Transition?

[enigma2517]

10.WHAT ARE THE ESSENTAL PREREQUISITES FOR THE TRANSITION FROM SOCIALISM TO COMMUNISM?

Firstly, a vast increase in the production of material wealth, sufficient to meet all the essential needs of all the working people, without rationing; and
secondly, a change in the outlook and attitudes of the mass of the working people, in that they have come to accept work as a natural obligation, performed according to ability without economic compulsion, and in that they have come to take from distribution centres only what they need.

The adoption under socialism of the principle of distribution according to work performed is necessary in order that the first prerequisite of commmunism -- a vast increase in the production of material wealth -- may be attained as soon as possible.

Got this off of a link in Malte's beginners guide. Learn something new everyday :)

Click here for original (http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/marxism/Cl8.html)

So lets start another marxist vs anarchist debate thread. I've seen some of the ones before but they're lengthy and tend to jump around to tangents. So lets stick to this.

First point, can an advanced capitalist nation almost immediately begin to be operated in a way that it can provide every citizen with necessary material wealth. I heard a saying once that communism is the elimination of scarcity. I know that in the Spanish revolution areas that were better off could have totally open bread shops for instance, while poorer and less productive areas still had to ration...but they still managed I suppose? I don't know, you tell me...does the wealth exist already or does it still need to be accumulated? Can this be down with entirely libertarian principles or is a state apperatus in order? What about poorer, underdeveloped nations?

The second question I think I can answer for myself...I believe the exist of a state acts largely as a metaphorical "babysitter". You are not mature enough to view work as pleasurable, you are not yet ready for your liberation we will teach you. This kind of attitude never yields positive results. I think people who are treated like children will act like children. But is socialism looking down on people (perhaps a more leninist view) or is the state really just necessary to protect the workers? Keep more libertarian precedents such as the Paris Commune in mind when you answer this as well.

Enjoy, food for thought :D

[Daymare17]

There's a prerequisite for Socialism too. That prerequisite is a level of economy higher than the highest capitalism, since Marx thought the revolution would come in the advanced countries first. Where that's not fulfilled, as in the USSR, it's not socialism but only a transition from capitalism to socialism (some Lenin quotes to make the Stalinists mad:)

"We are far from having completed even the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. We have never cherished the hope that we could finish it without the aid of the international proletariat. We never had any illusions on that scoreÉ The final victory of socialism in a single country is of course impossible. Our contingent of workers and peasants which is upholding Soviet power is one of the contingents of the great world army, which at present has been split by the world war, but which is striving for unityÉ We can now see clearly how far the development of the Revolution will go. The Russian began it - the German, the Frenchman and the Englishman will finish it, and socialism will be victorious." (LCW, Vol. 26, pp. 465-72.)

""But we have not finished building even the foundations of socialist economy and the hostile powers of moribund capitalism can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than illusionsÉ And there is absolutely nothing terrible É in admitting this bitter truth; for we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism - that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism." (LCW, Vol. 33, p. 206.)

The USSR of Stalin was not socialism but a very deformed transitional stage in which the bureaucracy of the workers' state, thanks to the backwardness and isolation of the revolution, got interests opposed to the class it represented and usurped power.

[NovelGentry]

May 21-28: Versailles troops enter Paris on May 21. The Prussians who held the northern and eastern forts allowed the Versailles troops to advance across the land north of the city, which was forbidden ground to them under the armistice — Paris workers held the flank with only weak forces. As a result of this, only a weak resistance was put up in the western half of Paris, in the luxury city; while it grew stronger and more tenacious the nearer the Versailles troops approached the eastern half, the working class city.

The French army spent eight days massacring workers, shooting civilians on sight. The operation was led by Marshal MacMahon, who would later become president of France. Tens of thousands of Communards and workers are summarily executed (as many as 30,000); 38,000 others imprisoned and 7,000 are forcibly deported.

Indeed keeping the Paris commune in mind... is the state really just necessary to protect the workers?

You tell me.