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readingatwork posted:I worry that even if we implement a perfect version of Luxury Gay Communism that over time future generations become comfortable and unaware of the realities of class struggle. They'll de-radicalize and eventually liberal/wealthy factions will start gaining power again as people start carving up the welfare state for their own benefit one tiny piece at a time. The end result might not be capitalism necessarily but some form of class hierarchy would reform and the injustices we fought to unto will begin again. Of course, this is likely a problem in any society, not just Marxist ones, but I still think about it a lot. But that isn't how Marx saw it. I recently wrote an article on the subject, but communism is considered a logical end-point of historical development: slavery existed until it was no longer compatible with the growing productive forces of society, so it was overthrown by feudalism; feudalism had a pretty good run until the expanding productive forces of society couldn't be handled by feudal ties anymore and were conflicting with ascendant capitalism, hence bourgeois revolutions were carried out overthrow feudalism; capitalism has (in Marx's words) "created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together," yet it will meet the same fate as slavery and feudalism since the continued growth of the productive forces causes the capitalist system to enter into ever greater economic crises, which can only be resolved by proletarian revolution and transition to a post-capitalist society (i.e. the lower and higher phases of communism, the former being what Marxists mean when referring to socialism.) In other words, the maintenance of communism has nothing to do with whether people "want" it or not, but whether things have reached the point where communism is the only way society can effectively function given the incredibly high level of productive forces. Private property will have become a blatant hindrance to productivity, much as how capitalist agriculture has rendered the slave plantation and feudal estate obsolete. I think the most you can say is that a communist society at any given time may have "bad" elements, but the mode of production will still be a communist one with or without these elements, which can be peacefully or violently removed by the inhabitants of said society in their quest to improve things. For example, Thomas More's Utopia (traditionally considered by Marxists to be the first significant depiction of a communist society, albeit literally a utopian one) answered the question of "who will do unwanted work under communism" in his own 16th century manner by society enslaving certain persons for various offenses and forcing these to do "unsavory" tasks like clean animal carcasses. Yet the fictional island of Utopia was still characterized by the abolition of private property, and production and distribution of goods based on needs. So if a future communist society somewhere did for some reason actually implement a form of slavery like in More's text, there's no reason why the population couldn't put up with it (to say nothing of peacefully abolishing or forcibly overthrowing it) while still remaining within the communist mode of production. But there would be no material basis for a restoration of capitalism any more than there's a material basis for a restoration of slavery or feudalism today. Enver Zogha fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Nov 5, 2020 |
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Nov 5, 2020 13:15
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How are u posted:Oh I am not writing off 74 million people. I just mean the ones who are too far gone, like the folks who stormed the Captiol. I was thinking about and writing about those type of people. I think there is some percentage of that 74 million that are completely, utterly gone. I'm not guessing exactly what that percentage is, but I suspect it is way higher than you or I would like to see. This seems to apply to any revolution. Like I'm sure not every single person utterly convinced that the Tsar was a wonderful human being and the Bolsheviks were bunch of Jewish agents of the Kaiser joined the counter-revolutionary armies, but those that did tended to die on the battlefield or flee after the Civil War ended. Enver Zogha fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 12:45
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