Thread by @LunaOi_VN

In Vietnamese Marxist-Leninism, we have specific definitions for "revisionism" and "dogmatism." It comes down to what we refer to as the "private" and the "common."

(thread)

https://twitter.com/LunaOi_VN/status/1459647211524878336

The PRIVATE category includes specific things, phenomena, and ideas.

The COMMON includes aspects, factors, and relations that exist in many things in phenomena.

Private and common have a dialectical relationship with each other: the private contains the common (every apple will have some characteristics in common with other apples) and the common is made up of many private individuals. "Unity in contradiction/contradiction in unity."

DOGMATISM is what happens when we focus too much on the common and ignore the private.

Sally might see a few red apples and conclude: “all apples are red.” If Sally then sees a green apple, yet continues to insist that “all apples are red,” then Sally is engaging in dogmatism.

REVISIONISM is what happens when we ignore the common and see only the private. This leads to constant panicking!

Sally might see a red apple and think she knows all about apples, then sees a green apple and panics! "This can't be an apple! I have to start my analysis all over!"

We must avoid revisionism AND dogmatism by properly understanding the private, and the common, and the dialectical relationship they have with one another.

In "defining the working class" we have dogmatists who see class as a STATIC system and fail to see or account for ANY intra-proletarian development, secondary contradiction development, etc. (for example, class reductionists). This is dogmatic over-simplification.

We also have revisionists who spend way too much time focusing on individual scenarios and which specific individual jobs/positions count as working class and which don't, or fretting about outliers that don't have much impact on overall class dynamics - REVISIONISM!

We have to balance our understanding of the common while acknowledging private aspects that influence society. For example, highly-paid tech workers gentrifying poor black neighborhoods constitute private development which has become common enough to warrant our analysis...

We have to recognize, as accurately as possible, the COMMONALITIES - those rich tech workers sell their labor as a commodity to obtain money to buy commodities to live, they do not own the means of production, they are proletarian. But we also have to recognize the PRIVATE...

Rich gentrifying tech workers may have internally common characteristics of false consciousness (siding with capitalists because they feel secure and as if they benefit from capitalism), characteristics of class betrayal in displacing poor black workers, etc. etc.

Our consciousness and practice must reflect the reality, without becoming dogmatic and painting with too broad of a brush, and without becoming revisionist and focusing too much on extraneous details that don't help us to move the revolution forward.

And the best way to do this is to try to look at the world in terms of internal and external relationships, processes which are constantly developing, and seeking a historical and comprehensive perspective. These are the basic principles of dialectical materialism!

Soon I'll be putting out a fully annotated translation of the Vietnamese curriculum on dialectical materialism which explains all of this and more in detail. The ebook will be free! So follow me if you wanna know when that comes out!

Oh, in the meantime, you can watch my playlist on dialectical materialism which goes over the basics :D

youtube.com/playlist?list=…