Marx...

[Drace]

Did Marx ever himself say that his ideas of communism could not be reached? Is this just propaganda thought in school?

What are the claims of this?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

He actually said that the class war leads to the revolutionary transformation of society or to the common ruin of the contending classes.


"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." [Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto.]

We just have to make sure the former is the case...

[apathy maybe]

Did Marx ever himself say that his ideas of communism could not be reached? Is this just propaganda thought in school?

What are the claims of this?

I believe that in his earlier stages Marx said that "communism" was inevitable, and then later, changed to "communism or destruction" (see the quote from Rosa).

Anyway, saying that anything is "not possible" or is "inevitable" when referring to history and the future is potentially problematic. After all, full "democracy" used to be regarded as impossible by the autocrats, and now we have "everyone" voting (or at least having the potential to).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AM, the Communist Manifesto was written in 1848; that's pretty early on!

The word 'inevitable' is inappropriate too, since it rules out human agency, something Marx definitely considered crucially important for the formation of a communist society.

[Red_Dialectics]

I think he meant that there would inevitably be people who started a real communist revolution, and that a communist revolution would eventually succeed.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Except, of course, he did not say this.

[RedHal]

Did Marx ever himself say that his ideas of communism could not be reached? Is this just propaganda thought in school?

What are the claims of this?

Is it important if Marx claimed that communism was inevitable or not? Some people are too caught up in the infallible Marx. Judge his ideas, are they correct or not.