Quick Question About The Stages Development..

[ConfusedAntiCapitalists]

From what I understand it's like this...and please correct me if I have it wrong.

1. The first stage (if the area isn't running in it's full industrial and productive capacities) is a sort of managed economy (State capitalist?) ...whose goal is to basically bring production and distribution to a level where there are no or as little shortage as possible...

2. Actual socialism...where the power is dissolved from the Party into the hands of the workers; and the wealth is distributed equally and class divisions begin to fade...and

3. Actual Communism..which as a stage of socialist development has a definition that is basically interchangable with anarchism...or some forms of it.

I understand this to be more of a Marxist belief..where the anarcho communist would either try to bypass, shorten or make as democratic as possible the first two stages...

Where am I wrong?

[Djehuti]

Marx only spoke about two "stages", the first stage of communism and the second stage of communism. And as you see, both these stages are communist stages. The first stage of communism is synonymous to the free association of producers, the aboloshing of the division between producers and the means of production, the abolishing of property relations as such. For Marx, there never existed anything such as a communist stage with a state, commodity production or wage labour.

What Marx called the first stage of communism has nothing to do with what Lenin later called socialism: ”Socialism is merely the next step forward from state capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly”.

Personally, I don't think we need all these "stage-thinking" at all. Of cource everything won't happen at once, but I can't really see the use of it.

[davidasearles]

Djehuti

I'm with you on this. It's not like any of this stuff is inevitable. I work on trying to convince workers that they ought to set as their target taking over the means of production and collectively operating it for themselves. When we get there then tell me what stage we're in. :-)

dave searles

[Janus]

The first stage (if the area isn't running in it's full industrial and productive capacities) is a sort of managed economy (State capitalist?) ...whose goal is to basically bring production and distribution to a level where there are no or as little shortage as possible...
Assuming that this is all taking place in a developed nation, then capitalism should already have taken care of the technological advancement part of this step and thus would open up the way to the lower stage of communism (as Marx called it) immediately following the working class victory.