denounces the communists of another country while never
confronting his own bourgeoisie is not an internationalist. He is the opposite.
And the geography of his practice confirms it: he denounces from safety, from
within the imperialist bloc, the very countries that fought the imperialists
and won.
The self-imposed illusion,
sectarianism, and labeling could be broken
through: 1) Theoretical clarity. The only way to see the illusion as an illusion is
through studying the theories and applying the dialectics of Marxism to the existing
conditions. This is where ML criticism and debate come to the forefront without
blind denunciation, but with an explanation of the mechanism and supportive theories within
the context. 2) Practical contradiction. Studying and researching the
subject and the objective reality that the illusion contradicts. This is the
"practical experience", which is not very difficult in our
technological era. The illusion will survive to a large degree, but depending
on the sincerity of the person, it will be loosened or even shattered. 3) This
only works at the individual level; politically, associate more with those who are
ready and willing to study, research, debate, and objectively decide. One has
to make a distinction between social and political relations. In the case of the
mixture of both , abandoning the
illusion would easily mean losing a social environment: friends, identity, and
social sense of belonging. In that case one
cannot abandon it, no matter how clear the facts are. The illusion breaks
only when there is a comradely alternative available: a group, a tradition,
a practice that says, "you can be wrong and still be one of us."
What follows from this analysis is
not despair but discipline: the restoration of the Leninist method,
the practice of criticism and self-criticism, and the comradely
struggle to dissolve the illusion rather than to expel the mistaken.
The chain holds together; the
fight against sectarianism is the fight to break the template.
