If you haven’t heard, the ‘Reddit famous’ left-com blogger Eden Sauvage has departed ways with left-communism and communization (I’m not quite sure which tendency he was) to reunite with his Marxist-Leninist path. After being criticized on the subreddit r/leftcommunism by u/dr_marx, Sauvage took some downtime, closed his left-com blog, and opened up his new ML blog, titled Storm the Heavens: Marxist-Leninist Reflections. To announce his new blog, he made a ‘self-crit’ post ‘What is the Difference Between Idealist Criticism and Materialist Criticism?’. I decided to check it out myself and write down my reaction to it.

He opens with calling ultra-leftism, left-communism, communization—all these varying currents—‘ultra-Trotskyism,’ because, he says, they are ‘further left than Trotskyism.’ I personally don’t understand the need for condemning certain opportunisms or deviations as ‘left’ or ‘right,’ because that implies Marxism and communism are simply on a scale with liberalism and fascism, as if these are matters of a one-dimensional slider or a two-dimensional slider in the case of the famous political compasses. As such, the placement of left-communism, communization, etc. as to the left of Trotskyism (and so little to the left of it that it can be labeled ultra-Trotskyism) is ridiculous, even on a historical basis. The Italian and German-Dutch criticisms of the Bolsheviks, the October Revolution, and the 3rd International don’t result from a break within Trotskyism. Regardless, let’s continue.

Sauvage resorts to the unoriginal and lazy claim that ‘left-coms criticize from the sidelines and do nothing in return.’ This is, he calls, idealist criticism, in contrast to his and MLs’ materialist criticism that works within the movement, as his saying goes. We’ll get into this later.

For now, he proceeds to give a number of paragraphs (that is, 25 to 33 percent of his essay) on comparing revolution to a group of scientists trying to get a rocket to the moon. The analogy goes: MLs are the scientists, ultra-Trotskyists are the pseudoscientists. The rockets may get, say, halfway there. MLs will study the rocket’s engineering, the programming, the actual trajectory, the moon’s location in its orbit, whatever. The pseudoscientists will, instead, say “Fuck the rockets! We’ve got a 100% guaranteed rocket blueprint right here. This baby will take off at exactly 90 degrees!” The scientists ask the pseudos to launch it, to which the pseudos reply, “Of course not. We must keep our rocket theoretically pure and bulletproof. Don’t you know that trying a launch with this rocket will destroy this purity?” The moral of Sauvage’s brilliant analogy (an analogy to which his college-money is unfortunately going towards) is that MLs are the true scientists for working with the actual results, having the ganas to attempt launching rockets, whereas ultra-Trotskyists sit on the sidelines and produce shit.

This is embarrassing on many grounds. Firstly, and most importantly, the analogy only works if the reader takes for granted that the USSR/PRC/Cuba et. al. were ‘partially successful rockets.’ If Sauvage was intending this essay for his critics, he simply wasted a third of his time to convince us on this baseless analogy. Secondly, rockets don’t even get to the moon at a 90-degree angle. Their trajectory is at an angle to get into the earth’s orbit. But that’s, of course, not the meat of the matter. The meat of the matter is that the idealism that Sauvage condemns left-coms with is the exact idealism he is guilty of.

The proletarian revolution is not a rocket with which the communists “build to get to communism”, as this poor analogy goes. Neither is the proletarian revolution the command of a party (cf. Engels’ The Principles of Communism sec. 16 and Marx’s Conspectus of Bakunin’s ‘Statism and Anarchy’) with which the party can then claim responsibility for, such as the common phrasing of ‘Marxist-Leninist or anarchist revolutions’ which Sauvage himself is guilty of in this article. In all cases, revolutions are made by classes in response to a crisis.

“To the Marxist,” wrote Lenin, “it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the ‘upper classes’, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for ‘the lower classes not to want’ to live in the old way; it is also necessary that ‘the upper classes should be unable’ to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in ‘peace time’, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the ‘upper classes’ themselves into independent historical action. “Without these objective changes, which are independent of the will, not only of individual groups and parties but even of individual classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible. The totality of all these objective changes is called a revolutionary situation.”

The Collapse of the Second International, 1915

Sauvage, like all other Marxist-Leninists, does not examine his preconceptions of revolution and compares them with Marx, Engels, and Lenin. If he did, he wouldn’t have embarrassed himself with this analogy of revolution being the result of blueprints of communists.

Left-coms, Sauvage writes, break away from Marx’s method of criticism by divorcing their theories from practice, by not examining the real results of past revolutions and learning from them. I legitimately wonder where Sauvage gets this ignorant idea, for the entire tendency known as ‘left-communism’ originated through a conflict of the class character of the USSR, the prospects for the Russian Revolution given the failure of the Western European revolution, and the criticism of the results of the infamous theory of ‘socialism in one country.’ I personally can’t believe how lazy his claim is given left-communism gave itself the ‘left’ modifier through a debate in the Comintern over practice.

Sauvage writes, “Marxist-Leninists should remember that the best practice will never be perfect, pretty, and clean, but inevitably covered in the dirt and blood of capitalist society.” Compare this with Pannekoek:

“Revolution also demands something more than the massive assault that topples a government and which, as we know, cannot be summoned up by leaders, but can only spring from the profound impulse of the masses. Revolution requires social reconstruction to be undertaken, difficult decisions made, the whole proletariat involved in creative action – and this is only possible if first the vanguard, then a greater and greater number take matters in hand themselves, know their own responsibilities, investigate, agitate, wrestle, strive, reflect, assess, seize chances and act upon them. But all this is difficult and laborious.”

Pannekoek, World Revolution and Communist Tactics, Part IV, 1920

Even more, compare this with Bordiga discussing the controls of the proletarian state:

“No doubt, when put into practice, these controls will create tremendous difficulties, but it was long ago that Lenin expressed his contempt for all plans of revolutions to be carried out without difficulties! The inevitable conflicts will not be completely resolved by drawing up piles of rules and regulations: they will constitute a historical and political problem and will express a real relationship of forces.”

Bordiga, Proletarian Dictatorship and Class Party, 1951

Are these the sayings of a people who believe revolution is “perfect, pretty, and clean”? Not at all. Given Sauvage’s history, this is not ignorance nor naivety, but pure, deceitful laziness in addressing his opponents.

The rest of the essay is devoted to Trotsky and Stalin’s achievements in following Lenin’s will and whatever the fuck MLs do on their blogs. I’ve responded to what I wanted to.