Editing Marxism–Leninism (section)

=== Left-wing criticism ===
{{See also|Anti-Stalinist left}}
Marxism–Leninism has been criticized by other [[socialists]], such as [[anarchists]], [[communists]], [[democratic socialists]], [[libertarian socialists]], [[Marxists]], and [[social democrats]]. [[Anti-Stalinist left]] and other [[left-wing]] critics see it as an example of state capitalism,<ref>{{cite book |last=Cliff |first=Tony |author-link=Tony Cliff |year=1996 |url=https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/cliff/state-capitalism-in-russia-cliff.pdf |title=State Capitalism in Russia |access-date=6 October 2020 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-date=17 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211017084649/https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/cliff/state-capitalism-in-russia-cliff.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Alami |first1=Ilias |last2=Dixon |first2=Adam D. |date=January 2020 |title=State Capitalism(s) Redux? Theories, Tensions, Controversies |journal=Competition & Change |volume=24 |issue=1 |pages=70–94 |doi=10.1177/1024529419881949 |s2cid=211422892 |issn=1024-5294 |doi-access=free}}</ref> and have referred to it as a "[[red fascism]]" contrary to left-wing politics.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Voline |year=1995 |url=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voline-red-fascism |title=Red Fascism |translator-last=Sharkey |translator-first=Paul |journal=Itinéraire |location=Paris |issue=13 |access-date=6 October 2020 |via=The Anarchist Library |archive-date=17 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211017084653/https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voline-red-fascism |url-status=live}} First published in the July 1934 edition of ''Ce qu'il faut dire'' (Brussels).</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Meyer |first=Gerald |date=Summer 2003 |title=Anarchism, Marxism and the Collapse of the Soviet Union |journal=Science & Society |volume=67 |issue=2 |pages=218–221 |doi=10.1521/siso.67.2.218.21187 |jstor=40404072 |issn=0036-8237}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Tamblyn |first=Nathan |date=April 2019 |title=The Common Ground of Law and Anarchism |journal=Liverpool Law Review |volume=40 |issue=1 |pages=65–78 |doi=10.1007/s10991-019-09223-1 |s2cid=155131683 |issn=1572-8625 |doi-access=free|hdl=10871/36939 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> [[Anarcho-communists]], [[Classical Marxism|classical]], [[Libertarian Marxism|libertarian]], and [[orthodox Marxists]], as well as [[Council communism|council]] and [[left communists]], are critical of Marxism–Leninism, particularly for what they see as its authoritarianism. Polish Marxist [[Rosa Luxemburg]] dismissed the Marxist–Leninist idea of a "vanguard", stating that a revolution could not be brought about by command. She predicted that once the Bolsheviks had banned multi-party democracy and internal dissent, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" would become the dictatorship of a faction, and then of an individual.{{sfn|Morgan|2015|p=658}} [[Trotskyists]] believe Marxism–Leninism leads to the establishment of a [[degenerated workers' state|degenerated]] or [[deformed workers' state]], where the capitalist elite have been replaced by an unaccountable bureaucratic elite and there is no true democracy or workers' control of industry.<ref>{{cite book |last=Taaffe |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Taaffe |date=October 1995 |title=The Rise of Militant |url=https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/militant/ |chapter=Preface, and Trotsky and the Collapse of Stalinism |publisher=Bertrams |quote=The Soviet bureaucracy and Western capitalism rested on mutually antagonistic social systems. |isbn=978-0-906582-47-3 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021217071256/https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/militant/ |archive-date=17 December 2002 |url-status=live}}</ref>

American Marxist [[Raya Dunayevskaya]] dismissed Marxism–Leninism as a type of [[state capitalism]] because of [[state ownership]] of the means of production,{{harvnb|Howard|King|2001|pp=110–126}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Lichtenstein |first=Nelson |author-link=Nelson Lichtenstein |date=2011 |title=American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania Press]] |pages=160–161}}</ref> and dismissed one-party rule as undemocratic.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ishay |first=Micheline |author-link=Micheline Ishay |date=2007 |title=The Human Rights Reader: Major Political Essays, Speeches, and Documents from Ancient Times to the Present |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |pages=245}}</ref> She further stated that it is neither [[Marxism]] nor [[Leninism]] but rather a composite ideology that Stalin used to expediently determine what is communism and what is not communism for the countries of the [[Eastern Bloc]].<ref name="sioc32">{{cite book |last=Todd |first=Allan |date=2012 |title=History for the IB Diploma: Communism in Crisis 1976–89 |pages=16}}</ref> Italian left communist [[Amadeo Bordiga]] dismissed Marxism–Leninism as political opportunism that preserved capitalism because of the claim that the exchange of commodities would occur under socialism. He believed that the use of [[popular front]] organisations by the Communist International and a political vanguard organised by [[organic centralism]] were more effective than a vanguard organised by democratic centralism.<ref>{{cite web |last=Bordiga |first=Amadeo |author-link=Amadeo Bordiga |year=1920|title=Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution |url=https://libcom.org/library/role_party_bordiga|publisher=Communist International |access-date=25 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190325173122/https://libcom.org/library/role_party_bordiga |archive-date=25 March 2019 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="dialougestalin">{{cite book |last=Bordiga |first=Amadeo |author-link=Amadeo Bordiga |date=1952 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1952/stalin.htm |title=Dialogue With Stalin |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180715104831/https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1952/stalin.htm |archive-date=15 July 2018 |url-status=live |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> Anarcho-communist [[Peter Kropotkin]] criticised Marxism–Leninism as centralising and authoritarian.{{sfn|Morgan|2015|p=658}}

Other leftists, including Marxist–Leninists, criticise it for its repressive state actions, while recognising certain advancements, such as [[egalitarian]] achievements and [[modernisation]] under those states.<ref name="Milne 2006">{{cite news |last=Milne |first=Seumas |author-link=Seumas Milne |date=6 February 2006 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,,1710891,00.html |title=Communism may be dead, but clearly not dead enough |work=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=18 April 2020 |quote=The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140811031005/https://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,,1710891,00.html |archive-date=11 August 2014 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Parenti|1997}} While [[Michael Parenti]] disagrees with blanket condemnations of former Marxist–Leninist countries, he condemned "Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society.", including "serious problems of labor productivity, industrialization, urbanization, bureaucracy, corruption, and alcoholism. There are production and distribution bottlenecks, plan failures, consumer scarcities, criminal abuses of power, suppression of dissidents, and expressions of alienation among some of the population." Parenti further argued that the economies of Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union suffered from "fatal distortions in their development" because of "embargo[s], invasion, devastating wars, and costly arms buildup; excessive bureaucratization and poor incentive systems; lack of administrative initiative and technological innovation; and a repressive political rule that allowed little critical expression and feedback while fostering stagnation and elitism."<ref>Parenti, Michael (1995). Against Empire. {{ISBN|0-87286-298-4}}.</ref><ref>Parenti, Michael (1997). Blackshirts and Reds. {{ISBN|0-87286-329-8}}.</ref><ref>Parenti, Michael (August 2007). Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader. City Lights Books, 403. {{ISBN|978-0-87286-482-5}}.</ref>

In Western Europe, communist parties, which were still committed to Marxism–Leninism through more democratic means, were part of the initial post-war governments, and even when the Cold War forced many of those countries to remove them from government, such as in Italy, they remained part of the liberal-democratic process. By the 1960s and 1970s, many Western Marxist–Leninists had criticised many of the actions of Communist states, distanced from them, and developed a [[democratic road to socialism]], which became known as [[Eurocommunism]].<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Kindersley |editor-first=Richard |date=2016 |orig-year=1981 |title=In Search of Eurocommunism |publisher=[[Macmillan Press|Palgrave Macmillan UK]] |isbn=978-1-349-16581-0}}</ref> This development was criticised by both non-Marxist–Leninists and other Marxist–Leninists in the East as amounting to social democracy.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Deutscher |first=Tamara |date=January–February 1983 |title=E. H. Carr—A Personal Memoir |url=http://newleftreview.org/I/137/tamara-deutscher-e-h-carr-a-personal-memoir |journal=New Left Review |volume=I |issue=137 |pages=78–86 |access-date=13 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224151819/https://newleftreview.org/issues/i137/articles/tamara-deutscher-e-h-carr-a-personal-memoir |archive-date=24 February 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> With the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]] and the [[Fall of Communism]], there was a split among Marxist–Leninists between those hardline Marxist–Leninists, sometimes referred to in the media as ''[[neo-Stalinist]]s'', which remained committed to orthodox Marxism–Leninism, and those democratic Marxist–Leninists which continued to work within the liberal-democratic process for a democratic road to socialism,<ref>{{cite book |last=Sargent |first=Lyman Tower |year=2008 |title=Contemporary Political Ideologies: A Comparative Analysis |url=https://archive.org/details/contemporarypoli00sarg_989 |url-access=limited |edition=14th |publisher=Wadsworth Publishing |page=[https://archive.org/details/contemporarypoli00sarg_989/page/n135 117] |isbn=978-0-495-56939-8 |quote=Because many communists now call themselves democratic socialists, it is sometimes difficult to know what a political label really means. As a result, social democratic has become a common new label for democratic socialist political parties.}}</ref> while many other ruling Marxist–Leninist parties became closer to democratic socialist and social democratic parties.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lamb |first=Peter |year=2015 |title=Historical Dictionary of Socialism |edition=3rd |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |page=415 |isbn=978-1-4422-5826-6 |quote=In the 1990s, following the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union, social democracy was adopted by some of the old communist parties. Hence, parties such as the Czech Social Democratic Party, the Bulgarian Social Democrats, the Estonian Social Democratic Party, and the Romanian Social Democratic Party, among others, achieved varying degrees of electoral success. Similar processes took place in Africa as the old communist parties were transformed into social democratic ones, even though they retained their traditional titles ... .}}</ref> Outside Communist states, reformed Marxist–Leninist communist parties have led or been part of left-leaning coalitions, including in the former [[Eastern Bloc]]. In Nepal, Marxist–Leninists ([[CPN UML]] and [[Nepal Communist Party]]) were part of the [[1st Nepalese Constituent Assembly]], which abolished the monarchy in 2008 and turned the country into a federal liberal-democratic republic, and have democratically shared power with [[Maoists]] ([[CPN Maoist]]), social democrats ([[Nepali Congress]]), and others as part of their [[People's Multiparty Democracy]].<ref name="Battharai 2018">{{cite news |last=Bhattarai |first=Kamal Dev |date=21 February 2018 |url=https://thediplomat.com/2018/02/the-rebirth-of-the-nepal-communist-party/ |title=The (Re)Birth of the Nepal Communist Party |work=The Diplomat |access-date=29 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210302222331/https://thediplomat.com/2018/02/the-rebirth-of-the-nepal-communist-party/ |archive-date=2 March 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>