Is a revolution needed to achieve a Communist state?

[BlackFlag]

So, we all know the fact that the Communist Manifesto recommends a revolution in order to establish a communist state. I'm personally opposed to this for a few reasons, including:
1. The Bourgeois and proletariat relationship and inequality isn't what it was back in the Industrial Revolution i.e:
Industrial Revolution workers were doing 12 hours a day, earning far less money than what would be paid now.
Nowadays everyone gets statutory holidays, defence if they're sick, women get time off if pregnant. There's no reason to use violence to overthrow the State.
2. Citizens might be outraged by destruction committed, leading to them rejecting the new communist state.
The other way to do it:
1. Have people with communist ideologies join the Senate/Daíl/whatever. Make them politicians, spread Marxist beliefs by awakening people from Capitalistic Propaganda.
2. Have them push through acts towards a communist system, examples include equal healthcare, the abolition of private healthcare.
3. Over time through reform, with enough support, the Communist State is introduced and the Bourgeois lose what they had.

While I understand people like Phil Knight don't deserve to avoid violence, a lot of innocents would lose things along the way, which is a waste of human life.
Please go easy on me if I've got things wrong, I'm fifteen and still learning.

[Remus Bleys]

So, we all know the fact that the Communist Manifesto recommends a revolution in order to establish a communist state. I'm personally opposed to this for a few reasons, including:
1. The Bourgeois and proletariat relationship and inequality isn't what it was back in the Industrial Revolution i.e:
The proletariats have nothing and the bourgeois own the means of production. So, yeah, nope you are wrong.

Industrial Revolution workers were doing 12 hours a day, earning far less money than what would be paid now.
look at china or any other nation. I mean, i wonder how many people in first worlds still suffer those conditions. i hope someone can get a statistic on that.

Nowadays everyone gets statutory holidays, defence if they're sick, women get time off if pregnant. There's no reason to use violence to overthrow the State.
err... they still don't work for themselves. This sounds more like capitalism= communism.


2. Citizens might be outraged by destruction committed, leading to them rejecting the new communist state.
fuck "the people" the proletariat asserts itself with force violence and dictatorship.

The other way to do it:
1. Have people with communist ideologies join the Senate/Daíl/whatever. Make them politicians, spread Marxist beliefs by awakening people from Capitalistic Propaganda.
These institutions are so bureaucratic as to make that impossible in America at least. The situation is similar in Europe I think.

2. Have them push through acts towards a communist system, examples include equal healthcare, the abolition of private healthcare.:laugh:

3. Over time through reform, with enough support, the Communist State is introduced and the Bourgeois lose what they had.
This sounds kautskyist. The state has to be destroyed because it is a form of bourgeois rule. We cannot use their ready made tools against them.


While I understand people like Phil Knight don't deserve to avoid violence, a lot of innocents would lose things along the way, which is a waste of human life.oh no human life

Please go easy on me if I've got things wrong, I'm fifteen and still learning.
yeah i remember that. it really does suck. What theory have you read btw?

[G4b3n]

The manifesto doesn't recommend a revolution, it realizes its inevitability. While the proletariat does not struggle as it once did for survival, capital has become no less exploitative and no less dangerous to the livelihood of workers. Labor is a fundamental aspect of one's very humanity and to have this aspect dominated is to be stripped of your value as a human being; in other words, revolution is as justified today as it was in 1848.

A "communist state" can not be created from reform because the bourgeoisie are not simply opposed to it in rhetoric, their very existence is an opposition to the creation of a worker's society therefore they must be combated in the literal sense. This is not a call for senseless violence, it is a call for the organized working class to physically seize the means of production. Historically, this has been done with surprisingly little blood shed such as in the case of Spain and Russia, and there is no reason to assume that a future revolution will necessarily be violent and chaotic.

[Decolonize The Left]

So, we all know the fact that the Communist Manifesto recommends a revolution in order to establish a communist state. I'm personally opposed to this for a few reasons, including:
1. The Bourgeois and proletariat relationship and inequality isn't what it was back in the Industrial Revolution i.e:
Industrial Revolution workers were doing 12 hours a day, earning far less money than what would be paid now.
Nowadays everyone gets statutory holidays, defence if they're sick, women get time off if pregnant. There's no reason to use violence to overthrow the State.
There are far more proletarian workers now then in the time of Marx as capitalism has expanded immensely and reaches all corners of the globe and in many cases the conditions are far worse. Consider sweat shop workers in Indonesia, for example, or perhaps those who mine ore in Africa. Regardless, the pay/condition of the working class is indeed a point of interest, but the real issue at hand is the fundamentals of capitalism: those fundamentals which function upon the exploitation and oppression of our class.


2. Citizens might be outraged by destruction committed, leading to them rejecting the new communist state.

Generally speaking, a communist revolution would be launched and enacted by the proletariat, i.e. the citizens. So the citizens wouldn't be "outraged" at their own actions...


The other way to do it:
1. Have people with communist ideologies join the Senate/Daíl/whatever. Make them politicians, spread Marxist beliefs by awakening people from Capitalistic Propaganda.
2. Have them push through acts towards a communist system, examples include equal healthcare, the abolition of private healthcare.
3. Over time through reform, with enough support, the Communist State is introduced and the Bourgeois lose what they had.

What you describe is called "reformism," and is not the general tendency of this board. It is called RevLeft for a reason.


While I understand people like Phil Knight don't deserve to avoid violence, a lot of innocents would lose things along the way, which is a waste of human life.
Please go easy on me if I've got things wrong, I'm fifteen and still learning.

No worries. I can absolutely understand your resistance to the notion of a chaotic and perilous revolution whereby mass swaths of the population are killed, etc... I assure you that this is not what most people mean when they refer to a communist revolution.

All a communist revolution really means is the mobilization of the working class in their own interest and the act of taking possession of the means of production in the name of that interest. Anything more is supplementary.

[BlackFlag]

oh no human life

yeah i remember that. it really does suck. What theory have you read btw?
I personally think Human life is important, saying it's nothing leads to worse outcomes.
I'm reading The Communist Manifesto atm.
Thanks to the others for the useful posts aswell, I'm a little clearer on what you mean by a Revolution, now.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

That's misinterpreted at best — and deceitful at worst. The Manifesto is pretty explicit about the subject:

This implies that the inevitability of revolution is counterposed to humans consciously acting. This is a mistaken understanding of what is meant by saying the revolution is inevitable. We do not regard humans are mindless drones. Human beings have certain wants, needs and impulses as well as physical and mental power.

To think that declaring the revolution to be unavoidable means that we hold the belief that we will, if we wait long enough, end up in a communist utopia is a grossly mistaken idea. Marx remarked in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past". I think this citation is relevant for understanding what we mean by inevitability of revolution. We presuppose that human beings are not mindless drones. They have certain mental and physical capabilities which they can use for their interests. They do not, however, live in a vacuum. They live in a really existing world. What we argue is that the development of the capitalist mode of production will inevitably lead to the circumstances in which the proletarian class is compelled to rise against it.

Within these circumstances we can work, as Marx and Engels did an called for, towards organising ourselves as a class. Inevitability does not mean patiently waiting, to do so would be madness. Work is still needed for the overthrow of capitalism but this is made possible by the premises that are existent in capitalism which lead to revolution.

[consuming negativity]

There's no reason to use violence to overthrow the State.

I think the mistake you're making here is equating morality to actions but not looking at the circumstance surrounding those actions. Which act is truly the immoral one: slave ownership, or using violence to free slaves from their owners? A slave killing her or his master is not the moral equivalent of a master killing his or her slave. Likewise, which act is really immoral: keeping people in poverty, deprived from the fruits of their labor... or using violence to set yourself and everyone else free?

[G4b3n]

That's misinterpreted at best — and deceitful at worst. The Manifesto is pretty explicit about the subject:

How does that contradict my assertion at all?

The revolution is inevitable and those are indeed its aims.

[Bala Perdida]

Violence is a final step in the revolution that should be avoided if possible. The revolution is going to start with mass protest and civil disobedience. Hopefully the enforcement arms, i.e. military and police, will be on our side at this point. If not, then we'll have to resort to warfare. So only after the bourgeoisie show us that they are going to hold their grasp on power by any means they feel necessary, like firing on protesters and instituting martial law, will we engage them through warfare.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The manifesto doesn't recommend a revolution, it realizes its inevitability.
Revolution isn't inevitable, though.