stages of communism?

[nihilust]

What exactly are marx/engels stages of communism? downfall of capitalism, where does the dotp take place etc etc

[Blake's Baby]

Three stages, basically.

DotP = a class society, in which the working class has assumed political power in the state; but as this is not yet a situation where capitalism has been overthrown worldwide, it corresponds to the world civil war, when both revolutionary and reactionary territories exist and the world revolution has not yet been completed. This, I and many others would argue, must mean that the DotP must be overseeing a truncated form of capitalism (because it's a society with a class system, property laws and states).

Lower stage of communism = a stage when capitalism has been defeated throughout the world, but society is not yet capable of producing unlimited goods to fulfill all needs; in this stage there must be some sort of rationaing in place; some people think it should be rationing by price, some rationing by work, some - like me - rationing by need. We don't really agree about that point.

Higher stage of communism = the stage when production for need really is a reality and there are no shortages, no rationing, and we can all live free and productive lives.

[Peoples' War]

Some may call the lower stage of communism as "socialism".

[nihilust]

do some argue that the dotp is a higher stage? i thought ive heard that before, didnt necessarily agree however

[theblackmask]

Can anyone point to where Marx actually talks about stages of communism?

[Caj]

What Blake's Baby said is essentially correct.

I'd add that neither an entirely lower phase nor an entirely higher phase of communism will likely ever exist. Communism will be simultaneously lower phase and higher phase, just with respect to different products. So while food, for example, will likely be produced and distributed "from each according to her abilities, to each according to her needs" shortly, if not immediately, after the withering away of the state, other, more scarce produce will have to be rationed. As the productive forces develop under communism, more kinds of produce will become abundant and will consequently be produced and distributed in a "higher phase" fashion. Nonetheless, although higher phase production and distribution will gradually replace lower phase rationing, there will obviously always be a scarcity of some things and consequently the necessity of lower phase rationing.


Can anyone point to where Marx actually talks about stages of communism?

He talked about the lower and higher phases of communism in his "Critique of the Gotha Programme," which can be found at Marxists.org.

[Caj]

Some may call the lower stage of communism as "socialism".

Marx didn't. He used socialism and communism interchangeably. The distinction between socialism and communism in which the former is the lower and the latter the higher phase of communism began with Lenin. Then, of course, the Stalinists further confuse the matter by equating socialism (read: the lower phase of communism) with the DotP.

[Peoples' War]

Marx didn't. He used socialism and communism interchangeably. The distinction between socialism and communism in which the former is the lower and the latter the higher phase of communism began with Lenin. Then, of course, the Stalinists further confuse the matter by equating socialism (read: the lower phase of communism) with the DotP.
Of course Marx never, but that's irrelevant, it's just semantics. A lot of SPGB types, and super duper lefties with a grudge think this is the ultimate evil revision of Marx's theories...it's madness. Obviously it's not revision, it's semantics.

It really isn't confusing until you get to Stalinism, because although he proclaimed they had socialism, it had none of the characterists described by Lenin or Marx. Then, as you said, it would pose the question of: was it a DOTP? We can safely say it was not -- after a point--, the workers councils lost control of anything, and those were the organs of workers power.

[nihilust]

stalin himself advocated socialism/seemed to actually proceed with lower form

[Blake's Baby]

Of course Marx never, but that's irrelevant, it's just semantics. A lot of SPGB types, and super duper lefties with a grudge think this is the ultimate evil revision of Marx's theories...it's madness. Obviously it's not revision, it's semantics...

But it's unnecessary and confusing semantics, which you brought up. Why did you find it necessary to even mention it? The OP asked about Marx and Engels, I answered about Marx and Engels, and you brought up Lenin and Stalin's confusions and misuse of Marx's terminology, for no really good reason as far as I can see.

[Caj]

Of course Marx never, but that's irrelevant, it's just semantics.

And I'm not saying Lenin's use of the word socialism in place of the lower phase of communism is anything more than semantics. (The Stalinist use of socialism as equivalent to both the proletarian dictatorship and the lower phase of communism, on the other hand, does reflect an actual theoretical divergence from Marxism -- namely "Socialism in One Country" -- but I digress.) The reason I brought it up was simply for purposes of clarification.


A lot of SPGB types, and super duper lefties with a grudge think this is the ultimate evil revision of Marx's theories...it's madness. Obviously it's not revision, it's semantics.

I agree.

[Grenzer]

Well really where it becomes problematic is where you have certain types; namely the varieties of Stalinists, who insist that socialism is capitalism, or something that does not fundamentally depart from the core of capitalism: extraction of surplus value via wage labor(which according to Engels is what defines a mode of production). Arguing whether it was a dictatorship of the proletariat is one thing; but claiming that socialism is capitalism is another.

Another troubling issue was Lenin's insistence that with the establishment of state capitalism in the Soviet Union, that socialism could be established several months later. This seems to indicate a radical revision of Marx that really departs from the emancipatory project of Marxism. Unlike the SPGB though, I don't think that simply because Lenin was wrong about certain things that he becomes worthless. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Now some people like Paul Cockshott try to argue in a very opportunist manner that the rejection of the Stalinist states as socialist is utopian because they did not live up a certain ideal. Either he fails to understand the nature of the criticism, or is deliberately distorting it: there is nothing speculative about the statement that socialism is not capitalism.

[Ostrinski]

It should be remembered that these different stages do not constitute entirely different economic modes of production as some people tend to think - they simply measure different levels of the successful development of a classless society.

The idea that you need some all knowing bureaucracy to secure and pave the way for the workers is a corpse that needs to be put to rest.

[Peoples' War]

But it's unnecessary and confusing semantics, which you brought up. Why did you find it necessary to even mention it? The OP asked about Marx and Engels, I answered about Marx and Engels, and you brought up Lenin and Stalin's confusions and misuse of Marx's terminology, for no really good reason as far as I can see.
It really isn't that confusing...if it is confusing to someone, I question how one can even understand Marx's writings to be questioning it. Anywho, I mentioned it because a lot of people call it socialism, and if you are going to expand your mind and read Lenin and Trotsky at any point, you should know that.

[theblackmask]

He talked about the lower and higher phases of communism in his "Critique of the Gotha Programme," which can be found at Marxists.org.

If by talked about, you mean vaguely mentions. The word "phase" is used twice in Critique of the Gotha Programme, and the word "stage" is never used. Marx never laid out stages of socialism/communism.

Anybody who tries to tell you that communism follows stages is either naive, or purposefully trying to narrow your idea of what communism is.

[Caj]

If by talked about, you mean vaguely mentions. The word "phase" is used twice in Critique of the Gotha Programme, and the word "stage" is never used. Marx never laid out stages of socialism/communism.

Anybody who tries to tell you that communism follows stages is either naive, or purposefully trying to narrow your idea of what communism is.

Maybe you should actually read the work in question:


What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

Hence, equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.

But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

I'd say the above amounts to a bit more than a passing mention.

[theblackmask]

I have read the work in question, thanks. A few paragraphs out of the collection of a guy who wrote tomes is absolutely what I would consider a passing mention. If Marx really supported the idea of stages of communism, I think he would have wrote much more about it than he did.


"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence."

So does my Marx quote cancel out yours?

[Paul Cockshott]

“Marx didn't. He used socialism and communism interchangeably. The distinction between socialism and communism in which the former is the lower and the latter the higher phase of communism began with Lenin.”

This is half arrant nonsense and the other half true. The true point is that the identification of the Marx's brief reference to a first phase of communist society with socialism is indeed a Leninist interpretation of Marx.

The arrant nonsense is the idea that Marx was an advocate of socialism and that he identified communism with socialism. I wonder at times whether the socialist sectarians on this website every pay attention to the manifesto of the Communist Party. There is a whole chapter devoted to distinguishing communism from socialism. As he and Engels point out there is a whole range of different types of socialism, reactionary socialism, true socialism, critical utopian socialism, and they identify communism with none of these. Now some of these socialist tendancies have acquired new names - reactionary socialism became called Fascism, and some new socialist tendancies have come into existence like social democracy, but most of them continue and several of these tendancies are well represented on this website.

Here the most common variety are True socialists ( for example current German Hegelian socialists and American followers of Raya Dunayevskaya) and Critical Utopians ( for example sympathisers with the SPGB ) .

The critical utopian socialists edge towards reaction as Marx says ”By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.”

The critical utopians try to foist onto Marx ideas about general free distribution of goods, which he never advocates, and judge the actual communist movement ( the real political movement that has tended to abolish existing conditions ) by their utopian standards. When it does not meet up to socialist nostrums they reject it and give way to anti-communist ideology. In this rejection of the real communist movement they follow in the footsteps of earlier socialists like Kautsky.

[Caj]

I have read the work in question, thanks. A few paragraphs out of the collection of a guy who wrote tomes is absolutely what I would consider a passing mention. If Marx really supported the idea of stages of communism, I think he would have wrote much more about it than he did.

Well, Marx really didn't write much about communism (as a mode of production), certainly not "tomes" on the subject.


So does my Marx quote cancel out yours?

I like that quote.

The ideas of a lower and higher phase of communism were not proposed as "ideals to which reality [will] have to adjust itself." It's just saying that scarce goods in a communist society won't be able to be allocated in accordance with needs but will have to be rationed in some way (the lower phase of communism). Abundant goods, on the other hand, would be able to distributed in accordance with needs (the higher phase of communism). This isn't utopian planning of a future society in any sense.


The arrant nonsense is the idea that Marx was an advocate of socialism and that he identified communism with socialism. I wonder at times whether the socialist sectarians on this website every pay attention to the manifesto of the Communist Party. There is a whole chapter devoted to distinguishing communism from socialism. As he and Engels point out there is a whole range of different types of socialism, reactionary socialism, true socialism, critical utopian socialism, and they identify communism with none of these. Now some of these socialist tendancies have acquired new names - reactionary socialism became called Fascism, and some new socialist tendancies have come into existence like social democracy, but most of them continue and several of these tendancies are well represented on this website.

Here the most common variety are True socialists ( for example current German Hegelian socialists and American followers of Raya Dunayevskaya) and Critical Utopians ( for example sympathisers with the SPGB ) .

The critical utopian socialists edge towards reaction as Marx says ”By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.”

The critical utopians try to foist onto Marx ideas about general free distribution of goods, which he never advocates, and judge the actual communist movement ( the real political movement that has tended to abolish existing conditions ) by their utopian standards. When it does not meet up to socialist nostrums they reject it and give way to anti-communist ideology. In this rejection of the real communist movement they follow in the footsteps of earlier socialists like Kautsky.

Obviously, I was referring to socialism as a mode of production and society, which, to Marx and Engels, was synonymous with communism. Socialism as a movement, on the other hand, meant something much broader than communism in the mid-1800s (as it continues to today).

[Paul Cockshott]

I am curious as to where you reckon that Marx says a) there is a socialist mode of production, b) that it is the same as he means by communism.
Verb sap., I am not denying that there is a socialist mode of production, just denying that Marx wrote about it.