Marxism-Leninism and money, police and the military.

  1. Comrade_Stalin
    Comrade_Stalin - 31st January 2010, 01:06
    [FONT=Verdana]Under the articles section in this forum, there is a post, called “What is Communism”. In it, talk about the need, for no money, no polices and no armed organizations. I would like to know what the current Marxist-Leninist belief is, when it comes to money, polices, and the military, in both the lower and higher stages of communism. [/FONT]

    [FONT=Calibri]Also can you guy check my understanding. That the higher stage of communism is not the final stage.[/FONT]
  2. Comrade_Stalin
    Comrade_Stalin - 31st January 2010, 20:10
    Does any one have a answer?
  3. btpound
    btpound - 7th February 2010, 06:07
    I think it is ironic that no one really has been answering your questions Comrade Stalin. These are some of the same problems I have been struggling through myself. I think there is a huge deficit in marxist thinking and writing about how exactly the transfer from capitalism to communism is suppose to happen. How do you run society without money? How do you eliminate class antagonism? Who do arrest, when and why? Personally, that is why I turned to Maoism. But even Maoism only goes so far. We have no example of how the economy and the government would really be run in a country like America, or Brittain, or France. What if a revolution is left isolated? What do we do? Admit defeat? how do we handle the problem that many of these countries have a lot of different communist parties with a hundred different lines? What do we do? Just let it sort itself out?

    So much talk about the dictatorship of the proletariat. So much talk about was Russia socialist, or state capitalist, or a degenerated worker's state. The more it is debated, the longer the discussion goes on, the less and less I care. I wish I had a gong. "sorry comrades, your time is up. Let's move on". Do people really care about this? I don't mean the handful of a few thousand Marxists in your respective countries, I mean the people. Often heard of, but never heard from. When I talk about it with people about socialism and communism they don't say, "yea yea this all sounds great, but what's your line on Russia?" They don't give a shit about Russia. What they care about is what our plans are for today. I don't think we look intelligent. And we are intelligent. So we should act intelligent. We should develop real answers. We should expand the boundaries of Marxism, not wander around in the time-fog.

    Sorry if I am sounding like an asshole. And I am sorry comrade for making your honest post about me and my frustration. But I have been asking these same questions and getting no answers. I have been trying to just sort it out myself, but I am not getting very far very fast without people to help me along. I think I will form a group to deal with socialist economics and political theory. PM me if anyone has any interest. I don't want to form a party of one. Again, sorry for the long self indulgent post. I wish there were more answers.
  4. Comrade_Stalin
    Comrade_Stalin - 7th February 2010, 17:54
    [FONT=Verdana]Yes I understand your pain to, and that why I asked why don’t' we use this forum more. I would like to question removing money as I see it as a form of “collective bargain”. Hell it even a form of de-specialize collective bargain as you are not setting the price between any two items but all items. If it was we would have 10 pig to cow notes for ever time a framer would buy a cow. But instead you can get money from selling any item, and get any item with money. [/FONT]
  5. Charles Xavier - 8th February 2010, 22:51
    Well comrade, can we say what will communism be like right now? Can we say what it will be in an absolute terms? No we cannot.

    We cannot because of several problems, one, nothing is an absolute, everything is a process of constant change and progress. And in terms of what it will look like we do not have examples on what this form will be, we are not close to a point of developing this advanced society. That being said we can speculate as did Marx and Engels did. Which they had just speculations on what it would be, guess work by geniuses but still guesswork. Marx had thought of two different ideas for currency, one is everything is free, take as needed, the other is an idea of labour time vouchers, so you put 4 hours labour into a job you get 4 hours labour worth of commodities. In terms of policing, can we say there will be no crime? Well I cannot say, property crime in terms of stealing personal property may still occur, murder, etc, will the conciousness of the people be elevated enough to overcome this because they live in surplus? We can only rely on guess work since advanced communism has never existed. Can there be communism when there are capitalist societies still around? My opinion is that Communism can only be attainable when there is an absent of opposition to working class power.

    Its like asking a primative communist society tell you what fuedalism would look like, or a slave society inform you about capitalism.
  6. Comrade_Stalin
    Comrade_Stalin - 9th February 2010, 04:40
    Well comrade, can we say what will communism be like right now? Can we say what it will be in an absolute terms? No we cannot.

    We cannot because of several problems, one, nothing is an absolute, everything is a process of constant change and progress. And in terms of what it will look like we do not have examples on what this form will be, we are not close to a point of developing this advanced society. That being said we can speculate as did Marx and Engels did. Which they had just speculations on what it would be, guess work by geniuses but still guesswork. Marx had thought of two different ideas for currency, one is everything is free, take as needed, the other is an idea of labour time vouchers, so you put 4 hours labour into a job you get 4 hours labour worth of commodities. In terms of policing, can we say there will be no crime? Well I cannot say, property crime in terms of stealing personal property may still occur, murder, etc, will the conciousness of the people be elevated enough to overcome this because they live in surplus? We can only rely on guess work since advanced communism has never existed. Can there be communism when there are capitalist societies still around? My opinion is that Communism can only be attainable when there is an absent of opposition to working class power.

    Its like asking a primative communist society tell you what fuedalism would look like, or a slave society inform you about capitalism.
    Yes we as a group have a problem. We have no model to show what advance communism is like. The closes I have come to it, is a Tropico 3 model and a Startopia, with both using labour time vouchers, but with somethings free. So it more of a labour time vouchers and something is free, take as needed comb. One of the problem is that we can not work on this model as we are fighting every group, not on the model, but on us vs. them
  7. Charles Xavier - 12th February 2010, 01:40
    And I have all the more reason not to be silent on this point, because, in the first place, a Communist is expected to devote greater attention to the tasks of tomorrow, and not of yesterday, and, in the second place, my pamphlet was written before the Bolsheviks seized power, when it was impossible to treat the Bolsheviks to vulgar petty-bourgeois arguments such as: “Yes, of course, after seizing power, you begin to talk about discipline.”
    “. . . Socialism will develop into communism . . . since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.” [The State and Revolution, pages 77-78]; thus, “elementary conditions” were discussed before the seizure of power.)
    “. . . Only then will democracy begin to wither away . . ." when “people gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims; they will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state” [The State and Revolution, page 462.]; thus mention was made of “copy-book maxims” before the seizure of power).
    “. . . The higher phase of the development of communism” (from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs) “. . . presupposes not the present productivity of labour and not the present ordinary run of people, who, like the seminary students in Pomyalovsky’s stories, are capable of damaging the stocks of public wealth just for fun, and of demanding the impossible” [The State and Revolution, pages pages 469-470.]
    “Until the higher phase of communism arrives, the socialists demand the strictest control by society and by the state over the measure of labour and the measure of consumption . . .” (ibid.).
    “Accounting and control—that is mainly what is needed for the smooth working, for the proper functioning of the first phase of communist society” [The State and Revolution, page 473.] And this control must be established not only over “the insignificant capitalist minority, over the gentry who wish to preserve their capitalist habits”, but also over the workers who “have been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism”[The State and Revolution, page 474.] and over the “parasites, the sons of the wealthy, the swindlers and other guardians of capitalist traditions” (ibid.).



    http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...918/may/09.htm


    I hope this article answers some questions you have, on the state and on ultra-leftism and on state capitalism
  8. Comrade_Stalin
    Comrade_Stalin - 13th February 2010, 02:10
    “. . . Only then will democracy begin to wither away . . ."
    So when he was talking about democracy, was it the type of democracy we have now wherte you can only vote for your next tyrant or democracy in general?
  9. Charles Xavier - 15th February 2010, 21:42
    So when he was talking about democracy, was it the type of democracy we have now wherte you can only vote for your next tyrant or democracy in general?
    He is referring to states, like the need for a majority to rule, the need for a state to rule will wither away.
  10. Comrade_Stalin
    Comrade_Stalin - 18th February 2010, 03:01
    He is referring to states, like the need for a majority to rule, the need for a state to rule will wither away.
    I don't think that there should ever be a time, when the majority, should not rule.
  11. Charles Xavier - 20th February 2010, 01:52
    I don't think that there should ever be a time, when the majority, should not rule.

    There will be a point where there wouldnt be a need for a majority to rule or for anyone to rule. Just living.
  12. Comrade_Stalin
    Comrade_Stalin - 21st February 2010, 22:14
    There will be a point where there wouldnt be a need for a majority to rule or for anyone to rule. Just living.
    Sounds to Utopian to me, like all of our problems will be solved if we just move to communism
  13. Charles Xavier - 1st March 2010, 00:33
    Sounds to Utopian to me, like all of our problems will be solved if we just move to communism
    We will not be able to answer these questions in our lifetime. Communism has never existed and capitalism has never been usurped as the dominant economic system of the world as of yet.
  14. Comrade_Stalin
    Comrade_Stalin - 3rd March 2010, 04:50
    We will not be able to answer these questions in our lifetime. Communism has never existed and capitalism has never been usurped as the dominant economic system of the world as of yet.
    Well this make a lot of sense that we well not know what communism will be like in the end, but we should be able in some shape or form to produce a theory on it. While knights could not tell me how tank warfare would work, they should be able on some level tell me how it should act. Like they need to mass in groups to attack, or have support or something.

    By the way, how is that fourm coming?
  15. Charles Xavier - 3rd March 2010, 18:49
    Well this make a lot of sense that we well not know what communism will be like in the end, but we should be able in some shape or form to produce a theory on it. While knights could not tell me how tank warfare would work, they should be able on some level tell me how it should act. Like they need to mass in groups to attack, or have support or something.

    By the way, how is that fourm coming?
    There has been stuff writen on communism. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State - Engels


    http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...mily/index.htm

    This is a good read on the subject.

    As for the forum I'm too busy and not worth my time right now.