dumb question about socialism vs communism and the DotP

[slum]

this question is probably super dumb and lazy and i should just go read some actual text but its late and i'm in learning, idk please humor me and spoonfeed me knowledge?

so the people i talk w/ irl make this distinction between socialism and communism, presumably where:

socialism is the period of time where you have the DotP, a worker's state (not just a seized capitalist state, but a new one based on democratic worker's control)- and it must be a state since the working class is oppressing the bourgeoisie and the state is an organ of class rule, and you have to fight the counter revolution and the revolution has to spread and all that.

communism has to be global, so when the revolution spreads to all countries and has effectively suppressed the capitalist class we can do away with classes, exploitation, and the state entirely. then we got communism.

then i come on here and people say that marx and engels used the two terms interchangeably. this puzzles me b/c i feel like they recognized full well there has to be some kind of transitional period between the two arrangements of production, (capitalism and communism) or that even if there isn't a separately defined transitional period, the period of time in which the DotP takes over the state and the means of production occurs DURING capitalism and remains IN CAPITALISM until international communism is a possibility. except if the workers (organized into a democratic state) own the means of production and plan production to fulfill human need instead of profit, how can this still be capitalist? the relations of production have changed, surely. all the same, there can't be little 'islands' of communism when capitalism is global. so is the DotP not some stage that is neither capitalist nor communist?


i'm especially interested in the views of people who think the socialism/communism split is bunk, but please don't just tell me all about how much you hate lenin and how he ruined marxism forever.

alternatively, direct me to wherever marx deals with this.

[ind_com]

Marx distinguished between the DotP and socialism. He described socialism as the lower phase of communism, which would be different from communism only in the sense that workers would be paid in terms of their output, not their needs. According to Marx, socialism would be classless, and global.

Lenin occasionally deviated from Marx's definition of socialism. There are instances in which he fully agreed with Marx, but sometimes he stated that socialism could be established in one country, and that classes would remain in socialism and the overthrown classes would continue to struggle to regain power. Stalin agreed with Lenin.

Mao initially agreed with Lenin and Stalin, and explained the construction of socialism as the transformation of commune-collective ownership to total public ownership. However, as the Sino-Soviet split intensified, and Maoism began to present itself as a revolutionary alternative to Soviet-backed parliamentary revisionists, the definition of socialism began to be associated more with the underlying politics of class-struggle. Mao acknowledged that not only did the overthrown classes continue to struggle against the proletariat in socialism, but there also emerged a new class from the bureaucracy which could potentially overthrow socialism and reverse the system back to capitalism. Hence, socialism was defined as the transitional period in which the proletariat and the semi-proletariat constitute a dictatorship over all other classes.

Clearly, by the time class struggle progresses to the level of neutralizing all classes, there will not be a bureaucracy to run the system. This means that development will be equal among all individuals. By this stage, the means of production will develop enough to run the communist principle of 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'. So, in contrast to what Marx and Lenin believed, Maoists claim that by the time class struggle ends, there will be no need of socialism as Marx defined it. So, Maoists hold that socialism starts from the seizure of political power by the proletariat, and goes on until communism.

[Strannik]

As I understand this, socialism is the complicated term. "Socialism" implies ownership by "society". But "society" tends to be an abstraction. You could have an unelected dictator, elected representative council, direct democratic social network - and they all could claim that they are "socialist", because they run common wealth in the interests of "society". "Socialism" presupposes an opposition between individual and society. The sum of individual- and subgroup interests does not quite give you the whole social need. For example even a socialist society might threaten the interests of it's future generations by spending too much non-renewable resources for needs of current generation. In this case, policies have to be established even when not all individuals agree with them.

"Communism", I think, implies common ownership of wealth without central or representative body of any kind. The "tragedy of commons" no longer applies because it's prerequisite (opposition of individual and social interest) is gone. The sum of individual interests never threatens the survival of society as a whole, so there is no need for "policies" in the first place.

[Blake's Baby]

this question is probably super dumb and lazy and i should just go read some actual text but its late and i'm in learning, idk please humor me and spoonfeed me knowledge?...

I don't think it super-dumb or lazy, it's both important and heavily contested, as the answers you're going to get here will testify.

...so the people i talk w/ irl make this distinction between socialism and communism, presumably where:

socialism is the period of time where you have the DotP, a worker's state (not just a seized capitalist state, but a new one based on democratic worker's control)- and it must be a state since the working class is oppressing the bourgeoisie and the state is an organ of class rule, and you have to fight the counter revolution and the revolution has to spread and all that...

OK, but it's really only Maoists, Stalinists who haven't read very much, and a single Trotskyist on RevLeft, that equate 'socialism' with the DotP.

...communism has to be global, so when the revolution spreads to all countries and has effectively suppressed the capitalist class we can do away with classes, exploitation, and the state entirely. then we got communism...

Yes, which to some of us = socialism (lower and higher stage).

...then i come on here and people say that marx and engels used the two terms interchangeably. this puzzles me b/c i feel like they recognized full well there has to be some kind of transitional period between the two arrangements of production, (capitalism and communism) ...

This is quite right. They don't call it socialism however.

...or that even if there isn't a separately defined transitional period, the period of time in which the DotP takes over the state and the means of production occurs DURING capitalism and remains IN CAPITALISM until international communism is a possibility...

Yes. The 'revolutionary transformation' (Critique of the Gotha Programme Pt IV) of capitalist society to communist society, which corresponds to 'the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat'. If there are classes then there is no 'socialism' - unless, like the Maoists, you want 'socialism' to mean 'the DotP' which is fine, as long as you don't then think that that's how Marx used 'socialism', or the rest of us either.

... except if the workers (organized into a democratic state) own the means of production and plan production to fulfill human need instead of profit, how can this still be capitalist?

Beceause capitalism is a world system. It cannot be abolished locally. The workers controlling a state that owns the means of production, in a capitalist world market, is just like a big co-operative. It's not socialism. It's self managed capitalism.

...the relations of production have changed, surely...

But they haven't. Wage labour and commodity production have not been done away with, trade on the capitalist market has not been done away with, 'property' per se has not been done away with (10% of property has been collectivised, 90% of property has not, but even so, the 10% of collectivised property is just nationalised rather than done away with), the state still exists and classes still exist - how can 'the proletariat' have a dictatorship unless 'the proletariat' still exists as a class?

... all the same, there can't be little 'islands' of communism when capitalism is global. so is the DotP not some stage that is neither capitalist nor communist?...

No, it's still capitalism, but capitalism that's in the process of being dismantled by the working class.

As the revolution extends and more territory (and property) is brought into the dictatorship, a point will eventually be reached when the bourgeoisie has been defeated - the revolution has been successful and at that point (when the working class holds all property) property can then be abolished - which in turn means classes are abolished and the state(s) 'wither away' (as they're deprived of their economic basis). Until then however, it's increasing attenuated capitalism that the working class is administering.

If you have some cold water (the capitalist world), and apply some heat (revolution) you may get bubbles in one place and not in others (the revolution taking place in one territory not another). As more heat is applied, bubbles appear in more places (more revolutionary territories). But only when bubbles appear everywhere is the water 'boiling' (socialist). We don't say 'well the kettle is boiling there but not there' (ie, no socialism in one country).

...
i'm especially interested in the views of people who think the socialism/communism split is bunk, but please don't just tell me all about how much you hate lenin and how he ruined marxism forever.

alternatively, direct me to wherever marx deals with this.

'Critique of the Gotha Programme' (Part IV in particular) is probably the best place to start, and 'The Civil War in France' also contains a lot on the DotP. But there's also the Letter to Domela Nieuwenhuis that contains some interesting remarks on understanding the Commune; lastly, Engels' 'Principles of Communism' is also worth a read.

And I managed all that without dissing Lenin once.

PS Slum - I like your avatar. Gotta love Magritte.

Marx distinguished between the DotP and socialism...

Indeed.

...He described socialism as the lower phase of communism, which would be different from communism only in the sense that workers would be paid in terms of their output, not their needs...

I think that's a misinterpretation of what Marx is saying. That business about replacing the 'socialist' slogan of 'from each according to their ability to each according to their work' with the 'communist' slogan 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their need' doesn't apply to separate phases of 'socialism' and 'communism', it applies to 'socialist' and 'communist' groups. Marx was at pains to point out that the higher stage of communism was possible, against the Utopians who believed that a benevolent technocracy was the best humanity could achieve.

... According to Marx, socialism would be classless, and global...

Yes, to Marx socialism = communism.

[slum]

excellent, thanks for your response. i'm new to all of this so my ideas get confused very easily.

OK, but it's really only Maoists, Stalinists who haven't read very much, and a single Trotskyist on RevLeft, that equate 'socialism' with the DotP.

okay, this seems to be where i've gone off track. i've probably got some residual unconscious liberalism that equates socialism with some kind of state (egads!) that i'll need to have beaten out of me.

Yes, which to some of us = socialism (lower and higher stage).

so if socialism is the post-DotP stateless and classless society, what does communism bring to society that socialism has not already brought? i've seen the explanation where socialism= 'to each according to his contribution' and communism= 'to each according to his need' in terms of distribution, but this seems to rest on the assumption that capitalism has not already expanded humanity's productive capacity to the extent that, were those productive forces redirected away from profit, we could fulfill all human need.

this (the idea that we need a worker's state and then a stateless socialism to begin to expand production in this way) is one of the reasons i find 'principles of communism' somewhat confusing, or at least outdated. is the main distinction then one of how people think about work? that in a socialist society, although it is stateless and classless, we assume people will still find work abhorrent, and that there needs to be a new generation of people born in an era without exploitation or want before mankind can approach work differently? this seems to rest a little heavily on presuppositions about innate human laziness or misanthropy.

i hope that made some sort of sense; clearly i need to read critique of the gotha programme.

Yes. The 'revolutionary transformation' (Critique of the Gotha Programme Pt IV) of capitalist society to communist society, which corresponds to 'the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat'. If there are classes then there is no 'socialism' - unless, like the Maoists, you want 'socialism' to mean 'the DotP' which is fine, as long as you don't then think that that's how Marx used 'socialism', or the rest of us either.

i know absolutely nothing about maoism so i'm just gonna hang my head in shame and admit i've been dreadfully confused about the DotP.

But they haven't. Wage labour and commodity production have not been done away with, trade on the capitalist market has not been done away with, 'property' per se has not been done away with (10% of property has been collectivised, 90% of property has not, but even so, the 10% of collectivised property is just nationalised rather than done away with), the state still exists and classes still exist - how can 'the proletariat' have a dictatorship unless 'the proletariat' still exists as a class?

this is a really good point, thanks. to clarify: so you see capitalism as being primarily about commodity production and wage labour, and that bourgeois exploitation of workers for surplus labour power is just the social relationship that arises from that kind of production? it's still capitalism regardless of who owns the means of production, so long as production is directed towards commodity production and worker's receive a wage (no matter if it exceeds the amount necessary to sustain and reproduce the working class)?

No, it's still capitalism, but capitalism that's in the process of being dismantled by the working class. As the revolution extends and more territory (and property) is brought into the dictatorship, a point will eventually be reached when the bourgeoisie has been defeated - the revolution has been successful and at that point (when the working class holds all property) property can then be abolished - which in turn means classes are abolished and the state(s) 'wither away' (as they're deprived of their economic basis). Until then however, it's increasing attenuated capitalism that the working class is administering.

okay, this makes sense.

'Critique of the Gotha Programme' (Part IV in particular) is probably the best place to start, and 'The Civil War in France' also contains a lot on the DotP. But there's also the Letter to Domela Nieuwenhuis that contains some interesting remarks on understanding the Commune; lastly, Engels' 'Principles of Communism' is also worth a read.

i will def. check those out, looks like gotha programme is what i've been looking for re: this question.

principles of communism is actually what caused a lot of this confusion for me, though, especially where he talks about how a revolution that establishes a "democratic constitution, and through this the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat (18)" puts through a bunch of measures that attack private property but do not abolish it (he even makes sure we can expand inheritance of private property! 18xi). he seems to be saying that you need to have a proletariat-dominated state that controls all money and credit (18vi), all transportation (18xii) and (some, not all) of the means of production including land, before you can "multiply the country's productive forces" to the extent where meeting human need is feasible. but this (especially re: agriculture) seems either wrong or out dated to me; i assume that capitalists, who must expand the productive forces under their control in order to survive in competition with one another, and who have now had several centuries to do so, have already expanded productive forces and adopted more efficient technologies to the extent where we could meet all human need, were only these forces redirected away from profit and towards human need. the issue of agriculture right now in particular is not that it is "held back by the division of privately owned land into small parcels (20)", but that a small number of people own giant tracts of mono-crops, many of which aren't even useful as food, and that although we have a glut of many foodstuffs, it's not profitable to distribute them to hungry people (it is profitable to undercut small farmers who do own small tracts of land and force them into cities to live as wage workers).

given the level of productive capacity which capitalism has developed since 1847, why can't workers just seize the means of production, plan distribution, and abolish private property all at once?

And I managed all that without dissing Lenin once.

hahah sorry. i get kinda wary of the weird sectarianism on here that always seems to focus on this or that individual. thanks for responding to my question in good faith and with real explanations of ideas.

[slum]

Marx distinguished between the DotP and socialism. He described socialism as the lower phase of communism, which would be different from communism only in the sense that workers would be paid in terms of their output, not their needs. According to Marx, socialism would be classless, and global.

okay good; i also saw blake baby's reply to you below about this idea of 'phases' being somewhat in dispute. i think my main mistake here has been thinking the DotP had some relationship to socialism, or rather that socialism (for marx) had some relation to statism.

[QUOTE=ind_com;2603002]
Lenin occasionally deviated from Marx's definition of socialism. There are instances in which he fully agreed with Marx, but sometimes he stated that socialism could be established in one country, and that classes would remain in socialism and the overthrown classes would continue to struggle to regain power. Stalin agreed with Lenin.[/quote[

The socialist principle, "He who does not work shall not eat", is already realized; the other socialist principle, "An equal amount of products for an equal amount of labor", is also already realized. But this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish "bourgeois law", which gives unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labor, equal amounts of products. This is a “defect”, says Marx, but it is unavoidable in the first phase of communism; for if we are not to indulge in utopianism, we must not think that having overthrown capitalism people will at once learn to work for society without any rules of law. Besides, the abolition of capitalism does not immediately create the economic prerequisites for such a change.
Now, there are no other rules than those of "bourgeois law". To this extent, therefore, there still remains the need for a state, which, while safeguarding the common ownership of the means of production, would safeguard equality in labor and in the distribution of products.
The state withers away insofar as there are no longer any capitalists, any classes, and, consequently, no class can be suppressed.
But the state has not yet completely withered away, since the still remains the safeguarding of "bourgeois law", which sanctifies actual inequality. For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.

so is lenin talking about what he sees as socialism here, or a pre-socialist (DotP in capitalism) stage where some socialist principles are realized? is he in disagreement here with marx, even though he says nothing here about SioC?

i'm so confused, ugh.

[ind_com]

so is lenin talking about what he sees as socialism here, or a pre-socialist (DotP in capitalism) stage where some socialist principles are realized? is he in disagreement here with marx, even though he says nothing here about SioC?

i'm so confused, ugh.

Lenin is talking about socialism here, and in that piece he claims that socialism will not have classes. He claims that the state will exist, but without its elements of class oppression. Lenin is essentially talking about just a form of government, if we strongly associate the state with class oppression. So, here Lenin is in complete agreement with Marx.

[Blake's Baby]

excellent, thanks for your response. i'm new to all of this so my ideas get confused very easily...

Not at all, I applaud you for trying to get to grips with difficult questions, which are in themselves complex in part of the incnsistent terminology of people who have discussed them.

...
okay, this seems to be where i've gone off track. i've probably got some residual unconscious liberalism that equates socialism with some kind of state (egads!) that i'll need to have beaten out of me...

My own view is that in discussing the problem of what the DotP is, the term 'socialism' should be avoided altogether. Marx refers to 'the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat' which corresponds to the transformation of capitalist society into communist society. Elsewhere he talks about the lower and higher phases of communist society.

But regarding 'socialism' itself, I contend that socialist society follows capitalism not runs alongside it or is part of it.

...

so if socialism is the post-DotP stateless and classless society, what does communism bring to society that socialism has not already brought?...

They're the same thing. What's the advantage of a bacon buttie over a bacon sarnie? They're different terms for the same thing.

... i've seen the explanation where socialism= 'to each according to his contribution' and communism= 'to each according to his need' in terms of distribution...

As I tried to explain to ind_com, I think this is a result of a misreading or misinterpretation of what Marx is trying to get at. I don't think the 'socialist slogan' of 'to each according to work/contribution' is a principle of a phase called socialism and the 'communist slogan, of 'to each according to need' is a principle of a phase called communism. I think that Marx meant that 'to each according to work/contribution' was a slogan espoused by Utopian Socialists (who saw socialism as a benevolent but technocratic dictatorship in the interests of the working claass) whereas 'to each according to need' was a slogan espoused by Scientific Socialists also called Communists, who saw the working class not only as the beneficiaries of the revolution but its actors too.

... but this seems to rest on the assumption that capitalism has not already expanded humanity's productive capacity to the extent that, were those productive forces redirected away from profit, we could fulfill all human need...

Which in Marx's time was true enough. Unfortunately, though it may be true that productive and distributive capacity has increased enough to fulfill human needs, I think the process of the revolution and world civil war will inevitably lead to the ruination of a portion of that capacity. It will not be possible to just turn production round on day one. There will, I think, be an inevitable period of repairing what has been destroyed during the war.

... this (the idea that we need a worker's state and then a stateless socialism to begin to expand production in this way) is one of the reasons i find 'principles of communism' somewhat confusing, or at least outdated. is the main distinction then one of how people think about work? that in a socialist society, although it is stateless and classless, we assume people will still find work abhorrent, and that there needs to be a new generation of people born in an era without exploitation or want before mankind can approach work differently? this seems to rest a little heavily on presuppositions about innate human laziness or misanthropy...

I don't think it's that at all. The DotP progressively wrests capitalism and the state(s) away from the bourgeoisie. When the bourgeoisie is defeated and the working class controlls everything, then property and states (and the classes states are based on, which in turn are based on property) can cease to exist. But there is a possibility (an almost certainty in my opinion) that the immediately post-revolutionary society will not be able to move straight to the 'higher stage' of communism, because there will still be problems with prouction and distribution - mostly, as I say, as a result of the necessity for reconstruction in the wake of the world civil war. We'll need rationing in some form in the 'lower stage'. Now with a relatively optimistic assessment that 'lower stage' may be complete in months, or a couple of years. But there are some people who think it will take decades or even a century or more. I really hope not.

... i hope that made some sort of sense; clearly i need to read critique of the gotha programme.

i know absolutely nothing about maoism so i'm just gonna hang my head in shame and admit i've been dreadfully confused about the DotP...

No head-hanging necessary - as I said at the beginning, I think it's admirable that you're trying to get to grips with very confusing stuff.

...
this is a really good point, thanks. to clarify: so you see capitalism as being primarily about commodity production and wage labour, and that bourgeois exploitation of workers for surplus labour power is just the social relationship that arises from that kind of production? it's still capitalism regardless of who owns the means of production, so long as production is directed towards commodity production and worker's receive a wage (no matter if it exceeds the amount necessary to sustain and reproduce the working class)?...

All class societies depend on one (ruling) class extracting 'work' from a producer class. Wage labour and commodity production are the mechanisms for this exploitation in capitalism, and they are what makes capitalism different from other forms of exploitation. Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific talks about how in the 1880s capitalism is moving from the individual capitalist entrepreneur factory-owner to the committe of joint-stock-holders; it doesn't stop being capitalism because individuals no longer own individual machines or factories. Engels also talks about how parliament increasingly represents not the individual interests of capitalists, but increasingly that national economic interest - the state becomes the 'national capitalist'. Without getting into another debate about 'state capitalism', Engels does show that the forms of property in capitalism do not depend on individual ownership. Corporate capitalism is still capitalism, and when the state acts as a corporation...?

...
i will def. check those out, looks like gotha programme is what i've been looking for re: this question.

principles of communism is actually what caused a lot of this confusion for me, though, especially where he talks about how a revolution that establishes a "democratic constitution, and through this the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat (18)" puts through a bunch of measures that attack private property but do not abolish it (he even makes sure we can expand inheritance of private property! 18xi). he seems to be saying that you need to have a proletariat-dominated state that controls all money and credit (18vi), all transportation (18xii) and (some, not all) of the means of production including land, before you can "multiply the country's productive forces" to the extent where meeting human need is feasible. but this (especially re: agriculture) seems either wrong or out dated to me; i assume that capitalists, who must expand the productive forces under their control in order to survive in competition with one another, and who have now had several centuries to do so, have already expanded productive forces and adopted more efficient technologies to the extent where we could meet all human need, were only these forces redirected away from profit and towards human need...

Well, yes. In 1846 or whenever, capitalism was still developing. However, Marx and Engels also developed the notion that there was an inevitable end of that development process - the notion that the 'relations of production' become 'a fetter' on the development of the 'means of production'. In other words, the property and legal forms of capitalism will ultimately prevent the possibilty of the further development of the productive forces for the benefit of humanity.

It's been generally accepted by most of the Marxist movement since the early 20th century that capitalism is now obsolete/deceadent. The SPGB, for instance, formed in 1904 on the basis that capitalism has developed to the point where communism was possible and the task of the working class was to struggle for a socialist society. In WWI, Rosa Luxemburg wrote about how capitalism was now - whatever it had been before - a barrier to the future of humanity. In the earliest days of the Communist International, the recognition that capitalism had entered a phase in which communism or destruction of humanity were the only options - the 'epoch of wars and revolutions'. So, in this case, there's a belief among some Marxists (myself included) that capitalism is obsolete = is decadent = has become a fetter on the development of the means of production.

... the issue of agriculture right now in particular is not that it is "held back by the division of privately owned land into small parcels (20)", but that a small number of people own giant tracts of mono-crops, many of which aren't even useful as food, and that although we have a glut of many foodstuffs, it's not profitable to distribute them to hungry people (it is profitable to undercut small farmers who do own small tracts of land and force them into cities to live as wage workers).

given the level of productive capacity which capitalism has developed since 1847, why can't workers just seize the means of production, plan distribution, and abolish private property all at once? ...

If we can do it all at once worldwide, and take over without the bourgoisie 'burning the house down' in the process, then surely, why not?

I don't think it'll happen like that; I would be extraordinarily happy if we could pull it off however.

...

hahah sorry. i get kinda wary of the weird sectarianism on here that always seems to focus on this or that individual. thanks for responding to my question in good faith and with real explanations of ideas.

Hey, I think Lenin made a lot of mistakes. I could have just posted to say what I thought they were. But, you're asking serious questions and deserve serious discussion on them.

Lenin is talking about socialism here, and in that piece he claims that socialism will not have classes. He claims that the state will exist, but without its elements of class oppression. Lenin is essentially talking about just a form of government, if we strongly associate the state with class oppression. So, here Lenin is in complete agreement with Marx.

I don't think this can be the case. There can't be a 'state' with 'classes', because a state is in the end the expression of a class society. The idea of a state without classes is nonsense.

[ind_com]

I don't think this can be the case. There can't be a 'state' with 'classes', because a state is in the end the expression of a class society. The idea of a state without classes is nonsense.

I agree. Nowadays we reject the usage of the term 'state' as anything more than a machinery for class-oppression. In a classless society, only a mass-government can exist.

[Blake's Baby]

But you think classes can be abolished locally?

To me that semes impossible. It implies socialism in one country is possible, not by changing the definition of socialism but by changing the definition of country (which in turn changes the definition of socialism).

[ind_com]

But you think classes can be abolished locally?

To me that semes impossible. It implies socialism in one country is possible, not by changing the definition of socialism but by changing the definition of country (which in turn changes the definition of socialism).

The Maoist definition of socialism is different from the Marxist or Leninist ones.

EDIT: What we mean by socialism has classes and hence a state.

[Blake's Baby]

But you think classes and property can be abolished locally?

[ind_com]

But you think classes and property can be abolished locally?

It is a very idealistic situation, and is equivalent to claiming that a single person sitting in a room can discover everything from relativity to quantum mechanics or genetic engineering. A society that progresses to the level of abolishing classes and property will successfully induce world revolution decades before it reaches that stage. Moreover, it will be under continuous pressure of intervention and infiltration by capitalists and their agents until it manages to topple at least a majority of the bourgeois states.

[Blake's Baby]

Is that a qualified 'yes they can' then?

[ind_com]

Is that a qualified 'yes they can' then?

See, that way the other example I gave can also happen. But the probabilities of those events happening, or workers spontaneously conducting the world revolution, or capitalists becoming kind enough to step down peacefully, are so low that it is practical to reject them as impossible phenomena.

[Blake's Baby]

OK. I get it. Logically possible but never going to happen.

[slum]

My own view is that in discussing the problem of what the DotP is, the term 'socialism' should be avoided altogether. Marx refers to 'the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat' which corresponds to the transformation of capitalist society into communist society. Elsewhere he talks about the lower and higher phases of communist society.

maybe i should just follow that advice when talking about the DotP. my issue is i'm considering joining an organization that has 'socialist' in the title, and the people i talk with from this organization (met w/ one of them again today and asked about this issue) say outright that to them, the DotP phase of dismantling capitalism IS socialism i.e. socialism with a state that will wither away into stateless and classless communism once the revolution spreads and has suppressed the bourgeoisie.

so i'm always like "why stop at calling yourselves socialists, then, if you want communism and think there is a difference between socialism and communism?" we all seem to be in agreement about the need for a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and a transitional period where the counter revolution is crushed and production is re-organized, but not about what to call that period. your argument that it is not socialism, but rather a prelude to socialism, is what i am now inclined to agree with, but i'm confused by lenin and these folks i know irl who consider themselves some kind of trotskyist/bolshevik-leninists.

But regarding 'socialism' itself, I contend that socialist society follows capitalism not runs alongside it or is part of it.

gotcha

As I tried to explain to ind_com, I think this is a result of a misreading or misinterpretation of what Marx is trying to get at. I don't think the 'socialist slogan' of 'to each according to work/contribution' is a principle of a phase called socialism and the 'communist slogan, of 'to each according to need' is a principle of a phase called communism. I think that Marx meant that 'to each according to work/contribution' was a slogan espoused by Utopian Socialists (who saw socialism as a benevolent but technocratic dictatorship in the interests of the working claass) whereas 'to each according to need' was a slogan espoused by Scientific Socialists also called Communists, who saw the working class not only as the beneficiaries of the revolution but its actors too.

okay, this does clear some things up if that's the case. i tend to forget that there were other socialist movements going on in the 19th c. that marx was responding to and the term 'socialism' is undoubtedly going to be tossed around to apply to a variety of things given how many people with wildly different ideas considered themselves socialists.

Which in Marx's time was true enough. Unfortunately, though it may be true that productive and distributive capacity has increased enough to fulfill human needs, I think the process of the revolution and world civil war will inevitably lead to the ruination of a portion of that capacity. It will not be possible to just turn production round on day one. There will, I think, be an inevitable period of repairing what has been destroyed during the war.

point. i raised this issue today with my flesh-and-blood socialists (no offense, i am sure you are similarly organic) and they pointed out both this and that production needs to be re-arranged anyway since right now it's designed to make so much superfluous crap. so i can now see the need for this period.

All class societies depend on one (ruling) class extracting 'work' from a producer class. Wage labour and commodity production are the mechanisms for this exploitation in capitalism, and they are what makes capitalism different from other forms of exploitation. Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific talks about how in the 1880s capitalism is moving from the individual capitalist entrepreneur factory-owner to the committe of joint-stock-holders; it doesn't stop being capitalism because individuals no longer own individual machines or factories. Engels also talks about how parliament increasingly represents not the individual interests of capitalists, but increasingly that national economic interest - the state becomes the 'national capitalist'. Without getting into another debate about 'state capitalism', Engels does show that the forms of property in capitalism do not depend on individual ownership. Corporate capitalism is still capitalism, and when the state acts as a corporation...?

this makes sense, but i'm still kind of confused, because if you have a DotP, which is a worker's state, even if workers still exist as a class, who are they exploiting? other workers? are workers still expected to contribute surplus labour power to production beyond what they receive in wages if production does not result in profit for the state? or does production involve a profit for this state-acting-as-a-corporation, in which case i can see this as capitalism?
the DotP needs to be a state so that it can perform a military function to appropriate private property and suppress the bourgeoisie; in that regard it is an organ of class rule. but i am less certain of its economic function.

So, in this case, there's a belief among some Marxists (myself included) that capitalism is obsolete = is decadent = has become a fetter on the development of the means of production.

this makes sense, and it's probably inevitable when you have a system that develops according to what is profitable, not what humanity needs. so who are the marxists who disagree with this stance?

Hey, I think Lenin made a lot of mistakes. I could have just posted to say what I thought they were. But, you're asking serious questions and deserve serious discussion on them.

mind telling me what lenin's mistakes were re: this socialism vs. communism thing? i feel like he made a distinction between the two in state and revolution that also implied the DotP (state) phase was the 'lower phase of communism' which implies socialism with classes and the state, although not the bourgeois state. did i just misread that, or is that really his argument?

[Starship Stormtrooper]

I'm pretty sure that the Trotskyists started putting socialist in their name despite technically being communists in order to differentiate themselves from the 3rd International (Comintern) parties that generally called themselves communist parties.

[Blake's Baby]

this makes sense, but i'm still kind of confused, because if you have a DotP, which is a worker's state, even if workers still exist as a class, who are they exploiting? other workers? are workers still expected to contribute surplus labour power to production beyond what they receive in wages if production does not result in profit for the state? or does production involve a profit for this state-acting-as-a-corporation, in which case i can see this as capitalism?
the DotP needs to be a state so that it can perform a military function to appropriate private property and suppress the bourgeoisie; in that regard it is an organ of class rule. but i am less certain of its economic function...

I don't think any society can ever return to the worker the value of what the worker makes - not unless individual workers are then to be entirely responsible (through charity, perhaps) for every single person who isn't capable of contributing materially to society (children, the sick, the elderly etc). Even Marx, in discussing labour vouchers, refers to the labourer receiving his rewards 'after a share has been deducted for social necessities' or some such phrase that I can't remember now. But the point is that somehow society 'taxes' work in order to provide care for those who can't work (and development of the productive forces, etc).

So in essence its economic function is to allow production to go ahead and that production (and the resultant distribution) to be used to fulfill human needs - direct needs (food, fuel, shelter, medicine...), more indirect investment in infrastructure and research (medical, educational, ecological, productive...), and just plain old cultural investment. I think these need to be handled at a society-wide level instead of each commune asking its workers to fund a creche out of 'wages' - because how else does a society that returns to the workers the total of the produced social wealth operate? If 30 million people produce the social wealth in a country of 60 million (eg, the UK now more or less) then the 30 million non-productive people live or die at the mercy of the 30 million workers. If the workers decide not to hand over a portion of the social wealth (it's all returned to them remember) then the old sick and children will die.

...
this makes sense, and it's probably inevitable when you have a system that develops according to what is profitable, not what humanity needs. so who are the marxists who disagree with this stance?...

There are many people who claim to be marxists that think that capitalism is still capable of revolutionising production or otherwise acting in a positive developmental manner. I think they're wrong, and I think they're so wrong that their 'marxism' must be suspect, but they claim to be marxists and say that those of us who believe tat capitalism has passed its objective limits are deluded. Who's to say who's right? I say I am. Others disagree.

...
mind telling me what lenin's mistakes were re: this socialism vs. communism thing? i feel like he made a distinction between the two in state and revolution that also implied the DotP (state) phase was the 'lower phase of communism' which implies socialism with classes and the state, although not the bourgeois state. did i just misread that, or is that really his argument?

He's pretty confused, using socialism sometimes as a synonym for the lower stage, sometimes as a synonym for the whole of communist society (lower and higher) and sometimes he seems to conflate the lower stage with the DotP; which doesn't help at all, as I think it's best to be clear about what one is talking about... something I try but don't always manage, and I'm sure Lenin did too, but it really isn't helpful to mix up terms, and concepts, and have people thinking you're referring to one thing when you might be referring to something else.

'State and Revolution' is relatively clear as long as you pay careful attention to where he deviates from Marx's terminology. To be fair, he usually flags it up. Elsewhere, he's much less clear. 'Socialism is state capitalism made to work for the whole population' is one of his less clear formulations on the subject, in my opinion.

[Lucretia]

this question is probably super dumb and lazy and i should just go read some actual text but its late and i'm in learning, idk please humor me and spoonfeed me knowledge?

so the people i talk w/ irl make this distinction between socialism and communism, presumably where:

socialism is the period of time where you have the DotP, a worker's state (not just a seized capitalist state, but a new one based on democratic worker's control)- and it must be a state since the working class is oppressing the bourgeoisie and the state is an organ of class rule, and you have to fight the counter revolution and the revolution has to spread and all that.

communism has to be global, so when the revolution spreads to all countries and has effectively suppressed the capitalist class we can do away with classes, exploitation, and the state entirely. then we got communism.

then i come on here and people say that marx and engels used the two terms interchangeably. this puzzles me b/c i feel like they recognized full well there has to be some kind of transitional period between the two arrangements of production, (capitalism and communism) or that even if there isn't a separately defined transitional period, the period of time in which the DotP takes over the state and the means of production occurs DURING capitalism and remains IN CAPITALISM until international communism is a possibility. except if the workers (organized into a democratic state) own the means of production and plan production to fulfill human need instead of profit, how can this still be capitalist? the relations of production have changed, surely. all the same, there can't be little 'islands' of communism when capitalism is global. so is the DotP not some stage that is neither capitalist nor communist?


i'm especially interested in the views of people who think the socialism/communism split is bunk, but please don't just tell me all about how much you hate lenin and how he ruined marxism forever.

alternatively, direct me to wherever marx deals with this.

There is no "dictatorship of the proletariat" under socialism, because there are no classes under socialism (the "lower" stage of communism). The dictatorship of the proletariat (over other classes) is the use of the workers' state to suppress those other classes and the forces that underpin their power (value production, etc). As a workers' state, it exists in the transitional period between capitalism and socialism, when there is still a working class. Under socialism, there are no classes requiring a "dictatorship" of one over another. Under socialism, there is a democratic socialist state that is rapidly withering away until, by the time full-on communism has been achieved, there is no distinct state institution, its remaining functions having devolved on people in general.