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I don't consider the DotP capitalist to whoever brought that up. That is after capitalism has already been overthrown so obviously it'll cease existing in that particular country.
Economic Left/Right: -9.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.15
"There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." - Lenin
Capitalism doesn't cease to exist in a particuar country. Capitalism is a world system. Abolishing capitalism in one country is like cutting someone's finger off and claiming that you've killed them. 'Death in one finger' is no more death than 'socialism in one country' is socialism.
And you can all call the DotP 'socialism' as far as I'm concerned, but you have to be aware that if you use that term to the majority of us, we will think you mean a post-capitalist society (ie, that socialism is different to capitalism), not the final phase of capitalism. Just warning you that you have to make your terms clear if you're going to use the same words as other people but for different concepts (strikes me if it's easier if you use 'DotP' for the DotP, but maybe that's just me).
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
Socialism in one country does not claim it has killed capitalism globally, only a part of it i.e. in one country (any body part for your metaphor). If capitalism is the body, then why would cutting off a piece of it be impossible?
How can their be a dictatorship of the proletariat if the proletariat doesn't control production? The workers' control of production is socialism, yet that is not found even in their own dictatorship? That's not a workers' dictatorship if they don't even control their own production.
I'm referring to older posts in this thread, but I'm not in favor of divisions like "Orthodox maoism", or "Anarcho-Maoism", since the references are texts from a Comrade of the CPI (maoist-naxalbari), which is supported by major Maoist organizations in the world, or more generally to the work of UJCML/Gauche Prolétarienne in France (late 60's early 70's) which were activists maoists in an Imperialist country but with no reference to anarchism, or whatever other theories than Marxism and mass line.
For Mauve, only a few documents are available in English, most of them are in French, however, I've translated some (since I am generally fan of their work)_
That is why the class struggle continues under socialism and intensifies, as Stalin pointed out, something attacked by the Soviet revisionists and more or less disputed by the Maoists. Economically and culturally, capitalism seeks to reassert itself with the all-sided assistance of international capitalism.
As for your analogy, you also forget that someone cut off the finger; presumably he is in a position to attempt cutting off more, and then blood loss results. I don't know about you, but a finger that's cut off is already a serious health hazard. Certainly the capitalist powers were afraid of the victorious October revolution.
* h0m0revolutionary: "neo-liberalism can deliver healthy children, it can educate them, it can feed them, it can clothe them and leave them fully contented."
* rooster: "Supporting [anti-imperialism] is reactionary. How is any nation supposed to stand up [to] the might of the US anyway?"
* nizan: "Fuck your education is empowerment bullshit, education is alienation, nothing more. You indulge in a dying prestige for a role in a bureaucratic spectacle deserving of nothing beyond contempt."
* Alexios: "To the Board Administration: Ismail [...] needs to be eliminated from this forum."
It does cease to exist in that particular country if they're no longer using the capitalist means of production. Going by your logic the USSR would have been capitalist, and it clearly wasn't. Obviously I'm an advocate of world revolution, but as we know it can't all happen simultaneously.
Obviously you have quite a different definition of DotP than I do then, as has been pointed out in other threads as well. I think this is one reason why different tendencies will never unite, because of petty disputes over semantics like this one.
Economic Left/Right: -9.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.15
Except, it obviously was as the USSR used capitalist production - wage labour to produce commodities - and also it wasn't under the control of the proletariat (so it wasn't 'socialist' in the definition of those who think the DotP is 'socialist' because it wasn't the dictatorship of the proletariat).
Non-sequiteur, verging on a strawman. No one has said that the political takeover by the working class is simultaneous.
The working class takes power in a particular place - as in Russia in 1917. It hopes the working class will soon take power in other places - such as Germany and Hungary. These historical examples serve to illustrate the point. Maybe the working class does, or maybe it doesn't - the issue is what happens in the revolutionary territory in the short term, before the world revolution is completed, not whether the world revolution ever is completed within the cycle of a revolutionary wave (eg 1917-27).
Capitalism must be abolished as a world system. Until the working class has completed its political revolution against capitalism it can't abolish it, because it can't abolish what it doesn't control. If you think it can, I urge you to just do it. Abolish capitalism now, from behind your desk, and we can all get on with living in communism. If you believe it's possible, there's no reason not to just do it.
It's not a 'semantic' point, if you think socialism is the DotP (a question of terminology, which makes incomprehension more likely, but essentially a semantic question), but also that the DotP is not capitalist (a difference of how we understand revolutionary process that no handwavium about semantics will clear up), that involves massively different ways of looking at the world. You think it is possible to abolish capitalism in a single place, which means that you must believe it is possible to set up a post-capitalist society (that I call 'socialism') in one country. You however reject 'socialism in one country' which seems to mean, you reject the DotP in one country. I reject 'socialism in one country' because it means 'communism in one country'. I do not reject the DotP in one country; the DotP is for one country, initially, as it is the revolutionary expropriation of the capitalists in a place - which doesn't mean the end of capitalism as a world system. Because capitalism is wage labour and commodity production, not top-hats and moustaches, or even individual ownership of the means of production (or, as Engels pointed out in 1890, joint-stock companies would be a kind of socialism).
So, yes, these are more than semantic arguments.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
Why do you think communism and socialism are the same thing? They are two different words with two different definitions for a reason.Originally Posted by Blake's Baby
depends on who you ask. Marx/Engels used them interchangeably, and I see no reason to do otherwise, as it opens for a whole lot of problems around terminology, as this thread quite clearly shows.
"What is necessary is to go beyond any false opposition of programme versus spontaneity. Communism is both the self-activity of the proletariat and the rigorous theoretical critique that expresses and anticipates it."
-----
"...Stalinism is eternally condemned to govern capital, and the ideological dynamics of Stalinism are tied to this peculiar type of capital management; it is locked within this framework, reproducing the logic of capitalism under the veil of communism. For this reason, Stalinism, and its various derivatives, cannot accurately be regarded as communist if we choose to define it in materialist terms." - Tim Cornelis
They were alive in the 1800's, words change. Any modern dictionary clearly has two different definitions.
Any modern dictionary would probably tell you that socialism is equivalent to typical "left" social democratic parties, do you follow that definition?
The point is that socialism/communism were interchangeable until Stalin's "theory" of socialism in one country. This "theory" is clearly linked to the failing of the European revolution and USSR's plunge back into world capitalist relations; namely, it's not a theory at all, it's an ideology in the Marxist sense. To accept ideological ("mystifying") terms as a Marxist is honestly quite odd. Doesn't stop a lot of 'Marxists' from doing so, though, obviously.
There is no reason to differentiate between socialism and communism, and by doing so you buy into ideologies that should have died ages ago, and end up with a problem explaining what is what, where capitalism ends and where communism begins etc, as Blake's Baby has pointed out.
"What is necessary is to go beyond any false opposition of programme versus spontaneity. Communism is both the self-activity of the proletariat and the rigorous theoretical critique that expresses and anticipates it."
-----
"...Stalinism is eternally condemned to govern capital, and the ideological dynamics of Stalinism are tied to this peculiar type of capital management; it is locked within this framework, reproducing the logic of capitalism under the veil of communism. For this reason, Stalinism, and its various derivatives, cannot accurately be regarded as communist if we choose to define it in materialist terms." - Tim Cornelis
this is why I´ve stopped using the term "socialism" alltogether.
"Give me a place to stand, and I will sit on your face."
- Trotsky in the opening speech to the third congress of the Fourth International.
Why should I allow the word 'socialist' to be defined by people who don't know what it means? I'm a Marxist, I'll generally follow Marx's terminology when talking about the things Marx was wring about.
Of course language changes, otherwise we'd all be speaking Old English or possibly grunting. But it doesn't change all at once. We're putting you on notice that in attempting to re-define what 'socialism' is, some of us are going to continue using it the same way as it has traditionally been used in the socialist movement. It's hard to understand Marx and Engels if you apply your definitions to the words they used, rather than their definitions. Redefining words that other people are using, or referring to words written with one definition as if they have a different definition, is problematic. It's the 'how many times does Sherlock Holmes ejaculate?' problem. When the books were written, 'ejaculate' (generally) meant 'suddenly shout out'. Now it doesn't. Doe we assume that in fact Conan Doyle wanted us to think that Holmes and Watson were engaged in frequent public masturbatory exercises? No. We stick with the definition of the word that Conan Doyle was using. Likewise, attempting to understand what Marx and Engels were saying without defining their words in the same way is extremely problematic.
For instance - this keeps coming up - the famous passage from section 4 of the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."
Now, if you posit that 'socialism' comes before 'communism' and have therefore redefined Marx's terms, the 'socialism' must be = to the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. However, understanding that Marx meant "Between capitalist and communist (also known as socialist) society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other (which must be the final phase of capitalism as a thing must transform from what it is to what it is not). Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat (in which the proletariat, starting with capitalism, transform it into what it is not)".
There is a recent thread about all this: http://www.revleft.com/vb/confusing-...ighlight=gotha
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
Lenin and Stalin noted that commodity production and wages assumed new characteristics under socialism. Of course both also noted that commodity production is a remnant of capitalism and would have to be overcome, as Stalin in particular suggested be carried out in the countryside shortly before his death.
Stalin discussed the role of commodities under socialism in his final work, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.: http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/EPS52.html
This work was, of course, attacked after his death by the Soviet revisionists, who called him "dogmatic" and instead claimed that commodity production should be increased under socialism and that they more or less lost any status as a vestige of capitalism to be phased out through the further construction of socialism and communism.
The Engels quote 'bout joint-stock companies was used many times by anti-revisionists throughout the 60's-80's to demonstrate the fallacy many were peddling in their apologias for the Soviet revisionists, namely that state ownership somehow automatically implied "proletarian" ownership.
* h0m0revolutionary: "neo-liberalism can deliver healthy children, it can educate them, it can feed them, it can clothe them and leave them fully contented."
* rooster: "Supporting [anti-imperialism] is reactionary. How is any nation supposed to stand up [to] the might of the US anyway?"
* nizan: "Fuck your education is empowerment bullshit, education is alienation, nothing more. You indulge in a dying prestige for a role in a bureaucratic spectacle deserving of nothing beyond contempt."
* Alexios: "To the Board Administration: Ismail [...] needs to be eliminated from this forum."
This sentence is meaningless unless you say what you think 'socialism' means. For those of us who think it means 'communism' it's obviously rubbish. So, try defining 'socialism' here and there might be a point to discuss.
Commodity production and wage labour are capitalism. If you are arguing that the working class can take over a country and run capitalism (state capitalism, that is) under the dictatorship of the proletariat (while waiting for the world revolution) I think I'd agree (though I would under no circumstances call it 'socialism'). The argument is then how long this proletarian state capitalism can survive without the world revolution, how fast it degenerates, before the state itself is the site of a counter-revolutionary coup by the ruling party, who then become a capitalist class. History says about 2 years.
Just thought I'd leave this here.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
No, they do not.
Originally Posted by Merriam-WebsterYes, there is. Many socialists are not communists, even in Marx's time. Those socialists believed in socialism, but not communism. Socialism has always been a broader term that included communists, but were not necessarily communists. All communists are socialists, but not all socialists are communist.
Capitalism ends, and socialism begins, when the proletariat has control over the means of production and that production is not profit-based. Communism begins after socialism is global and all states have been abolished. Quite simple.
Marx is not the author of the English language. The term socialism was used before him, and it did not mean communism. No one else but some Marxists try to define socialism as the same thing as communism.
I am not, it's already been the way I am defining since before Marx.
Good, so stop saying it is communism.
No one is saying Marx and Engels didn't use that definition. We know what they meant when they used socialism interchangeably with communism. It doesn't mean we should when not reading their works.
No one, or at least me, is doing that.
Yes, read their words as they defined them. However, don't use that definition outside of their works, or else everyone will think you're crazy when you say "He ejaculated at me!" or "He ejaculated quite loudly!"
How can the proletariat have a dictatorship if they can't even control production?
It is. The proletariat needs to control production if they're going to have a dictatorship. How they can have a dictatorship but not control production boggles my mind.
Who says they can't control production? I don't even understand the premises of your qusestion.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
Socialism is the collective ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods.
Socialism is a classless communal society without money or states.
Your move.
What does this have to do with why you think the proletariat is incapable of controlling production?
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
