How to achieve communism?

[Hate Is Art]

after the revolution how would you suceed in implementing communism? Straight of scrapping of the system would be impractical but some very major changes would have be made, and the victory would have to be secured, what would you see as the best method of achieving Communism.

[Zanzibar]

- 18 -
What will be the course of this revolution?

Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the following:

(i) Limitation of private property through progressive taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.) forced loans, etc.

(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad magnates and shipowners, partly through competition by state industry, partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds.

(iii) Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and rebels against the majority of the people.

(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.

(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

(vi) Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital, and the suppression of all private banks and bankers.

(vii) Education of the number of national factories, workshops, railroads, ships; bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement of land already under cultivation -- all in proportion to the growth of the capital and labor force at the disposal of the nation.

(viii) Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother's care, in national establishments at national cost. Education and production together.

(ix) Construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal dwellings for associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry and agriculture and combining in their way of life the advantages of urban and rural conditions while avoiding the one-sidedness and drawbacks of each.

(x) Destruction of all unhealthy and jerry-built dwellings in urban districts.

(xi) Equal inheritance rights for children born in and out of wedlock.

(xii) Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands of the nation.

It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at once. But one will always bring others in its wake. Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country's productive forces.

Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.

From the Principles of Communism - Engels

[redstar2000]

We'll never know if Engels' "recipe" would have worked in 1848.

What might be done in 2048 or 2148 would obviously be very different and much more dramatic.

Certainly whatever remnants of the old state apparatus that were still functioning would be shut down.

Whatever revolutionary assemblies that had emerged would seek to "link up" in order to restore basic services on a communist basis.

There would almost certainly be a spontaneous "great wave" of collectivization initiated by workers everywhere.

Planning groups would be slow to emerge...so things would probably be rather chaotic in the first few years.

There would be a social climate of "revolutionizing everything"...and that would also tend to make things "sloppy" for a while.

Revolutions are periods of great experimentation...lots of things will be tried and the ones that seem to work well will spread.

And there will be an explosion of popular debate, discussion, and heated ideological struggle. Tens of millions of people will "find their voice"...and they will be heard.

And obeyed.

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The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[Zanzibar]

Originally posted by [email protected] 2 2004, 02:49 AM


http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas
That is one *****en smilely btw

:redstar2000: