Marx and Communism

>state owns everything, is centrally controlled, and a one party dictatorship to the point where marx himself says this will happen in the communist manifesto
That's the process for getting to communism, that is not communism itself

/pol/ brainlets should stay in their containment boards.

all bullshit meme excuses. Communist is the state taking direct control of everything, including the economy through a central bank, and marx himself even refereed to this method as despotic. Anyone who claims otherwise is ideologically blinded

So should /leftypol/ turdnuggets.

It really is pretty simple.

History moves forward in economic development through specific instances of conflict, which Marxists call "internal inconsistencies" and "class struggle", and produce a new economic system that corrects, or uses a different paradigm than the previous one. This is called historical materialism.

Slavery and aristocracy, became feudalism, which became mercantilism, which became capitalism, and Marxists believe that capitalism in turn will stop functioning as an economic system and the result will be a communist society.

Now, Marx himself, early in his career believed this was an inevitable progression of economic history, however, in his later years he became revolutionary, and thought that capitalism couldn't stop unless it was stopped by force.

If you're looking at it from a political science standpoint, communism is supposed to be a stateless society in which the means of production are publicly controlled, while socialism is supposed to be the transition period from capitalism to communism. This kind of communism thought has obviously never exist, and most people would say that it is impossible. Colloquially, communism generally refers to single-party states that attempted to militantly redistribute the means of production with centrally planned economies, ie USSR, Cambodia, Maoist China. Socialism generally refers to a less extreme version of this, usually state capitalism, market socialism, social democracy, etc.

Yes, that is the transition state that Marx was referring to, not the communist society itself.

THE COMMUNIST SOCIETY DOES NOT EXIST IN THE REAL WORLD AND HAS NEVER EXISTED, IT ONLY EXISTS IN THE UTOPIAN FUTURE OF COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA.

I know dumbass, I'm not even a communist, but you should at least know what Marx said before you criticized him.

>transition state
except its never going to work. Its a religious fiction. "we have to do X so the lord will return!" tier nonsense.

first post best post

Not that guy but that's not what the argument is about. He's trying to explain what Marx's idea of communism and socialism is. He's not trying to argue whether or not it will work, that's a different discussion.

We're not talking about whether it works or not, I already know it doesn't work, I'm just trying to tell you/him what communism actually entails so that when people say the USSR was communist they can understand why people say it isn't.

>What are the main themes
If you can't see yourself in your work, then you get disenfranchised.
His theories break down the moment a project is too big for a single person or involves thought/calculation/planning.
tl;dr he was a char fetishist.

>what's the link between socialism and communism?
One and the same. It's like asking the difference between minarchism and libertarianism.

sorry i got triggered.

Communism is what lead to the USSR being the way it was, just because communists claim that real communism is somehow something different does not change the real life proof of what communism leads to. So yes, USSR was communist and no it was not an Utopia.

>minarchism and libertarianism.
but there is a difference baka

Is this how you answer your own schoolwork questions and topics

It's all theoretical differences though.
No one would ever establish a leftist minarchist state because it wouldn't be a minarchist state.

It's like libertarian communism. Sure it's possible, but they don't exist because those who find communism appealing reject the legitimacy of voluntary agreements. Nothing prohibits communism in a libertarian state, except communists.

Sure but would every libertarian want a minarchist state

It depends on their outlook. If they are retarded and blindly obey principles, then they would prefer a totalitarian state over a minarchist state. (read as: all or nothing kokesh type faggots)

If they are not retarded, then yes. No minarchist non-micro state exists, so the establishment of a minarchist state guarantees an increase in liberty for anyone who isn't a naturalized citizen of sealand.

Sure, maybe it will increase liberty and all that jazz
will it be the exact form desired by libertarians

Are you trying to get at the legal balance and societal role of explicit types of property rights? Or are you trying to get at something else?
(cato unbounded has some good essays on this topic)

Well, that's one aspect of political difference. Surely, we can think of more.

Whether trying to deny me my property rights for my child sex slaves counts as statism or not?

Yes, yes, we're surely on the right track, though I'd have preferred something a little less "explicit".
Here's another example: do we consider mutualists a subspecies of libertarian, and if so, are also indistinguishable from minarchists?

>We're not talking about whether it works or not
>I'm just trying to tell you/him what communism actually entails so that when people say the USSR was communist they can understand why people say it isn't.

its an excuse by marxist in the "not real communism" way as they think they can try it again and it will just magically work this time. Its intentionally decietful or just plain ignorance on their part when they claim its just a stateless utopia and people like Stalin and Mao just got it wrong when the ideology calls for despots like them to impose a complete state control of everything

Private property does not equate to personal property. That detail is often conveniently left out. Private property refers to the means of production, essentially things that none of us will ever actually own. This point is misrepresented to enrage people over the loss of something they never actually owned in the first place.

I'd argue from a philosophical standpoint that they are, but from a governance standpoint they completely different animals.

So there is a political difference, then?

>muh Orwellian double speak

>the dictatorship of the proletariat = vanguardist democratic centralism
I think you’re confusing Marx and Lenin. That or you’re just a brainlet.

one-party state was not part of communist ideology.

it happened in soviet russia. when the bolsheviks were first in power, the other parties gradually started doing things we'd consider terroristic like bombing places, even the other left parties (i.e. socialist revolutionaries party and mensheviks).

the left of these parties left and the left mensheviks rejoined the bolsheviks (they were originally a single party) and the left sr's formed a party that supported the soviets which eventually folded into the bolsheviks.

also, the interesting point of stalin and mao and basically everyone besides pol pot (who was anti-soviet and was supported by the usa) was not that communism magically solves all problems, but that stalin and mao were legitimately the start of regimes which were infinitely better than tsarist russia and puppet state china, in terms of living standards and rule of law and even democracy.

the communists say that a "communist state" is in the socialist mode of production and "communism" is a future where money is either abolished or replaced with labour vouchers (which marx only talked about abstractly and is imo retarded and totally unimplementable) and marx's idea of a state that had "withered away" still had an army that could conscript soldiers forcefully, whereas in the modern era even capitalist countries like costa rica are able to not have armies (in b4 hurr durr special forces are the army).

marx was still huge for history though for having a very scientific way to analyze past, and even current societies.

>What are the main themes

the class system and how class antagonism is the driver of history.

Marx literally called the implementation of communism "despotic inroads" in the communist manifesto. no one is buying into your sophistry

i sort of got disentangled from my first point about the one-party state.

after the one-party state was temporarily part of soviet russia during the civil war (when russia was not just in a civil war where literal monarchist racists received financial support from colonialists who wanted to subjugate russia, but when they started to lose bad the west and japan invaded).

as russia became the only communist state, the stalin/trotsky debate took place. calling it a debate is farcical though, the bureaucracy was very corrupt and trotsky (left-wing) didn't like them, bukharian (right-wing) didn't like them but wanted state capitalism like modern china, stalin (centrist) appealed to the bureaucracy and said sure some were corrupt but they were doing the best they could.

this led stalin to win the battle and have trotsky exiled then killed, and eventually bukharin killed too.

the "socialism in one country" debate has many points it would take too long to get into, but the stalinist side was that the ussr was the only communist state at the time, and so the peoples of the world should put the ussr above national interests, as what was good for the ussr was good for the communist movement as a whole.

this obviously led to the ussr seeking normalized relations with the west and agreeing to things like barely supporting the democratically elected spanish republic and not helping the massively popular communists in greek, to the detriment of the world communist movement, but to the benefit of the national interest of the ussr.

Everybody knows that you fucking dumbass. What this thread is about are Marx's theories but you insist on using wrong terms because this cannot get through your thick skull

The dictatorship of the proletariat was never supposed to be led by an elite one party state in Marx's vision. This model was coined by Lenin and every subsequent "socialist" government was heavily influenced by it, and adopted the vanguardist approach. Even China. Lenin was not an orthodox Marxist and his views were heavily critiziced by pretty much everyone up until the bolshevik revolution triumphed and people started flocking over to him.

To understand Marx all you need to keep in mind is the existential mindset that every man is a product of his environment in the sense that we're social animals shaped by society and the legacy of past ages. If you take Marx at his word through Capital you're going to get an abstract destruction of political economy as it was first developing. If you want the real Marx and what he thought communism could be is in his notebooks and the Gotha Program where he talks about the principles of a possibly communist society, which was never anything but a far-end term for what could be long after man had transitioned through a socialism in which he realized his full nature.
Marx's whole contention is basically that all of human history is one of men attempting power through hierarchy, conquest, and grabs at power. Through the course of history this had by the industrial revolution developed in a system by which the average man was no longer slave outright or a feudal peasant tied to his masters property but a free-floating body of labor to be hired and expected to consumes. A socialist society isn't about stealing property so much as getting men to realize that the product of their labor is the very foundations of civilization outright, that society is both product and maker of man and his world. Where I think Marx fucked up is that he never got around to writing down his analysis of who the bourgeoisie really were or how the church played into this - basically his thoughts on government entirely and so left a gap into which his self-proclaimed disciples fell into. After the failures of the revolutions post-WWI and the rise of Communist Russia most Marxists took to hiding behind academic tenure and armchair arguments. The few who stayed mainstream like the French existentialists took to the papers while the Frankfurt school pumped out nothing but academic wordplay before turning its back on the student revolutions of the '60's.

>early in his career believed this was an inevitable progression of economic history, however, in his later years he became revolutionary, and thought that capitalism couldn't stop unless it was stopped by force.

The opposite. Late Marx was basically a Radlib, early Marx was blood for the blood god.

I assume this is for a school project. Don't listen to Leninists, Leninists are retarded "Muuhh capitalism IISSS communism!"

>What are the main themes

That history moves through stages of development based on mans material production and conditions. New technology leads to new contradictions in the system which leads to new class antagonisms which causes systems to rise and fall. Modern Capitalism for example, would not be possible without the industrial revolution and the formation of the urban proletariat and labour markets which formed in the early 19th century. As factory owners and such became rich, the feudal system fell since the aristocracy lost power.

Marx posits that Capitalism will fall due to automation (Organic consumption of capital) which will cause the rate of profit to fall and will produce crisis so unfixable, that people will be forced to move to a new system.

"What is Socialism"

Socialism is a stage of development between Communism and Capitalism where a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" is established. Currently we live in a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, which means, the middle class of business owners etc hold power over the worker, in the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, workers gain control in society and over their own production.

Eventually when the contradictions in Socialism are finally ironed out, it becomes Communism, which is a stateless, classless society that is basically Star Trek TNG.

>what's the link between socialism and communism?

Communists today with revise and tell you socialism leads to communism. Socialism is the economic system that leads to a communist society. Communism, in the original utopian conception, was not just a government or party. It was supposed to replace religion and government with it's own authority. Socialism is only the economic component.

constitutii.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/1936-en.pdf
>ARTICLE 1: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a socialist, state of workers and peasants.

>that every man is a product of his environment in the sense that we're social animals shaped by society and the legacy of past ages

You're not a product of your environment relying on an environment that doesn't exist. Legacy is an abstraction. Important, concrete, but abstract. Traditionalists for example are very much against the vein of post-modern aculturalism which dominates western society right now. If they read about a piece of legacy, and opt to renew it, that's them in conflict with their present environment. Exposure doesn't entail environment alone. Hate to sperge but there it is.

>implying the old aristocrats aren't ultra capitalists guiding both capitalist and communist powers through layers of shadow councils

And frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way.

>layers of shadow councils
they're called (((cabals)))

Socialism is always the goal, state control.

Communism is the lie told to idiots in order for Socialism to take root.

Commies actually believe the state will one day "step aside". Marx himself called them useful idiots.

Read the communist manifesto, it's all spelled out really simple for plebs. Then maybe read "none dare call it a conspiracy" by Gary Allen.

>Lenin supported war communism and established NEP so he was capitalist all along!

Communist manifesto is a meme. Read Engels for a dummies guide to marxist socialism or else you'd have to start with the greeks.

Communism is a meme, read whatever the fuck you want.

>Socialism is always the goal, state control.

>Communism is the lie told to idiots in order for Socialism to take root.

>Commies actually believe the state will one day "step aside". Marx himself called them useful idiots.

As with all things, context is needed to understand Marx. Marxists are revolutionaries, yes. But Marx himself was writing in the middle of an ongoing revolution: Industrialization. For all it's marvelous products, the Industrial Revolution had a number of unintended consequences that made life miserable in a way that it never had before. The economy became an end unto itself.
Marx ultimately wanted the proletariat to take the reins of power for themselves and redirect the revolution toward something brighter. It's a mistake to think of Marx as being a deconstructionist in the same way as the post-modernists of the 20th century and today. The construct that he is accused of decontextualizing was new and seemingly artificial. His was not a crusade to unmake and remake society in his vision but a competing theory at a time when no one knew what the next century would bring

Socdems don't all believe in communism, most of them believe markets are good, just not so good that they can't be improved by some democratic coordenation.

Lmao dude my school wasn't really critical at all of communism, the nazis were huge baddies tho, keep that in mind.

You make a good point that no one will ever address other than by claiming that Lenin's model was "an inevitability", rather than the late tsarist police state persisting despite regime changes.