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No true Scotsman, capitalist edition
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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Communism is not communalism, but it is heavily based on the Commune as a structure (I mean, Marx was literally drawing on the Paris Commune in formulating it) and means of governing by consensus of the proletariat.
Too many communists make a "survival of the fittest"-like mistake when trying to understand DoTP as Marx intended it, which was a descriptive state where the actions of the Proletariat as a body signify their collective will, and only conceptualize it as Lenin bastardized it, which was as a prescriptive mandate for authority by the State.
The Paris Commune, in Marx's analysis, was both progressive and yet a failure for not smashing the former state apparatus and failing to establish proletarian state power. The idea of having a bunch of horizontalist, indepentent but interconnected cells is not a Marxist notion, but instead closer to anarchism. Lenin did not bastardize the DotP, he clarified Marx's intentions against the bastardization by the second international.
Marx never intended there to be a vanguard party, and Engels literally said, "Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat". The universal suffrage that Marx explicitly did credit to the Commune, that made the Commune closest to real statelessness and classlessness, was totally abolished by Lenin (I think he actually called it "bourgeoise fetishism" in one critique).
Marx also never defined DotP in terms of violence, it was purely about class rule by the proletariat over the bourgeoise, as where Lenin explicitly defined it as requiring violent suppression of the bourgeoise by the proletariat. Marx always left open peaceful transitions to socialist rule, whereas Lenin explicitly ruled that out, and their definitions of DotP are at their core unaligned because of that. DotP was, to Marx, what happened as the state began to dissolve towards actual stateless Communism. To Lenin, it was (as I said before) a mandate to state power for the party (insert "stop resisting, you're being liberated" meme).
Whether you think Lenin was justified given his circumstances, a minority class of 'party-conscious' executives "leading" the proletariat while also suppressing and later banning rival socialist parties and party factions, is absolutely not what Marx intended DotP to look like.
Lenin also asserted the inability of the proletariat to form class consciousness in ways that, to me as a non-Leninist look like a validation of Trotsky's early criticisms (and obviously Trotsky was right in the end about 'substitutionism', and about Stalin). Lenin couldn't openly disparage proletariat rule for obvious reasons, but he did attempt to draw heavy distinctions between the proletariat and revolutionary leaders themselves, such as asserting that the proletariat would only achieve "trade-union consciousness" without the party (leaders) there to essentially save them from themselves.
It's funny you explicitly contrast Marxism against anarchism, because that feels like the colloquial meaning of anarchism? Otherwise, you're essentially ruling out the eventual dissolution of State and Class, which is a form of anarchism.
Marx was a member of what can be understood as a vanguard party, the International Working Men's Association. Marx was not against vanguard parties. The Paris Commune was a dictatorship of the proletariat, but you're fixating on the key problems with it that prevented it from being a successful dictatorship of the proletariat, which the Bolsheviks succeeded in establishing.
Lenin's point on how, without forming broad working class organizations, sponteniety will at most result in the Trade Union consciousness, is correct. It isn't that the proletariat could not form class consciousness in general, but that without an all-encompassing organization, these will always be limited to the extent that the proletariat is confined to local struggle. Having the most politically advanced among the proletariat organize in a political party is the same as how Marx engaged in political practice.
Lenin did not draw a distinction between the proletariat and the political party. Lenin did the opposite, stating that the party is of the proletariat. "Intellectuals" are not a class, they are a subsection of every class, and in organizing in a political party they serve as proletarian "intellectuals." I'm using air quotes because the term "intellectual" is a social role, not a measure of intelligence, you can be a very stupid intellectual or a very smart non-intellectual.
As for Trotsky/Stalin, this is wrong. Trotsky became a traitor, and was wrong about distrusting the peasantry. Stalin was more correct than Trotsky, and though I would charitably say that their big schism was an avoidable tragedy, Stalin was the one in the right on that fight. That's why he was elected, and supported by the people.
As for Marxism vs. Anarchism, the final end result of each is entirely different. Marxism posits full collectivization across the entire global economy, which represents a true end to class distinctions globally. Anarchism instead goes for full horizontalism, which results in petty bourgeois worker-cooperative style cells. Marxism and Anarchism understand class and the state differently, so what is stateless and classless for a Marxist has a state and class for anarchists, and vice versa.