"Undoing" communism

[28350]

A friend of mine recently asked me the following:
"Would a communist society be susceptible to an internal take-over? What prevents a disturbed person from coercing people back into a state?"
What do you think?

[ContrarianLemming]

A friend of mine recently asked me the following:
"Would a communist society be susceptible to an internal take-over? What prevents a disturbed person from coercing people back into a state?"
What do you think?

ask him/her, how could he do that?? theres no army to control, nor are there ranks to climb if theres a militia, there no money to buy people with, there no hierarchy to get on top! how could a wannabe fascist get on top? Theres really only one way: convince people to start a state again, in the event that the people agree then i find it unlikely that such fools would ever start a revolution in the first place!

easy thing to refute imo, anarchism/communism is all about taking away the means by which people abuse others, take away the tools

[mikelepore]

No matter what the future holds, the people could always vote themselves into a dictatorship. The only answer is for the people to be sufficiently educated so that they will never want to.

[CartCollector]

Interestingly enough the Marxist justification for this is historical materialism. That is to say, once society has moved on to its next stage, it's not going to want to go back. For instance, in countries where the monarchy has been deposed (like the US), is there ever a mass movement to set up a monarchy again? Even in constitutional monarchies like Britain, you don't see much popular desire to make the monarchy any stronger.

[Sifonas Gaidys]

No matter what the future holds, the people could always vote themselves into a dictatorship. The only answer is for the people to be sufficiently educated so that they will never want to.
I agree with you 100%. Education should be the main ideological and moral force in future society. Now they are teaching us how is the socialism is dangerous and in the future we will teach how bad capitalism was and how dangerous corporations were.

[¿Que?]

Not only that, I think people forget the true nature of what communism is all about. Yes, communism means smashing the capitalist mode of production, but it doesn't end there. One has to ask themselves, what does doing away with capitalism imply (according to historical materialism). The answer to this question is nothing less than social revolution. Revolution involving the economic base of society will inevitably have repercussions on the superstructure. The result is that social relations themselves will be transformed into something completely different than what we understand them to be today (under capitalism). This means that such a scenario is probably unlikely.

This is also one of the reasons I am not a big fan of all these "under communism" threads. Because people propose to analyze communist social relations based on premises of capitalist social relations.

Also, there is the concept of habit, if you're into Lenin. Look it up. State and Revolution chapter 5 part 4. A very detailed explanation of how one reaches the point where it can be said that the State withers away.

[Comrade Gwydion]

Interestingly enough the Marxist justification for this is historical materialism. That is to say, once society has moved on to its next stage, it's not going to want to go back. For instance, in countries where the monarchy has been deposed (like the US), is there ever a mass movement to set up a monarchy again? Even in constitutional monarchies like Britain, you don't see much popular desire to make the monarchy any stronger.

Not quite true. In France for example, there have been monarchist groups active a long time after the first and second republics. In fact there have been the Legitimists, the Orleanists and the Bonapartists.

In Spain the Carlist movement, wishing to put the offspring of Infante Carlos to the throne, was one of the largest parties in parliament and one of the large forces during the Spanish Civil War. (Allthough, one may note that because there was a constitutional monarchy in place during most of this time (though by far not all), replacing the king wasn't 'going back'.

[red cat]

Interestingly enough the Marxist justification for this is historical materialism. That is to say, once society has moved on to its next stage, it's not going to want to go back. For instance, in countries where the monarchy has been deposed (like the US), is there ever a mass movement to set up a monarchy again? Even in constitutional monarchies like Britain, you don't see much popular desire to make the monarchy any stronger.

I think a more precise interpretation of what you want to say is that after a class as a whole has fully taken control of the means of production, no class with lower production capability can seize the same back from it.

This can also explain the capitalist restoration in former socialist states; the organs of peoples' power had never completely replaced the bureaucracies there.

[Dimentio]

A friend of mine recently asked me the following:
"Would a communist society be susceptible to an internal take-over? What prevents a disturbed person from coercing people back into a state?"
What do you think?

Probably that there wouldn't be any structure to be able to conquer and establish under the control of one individual. It would be like trying to carve a statue out of running water.

[JohnnyC]

No one can know for certain what would happen, but in my opinion it's likely that education and life standard people would experience under communism would stop them from "undoing" it.Also, state can't exist without class antagonisms, and I really can't imagine anyone would voluntary agree to be exploited.(unless it's some kind of a very strange game)

[AK]

Probably that there wouldn't be any structure to be able to conquer and establish under the control of one individual. It would be like trying to carve a statue out of running water.
Well what if they manage to "freeze" communism. That's all I got.

[GPDP]

If all it takes to undo communism is for one guy or a small group to somehow manipulate the political and economic structures and fool people into following them, then I'd say we didn't do a good enough job building communism.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

A state is an institution of organized violence through which one class rules over other classes. It's not some abstract creation of a demented dictator.

Communism is a classless society. Lacking classes with opposed interests, this form of society will also lack a state.