What do we expect of the Lower Phase?

[prolcon]

In the Critique, Marx mentions communist society in a lower phase, socialist society. He very famously says that this lower phase of communism bears the "birthmarks" of capitalist society. He goes onto explain that the worker, in this phase, doesn't receive the full value of his labor; deductions are made from the value of his productive efforts to maintain an infrastructure of some kind. In fact, Marx mentions social "certificates" representing this value minus the aforementioned deductions. He argues that distribution in this phase is equivalent to the determined value of labor minus deduction, rather than distribution according to need, which characterizes the higher phase of communism.

So, in the Critique, we see Marx discuss what are essentially labor vouchers. But of special note is that something in socialist society has the authority to make deductions from the value of a worker's labor, and that this agency works in support of infrastructure. Infrastructure can be physical, but it's also organizational; what is the nature of social organization in the socialist stage? What infrastructure is being maintained if not some system of political administration, a state?

[The Jay]

I think that a lower phase would be characterized by a market-based Socialism. This is why I support the development of workers' cooperatives and other such methods. To me, such is both a strategy for building a revolution as well as building a lower phase, since in a workers' cooperative there is no capitalist.

Before anyone says something about them being petite-bourgeois, I contest that as a legitimate term since it doesn't fit into surplus analysis. It may work in some cases but it does not work if everyone in the enterprise has an equal say. The term only works if it is a solitary individual or small cadre that owns the workplace, decides what to do, how to do it, and what to do with the profits. If it is every or nearly every worker then it loses meaning to call it a capitalist enterprise IMO.

This is also why I support a union movement that builds alternative institutions and the best way to do that would be a union that permeates both traditional workplaces, capitalist ones, and worker coops. The bridge between workers still in a capitalist enterprise and those running themselves would be able to take some degree of political power or show physical muscle to a degree capable of setting up a decentralized-planned economy.

That way the infrastructure necessary for the operation of a communist society would be mostly established already in the lower phase, before the elimination or near elimination of markets, so the higher phase would not seem as difficult to achieve as it would en vacuo.

[helot]

I don't really subscribe to separating a lower from a higher stage of communism as such. The social relations would be the same the differences between the two temporal points would be down to recovering from the chaotic nature of revolution, there would probably be scarcity and rationing early on which would be eased over varying time periods depending on the priorities and capabilities of the post-revolution society.

[The Idler]

We expect the lower phase to last a lot less long than was anticipated in the 19th Century level of productive capability.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I hope nobody here is thinking of stopping the development of anarchy because some peice of marxist theory says there must be a lower phase. That is one of the ridiculous things about marxism: blindly following marxist theory like it is a law of physics.


I think that a lower phase would be characterized by a market-based Socialism.

No, if there is something you might later classify as lower phase it must be based on direct democracy and the development of communities. The fields and the factories must be collectivised (especialy the fields, because of food), and communities must form around those. When you have a real community you have a group of people united, and as the slogan says "the people united will never be defeated". The creation of communities is a very important step, since it will begin to slowly eliminate egoistic thought and action, and replace these with more altruistic thought and action. I am not talking about brainwashing, I am talking about the effects being in a united community has on people. The part about the direct democracy is also very important, since it will determine wether the revolution will actualy develop into anarchy or if it will turn into one of those "socialist" states like the USSR. The state cannot be allowed to reach power, if it does it must be eliminated again. Instead of the state we must use another form of organisation, this is facilitated because of the new communication technologies. I know marxists always say "you "abolish" the state and another one will replace it, it is useless to do that, all you can do is put a workers state in power", but that is a ridiculous statement which does not take into account important facts. First of all a state will not arrise if people don't listen to it, the only thing the state can do is force obedience, and if we are too strong to be forced to obey the state cannot exist. A state can only opress, it is like a corporation, it has a will of its own, it wants power to opress, but must maintain a balance so that it does not face the danger of being overthrown. A corporation will not be able to work if it does not generate profit, so it will colapse, the same happens with a state. If the people unite they will be stronger than the state, and indeed stronger than any invading force. The biggest enemy of the revolution is the will of the people (I know marxists dislike the term, so if you feel ofended find me a better one that means the same thing), it is what made the revolution and it is what can end it prematurely. If the people (again, I know marxist prefer the use of "proletariat", but I am not a marxist, so FU guys!) can stay united they will win against anything, a good example of this is the war of Vietnam, the people stood united against every threat, the french occupation, and the war with america, even when the americans burned down their country and poisoned them with chemical weapons, the people still fought, and it was because of their determination that they won.
We must not forget that revolutionary leaders like Lenin were nothing more than politicians who took advantage of the revolution to get to power. That is the problem with states, they always create politicians. A politician does not care about the revolution, he does not care about ideals, all he cares about is power, he is a part of the machine that is the state, and he is what creates the sentience of the state which I refered earlier. We cannot use a state because all it does is opress and it will take every oportunity avaliable to opress as many as possible, that is why it always opresses majorities. It is the people (I dislike the term proletariat because it excludes a big part of the population that can have the same interests as the proletariat is said to have as a class by socialist theory) who must take control, not a state, not a workers state, the state must be abolished and the people must be liberated!
Now we have the problem of organising without the state, which should not be as big a problem as some make it look like, since now we have better developped communication networks. The biggest obstacle (and one which makes certain, more cowardly, anarchists turn to ideologies like left-communism) of the revolution is war. How to wage war without having a state:
First of all we should not think of it as if we are coordinating an invasion of another country, since what we will be doing is defending our homeland from foreign invaders and reactionary forces. Then we should get into our minds the idea that we will not be able to make all the world go socialist at the same time, it was already a big colective effort to have one revolution in just one place. We must understand that what we need to do is defend, not conquer. There must be a military to secure the borders we have carved into the world map with our colective effort. This military must have a chain of command, soldiers and commanders. A chain of command must still exist so that our army can work properly, but our tactics must be very different from those of our enemies. We must do as the vietnamese did, they used the terrain to their advantage, and use unconventional guerrilla tactics to defeat the US army, just like the native tribes of Britain and Lusitania did when the romans invaded. Their organisation must be broken by our will and our uncoventional tactics, they will not know what to do when facing guerrilla tactics, they were not trained for it.
How to make sure the military does not become the state:
By this point the military should be the only authoritarian institution in the territory we have freed. A military does not have a mind of its own, and it will do all it can to achive the objective layed out for it, which is in this case the defence of free territory. There must be volunteers for the army, army propaganda, and, if necessary, conscription. I doubt conscription will be necessary if the homeland gets invaded by foreign powers, expecialy if the USA is involved, since this will provoke nation-wide hatred of the invaders and will make more people join. Then we have the problem of getting firearms and ammunition, if the revolution happens in a country like Portugal there will be no weapons to fight with because Portugal does not produce firearms. We either have to start mass producing firearms on a very short ammount of time, or we must get them from somewhere. We can use expropriated property to buy weapons from illegal weapons traders. We should not trade with other states, we should look into trading with illegal weapon dealers since they will probably only care about profit and will probably not waste the oportunity of arming a movement to wage war, but they might try to trick us with overexpensive weapons. We do not need a state to make weapons, nor to buy them, we can organise to arm the population against the invaders!
In the end the biggest difficulties the revolution has to face are the will of the people, who might get tired of fighting for a future they do not see near, and war.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

OMG I cannot beleive I wrote something so gigantic! I was thinking of writting more, but it is midnight now and I am getting sleepy, the only thing that keeps me awake is heavy metal music in my headphones.

[prolcon]

I think I understand the concern about the two-stage model of communism. In this conception, it feels like the lower phase describes a situation in which some kind of administration might persist, effectively preserving state. I think, though, we can expect to have to rely on a lot of highly centralized infrastructure already put in place by capitalism, at least in terms of productive administration. I think this is what Marx means by these "birthmarks." Socialism, the lower phase, is the period of time post-capitalism we're making necessary changes so that communist civilization operates on its own terms.

I can appreciate that you have criticisms of Marx, but watch it when you decide that we're Marx cultists. A person more interested in equal-level exchange of ideas would've assumed we find Marx's ideas to have credibility, rather than that we worship the fellow.