Musings on Gemeanship, Dogmatism, Education (Plus Vanguardism and Liberalism)

11 March 2026.

Comrades, chronicling the history of Thoughts of a Comrade for its five-year anniversary, along with reading the timeless wisdom of Comrade Mao and Comrade Kalinin, has given me the inspiration to compose another musings article. These ones require a certain state of mind to write, I have found.

The topics will be four: gemeanship, dogmatism, political education, and the Three Toos, each topic being somewhat connected to the next.

What sets us, as a political movement and social entity, from the cosmopolitan democrat? Well, what is such an ideology? Cosmopolitan democracy is the ideology of the artificial, or 'consumer' community. Cosmopolitan democrats are thus liberal, but not democratic in the sense of serving and supporting the Folk, far less the Workfolk, who impede the cosmopolitan democrat's imposition of socialitive-, or values-democracy. The ability to mix and match ways and mores, so to speak: that is the liberal ,,democracy'' championed by the cosmopolitan democrat. It is a very confused philosophy, an ahistorical (as in an intellectual and social genealogy's continuity) division of the immortal whole through time.

This phenomenon— I feel the term ideology to not be the proper category —has been erroneously criticised with a variety of terms. Those exemplifying it have been granted the titles of savant, dilettante, seeker, and most famously within our tradition, champagne socialist. As any multitude of identifiers, these are all one-sided, pointing to but one trait or another of the cosmopolitan democrat in stereotype.

If there is an artificial community, then there must be an opposite or challenge to this, and indeed there is. Gemeanship, the (Modern-ised) English cognate to Comrade Marx's and Comrade Engels' preferred term for communist social organisation, Gemeinschaft, is that opposite. Gemeanship is not strictly a synonym for community, for community is usually assumed to be some urban or sub-urban arrangement of citizens, born from social contracts and living proximity. This is a conception of cosmopolitan democracy, of pluralism in everything, convened in a social organisation the few times it is absolutely unavoidable to.

But then, what is this opposition in method, what is gemeanship? Gemeanship, to give the immediate definition, is a non-pluralist dictatorship of self-sustained being, or 'focus', in a certain sense. For instance, the till-town, unlike the urban steads above, is a dictatorship of the Workfolk, the essential strata of craftsmen and tillermen. Once a till-town transfigures into a burgh-town, the middling form betwixt the till-town and the cosmopolitan urban stead arises, eventually turning into outright cities. Sub-urbanity is a late process of its own, which we do not need to detail here. Where there is a burgh-town, there will be the burgher class, and where there is the burgher class (and the smallburghers), there will be its ideology, liberal capitalism and cosmopolitan democracy.

However, there is also the soulful gemeanship, the dictatorship of purpose. The soulful gemeanship is not just non-pluralist, it is positively anti-pluralist. Monasteries under differing 'internal denominations' (Franciscan, Benedictine, et cetera) are a good example of this dogmatic, stringent, yet intellectual and historical-preservationist orthodoxy, as are most vanguard parties once they have gone through the destabilising experience of a civil war or hostile foreign invasion. Counter-revolution itself seems to increase dogmatism, a natural condition of revolutionary anxiety? In contrast to the above form of gemeanship, this form is much more resilient against abolition through developing material conditions. During the French Revolution, to shew, the till-towns generally submitted to burgher rule in Paris, but the monasteries and churches had to be violently expropriated to the cause of cosmopolitan pluralism.

As we have stated in other places, the cosmopolitan democrat does not even have the intellectual capacity, nor the respect for such conservative elements as history, tradition, and exegesis, to begin formulating the rudiments of a dogma. Hence so, cosmopolitan democrats, whilst certainly capable of staples such as ideological education and repression, are not at all able to focus these tools in the articulation of a dogmatic world-view— a groundrising for sustaining itself, as such, as organic, expanding ideology.

Holding dogmatism to be exclusively a negative and unhelpful system of knowledge is to view it incorrectly from one side. The side of the reformer can be noble, yet in many cases, the dogmatists are rather in the right. For dogmatism is the preservation of a deep learning through orthodoxy. This is why most serious, studious reformers tend to be prior dogmatists, who have learned this orthodoxy, including its sacred history and traditions. The dogmatists are the sage wizards that preserve teaching and history, thus are they to be accredited some respect and say in the discourse of reform.

Why does the cosmopolitan democrat not qualify for such respect and right to speak? It is because the cosmopolitan democrat is missing the fundamental methods of real, rather than unrooted investigation. Anyone may open a library encyclopædia, as the urban professionals do, and whilst that impetus to educate oneself against an otherwise impoverished environment's corrupted institutions may be commendable, it cannot be the basis upon which one is entitled to seriously enter a discourse.

This is not to suggest that the right to discussion generally ought to be barred, for a cosmopolitan democrat is very much able to make the sudden qualitative leap into a dialectically grounded and traditioned intellectual in a given area of passion, if he only ends up studying it deeply enough. Indeed, this has been the very source of many a fine cadre in every century. This natural development makes many good intellectuals and masters, just as dogmatists make many good reformers. Comrade Mao famously said that peasants are intellectual advantaged in being blank papers, to wit:

'On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted'.

—Quotations from Mao; Socialism and Communism; page 36

It might similarly be applied in that cosmopolitan democrats are rootless papers, and orthodox dogmatists are bound tomes. One may lead to the other in time, and each still serves some purpose respectively. We shall see, at any rate.

We have gone through two problems whose solutions are pre-requisites for true learning, leading to the question of how to attain such a form of education. I have a potential thesis to which I have been building, though I am as yet unsure of its accuracy.

Firstly, ought the cosmopolitan democrats to be allowed in serious discourses or communist parties? I should suggest only as fellow-traveller observers, with limited rights of participation in either. Any thing more should risk an up-rooting of these serious endeavours, and any thing less should preclude the possibility for these men's growth out of their cosmopolitan democratic contradictions, to leave behind their erroneous outlook as members of the professional intellectual managerial patrons (PIMPs) of burgher ideology, and the society which enforces it, now joining the ranks of the gemeanship intelligentsia.

And what of the initial discussion on gemeanship? How does this alternative to artificial urban community fit into this question of education? Simply thus: in order to develop (we can not 'create') an organic, practical intelligentsia of the Folk and its revolutionary organisations, the cosmopolitan democrats must not only learn, truly learn, from the dogmatic wizards and masters, but learn within the context of a material or soulful gemeanship. It does not matter which it is at this very early stage, though it must inevitably become the latter, or it will face extinction via transition due to material conditions as previously outlined.

I suspect that all this is not news to our Asian comrades. This may be such common knowledge that the present proposition seems like an incompetent public plagiarism, a ridiculous repackaging of erstwhile wisdom. Indeed, the West has a unique problem in relation to the debasing of the natural, organic gemeanship intelligentsia, replaced or imprisoned as it is was by soulless cosmopolitan bureaucratic machinery-systems. A monster with a face of pipes and cogs stares down blankly at us from a haughty height. Shall it reign over us?

How else might we do battle against this stultus machine? It is not enough to publish articles. This by itself merely helps to increase the potential rate and yield of learning, but is not learning, by definition. As Comrade Kalinin and countless others have rightly advised, one must read theory and history to understand a single thing which is transpiring. But more than this, one must, like the dogmatic masters, learn deeply in whatever tradition. Only when anchored by the study of a tradition may one view an accurate assessment of the landscape. Otherwise, one shall follow the cosmopolitan democrat down-stream into the melting-pot, having a confused, aimless pluralism to make farcical sense of. Always have a purpose; always have a plan; always have a starting place.

Do not rush into reform or into debate. Feeble minds believe themselves well fancy enough to pontificate upon any matter. It is not so, comrades. What is the point of speaking politically if one must rely on propaganda (the news of others) to have any hope of producing the shallowest conclusion? There is of course 'nay investigation, nay right to speak', but there is also nay reason to. Comrades, I mean this with compassion, if you have not read theory of late, you have not something new to add. There are exceptions, but this is a rule of good measure.

So these musing on gemeanship and education come to a close.

Secondary Musings on Vanguardism, Liberalism,

Renewed Socialist Legality, and the Three Toos.

My dear comrades, please accept my apology for this extension. In collective leadership, it has been requested that I share something about the topics of this addendum. I will append the Three Toos to the end of it, as I think it makes a good, short finale. Though I did not plan anything for this, naturally, I will anywise try to bridge these two musings into a unified coherent discussion.

The first two matters, vanguardism and liberalism, map easily enough onto the prior musings. Cosmopolitan democrats favour liberalism, a voluntary, contractual, individual method of governance. Dogmatists usually favour organisational forms closer to vanguardism (depending on particular tendency)— a duty-affirming, disciplined, and hierarchical method. Dogmatists diverge a bit more on the method of governance, post-revolution.

This leaves the queer and disparate category of reformers to consider. As we have previously stated, the best reformers tend to have been dogmatists, having learned in their traditions and histories deeply, and therefore being able to proffer responsible, sensible reforms. Cosmopolitan democrats, on the other hand, tend to degenerate into cynicism, deconstructionism, aloof intellectualism, or populism. The latter two of these outlooks are not the worst thing, indeed they may be even lead to a gross bit of good during times of general political decay. Howbeit, these are not invulnerable substitutes for qualitatively superior methods; aloof intellectualism and populism seem to be a rootless imitation of the process of dogmatic orthodoxy and the reformers spawned therefrom. That is to say, whilst these latter two approaches are certainly much better than the former two, being cynicism and deconstructionism, they still serve as inferior replicas for the dogmatic system of learning, cobbled desperately together in a prolonged period of crisis.

Let us now shift completely towards vanguardism and liberalism. Thoughts of a Comrade is yet under-going deep discussions regarding every facet of vanguardism in Reform-Leninism. Early in Reform, Comrade Lenin's postulation of this 'party of the new type', the vanguard party, was criticised as erroneous. Throughout the continuing studies and discussions in Reform, however, this criticism has been found incorrect, on account of being insufficiently precise in identifying the quantitative source of certain excesses, thus it has been duly amended.

For the pre-revolutionary period, TOAC affirms the necessity of the vanguard party, as both the battering ram and the aristocracy of the Workfolk. To forgo a vanguard institution of some form is to admit defeat in the face of organised, cohesive ethnic and religious fanatics, of which fascism is only a single form amongst many actively growing kinds. It is Vanguardism or Barbarism, sadly. Citizens' clubs, trade guilds (unions being cosmopolitan imitations) and other manners of deeply rooted though less disciplined organisations can indeed, must indeed, exist along-side a vanguard institution, but ever with the understanding that, come the revolution, these shall rally to the Vanguard Party of the Workfolk, and obey its every order as one does the General-Staff's.

Once the revolution, and any civil war and/or foreign invasion following it, is complete, current Reform-Leninist theory holds that the vanguard party of the Workfolk ought to begin transitioning into the ruling party of the Folk and its gemeanship, otherwise known as 'Bureaucratic Socialism under Renewed Socialist Legality'. Neither the orthodox dogmatists nor the cosmopolitan democrats much like this formulation, but the best of Reform also starts out little-supported. One must climb mountains in opposition to have the full view, as it were.

This leads us naturally to Renewed Socialist Legality, one of the main policies of Reform-Leninism (along with New Socialist Constitutional Law and the Four Nosts and Stroikas). Renewed Socialist Legality, besides of course the Four Nosts and Stroikas, was created to resolve the sources of the aforementioned excesses and errors which have at times heavily impeded the proper functioning of the party. It is important to note that this policy, as all policies of Reform, is not for liberals or cosmopolitan democrats, but for comrades. It is a policy of organising the internal life of the party and movement. There is not time to go into this policy now.

Renewed Socialist Legality is not liberalism, and does not seek it. Liberalism makes anti-cultural degeneracy a central, unnegotiable tenet, whereas Renewed Socialist Legality is based on a legal culture, a comrade culture, united gemeanship, and dutiful obligations— in a word, capital-c Culture per se Culture, that which cosmopolitans fear most. This, like Reform as a whole, is an internal matter of our ideology and our gemeanship of comrades.

Speaking on investigations regarding vanguardism, there are a few things to say. Firstly, Western Marxists of all tendencies and views have much to learn from the Chinese experience. Whether one agrees with their choices or not, to ignore this rich experience by covering them with a blanket is to make blind arrogance one's party line. Comrades with a proper view will clearly study the history, efforts, and discoveries of our Chinese comrades, which will especially help in bringing us to modern times, as far as the theory of the party is concerned. Only once this has been achieved can the question of formulating Socialism with New English Sensibilities be raised. Until then, we are submerged by the Three Toos in the West: we and our theories and policies are too young, too simple, and too naive to really construct the groundwork of formulating party-building.

The second point, I will make briefly, and then end with a short description of the Three Toos. We must not be contented to read theory once, or even twice, on but one matter, and then proclaim ourselves masters, or in the same way, master theory only to call ourselves masters of practise. What am I saying, comrades? Do not be a specialised or a splattered cosmopolitan; be more like the conservative masters of ald, those who studied in the conservative arts, and then applied them to life. That is the communist method of learning also, only fully-realised, perfected.

This is why we have formulated the Three Toos. Let us expand our understanding of this slgan, ere we end.

What does it mean to 'be not of the Three Toos: not too young, not too simple, not too naive'? There is a gross deal of wisdom truncated in this slogan borrowed from Comrade Jiang Zemin. A deeper treating will be explicated in its own article. The plain meaning, then.

Too Young. This phrase has two meanings, that of being too inexperienced in a matter, and judging any policy whilst it is still in its infancy. Many good policies are pre-maturely terminated as failures, and are then catastrophically replaced by an ultra-policy which goes much too far in the desired direction, over-shooting the target into error.

Too Simple. This phrase refers either to dogmatic application or a simpleton's certainty, both being similar in result. Life, thought, and even the material conditions are complex, which dialectic itself is an affirmative recognition of. Propaganda and education benefit from simplicity, but policy, theory, and culture suffer detriment for it. The latter are not simple concerns. Much damage can be done by a foolish simpleton in these domains.

Too Naive. Unlike the above phrase, this phrase relates to motive, or intent, rather than the method by which it is pursued. Some comrades are swept up in idealist theatrics, forgetting that sharing ideas is the definition of propaganda (selling ideas is called 'marketing', a vulgar perversion), and that behind every idea's formation must necessarily be the scaffolding of an operative ideology, a world-view which facilitates the idea's forming. One must always have a care for this. The liberals, at the end of it (History, or what have you) do not want what we want, nor for the same reasons we want it so.

Allow me to complete this article with an extended quote from our All-Union Alderman, Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin:

When I read the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course, I was filled with admiration for its profundity of content, precision of thought, and simplicity of exposition, but I can not repeat it from memory, for I never memorised it. It is not, however, only a matter of memorising; the main thing is understanding.

The Marxist-Leninist theory is not a symbol of faith, not a collection of dogmas, but a guide to action. When they talk about mastering Marxism-Leninism, some men say: 'it is a profound piece of work', 'very profound', et cetera. It must be understood, however, that the main thing in Marxism-Leninism is not the letter, but the substance, the revolutionary spirit.

What do we mean when we say 'to master Marxism-Leninism in its entirety'? How are we to understand this? Are we to take it to mean imbibing all the wisdom of Marxism-Leninism by memorising ready-made conclusions and formulæ? Or are we to understand it as meaning to master the essence of Marxism-Leninism and to be able to apply this theory as a guide to action in life, in our social, political, and personal life? The second interpretation is the truer, more correct, and important one, for it is the basic feature of Marxism-Leninism. And when we talk about 'mastering Marxism-Leninism', we mean learning to regard it dynamically.

— Comrade Kalinin; On Communist Education; pages 60-61

The cosmopolitan democrat petulantly refuses to heed this advice. I hope this article has helped you to do so, comrades. Workfolks of all Lands, UNITE!