Is Communism the last step?

[which doctor]

In Marx's theory of Historical Materialism he never says there is anything past Communism.

Do you think that Communism is the "last step" or do you think there will be other stages?

Is society constantly evolving to the point where it never reaches a last step until the world ends.

I find it quite hard to believe that there is anything better besides communism, but perhaps I have this other theory has just never been put down on paper before. I have never heard of it.

It's been suggested that the next step after communism is Bio-Centrism :o. Perhaps in the future us communists will be stuck in the past while the compasstionate bio-centrists will be fighting for their revolution.

The only advive I have is to fight for the future, progress.

[Sentinel]

Do you think that Communism is the "last step" or do you think there will be other stages? Is society constantly evolving to the point where it never reaches a last step until the world ends.

Development will surely continue "forever" or until the human race dies out of some reason. But I can't see communism hindering that in any way, and thus it will prevail.

The previous systems have become obsolete since they have gone from progressive to
backwards. But the thing with communism is that it is all about progress. Therefore I can't see another system replacing it.



The only advice I have is to fight for the future, progress.

Since that is the essence of communism, that we will do. And so we will always be the
progressive ones. :)

[silentrevolutionary]

Humanity is about progress and about the resistance or fight against something, even though communism looks like those of us before the plunge as the answer there will never be any system, not even communism that shall contain humanity forever, there will eventually be another "radical" system in antithesis to the communist one. Therefore, I believe that communism is only a brief but all to necessary step on the way towards a more perfect humanity.

[Everyday Anarchy]

As an Anarchist, I like this quote (not sure who it's by)
I am an Anarchist, not because I believe Anarchism is the final goal. But because I believe there is no final goal.

I'm sure the same could be thought of with Communism. I can't believe that any system will simply be "the last step."
As we progress, we'll notice flaws in Communism and begin to develop new ideas and philosophies.

[Sentinel]

Originally posted by Xero
As we progress, we'll notice flaws in Communism and begin to develop new ideas and philosophies.

Well I see what you mean, but can anyone see what those would be? I mean, why even speculate in we cannot. That's the job of very distant future generations.

I find it very hard to believe that anything fundamentally different would succeed communism. That would have to be something reactionary, and I don't believe in time going backwards.

Communism itself might develop in unpredicted directions maybe, but why would it necessarily become obsolete? I don't see that as very likely.

[Vanguard1917]

The Sentinel

Development will surely continue "forever" or until the human race dies out of some reason. But I can't see communism hindering that in any way, and thus it will prevail.

Exactly. Communist society will destroy all the fetters placed on the development of the productive forces. It's the riddle of history solved.

[Cooler Reds Will Prevail]

Could the order somehow be cyclic, and someday we see different communes develop back into tribalism and the stages start over again? I'm not suggesting this is what will happen, just something to ponder.

At the moment nothing comes to mind that would be more advanced than communism, but I can imagine something will arise eventually. Communists should always be looking to further progress society so if something better arises, we should seek to embrace it.

[Jadan ja]

If the class struggle is what leads to revolution and change of the system, then communist society will forever remain communist since there are no classes in communism.

But that does not mean that there will not be other problems and that humanity does not continue to develop by solving those problems.

[piet11111]

i doubt it is the last step because of its flexibility it can addapt to all sorts of situations.

but what i do think would be a potentially dangerous time is when humanity starts populating other planets in the distant future.
it leaves more then enough room for a repeating of the cyclic order on a much bigger scale.
too bad i wont be around to see it happen.

[LtnMarxist]

Really with our current understanding of reality today, I don't believe as historical materialist we can say what society will develop into after communism. Communist society will liberate humanity to the point that we will evolve into something we can not even grasp today. We may be speaking with our minds and traveling the universe. We might not even inhabitant what we consider our material bodies in a few centuries. What I am saying is that with capitalism there were many great inventions and discoveries that has taken our understanding and relationship with our material reality to new heights and with this in combination with the emancipation of humanity for class oppression, our understanding of reality will in turn change. This may sound very abstract to people, but really even trying to guess where will be in a few hundred years is the truly abstract idea. But as historical materialist we also have the understanding that society and reality is ever evolving and changing and without making assumptions or looking into any crystal ball it is safe to say that we will definitely "evolve" to a new state of social existence past that of "communism".

[red team]

A labour system such as what classic Communism is, is unstable because it relies on a price system. There far too many ways in which people with power can corrupt a price system for their own ends because money can be hoarded. Furthermore, a price system relies on the valuation of commodities including labour itself when we are actually moving away from a labour based economy with technology replacing manual labour. I think eventually a fully automated economy needs to be developed which allows for Technocracy and energy accounting.

Even after money becomes obsolete an accounting system would still be needed. You can't break physical laws, particularly the law of conservation of energy. Machines that will do all the manual work for us will still need to be accounted for when fed the fuel they need to do useful work.

[Sentinel]

I think eventually a fully automated economy needs to be developed which allows for Technocracy and energy accounting.

Now we are talking! I see energy accounting as a thinkable future system to harmonize the production with the needs of the people.


Even after money becomes obsolete an accounting system would still be needed. You can't break physical laws, particularly the law of conservation of energy. Machines that will do all the manual work for us will still need to be accounted for when fed the fuel they need to do useful work.

Exactly! And in that system, a product is manufactured when someone "buys" it with the energy certificate and thus "votes" for it. Overproduction is eliminated.

I find this fascinating, and a very possible future way of administrating production.

[black magick hustla]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 03:49 AM

I am an Anarchist, not because I believe Anarchism is the final goal. But because I believe there is no final goal.


Its from Rudolf Rocker :)

[Dyst]

In my opinion, everything will be considered "the last step" until some kind of progress is needed by the community. I do not believe there will ever be one last step that when you reach you reach status quo. Everything is always evolving.

As said before, there are many things which may happen after communism. For example technological breakthroughs which allows for technocracy of some sort or maybe even other economical systems which may prove more suited in any given time.

[ComradeOm]

I remember reading a piece on historical materialism in which Marx/Engels asserts that communism will be the end of "pre-history". Events will still happen, history will still be made but the relations of production should not change.

[Ol' Dirty]

There is no "end". There will always be suffering; there will always be pain. People will always try to better society; sometimes it will work, sometimes it wil not. Communism is an excellent Idea, but is not the "final step".

[red team]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2006, 04:38 PM
There is no "end". There will always be suffering; there will always be pain. People will always try to better society; sometimes it will work, sometimes it wil not. Communism is an excellent Idea, but is not the "final step".
Yes, but suffering and pain is relative to the existing material conditions someone find themselves in. For example, I can't imagine the rich, pampered heiress of a wealthy hotel franchise ;) suffering more than the average worker enaged in menial work to support himself or herself.

[Janus]

Could the order somehow be cyclic, and someday we see different communes develop back into tribalism and the stages start over again? I'm not suggesting this is what will happen, just something to ponder.
According to Marx and Engels, that wouldn't occur because of dialectics. Simply put, change occurs in spirals not circles. Also, Hegel believed that contradictions will drive a system towards an Absolute through the process of the negation of the negation. So if communism is that absolute then everything couldn't just simply reerberate back to primitive society. However, dialectics isn't the most solid philosophy and has been prone to many errors.

If we somehow did regress back to primitive society, then it would be extremely hard to get out of it since most of the Earth's natural resources would've been depleted for a another progression of history.

[Dreckt]

I don't think there could be a cycle of the events. Well, that is, if we don't have a nuclear war or some terrible global occurance.

The thing is, in primal tribes, people did not have free information exchange. Hell, people lived in tribes all the way up until the 19th century, when they were colonized and became slaves to Europeans (for example).

Today, we have powerful computers that can store tons of information about past history. A cycle back is not possible so long the people remembers past history - about feudalism, nations and nationalism, capitalism and socialism. If people forget, or if this huge information exchange somehow would end (like a global catastrophy or war), only then people would naturally sooner or later forget, and the whole thing could start all over.

The information about past systems are there to serve us, to show the humans of the future why capitalism is wrong, what made it wrong, how it started, and so on. This is exactly like not forgetting the Holocaust. If we didn't have a database about the autrocities, people would forget, and thus it could have happened again.

As for what would come after communism, well, who knows? We don't even know how the world would look like at the time of communism. Will we still have humans at the workplace, or will most "simple" jobs be replaced by robots?

Well, I think we must take a look at how we would like to live our lives. It is a fact that people love doing things - building, art, sports and so on. I don't believe that people would, in the end, just sit at home and do nothing while society is runned by robots. I do believe, however, that robots will do the crucial work, and that what we do will mostly be our own interests (that is, the robots takes care of building and making food, researching new medicine etc, but humans would do it because they want to, not because the society needs them).

I think the ideal world is that of robots. Technology would do everything for us, and every single man and woman would live like gods. We can choose to go anywhere in space, or in the sea, and have our own robotic servants, for example.

Another possibility is that humans chooses to make a network out of themselves. Instant democracy. Maybe we will create technology between every human, maybe we have some kind of yet-undeveloped psychic power that enables us to communicate without speach? I don't know.

According to some, we will have a form of "Technological Singularity" around the next 20-30 years. This means that we will come to a point where our technology has become so great that progress will happen in a matter of hours. This would most likely be because the development of an AI. Oh, well, you can read it on this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

I do, however know, that there will be problems. We have many deceases to cure, we have to cure our planet too. What if we encounter a powerful alien civilization? And what if they are hostile?

Well, I don't know. We can only hope for the best to the coming generations.

[Ol' Dirty]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2006, 04:38 PM
There is no "end". There will always be suffering; there will always be pain. People will always try to better society; sometimes it will work, sometimes it wil not. Communism is an excellent Idea, but is not the "final step".


Yes, but suffering and pain is relative to the existing material conditions someone find themselves in. For example, I can't imagine the rich, pampered heiress of a wealthy hotel franchise ;) suffering more than the average worker enaged in menial work to support himself or herself.

This is not necasserily true. We all have ailments of the flesh and of the mind; we all have our struggles, emotional and physicaly.