Marxism And Leninism VS Islam

[شمله ور خراساني]

There are a few members who reveal their Marxist and Leninist views in discussions here and there.

And they have a clear Marxist critique of religion and religious institutions.

I would like those members to come here and express their critique and views in a more structured manner so we don't diverge from other discussions and keep different issues in different discussions.

So, you know who you are! Take the microphone and do your thing!

[imb706]

It seems a few decades too late to have this discussion. But religious socialism vs Marxist socialism was a major theme of politics in the 1800s and very early 1900s. Francis Bellamy and his society of Christian Socialist essentially advocated many of the same things marxist and communist did, just from a religious perspective. He even wrote a book I believe where it took place in the year 2000, after the US has followed his plans and that everyone owns their own property, the state facilitates the necessary works and policies to ensure everyone gets a fair shake in the economy and work force and other such things. It´s an interesting period of political history. However, I believe Islamic objection to Marxism didn´t happen till much later, around late 20th Century, and they mostly just attacked and killed socialist and such because the socialist opposed their warlordism and feudalism. It´s how it comes off to me anyway.

[شمله ور خراساني]

Well there are quite a few Afghans who still believe in Marxism unfortunately.

[imb706]

I´m sure they live in fear of their lives for having that political affiliation. If they are in Afghanistan anyway. I´d figure the country with the most marxist, communist and socialist is places like Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and such. I´m not a Marxist myself but I do read some stuff from Marxist, like this website called RationalRevolution. Good read.

[شمله ور خراساني]

I´m sure they live in fear of their lives for having that political affiliation. If they are in Afghanistan anyway. I´d figure the country with the most marxist, communist and socialist is places like Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and such. I´m not a Marxist myself but I do read some stuff from Marxist, like this website called RationalRevolution. Good read.

They are not in Afghanistan. They are everywhere.

I know a staunch Afghan Marxist who studies Econometrics at a renown Western University.

[imb706]

And his or her name is? And I´m sure there´s plenty of commies over there in Afghanistan, ex-PDSA (I think that is what it was called) members who don´t make their affiliation or beliefs public due to well, the danger associated with it.

[شمله ور خراساني]

And his or her name is? And I´m sure there´s plenty of commies over there in Afghanistan, ex-PDSA (I think that is what it was called) members who don´t make their affiliation or beliefs public due to well, the danger associated with it.

Actually most of the current army and police is led by ex-members of the communist party. And the Afghan secret police is also primarily ex-communists.

U.S. Enlists Ex-Foes for Afghan Army

Soviet-Era Brass Take Command Again In Alliance of Former Battlefield Rivals



By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

KABUL—The fledgling Afghan National Army has been created from scratch by the U.S. and its allies. But, at least in its senior ranks, it increasingly resembles an Afghan army of old—one the U.S. helped rout two decades ago.
The Afghan government is dominated by former mujahedeen guerrillas; both the minister of defense and the army chief of staff are former anti-Soviet insurgents. Most ANA generals and colonels appointed to serve just below them, however, are veterans of the Soviet-built Afghan military that hunted these insurgents through the 1980s.
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Massimo Berruti for the Wall Street Journal Afghan participants in a recent commanders' course—including 16 Soviet-era veterans and three ex-mujahedeen—listen to a graduation speech.



Facing a dearth of professional officers, the U.S.-led coalition is bringing these former foes in from the cold, restoring their Soviet-era rank and giving them command positions. American officers say few other Afghans have the formal military training and know-how to run conventional divisions and brigades.
Numbering just over 100,000 soldiers, the ANA is slated to grow to 172,000 by the autumn of 2011. Turning it into a serious fighting force is a priority for the Obama administration—offering the only exit strategy for the U.S.-led coalition as Western public opinion sours on the Afghan war.
In this mission, grooming senior ANA commanders is just as important as bulking up the ranks with recruits.
"If you don't develop leaders, this military cannot succeed," says U.S. Lt. Gen. William Caldwell IV, the commander of the coalition's program to build up Afghan security forces.
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Soviet-era veterans—many of them exiled or unemployed during the tumult of recent years—offer a ready reservoir of such leaders.
"Former army officers are very experienced, and the more we expand our army, the more we need them," says Brig. Gen. Ali Ahmad Popal, commander of the Kabul Military Training Center, a sprawling facility that churns out thousands of new ANA soldiers every month.
The deputy corps commander of Kandahar in Communist times, Gen. Popal himself lived in exile in India until joining the ANA in 2008.
"The only difference between the old army and the new army is that before we had conscription, and now it's all-volunteer," he says. "We fight the enemies of our country and anyone who attacks our soil."
President Hamid Karzai said this week he is considering a reintroduction of the draft in Afghanistan.
This reliance on Soviet-era officers was evident at a recent graduation ceremony from a senior ANA command course. Nineteen colonels and brigadiers in their 50s and 60s graduated after several months of study with American and French instructors. Among them, 16 had fought in the Communist Afghan army, and only three hailed from mujahedeen backgrounds.
These Afghan Army veterans—most of whom were educated in Russia—often espouse a top-down, bureaucratic approach that can clash with the American military culture, which gives more leeway to individual commanders and puts more authority in the hands of noncommissioned officers.
Yet coalition officers say they've come to appreciate that some of these Soviet-style methods suit a force like the ANA, which is three-quarters illiterate.
"There are times when they'll bring up an idea, and we'll say, yes, it works," says Canadian Brig. Gen. Paul Wynnyk, who supervises the U.S.-led international coalition's effort to develop Afghanistan's army. "Some of what the Russians did here was pretty good."
American and allied officials speak with particular respect about two Soviet-era veterans with whom they deal daily while running the war against the Taliban insurgency.
One is the first deputy minister of defense, Lt. Gen. Mohammad Akram, who headed the Communist army's southern regional command in the early 1990s. The other is the ANA's operations chief, Lt. Gen. Sher Karimi—a career officer who was educated at the Sandhurst military academy in England in the 1960s and speaks fluent English.
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Like many other army veterans brought back into service, Gens. Karimi and Akram hail from ethnic-Pashtun southern and eastern Afghanistan, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.
Their presence in the senior ranks may defuse the perception among many Pashtuns that the ANA is dominated by the rival ethnic group, the Tajiks, whose militias overthrew the Taliban with American help in 2001, and who are still over-represented among the officer corps.
The ANA's chief of staff, Gen. Bismullah Khan Mohammadi, is one of these Tajik commanders. A former aide to the late mujahedeen leader Ahmad Shah Masood, the bearded Gen. Mohammadi beamed broadly when asked on a recent morning how he felt building the new Afghan army together with his former enemies.
Then he beckoned the mustachioed Gen. Karimi, who was standing beside a nearby helicopter, and firmly clasped his hand.
With a sheepish smile, Gen. Karimi acknowledged that he had "sometimes" fought against his current boss in the battlefield.
Gen. Mohammadi erupted in hearty laughter.
"We've opened a new page in our history," he proclaimed. "Whoever comes in and aims to serve our country is our brother now."

[imb706]

Well I assume these ¨ex-communist¨ are simply people who worked under the communist regime in the past, in the same way the ex-baathist worked under Saddam Hussein. Obviously that´s going to be an untapped labor force and going to be attractive to recruit, happened in all the ex communist states. I do certainly hope the vestiges of Communist Afghanistan and the new Afghanistan get along, I don´t want to see another destabilizing civil war, and I do hope for a quick end to the insurgency there.

Thanks for the information though, it´s changed my views somewhat. I now more view Afghanistan as an ex-communist state in the same sense as a lot of the Eastern European countries, just with a way harsher recent history.

However, while searching about Communist Afghanistan, I found out that the Communist parties such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%...of_Afghanistan and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghani...n_Organization and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communi...of_Afghanistan are proscribed as banned parties, so I guess I was right there.

[imb706]

Thanks, I appreciate that.

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

Sangar, the Marxism of the 20th century is dead.

First, we must understand how and where Marxism is applicable. According to Marx himself, his theories would only work in a highly industrialized society. Marx lived in 19th century Germany, saw the problems there and in other northern and western European countries and wrote in Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto what he believed were the solutions to those specific problems of those specific times.

Change is constant. You can't apply those very Marxist principles of the 19th century in this post-modern world.

Maoism, Stalinism and indeed even Leninism are 'break-away' concepts which are not exactly Communism/Marxism per se.

Slavoj Zizek (wiki) is someone we'd call a Neo-Marxist. Most Communists you'd find outside North Korea and Cuba would adhere to Neo-Marxist ideas.

Lastly, Neo-Marxists also stay as far as away from the opiate as possible.

Here's something very tasteful - "they deceive you":