okay, so i'm sure this has been asked a billion times...

[narcoticnarcosis]

but what happens in the event of a revolution, and in the immediate aftermath?


this forum is a very small sampling of those who wish to establish a classless, stateless society, and already there's a large amount of diversity in the ideas and goals of said revolution.
obviously, there would have to be compromise on all sides in order to make it work, otherwise there would be ongoing revolution until only one ideology is left and would ultimately defeat the purpose of a free society, and ultimately the revolution, anyway.


what do we do in order to guarantee initial success, and ensure that that success is permanent without wiping out any and all dissenters?

[ellipsis]

some broad questions you ask, take it away learning forum!

[narcoticnarcosis]

some broad questions you ask, take it away learning forum!

sorry; i don't know how to be more specific... ;_;


i guess that's why it's good that i'm posting on the learning forum.

[Die Rote Fahne]

The answer will differ depending on who answers it. My answer will differ from a Marxist-Leninist. An anarcho-Syndicalists will differ from a Maoist, etc.

[Lyev]

This is a rather broad question, but the basics of how a revolution is played out should be universally agreed upon for most Marxists, but I guess it's not so simple. There are two kinds of 'revolutions'. First is a political revolution, where the regime is changed and the government is ousted (for example, the "Arab Spring" is a noteworthy example of this kind of popular revolution), yet the mode of production (feudalism, capitalism, socialism etc.) stays fundamentally the same. The social relation between the subordinate class (that is the wage-labourer, the proletariat under capitalism) and the ruling, exploiter class (the bourgeoisie -- the capitalists) stays the same, but maybe there will be a transition from a dictator to a western-style liberal democracy or something like that. By the way, I think we can broadly understand the 'mode of production', which is a phrase that Marx is of course fond of, to be the way that the necessities for life (food, clothes, housing etc.) are produced, distributed and exchanged in any given epoch.

The second kind of revolution is a social revolution, where the antecedent mode of production is superseded by the next one, which is more satisfying, workable or fairer than the previous. This was the kind of revolution that Marx was primarily interested in. The French Revolution was a social one, because the foundations of monarchy and feudalism were shook to their core, and bourgeois society took its grip producing the liberal-democratic ideology that preponderates today; "liberty, fraternity and equality" and all that jazz (but I think some people disagree on that). I think we can say that the 1917 Russian Revolution was social, although that is contentious. I think the closest we have come to a worldwide overthrow of capitalism is at the end of, and shortly following the First World War. I think social revolution is where workers seize control and ownership of their workplaces, without this being mediated by any kind of external grouping or party. Although this is arguably just a means to an end -- the second stage of revolution arises when a new society is materially built from this seizure of power.

However, on the speculation of what a 'future communist society might look like', well, Marx would probably argue that we are not here, as revolutionaries, to make blueprints for the future. We are not thinking up an elaborate plan for the new society in our heads and then projecting this out into the working class movement. The social forms that arise during the downfall of capitalism will be created by the proletariat and this will be communism, to put it quite simply. I am not sure how far we can speculate in detail as regards every single minutiae of this hypothetical change in the mode of production. Marx reproached the utopian socialists for dreaming up elaborate plans for the economy of the future.

[Zanthorus]

No one here actually knows what a 'revolution' will be like despite the presence of some users who like to romanticise violence. The emancipation of the working-class will be the act of the working-class itself, it will not be planned in advance by laughably insignificant socialist groups proclaiming themselves as 'the party'.

[Jose Gracchus]

? Are you drunk? Is your keyboard not working?

[Lyev]

? Are you drunk? Is your keyboard not working?
I think drunk -- saw him post a few similar messages in chit-chat, which is pretty funny.

[Sixiang]

? Are you drunk? Is your keyboard not working?

He's drunk.

[ZeroNowhere]

? Are you drunk? Is your keyboard not working?A drunken Marxist is a continual Christmas, as the saying goes.

[MarxSchmarx]

Lyev's answer covers some good ground, but I think the answer is a bit more straightforward.

It is simply this - that the liberation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself. Not segments or factions thereof, but of the class as a whole.

Where the overlap with Lyev's view is that when the change happens, by its very nature it is already built upon a legacy of compromise and consensus. Thus it is not as if there is agreement to get rid of capitalism and establish a classless stateless society on the one hand, and disagreement about how to do it on the other. This is true during historical epochs when the movement is isolated, marginalized, and largely divorced from the working class as a whole (as it is today).

When instead the working class is in the process of dismantling capitalism, it is already creating new institutions that will form the germ of the new society from the shell of the old. I know it sounds cliched, but it is true - that the process of establishing a classless, stateless society is not divorced from the abolition of capitalism. It is not through as though the vanguard or a handful of pamphleteers are a monolith that serves as a source of divine intervention for the uncouth masses. Rather, it is through the broad based, mass struggle that the question you ask, narcoticnarcosis (http://www.revleft.com/vb/member.php?u=38264) gets addressed. This obviates the distinction between a cataclismic abolition of capitalism and an "immediate aftermath".

This is basically how the transition from feudalism to capitalism happened. As Lyev alludes to, by the time the Bastille was stormed already the feudal institutions had become marginalized and discredited. The great drama turned out to be a denoument. I have little reason to believe the transition away from capitalism will play out very differently. By the time the "dramatic collapse" happens, it will seem quite a bit less dramatic and indeed the questions of what to do the next day would already have been answered well in advance. The pity is that we are not at that historic moment quite yet, which is why you have to get cracking!