Brief Theses on Leftist Deficiencies (Short Presentation of a Larger Article)

22 February 2026. Notice: this article will be a curt selected and reworked rendering of the contents in the article 'Observations on the Dangers of Vanguardism, Liberalism (Anti-Culture), and Anti-Philosophicalism Which the Four Nosts and Stroikas Seek to Rectify'. If one wishes to find a deeper explanation of any point, please visit and read the respective section in that article (here). There is a table of contents near the beginning of that article, after the three introductory notes, so it ought to be easy enough to find the equivalent section, whose section numbers are correlated exactly with this article's.

To quote from the article which this one is a reworking of, though it may seem rather hyperbolic:

'We are at the precipice of another Bolshevik-Menshevik split in the metaphorical Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of society. This time, the true Leninists are the Mensheviks, and the Woke Yezhovite left-liberals are the (post-Civil War) Bolsheviks, and already the atmosphere of terror is laying the groundwork for the machinery of great cancellation purges and a sociality of unquestionable dogma.'.

Why we must interrogate the problems contributing to the above crisis, I will illustrate with a quote thus quoted within the article, from Catalano's Commentary on Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason:

Just as pluralism and foundationalism are seen as philosophic extremes, Western capitalism and Soviet socialism are seen as cultural [socialitive] extremes. The success of capitalism's mystification calls for an unmasking... the tragedy of Soviet socialism, for its part, demands a questioning of the roots of socialism to see how this large-scale failure could have been possible'.

As I insinuated after the quotation, the failure was actually the Left (albeit including the CPSU), rather than Soviet socialism as such. That extremely informative experience may have in some or many ways been unsatisfactory, but it cannot be reduced to a 'large-scale failure', especially in light of the lessons drawn by comrades in the Communist Party of China from it.

The present theses are directed with a view towards establishing equally the need for and benefit of employing the Four Nosts and Stroikas. At the end of this article, another quotation from the master article, explaining each policy of nosts and stroikas, will be found. This final addition ought to provide some sufficient context to tie this article together; only bear in mind that the project of Reform, and thereafter Reform-Leninism, has a comparatively longer and deeper history than the piece can reasonably offer insight to.

There is one last thing I will add before we begin. the Republican Party and Democratic Party, and wider US society (outside New England, perhaps) are hostile, as fundamentally liberal creations— see Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed, and for an even deeper treatment, Thomas S Eliot's Notes Towards a Definition of Culture —communism is an inherently conservative philosophy of social organisation. It is a sacred order of actively rootful (not merely once-rooted!) Gemeinschaft/Gemænscip, a both equally cultivated and constructed republican, then ultimately democratic, dictatorship of workers, tillers, thinkers, singers, saga-wizards, writers, and crafters. The Four Nosts and Stroikas should likely seem a complete waste of time, or a ,,reactionary utopian'' venture, for these platforms have nay meaningless mercantile value, they are as meaningful as the number of the roots of the world and the bonds of man.

I. Two Halves of the Impasse

One half of comrades can nay longer find their way out of dogma, or nay longer see a world outside of it; and on the other hand, half of the comrades have eschewed the need for philosophy and theory, for reading per se, as in doing the reading of serious material as opposed to polemical or intellectually inconsequential fluff. In so adopting the liberal world-view, these comrades are incapable of formulating a truly Marxist dogma to being with. Neither situation is that of a living, developing, dialectical ideology.

As the other theses will clarify, what this quotation (from the master article) means is that both conservatives and communists are either too dogmatic, or have become so reliant on buying the sludge of melting-pot liberalism that they are not capable of making it to the very first step leading to the formalisation or recognised promulgation of dogma, that being possessing identifiable ideas and mores, to say nothing of adopting or developing philosophy and theory into a coherent, operative ideology. Liberalism, its universalist mould which it presses its sludge into, has culturally and intellectually stunted these masses through a programme of universalising homogenisation and a preference therefore of passive complacence, effectively compliance, a perverse, befattened consent of the governed. Manufactured sociality, manufactured politic, come ultimately from a manufactured mind, or is it truly the inverse? We leave it to others for deliberation. Let us start by quoting the master article.

II. Hegel, Expressly Brief

'This problem goes beyond my disagreement with the Hegelians. To recapitulate briefly, I agree with many Marxist theorists that Hegel is not as apparently tightly tied to Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Marxism as is dogmatically presupposed, and that Hegelianism inspires hyper-dogmatic, quasi-religious (Hermetic, Gnostic, or simply fundamentalistic) zealots, which are poor material for shaping into proper Marxist cadres. But we must unite, comrades'.

As may be known, I have a tepid if still tense view of Hegel and many latter day Hegelians. I generally prefer the theory of Feuerbach, the Feuerbachians Marx and Engels, Althusser, and Colletti. All these thinkers I have found informatively superior to the Hegel I have read. Regardless, this matter is not important for the present article, so that is all I will say of it. The only import is that such a small issue not divide us at a fragile time.

III. Culture as a Real Force

To quote from the master article first. 'One of the most conservative aspects of Marxism, which makes it positively incompatible with liberal burgher individualistic hedonism, is the requirement of a certain level of high culture which has become sufficiently cultivated and wide-spread that it influences common politic, that a successful and not malformed transition to socialism is developed'.

To interrupt our quotation of the master article for a moment, I should like to point out one important, conservative formulation of this high cultural requirement which goes thus: nay investigation; nay right to speak. Further that: 'unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Is that not too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Speaking of nonsense solves nay problems'. Nay wiser a comrade than Mao Tse-Tung himself advised this, yet too few have apparently heeded learning it. Of course, this kind of studious exegesis is held to be a virtue in the conservative arts, whereas anti-ideological deconstruction and narcissistic dogmatism (see Christopher Lasch) are the predominant models of enquiry triumphed by arrogant liberal individualism. Ultimately, these two models result in cultural degeneracy and anti-social alienation.

Returning to quoting the master article.

'When high culture reigns, self-governance and sophisticated, understanding, genuine politic predominates. When degenerate anti-culture asserts: tyranny, terror, and tempre-tantrums are to be expected from the political, and eventually all arenas. One may see this in the history of the Russian Marxist movement. As Tsarism became more liberal and culturally degenerate, culminating in the vulgar Provisional Government of February 1917, the Party (Russian Social Democratic Labour Party) went from internal tendencies or even schools; to amicable, dialoguing, and flexible external tendencies; to mutually exclusive rivaling tendencies (factions); to hostile opposing splinter parties; to hostile opposing faction in each splinter party; then to faction bans and inter-socialist imprisonments and reprisals; to outright terror purges (not to be conflated with normal administrative purges) and yezhovshchina amongst the factions of one sole tendency in a the single splinter party remaining— in the titular Yezhovshchina.

I may not quote any more from this section of the master article, due to concern for length. Simply let me add that I am aware that Americans either do not understand or are resistant to the concepts of high culture and cultural degeneracy having an actual, quite palpable impact upon other areas in life. Their lives, so shaped by hedonism, individualism, burgher cosmopolitanism, and alienated disconnection, instead of the feudal opposites to these phenomena, which formed modern Europe, have made such a suggestion nearly incomprehensible as to what it fundamentally means. Alack, it took me quite some time to help an intimate organisation of Americans finally understand this, which I do not have here to spare in this article.

IV. On Lenin's 'Party of the New Type': Vanguardism

'We need to face the facts Reform has presented to us in Disclosnost (Transparency/Attentiveness), and bravely meet them with Politstroika (Political Upstanding). Comrade Lenin, though of course a comrade of well-deserved prestige arising from his revolutionary profundity, bestowed to the Left a troublesome organisational legacy, much how I believe Comrade Marx had with the ,,science'' of Hegelian dogmatism.

What, then, is vanguardism? Comrade Lenin's conception of the "party of a new type" may be summarised as a highly centralised party of professional revolutionaries and a dogmatic reliance on underground, secretive, sectarian manners of party discussion and operation'.

Of all the sections in the master article, this one on vanguardism reflects the most (out)dated understanding. It was early in Reform, informed and instigated by the failures of American practises of vanguardism and arrogant Hegelian leadership within them. Reform hit vanguardism both hard and fast, perhaps too much so for a reasoned examination of the concept, especially outside the debauched American malpractise of it. As Comrade Mao said also, 'in approaching a problem a Marxist ought to see the whole as well as the parts. A frog in a well says, "the sky is nay bigger than the mouth of the well". That is untrue, for the sky is not just the size of the mouth of the well'.

Does this mean that the sky is without celestial blemishes, or that compounds drifting through it can never be poisonous? Of course not, not in the slightest. Retracting some erroneous hypotheses in favour of a superior focus from the facts is called science, whence the discovery of scientific socialism. Vanguardism, like every real, material structure has weaknesses, deficiencies, difficulties, and may develop a malformed conception or practise from time to time. The point first raised ought to be whether vanguardism can be reformed, or whether the primary problems under observation which it is experiencing are emanating from non-essential, particular aspects. Generally, total replacement is a last resort. With Reform now being a year old, such questions and considerations have become much sharper in their clarity.

V. Oppose Reading

I may quote the master article only so briefly here. 'Then, there is the reading crisis in the United States, where the DNC and RNC, with their affiliated degenerate gangs, have become the only ,,socially acceptable'' sources of political education in the natural, cultivated environment, what we might call the polity of the polis. These are also heavily controlled by the various capitalist satrapies, ,,civil society'' being a right mockery of the superior social atmosphere which came before. A paltry concession, it is. It is this evil institution of many arms and faces which dictates the reading and learning of Marxism, too, and more damagingly, how it read and learnt, and what new developments are prioritised in the discourse (see Gabriel Rockhill). It is another example of the growing shadow of liberal vanguardism and Woke Yezhovism'.

As I said, I may not quote any thing else in this section. So let me speak to just two more points. Firstly, in relation to the last problem in the above quotation, the Left needs a Bolshevik Option. Not more secretive underground organising, but the organisation of an internal, autonomous societial project separate from that of the decaying liberal civil society at large. Some say communal projects do not work; all I will suggest is that you never know when a communist monastery may become the final place of refuge (or a Maoist guerrilla base, if one should but take exception to the characterised portrayal).

Secondly, do not twist Comrade Mao's Oppose Book Worship into a denunciation of all reading. Actually read the book, even the first paragraph (quoted from earlier in this article). Whilst reading is not the sole method of investigation, I grant, any astute comrade who has done some investigation has likely put it in a book or journal, or perhaps a newspaper in fact, as is his duty to do so. That means you are trying to rebuild the wheel-barrow out of misplaced anti-intellectual arrogance or laziness, when you could have been advancing or rebutting, either serving to further sharpen this comrade's findings, only should you have bothered to read of them. If one does not remain intellectually connected to fellow tendencies, then there is also the danger of mutual isolation, hostility, and ultiamtely terror. Americans do not seem to understand this atomic danger, which is just one more example of how avoiding culture may lead to death— in the plural.

VI. Policies Proposed

Finally, I will only quote the single-paragraph summaries for Gladsnost, Politstroika, Disclosnost, Theorestroika, and the combined explanation of Renewed Socialist Legality and New Socialist Constitutional Law. None of the other policies' explanations will be included, nor the justifications which follow. Realistically, nearly the entirety of the master article's final section is being excluded, such as the lay-out for a hypothetical intra-Leftist parliamentary/coalition structure, the Union Council of Communist and Comrades' Parties.

'Gladsnost (Cordialness) is meant to restore an atmosphere of respectful comradery across all ideologies and tendencies on the Left. This does not include either wing of liberalism, of course, but does indeed cover our fellow social democratic, conservative socialist, and anarchist comrades. The policy of Gladsnost also deals with rehabilitating past comrades and de-anathemising their works and ideas (Comrehabin: Comradely Rehabilitation Initiative). Another programme is the planned institution of Friendship Kommissars (Friendkomms) to maintain friendships on the Left by working out troubles and such.

Politstroika (Political Upstanding) is a policy of not being afraid to praise and promote ustanding comrades, and not being afraid to upstand dogmatic or insufficient/incompetent structures, leaders, policies, and theories.

Disclosnost (Disclosure/Attentiveness/Discretion) is a policy about transparency, pluralism, and ensuring all comrades know or can easily figure out what is going on. One of the most important programmes of this policy is Diskommizdat (Dissident Communist Publishing) whereby comrades have a duty to publish pertinent, necessary material which is being censored or is otherwise unavailable to the party/organisation membership which such information should directly affect (in decision-making or likely-resultant disciplinary action, videre licet corruption), or material of historical/archival significance at risk of loss. Wiki-Leaks was a template for Diskommizdat. There are currently projects under-way in this policy, but, ironically, this information may not be disclosed at this time.

Theorestroika (Theoretical Restructuring) is a wider miscellaneous policy for the philosophical, cultural, theoretical, and economic debates which are going on around the Left, such as the hegel debate, the Bukharin/Deng versus Stalin/Mao economic and political debates, and the debates on party structure which have only in one aspect been discussed in this article.

Renewed Socialist Legality and New Socialist Constitutional Law are policies which are aimed at constructing a rigourous socialist legal theory and tradition of constitutional law, to both analyse liberal burgher law and its state, and to more smoothly enable the transition to and practise of socialism. The policies seek to encourage the study and discussion of law and constitutions, whether liberal or socialist, which is an area of study supremely neglected on the Left.'.

VII. Request to the Reader

We implore the inquisitive reader to look over the master article. We had multiple test-readers provide feed-back on the master article, to ensure that it was more or less accessible. Howbeit, the United States is entering imperial decline, a prime catalyst for cultural and of that especially intellectual degeneracy, historically (called 'dark ages' for this reason). Thus, we have become fearful that just the length of the article, nay matter how accessible, will make it labelled a reactionary piece of ,,book-keeper'' propaganda, a new anti-intellectual variant of the 'gate-keeper' concept.

Please, dear reader, go to the master article for a fuller understanding. Do not allow cultural collapse to frighten you away from engaging in the deeper questions. If you do allow it to, then Yezhov has already executed you in mind, and his total victory is but a matter of time. Be a better, more dutiful comrade, and seek truth from facts here:

https://philosophersinterior.wixsite.com/thoughtsofacomrade/post/summarising-the-dangers-of-vanguardism-liberalism-and-anti-philosophicalism-which-the-four-nosts-a