Communism not an ideal that society will have to adjust itself to?

[Jacob Cliff]

To ensure I'm getting off on the right foot before anything else: is this claim made to show that communism is derived from the present state of things and not just some abstract ideal which we are to draw-up and try to impose on society, externally?

I believe understand this in the abstract, but it's hard to articulate what communism *is* given that it isn't an "ideal that society will have to adjust itself to."

So if communism is the "real movement" deriving from the existing material conditions of the here and now, then why exactly do we advocate it? What, essentially, is the justification for advocating a system and IMPOSING it (because we are, after all, imposing a class dictatorship that will supplant capitalism, containing within it the seeds that lead to its own demise) on today's society?

If we want to detach ourselves from moralistic arguments and idealist notions that include shit like "Well, in communism you'll be able to [...]" and other presumptions of that sort, then why do we even stand to lay the foundations of a communist society? Does the communist reasoning for trying to build a society that, frankly, we only understand in the abstract (given that Marxists tend to not blueprint future society) ultimately reduce down to moral arguments against modern society's decadence? Or is there something more, perhaps less subjective and more scientific?

I don't know how muddled-up this may sound, but it's a bit hard to word what I'm trying to ask here. If I need to, I can rephrase.
(And keep in mind, I'm not saying this to "debunk communism" or make some snide remark to try and "stump" leftists, so save your hostility. But it's difficult for me to try and describe communism to someone, in person, who's persistent on "Well why are you a communist?" "What's wrong with capitalism?" "Why do you think communism better?", etc.)

........................

On a slightly related note, because I've wondered this myself: is the pursuit of a society that we don't even really clearly define or understand not dangerous in the long run? We are essentially theorizing that we ought to impose a class dictatorship because it will lead to a future society that hopefully yields better results than today, but we don't even really have an idea of what this "future society" will be.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I'm not even sure why we're on this road in the first place – and I don't think any communist knows where the road even leads to, besides some guesses which we make that are derived from today's existing conditions.

[ckaihatsu]

Offhand I'd say it sounds like you're taking on more 'baggage' than you need to -- as revolutionaries we don't need to promise rainbows and gumdrops, we just need to note that the world's working class is being exploited hour after hour, and that production and consumption would be much better handled with the proletariat in collective charge of society's productivity.

Your use of the term 'decadence' shows that you're concerning yourself with matters of *lifestyle* (as in politics-logistics-lifestyle), when the life-paths that individuals choose has *nothing* to do with what we advocate *politically*.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The thing is, Marx says some very definite things about communism on the very same page on which the much-abused "communism is not for us..." line can be found. The point was never that communism is some kind of sacred mystery. The point was that its conditions of existence are material; communism, if it happens, will happen because capitalism has laid the material basis for its own overcoming by developing the objective socialisation of production and a global circulation of goods. It's not that socialism is a nice idea, and then we bend reality to be in conformance with this nice idea; it would have been a nice idea in the Ur III period, but it would have been an impossibility (this was the point of the entire paragraph preceding that quotation in the German Ideology).

Now as for justification - the struggle for communism develops out of the material conditions of capitalist society. It doesn't ask for justification.

And again, I think the notion that we don't know anything about the communist society to be wrong. We don't know if there will be ten or twelve chief committees and how much delegates the world soviet will have, but it's not as if anything goes - as if communism is compatible with markets or government or whatever.

[Comrade #138672]

Indeed. Communism is not an ideal, but a material necessity that developed out of capitalism.

Btw. Communism is not a guess.

[Q]

Not anymore than capitalism was an ideal for feudal society to aspire to.

[RedMaterialist]

So if communism is the "real movement" deriving from the existing material conditions of the here and now, then why exactly do we advocate it? What, essentially, is the justification for advocating a system and IMPOSING it (because we are, after all, imposing a class dictatorship that will supplant capitalism, containing within it the seeds that lead to its own demise) on today's society?



Saying that communism is the real movement deriving from material conditions does not remove it from the reality of the day-to-day struggle of revolution. Otherwise no revolution would ever be necessary, all we would have to do is wait. Which, by the way, is the philosophy of the capitalist: All is best in the best of all possible worlds.

Capitalism produces a world class of propertyless workers which then develops its own consciousness; it becomes aware of the historical conditions of its own degradation, but also aware of its own power. Why should that class simply do nothing?

[Sibotic]

So if communism is the "real movement" deriving from the existing material conditions of the here and now, then why exactly do we advocate it? What, essentially, is the justification for advocating a system and IMPOSING it [...] on today's society?

It's quite possible for the kingdom of God to be at hand and still be a good thing. Obviously communism is also, as we all know, the condition which came about due to the abolition of capitalism, which was taken apart by its own contradictions. You presumably support communism, so its historical inevitability - which is merely to say that this support isn't divorced from historical conceptions - as it was is evidently not going to detract from this.


Does the communist reasoning for trying to build a society that, frankly, we only understand in the abstract (given that Marxists tend to not blueprint future society) ultimately reduce down to moral arguments against modern society's decadence?
For communists, as in another, but nonetheless closely related, sense for Hegel, morality and reality are not completely divorced, or morality is not merely abstract. Obviously if we're talking about production, then purpose is a necessary part of it, as someone pointed out was presupposed by Marx (as well as that this inherence of purpose to production would imply that a moral issue here would imply that people's relations of production reach past themselves to a higher purpose, which is unbeknownst to them). As such communist's 'moral' arguments against capitalism are not merely incidental asides picking at problems in it - presumably attempting to do this in accord with its existing principles -, but go to the heart of the system and involve contradictions inherent in it, and the necessity of communism beyond it. This makes it inaccessible, or did.


On a slightly related note, because I've wondered this myself: is the pursuit of a society that we don't even really clearly define or understand not dangerous in the long run? We are essentially theorizing that we ought to impose a class dictatorship because it will lead to a future society that hopefully yields better results than today, but we don't even really have an idea of what this "future society" will be.
If the road leads to totalitarianism then I'm all for it.

On a more detailed note, obviously understanding communism as part of the historical process doesn't mean that people don't know exactly what it was, necessarily, but rather that this understanding is theoretical rather than imaginative, or doesn't merely begin from trying to specify a bunch of characteristics of an incidental society.

[RedMaterialist]

So if communism is the "real movement" deriving from the existing material conditions of the here and now, then why exactly do we advocate it? What, essentially, is the justification for advocating a system and IMPOSING it (because we are, after all, imposing a class dictatorship that will supplant capitalism, containing within it the seeds that lead to its own demise) on today's society?



Marx and Engels addressed this argument in The Communist Manifesto. You want the benefits of communism but without the revolution necessary to achieve it. Marx called this "Bourgeois Socialism:"

Marx, Engels. The Communist Manifesto


The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.

[ckaihatsu]

I'll add that you're flirting with an outright *fatalistic* and *defeatist* position, if you're going to question 'revolution', since what you're doing only defaults to the *status quo* -- capitalism.

[ckaihatsu]

politics-logistics-lifestyle


History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

http://s6.postimg.org/44rloql0x/160309_History_Macro_Micro_politics_logistic.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/r686uhkod/full/)

[Dave B]

I think Karl’s analysis was based on a trend analysis of capitalism and were it would end up and what it would lead to etc etc.

Trend one was a increasing concentration of ownership and ‘control’ of the stuff required to make things.

We have arrived at that point pretty much and it is fairly well understood even outside of ‘marxist’ analysis eg the 99% thing which is moving apace to the 99.9%.

The second point was ‘control’; as he projected that the whole capitalist system would become increasingly unstable and a law unto its market like self.

Unemployed building workers and homeless people; as well as insecure rates of profit etc.

Along side that is capitalisms general and given development of technology and potential to provide abundance.

Solutions, as ideas, emerge out of or as answers to extant problems they don’t fall from the sky.

The answer could appear to be sack the capitalist paradigm of production for profit and introduce production for use.

That could involve some kind of ‘democratic state capitalism’ with I guess retaining the market to some extant whilst allowing production to be moderated or controlled by the intervention of planned production or something?

With people being paid with labour vouchers; as if paper ‘money’ now isn’t labour vouchers?

Some kind of federation of syndicalist co-operatives?

Some kind of dogs dinner combination of the two.

Or cut the snake off at it head and have voluntary labour and free access; from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.


The problem with that is that is that we have been convinced that we are all like the capitalist class themselves, lazy, aspirants to parasiticism, greedy and individually selfish with an insatiable appetite for all things possible ie hundreds of pairs of shoes, Calvin Klien underwear, roasted otters noses and generally gorging ourselves on crap and vomiting it up so we can start again.

And thus there will never be enough to go around.

And bollocks to the nobility and social status of performing useful work.

Something that is slowly knocked out of us from the age of about 8.

Like the John Major joke about running away from the circus to become an accountant.

I work in manufacturing industry and take a snobbish satisfaction that I am doing something ‘useful’.

In the West it is almost and elitist workerist position; probably part of my cultural heritage or something.

I suppose it helps if you are not too over worked , reasonably paid and are contemptuous of all the bling you are told you cannot live without.

[ckaihatsu]

I think Karl’s analysis was based on a trend analysis of capitalism and were it would end up and what it would lead to etc etc.

Trend one was a increasing concentration of ownership and ‘control’ of the stuff required to make things.

We have arrived at that point pretty much and it is fairly well understood even outside of ‘marxist’ analysis eg the 99% thing which is moving apace to the 99.9%.

The second point was ‘control’; as he projected that the whole capitalist system would become increasingly unstable and a law unto its market like self.

Unemployed building workers and homeless people; as well as insecure rates of profit etc.

Along side that is capitalisms general and given development of technology and potential to provide abundance.

Solutions, as ideas, emerge out of or as answers to extant problems they don’t fall from the sky.

The answer could appear to be sack the capitalist paradigm of production for profit and introduce production for use.

That could involve some kind of ‘democratic state capitalism’ with I guess retaining the market to some extant whilst allowing production to be moderated or controlled by the intervention of planned production or something?

With people being paid with labour vouchers; as if paper ‘money’ now isn’t labour vouchers?

Some kind of federation of syndicalist co-operatives?

Some kind of dogs dinner combination of the two.

Or cut the snake off at it head and have voluntary labour and free access; from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.


The problem with that is that is that we have been convinced that we are all like the capitalist class themselves, lazy, aspirants to parasiticism, greedy and individually selfish with an insatiable appetite for all things possible ie hundreds of pairs of shoes, Calvin Klien underwear, roasted otters noses and generally gorging ourselves on crap and vomiting it up so we can start again.

And thus there will never be enough to go around.

And bollocks to the nobility and social status of performing useful work.

Something that is slowly knocked out of us from the age of about 8.

Like the John Major joke about running away from the circus to become an accountant.

I work in manufacturing industry and take a snobbish satisfaction that I am doing something ‘useful’.

In the West it is almost and elitist workerist position; probably part of my cultural heritage or something.

I suppose it helps if you are not too over worked , reasonably paid and are contemptuous of all the bling you are told you cannot live without.


I have a couple of treatments that speak to the topics you raised of 'marginal markets' (my wording) and labor vouchers:


Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political Economy



http://s6.postimg.org/cp6z6ed81/Multi_Tiered_System_of_Productive_and_Consumptiv.j pg (http://postimg.org/image/ccfl07uy5/full/)


Pies Must Line Up



http://s6.postimg.org/5wpihv9ip/140415_2_Pies_Must_Line_Up_xcf_jpg.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/erqcsdyb1/full/)

[Verneinung]

So if communism is the "real movement" deriving from the existing material conditions of the here and now, then why exactly do we advocate it? What, essentially, is the justification for advocating a system and IMPOSING it (because we are, after all, imposing a class dictatorship that will supplant capitalism, containing within it the seeds that lead to its own demise) on today's society?

It is kind of inconsistent to view communism as a movement and then subsequently as a system. You have to notice the dual usage of the term, and the primacy ought to be placed on it as a movement. The communist society is more of a consequence as opposed to the goal (as the goal addresses the current condition).

From Marx:

The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.

The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialized production, into socialized property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.

When they tried to make it as simple as possible Marx and Engels (and others) said communism was just the abolition of private property.

From Principles of Communism: What will this new social order have to be like?

In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.

Capital is a social relation, so socialism and communism represent an opposition to this social relation. There is no "class dictatorship". You are imposing democracy and opposing tyranny, which if you phrased it that way, it would be hard to find a person to disagree with you.

Marx has a diatribe against ownership referencing the Lockean theory of labor/property somewhere in Capital. What one would have to understand is that production was socialized (and not by communists), but the ideology of individual property ownership subsisted within the context of that socialization, which is a logical inconsistency. Communism only sets straight that inconsistency by saying that if production is socialized the totality of social relations should reflect this and the alienated state of capital and labor ought to be reconciled.


If we want to detach ourselves from moralistic arguments and idealist notions that include shit like "Well, in communism you'll be able to [...]" and other presumptions of that sort, then why do we even stand to lay the foundations of a communist society? Does the communist reasoning for trying to build a society that, frankly, we only understand in the abstract (given that Marxists tend to not blueprint future society) ultimately reduce down to moral arguments against modern society's decadence? Or is there something more, perhaps less subjective and more scientific?

The moral argument is there, but it has nothing to do with "decadence".


On a slightly related note, because I've wondered this myself: is the pursuit of a society that we don't even really clearly define or understand not dangerous in the long run? We are essentially theorizing that we ought to impose a class dictatorship because it will lead to a future society that hopefully yields better results than today, but we don't even really have an idea of what this "future society" will be.

That is an argument against all future events. Theory in general provides predicative value under the assumption that the assumptions of the theory apply to whatever reality upon which those assumptions are based.

There are basic theories about how capitalism function and ideology functions, which are more difficult than the ones dealing with physics (since humans are involved), but nonetheless we have a good idea about the negative consequences of a global capitalist system.

The point is not to know what a future society will bring, it is to deal with the problems of the present day: the climate, war, violation of civil liberties, perpetuation and creation of poverty and dependency, health crises, environmental disaster, destruction of morality, family, community, etc.

[ckaihatsu]

The point is not to know what a future society will bring, it is to deal with the problems of the present day: the climate, war, violation of civil liberties, perpetuation and creation of poverty and dependency, health crises, environmental disaster, destruction of morality, family, community, etc.


Whether to focus on transcending current social ills and/or to delineate *future potentials* post-capitalism, is really a matter of *taste*, I would say -- I find it helpful to consider what general *positives* would be enabled once the class division is usurped, so as to 'keep your eyes on the prize'....

Many people are conscious of the strange but real discrepancy between regular everyday individual intelligence, and the 'fractured', *un*-intelligent way that the overall world works in. Certainly any pre-teen or person coming-of-age will have reflected on this somewhat by that stage in their life, perhaps leading them around to political philosophy like here at RevLeft, or perhaps not.

The more socially-oriented will certainly wonder why we *don't* have a worldwide *egalitarian* approach to society / community, when it would appear that there are no untapped material or human barriers to such happening right now....