(NOTE ON MARCH 7, 2023: Since this has been published, many changes and reforms within the community of this site have taken place. Some of the points made here may be outdated)
The spector of pro-Communist Party of China internet culture is nothing particularly new. To any anti-revisionist who has engaged online for merely a few moments on Communist communities, it is very probable that you have heard not only of revisionist rhetoric, but have heard of the classic places for Dengists to congregate online - GenZedong among others.
However, as of recent, a new center for Dengist revisionist ideology has appeared and consolidated itself - ProleWiki. Unlike the other communities which promote revisionist ideology, ProleWiki is largely not in the form as a subreddit, discord server, or any other expected place for revisionism to proliferate, but is in the form of a wiki - similar to that of Wikipedia - and entitles itself as “the proletarian encylopedia”.
While initially, ProleWiki may seemingly be an “all-Communist” encylopedia, which is in adherence to Marxism, and which is attracting Communists from all across the internet to read its articles and edit, and - as it claims - spread revolutionary theory to the people, these notions are false.
Behind the façade of its frontpage, within ProleWiki lies nothing but revisionism, sectarianism, and cliquishness.
The following details are all provided by experience from me personally, who has been working with ProleWiki for months and has, until recently, been associated with the administration, and other editors, both former and current, whose name shall remain anonymous.
Organizations such as this can not persist without their mistakes and excesses being noted, and their autocratic, revisionist, and ultimately counter-revolutionary structures being shown. The community surronding this wiki has proven itself to be hostile towards anti-revisionism.
By the end of this, it should be clear why so few people no longer are joining (as they were in great numbers in 2020 and 2021, before the project went into what can only be worded as stagnation and oligarchization), and why so few people are making edits, why this project fails to be informational and spread revolutionary ideas to the people, and why you should not attempt to further edit, or even trust this project.
1. a brief History on the Founding and Development of ProleWiki
Before the present condition of ProleWiki is discussed, the history must first be noted, as it will provide much-needed context.
ProleWiki was founded in September 2020 by, among a few others, Camaradaforte (whom shall be referred as Forte from here), a pro-Communist Party of China propagandist from Brazil, and who is the effective leader of the project presently.
Forte and his small clique soon reached out to Dengist communites across the internet both to establish a base of readers for the nascent wiki, and to gain editors and administrators (even if it included allowing known “Patriotic Socialists” and other social-chauvinists into the project, whom Forte cared little about, so much as they defended Chinese revisionism). These communites included GenZedong, a community largely based on Reddit which is infamous for its pro-China extremist line and revisionism, Lemmygrad (a Dengist alternative to Reddit), along with other groups such as those based in the platform Telegram.
While enjoying an early surge of new edits from these communites, this was short-lived. These new editors left the project shortly after they joined, and the activity and development of ProleWiki stagnated, with the only edits being made were those from the (at the time) three administrators remaining on the project. Throughtout 2021 and 2022, the development of ProleWiki would remain at a similarly unimpressive rate.
The internal condition of the community within ProleWiki would remain stable for this time, with most of the editors being in-line with the Dengist line of the ProleWiki administrators, and with little conflict over ideological matters.
This state of internal coherence would all rapidly disintegrate in August of 2022 when, along with others things such as my protestations regarding the treatment of China, the inevitable creation of the page on Patriotic Socialism happened. The page correctly noted Patriotic Socialism (with regards to the pseudo-socialist chauvinist ideology found in the United States of America) as being opportunist and revisionist. However, certain members within ProleWiki were Patriotic Socialist, including a then-administrator Jucheguevara, and a conflict would start between Patriotic Socialist and non-Patriotic Socialist (which included two of the three administrators) elements within ProleWiki.
This skirmish would result in the non-Patriotic Socialist attaining ideological victory over the Patriotic Socialist elements, with the correct anti-Patriotic Socialist viewpoint of the article persisting. Relative peace would remain in the ProleWiki community, however, this would not be long-lasting. A month after the initial conflict, in September, the before-metioned administrator with Patriotic Socialist views, Jucheguevara would, particularly following the creation of the articles on MAGA Communism and on Infrared, which similar to the one on Patriotic Socialism, made clear that “MAGA Communism” was anti-Marxist and revisionist, and the Infrared collective (who are major “theorists” and promoters of “MAGA Communism”) were chauvinist, apparently experience escalating discontent and frustration with ProleWiki itself.
Jucheguevara would conspire with the Infrared community to effectively infiltrate ProleWiki and force it to adopt Patriotic Socialist ideology, and to enforce a pro-Patriotic Socialist viewpoint onto the previously metioned articles.
This covert attempt to subvert ProleWiki would, however, hastily be discovered by the other two administrators, who were firmly against Patriotic Socialism, and Jucheguevara would be ejected from his place as administrator and banned from the project, it is critcal to note his actions after this event will become relavant later.
With regards to the greater success of this attempt at infiltration of ProleWiki by Patriotic Socialist elements, the particular aspects of which are unknown, with the administrators of ProleWiki - who are the only ones that have access to editor recruitment details - refusing to provide any meaningful information concerning this topic. It is, however, almost certain that a number of Patriotic Socialist infiltrators have “slipped” past the vetting questions which ProleWiki editors must take and persist in covertly spreading chauvinist ideology in the ProleWiki community to this day.
Following this hostile act by Patriotic Socialists against ProleWiki, on the 27th of September, the same day Jucheguevara was banned, the ProleWiki administration would openly prohibit any sort of Patriotic Socialist or “MAGA Communist” ideology on ProleWiki, declaring that:
"As of today also, anyone harbouring patsoc (specifically the USA kind) sentiments or sympathies will follow jucheguevara's example and be banned from our project."
With this, ProleWiki would formalize its stance against Patriotic Socialism, with the administration further making their stance against Patriotic Socialism explicit in their principles. Later, any remaining Patriotic Socialist in the ProleWiki community would either leave the project by their own will or be banned.
What must be noted here is that this action by ProleWiki was not due to any anti-revisionist motivation, but merely due to the fact that Patriotic Socialists were no longer useful to the administrators anymore. In the years before this, Patriotic Socialists were knowingly allowed on the project, and even given positions of power. What changed was that the Patriotic Socialists on ProleWiki ceased focusing on defending Chinese revisionism, and had redirected their focus towards promoting Patriotic Socialism. Otherwise, Forte and the other administrator would have largely allowed their presence on ProleWiki. This indicates that the primary focus on ProleWiki is not to spread revolutionary ideology, but to merely defend revisionist states.
The major event to happen on ProleWiki to this date was October 2022, nearly a month after the ban on Patriotic Socialists.
Out of seemingly nowhere, on the 21st of October, the ProleWiki administrators banned my account, with the only justification provided being vague words about my supposed “dogmatism, sectarianism, factionalism” etc.
However, what is more relevant is the results of this. My sudden ban on ProleWiki appeared to mark the “signal” for an entire mass-banning of all anti-revisionist elements on ProleWiki. Within a few days, most accounts which were openly anti-revisionist were banned, with the administrators calling the banned anti-revisionists “Hoxhaist worms,” “ultra-lefts,” “idealists,” and so on. ProleWiki further refuses to let any anti-revisionists into their project.
Today, the ProleWiki editors (who, by now, are all fanatical Dengists) have taken an extremley militant stance against anti-revisionism, particularly in their articles, with them calling anti-revisionists “infantilist” and “dogmatic.”
From here, ProleWiki in its modern form appears. Its revisionist and opportunist features have materialized fully, and its stance against us has been made clear.
2. the Ideology of ProleWiki
As I have referenced many times earlier, ProleWiki follows revisionist ideology, more particularly, Dengism.
Dengism is a revisionist and pseudo-Marxist ideology which originated during the full restoration of capitalism in China in the late 1970s. With regards to its followers in this context, it refers to the “Communists” who maintain the view that state-capitalism is socialism, class struggle is trivial and secondary in comparison to the development of the productive forces, that maintaining the bourgeoisie in power is socialist, and that working towards a revolution in one’s own country is useless, and all effort of the Communists must be wasting towards defending supposed “actually existing socialism.”
Dengism is the ideology of counter-revolution, stagnation, and social-imperialism, and it is this ideology which ProleWiki adopts and defends fully.
ProleWiki dedicates itself towards spreading little more than revisionist propaganda and misinformation concerning the “People’s” Republic of China and other revisionist states, including and particularly denying crimes commited against national liberation movements and socialist elements with China.
ProleWiki proclaims China to be in the “primary stage of socialism,” totally rejects Chinese Social-imperialism, claims China to be a “planned economy,” and asserts that anybody who is against the revisionist “Communist” Party of China to be a “Western pseudo-leftist,” and so forth.
While claiming to advance class consciousness and spread Communist theory to the people, it really, as it would seem, clearly views this as secondary, for ProleWiki actively does little more than degrade Marxist theory to make it comply with their Dengist revisionism. For instance, it claims in its article on socialism:
“As socialism is a way of organizing society that lies somewhere in-between Capitalism and communism, it has properties of both. […] Under socialism private property is only partially abolished.”
Further, many of their editors are of the view that:
“[Socialism] still has many bourgeois elements, such as billionaires”
They do not reach this conclusion from educating themselves on Marx or Engels, but merely because China does this, and they maintain that China is socialist. In other words, they do not base themselves in Marxism and view China with that basis, they rather base themselves on the (bourgeois) economic system of China for their source on the aspects of Marxism, and appropriate Marx and Engels to “comply” with China’s capitalist system. They mask their revisionist propaganda and deviations from Marxism with demagogic lies of “Marxist-Leninist education and theory.”
Socialism removes the ruling class from power, as well as the most immediate bourgeois elements, including and especially billionaires. Private ownership of the means of production is removed as well. From a historical prospective, did the leaders of the French Revolution wait fifty years to expropriate feudal relations and remove the aristocracy? Did Stalin decide to wait fifty years before collectivizing the land of the kulaks? Did Hoxha decide to wait fifty years before removing the feudal clans and reactionary clerical structures from power? Of course not. As dialecticians, we understand that the excisement of Capitalism and the creation of Socialism represents a qualitative leap, one that is rapid rather than protracted, for a dialectical leap that is of a protracted nature is rather quantitative, and such leaps and what is required to build up towards that qualitative lead. With regard to this context, the contradictions and other developments of the Capitalist mode of production are the elongated and lesser leaps which lead towards the final qualitative leap in society towards revolution and thus Socialism.
3. Anti-science promotion
ProleWiki has taken a number of anti-science positions, particularly regarding psychiatry. The founder and effective leader of ProleWiki, Forte, himself is a self-declared supporter of the anti-psychiatry movement, and has even "invited" editors from anti-psychiatry communities on Reddit and Lemmygrad to promote their denialist views.
ProleWiki has openly endorsed the "big-pharma" conspiracy theory, claiming that nearly all psychiatric and pharmaceutical research and developments are ultimately part of a larger plot by "big-pharma" to drug the working class into submission, and that most professionals working in those fields are members of the bourgeoisie and "bribed" by this "big-pharma" plot. Many editors on ProleWiki have even claimed that conditions such as autism and ADHD were "scientism", "nonexistent", and "facts of culture".
After suffering notable criticism from this postion regarding these topics, ProleWiki has, despite its claimed support for Scientific Socialism, done little in regard to rectifying this misinformation beyond putting an “ideological confilct” notification on their content regarding psychiatry and other fields (despite the fact that psychiatry is a scientific discipline, and objective proof suggests nothing but that), yet they have otherwise left this very negatively recieved view on deaf ears.
4. the Editorship and Activity
As is the case with all virtual encyclopedias, ProleWiki is dependent on volunteer editors to do much of the labor and expand the project.
With most wikis, it is the case that they expand, both in the number of editors and pages, over time. Wikipedia went from a few hundred editors in the early 2000s to millions by the late 2010s. This is not the case with ProleWiki; the rate in which articles are created and expanded and new editors joining in the project has changed little over the nearly three years it has existed.
In March 11th, 2022 , the site had a similar acccount creation rate, and number of edits as during 2020 and 2021, with only, at best, two pages being created per week. However, half-a-year later, on August 6th, 2022, the number went down, and only around five accounts were ever created up to this date. Whereas in the last half-year period of late 2021 to early 2022, account were being made very commonly, as were edits. Such concerning downward trends do not happen on similar projects which otherwise survive to this day.
The only reasonable causality is that of stagnation, self-serving and careerist aims on the part of the administration, a lack of democracy, and an overall lack of interest in the project from people outside of it, likely due to the poor and oligarchic control that ProleWiki maintains, which will be further discussed later.
From purely the part of the common editorship, there are only really two-to-five active editors at any given time, and this had in fact been the case for the entire existance of ProleWiki.
There is a very concerning discrepancy between the amount of accounts existing and the real number of active editors. While the numbers on the ProleWiki page claims that there are presently “~20” active editors, despite over 250 registered accounts, even this despairingly small number is a large overstatement. The real numbers are about four , with all the others who are considered “active users” doing nearly nothing in regards to edits, with many simply correcting a typo on a talk-page comment and nothing more for the entire month.
Of course, there has only truly been a single non-administrative editor who has stayed with the project on the long-term. Most, if not all active editors left the project (almost certainly due to its problematic and stagnate nature) after a few weeks or months or were banned by the administration. Some others maintain “lose” long-term involvement in the project, commonly in the form of participating with the ProleWiki Discord server in unrelated topics such as memes, informal discussions, and things of that nature, but even they leave within a year.
5. the Leadership of ProleWiki
ProleWiki is, first and foremost, the personal hobby and “playground” of just a single person, Camarada Forte.
Forte’s power on ProleWiki is both total and unquestionable. He is unable to be removed from his role as administrator, and bans people with minimal discretion. If he desires somebody be removed, even if they did little, or if he desires some major change to happen concerning the project - it will be done, with resistance being met with little care by him or, particularly if somebody disagree with his own personal ideological views, even a ban from the site.
However, in recent months, Forte has delegated some small trivialities to others regarding administration, and promoted them to the role of system operator (note without any sort of voting or consensus by the editorship, and simply by his own personal decision).
These other administrators, likewise, hold unquestionable power over the editors; they cannot be removed (unless Forte decides it personally, of course), they can ban people with little care, and so on. However, they all commonly hold the traits of being extremely servile to Forte’s views and actions, and they have all a record of “donating” to Forte’s project before.
Forte does not care who exactly his clique of hand-picked administrators are, so long as they “donate” to the project and ban people who question Forte’s views. Such much so, that he has even let a known Patsoc into his administration, and defended his place in that role up until that Patsoc administrator started to pose a threat to Forte’s power.
Nobody can enter this clique of administrators, it has never happened before. At the closest, only one editor who had worked for months and who fell perfectly into Forte’s line was given a small role, but never a full administrative position.
Presently, their only exists two administrators on ProleWiki, Forte and another, both of whom are unelected, and the latter was, as talked about before, hand-picked by Forte due to personal loyality and “donations” alone.
6. Voting and Governance
Democratic Centralism does not exist in any way on ProleWiki. Its principles were determined solely by Forte, and have never changed in any way more than small adjustedments in wording which Forte personally made.
ProleWiki claims its “government” is located in a hub, a special page which editors can go to suggest things and, in theory, vote on matters. However, this “hub” is powerless. No voting ever happens, and if it did happen, Forte would not respect it at all.
At best, somebody might make a small suggestion to the wording of certain pages or something such as that, however, Forte, being the petty internet dictator of ProleWiki, will only ever heed their suggestions if it agrees with his own views, and only then will he implement the (always small and meaningless) suggestion. However, nothing larger than that is ever made by the editorship.
In truth, the real “government” of ProleWiki is located in the “administration” channel on the ProleWiki Discord sever, which the editors cannot even see, if they know about it at all.
Here, it can be assumed that the way it fuctions is based on Forte handing down orders to the lesser administrators, and them performing them. Nothing more.
7. Administrator Transparency
While ProleWiki (e.g. Forte) claims to be transparent, it is anything but that.
As said before, the real governance happens in an isolated and invisible section on the ProleWiki discord server, with Forte holding total power over what happens.
Nobody hears of what happens in the administrator section in the Discord server, nor do they even know about it. Thus, from the very start, ProleWiki is totally lacking in any sort of transparency, with no administrative acts ever being told to the editorship.
Further, ProleWiki is fully willing to monitor the actions of it editors, without telling them at all, and particularly if they disagree with Forte on even small subjects.
8. Recruitment Tactics
ProleWiki, as it has made clear, is following Dengist and campist ideology. Further, due to the careerism and cliquishness of the revisionist chief of this project, Forte, it is nothing but expected that he would not project honesty regarding editor recruitment.
ProleWiki is, by Forte's own admission, very much linked with Lemmygrad, a Marxist-Leninist community similar to that of Reddit. In fact, both Forte and his underling, Criticalresist, are system operators on that platform, and commonly coordinate actions with Lemmygrad users.
However, in this case, what is more relevant is the fact that Lemmygrad maintains, and is in many regards effectively controlled by, a large community of GenZedong, which is a mirror of the larger GenZedong community on Reddit.
GenZedong is infamous for its genocide denial, racism, extreme revisionism, and uncritical defense for the Social-fascist and Capitalist state of China.
Forte, knows this all too well, and has taken advantage of this insular community of pro-CPC extremists to ensure the survival of ProleWiki's revisionist and anti-Marxist line.
Forte is believed to, since 2020, have gained certain "ties" among the GenZedong moderators, and is suspected to be a member of both the GenZedong Reddit and Discord server. Forte has used his ties to regularly request GenZedong members "apply" to create accounts on ProleWiki. He has likely not only done this on their Discord server, but has been confirmed in doing this on external sites.
Meanwhile, Forte is known to block the account requests of anti-revisionists, including and particularly Hoxhaists and Maoists, likely due to their education in combatting revisionists such as him. It has been confirmed that Forte has blocked the accounts of Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, principally Maoists, anti-China Marxist-Leninists, and essayists from Stalinist Compositions, a self-named Hoxhaist community which I recall personally contacting to have them view and potentially join this project.
With this, Forte is able to destroy any sort of change in ProleWiki's Revisionist line, for he is able to simply rally his Dengist fanatics, and destroy the non-revisionists.
9. Conclusion
ProleWiki fails to meet even it most fundamental goals and ideas, with it simply being an ego-driven project on the part of Forte in particular.
Know that if you seek to join ProleWiki, you will have no say whatsoever in running of the site, no ways of getting into admin work, will likely be left-aside, perhaps banned, once Forte and his clique have no use for you anymore, and will be joining a stagnate, moribund, and intellectually deprived community, with your actions potentially being under total surveillance by the admins alone.