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Discourse exclusively on the basis of historical materialist methodology.
Forum rules: No one line posts please. This forum is for discussion based on Marxism, Marxism-Leninism and similar revisions. Critique of topics not based on historical materialism belongs in the general Communism forum.
#14426146
Communism is supposed to be a classless, stateless, moneyless, international society, with common ownership of the means of production, but some peculiarities in Marxism lead me to believe that it does not have to possess ALL of these characteristics at once in order to be communist.

These peculiarities are the concepts of "primitive communism", and "pure communism". If it can be said that primitive tribal society was communist, then we already have an example of a non-international form of communism, since tribes defended territory against each other, and did not share things in common across tribes unconditionally. In addition, if socialism gradually evolves into pure communism by maximizing each of the aforementioned foundational elements, then it follows that there are communisms which are less pure.

The very concept of pure communism means that communism is not a unitary concept depending completely on the fulfillment of one particular characteristic, and that therefore systems which fulfill the major production changes of communism may be considered mostly communist.

What, for example, would we call a national state in which there existed a classless, moneyless order, under common ownership of the means of production? Is this merely socialist? Is the line between socialism and communism even clear cut? I think Marx says that the socialist mode of production is occurring under the authority of the "dictatorship of the proletariat", and that if the economic conditions for communism were imprinted into the social fabric of society (materialism means our way of thinking will become more communist), then the state would wither away, and national boundaries would collapse, since the state only exists for class reasons.

However, this isn't a deterministic foregone conclusion, since states can exist for moralistic/idealistic reasons which might deviate from standard Marxist thinking. How then would we describe these hypothetical states which have achieved all the economic conditions for communism internally, while still presenting a national barrier against the world? Primitive communism seemed to exhibit these characteristics, since there was said to be common ownership, but it was segmented into competing spheres of common ownership, due to family/blood/racial and religious ties.

(As an aside: doesn't historical materialism imply that you can be both a communist and a reactionary at the same time in the form of primitivist ideology?)
#14426657
Marxism is the study of the dialectic via material means.

These peculiarities are the concepts of "primitive communism", and "pure communism". If it can be said that primitive tribal society was communist, then we already have an example of a non-international form of communism, since tribes defended territory against each other, and did not share things in common across tribes unconditionally. In addition, if socialism gradually evolves into pure communism by maximizing each of the aforementioned foundational elements, then it follows that there are communisms which are less pure.


Returning to the paleolithic is, or all practical purposes, impossible. A Marxist sees his view of communism as, "scientific socialism," which means that there are certain rules that history follows. The rules, at most basic:

Dialectics for Kids wrote:Dialectics is a tool to understand the way things are and the way things change. Understanding dialectics is as easy as 1 - 2 - 3.

One--Every thing (every object and every process) is made of opposing forces/opposing sides.

Two--Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one opposite overcomes the other.

Three--Change moves in spirals, not circles.

These are the three laws of dialectics according to Frederick Engels, a revolutionary thinker and partner of Karl Marx, writing in the 1870s in his book Dialectics of Nature. Engels believed that dialectics was "A very simple process which is taking place everywhere and every day, which any child can understand". This web site is dedicated to proving his point. In fact, if you understand the first seven pages of this site, you already understand the basics of dialectics…

Here's how it works -

1) Everything is made of opposites.

No object could hold together without an opposing force to keep it from flying apart. The earth tries to fly away from the sun, but gravity holds it in orbit. Electrons try to fly away from the nucleus of an atom, but electromagnetism holds the atom together. Ligaments and tendons provide the ties that hold bones together and muscles to bones.

Like material objects, the process of change needs opposing forces. Change needs a driving force to push it ahead, otherwise everything stays put. A billiard ball only moves when hit with a pool cue or another ball. We eat when our hunger tells us to. A car won't move if it's engine won't start. To win in fair elections candidates need more votes than their opponents.

Engels, drawing from the philosopher, Hegel, called this law the "interpenetration of opposites"; Hegel often referred to the "unity of opposites." This may sound contradictory, but it is easy to understand. It's like the saying, "It takes two to tango." There is no game if one side quits. There is no atom if the electrons fly away. The whole needs all of its parts to be a whole.

2) Gradual changes lead to turning points.

The ABC's of Change give 26 examples of this, one for each letter of the alphabet. What happens is that the two opposing forces in a process of change push against each other. As long as one side is stronger than the other side, change is gradual. But when the other side becomes stronger, there is a turning point--an avalanche, a birth, a collapse, a discovery, . . .

Engels called this the law of the transformation of quantity into quality. Quantitative change is the gradual build-up of one opposing force. Qualitative change takes place when that opposite becomes dominant.

This law is powerful in describing the stages of development of anything. A person's life follows these quantitative/qualitative changes. Likewise human history, or the history of a particular place, has gone through many stages.

Using the same approach it is possible to trace the history of the universe right up to the present by identifying the key turning points.

3) Change moves in spirals, not circles.

Many changes are cyclical--first one side dominates, then the other--as in day/night, breathing in/breathing out, one opposite then another. Dialectics argues that these cycles do not come back exactly to where they started; they don't make a perfect circle. Instead, change is evolutionary, moving in a spiral.

Maybe the changes are tiny, so we think nothing is really different--it's true that we hardly change in a measurable way with every breath. But we can see that many cycles do come around to a different place --children are not the same as their parents, even if they are a lot alike. People go to school and learn; when they return home, they are no longer the same. And, like it or not, you are a bit older with every breath. For more examples, see Spirals A - Z or Popcorn, Earthquakes, and Other Changes.

Engels, again following Hegel, called this law "negation of negation". This sounds complicated, but, as Engels said, it is going on all the time. What happens is that first one side overcomes its opposite--this is the first negation. This marks a turning point as in Engels' 2nd law. Next, the new side is once again overcome by the first side. This is negation of negation.


Primitive communism was a kind of communism, but then it ended with—amongst other things—the conception of property and the creation of classes. Thus, since history came after that, history is the story of class conflict. In order to negate the creation of classes, a dialectical model is followed. Not for any particularly ideological reason but, again, that's how history works. Unless, of course, you are saying that everyone would simply give up the concept of property as we know it and throw their conceptions of class into the wind and decide to hold hands all at once. Doing so would have to be planet wide, of course, otherwise those that did not join in on this utopian train of fail would probably destroy the rest.

This leads to the second point, that since everyone on the planet was tribal, and every tribe was communist (as you yourself suggest), then this is hardly "an example of a non-international form of communism," since everyone was already working within the same system.

Yes there were fights in the paleolithic, but Britain and Germany were both capitalist countries fighting each other in WWI.

In addition, if socialism gradually evolves into pure communism by maximizing each of the aforementioned foundational elements, then it follows that there are communisms which are less pure.


Back to the dialectic, each system contains opposites. In capitalism, this is the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It is, however, true that some feudal remains exist in—say—the United Kingdom here and there. However, they are mostly irrelevant. The important thing here is that the base of society is capitalistic. Capitalism is an international system. The changes that exist within capitalism will come out and transform it, as an international system, into an international system.

Engels wrote:Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?

No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.

Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.


What, for example, would we call a national state in which there existed a classless, moneyless order, under common ownership of the means of production?


A workers' state.

Is this merely socialist?


By definition, since it is not international, it is not socialist.
#14426741
The Immortal Goon wrote:Marxism is the study of the dialectic via material means.


The flaw in Marxism is not dialectics per say, but the specific ideas that the dialectics of the means of production always resolve into complete forms with all the characteristics Marx describes, and that the means of production always override other factors.

Internationalism is said to come about through the capitalist breakdown of nations which then unites workers as a class. This implicitly assumes that capitalism couldn't be rejected/fail before then, through material changes Marxism doesn't much consider such as automation destroying capitalism, leaving nationalism stratified in place due to people's idealism based worldviews, or perhaps the material concern of resource availability: "tha technocracy is redoocin' our rations because o' dem dirty Pakistanis, dat's ooh!"

Marxism seems to be narrow materialism, because it ignores hysteresis effects. If the material world gives rise to thought, then thought in turn effects the material world such that the next thoughts it can give rise to will be different. People may decide to be nationalistic for example even if the class boundaries collapse in each nation due to the undermining of the capital class.

Contradictions also don't have to be one against one relations either. A system could contain a variety of contradictions, many more than just two, which balance. If we wish to use examples from physics, we can have a variety of forces pulling in triangles or pushing in complex shapes or whatever you would like. The weakening of one element could cause a resultant movement in that direction, or some other net direction based on the relative strengths of the compoments. History is not a circle, and its not simply a spiral either, but a tree of spirals. Multilectics?


The Immortal Goon wrote:This leads to the second point, that since everyone on the planet was tribal, and every tribe was communist (as you yourself suggest), then this is hardly "an example of a non-international form of communism," since everyone was already working within the same system.

Yes there were fights in the paleolithic, but Britain and Germany were both capitalist countries fighting each other in WWI.


I was under the impression that communism was different in that "common ownership of the means of production" combined with "internationalism" meant that there were no world boundaries any more, and that all people everywhere had no legal exclusion from the means of production. If the tribal system was internally classless, but created a boundary against other tribes owning their stuff, then isn't that merely "group private property" (if along egalitarian co-operative lines), rather than communism?

Isn't communism as an international system all about collaboration and unity? If tribes excluding each other can be communist, then why can't nations excluding each other be part of a communist world? What would internationalism even mean without some sort of functional integration across what were formerly borders?


The Immortal Goon wrote:Back to the dialectic, each system contains opposites. In capitalism, this is the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It is, however, true that some feudal remains exist in—say—the United Kingdom here and there. However, they are mostly irrelevant. The important thing here is that the base of society is capitalistic. Capitalism is an international system. The changes that exist within capitalism will come out and transform it, as an international system, into an international system.


So, essentially... the material contradictions that are contained in capitalism will always resolve in such a way that all the characteristics of communism are fulfilled at more or less similar times globally, and any aberrations will be isolated holdovers?


The Immortal Goon wrote:By definition, since it is not international, it is not socialist.


So this state has to do what in order to become communist? Drop all immigration controls? Conquer all of the other countries and integrating them into an international system of its choosing?
#14426746
Contradictions also don't have to be one against one relations either. A system could contain a variety of contradictions, many more than just two, which balance. If we wish to use examples from physics, we can have a variety of forces pulling in triangles or pushing in complex shapes or whatever you would like. The weakening of one element could cause a resultant movement in that direction, or some other net direction based on the relative strengths of the compoments. History is not a circle, and its not simply a spiral either, but a tree of spirals. Multilectics?


No doubt.

This is why movements like Fascism arise and romantic movements about restoring monarchies (in Tibet, for instance) will come up. This is the petite bourgeoisie in the former and a pseudo-feudal movement in the latter case.

However, this does not change the fact that the world is united under a capitalist base that deliberately acts to keep it as such.

I was under the impression that communism was different in that "common ownership of the means of production" combined with "internationalism" meant that there were no world boundaries any more, and that all people everywhere had no legal exclusion from the means of production. If the tribal system was internally classless, but created a boundary against other tribes owning their stuff, then isn't that merely "group private property" (if along egalitarian co-operative lines), rather than communism?


Primitive communism is not socialist communism. They are linked in name for a variety or reasons, not the least of which to sandwich the conception of the End of History into it (history being the study of class conflicts). But they're not the same thing, nor can they be, as they are different epochs with different material bases and such.

So, essentially... the material contradictions that are contained in capitalism will always resolve in such a way that all the characteristics of communism are fulfilled at more or less similar times globally, and any aberrations will be isolated holdovers?


No. We could end up like Mad Max or in some other kind of nightmare. Communists must fight for the future, not sit back with their feet up and expect the capitalists to hand everything over to them for no reason. People are more than part of the process, they are the process.

To quote Losa Luxemburg:

The Janus Pamphlet wrote:Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does "regression into barbarism" mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration--a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales. In this war imperialism has won. Its bloody sword of genocide has brutally tilted the scale toward the abyss of misery. The only compensation for all the misery and all the shame would be if we learn from the war how the proletariat can seize mastery of its own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes.


So this state has to do what in order to become communist? Drop all immigration controls? Conquer all of the other countries and integrating them into an international system of its choosing?


That would hardly be realistic. It should be honest with what it is and how it exists.
#14427285
The Immortal Goon wrote:Primitive communism is not socialist communism. They are linked in name for a variety or reasons, not the least of which to sandwich the conception of the End of History into it (history being the study of class conflicts). But they're not the same thing, nor can they be, as they are different epochs with different material bases and such.


Now we are getting to the core of the issue, which I suppose is the semantics of Marxist theory (which isn't as unimportant as it seems ).

Wasn't it then a mistake by Marx to call it primitive communism if the prime reason is to shoehorn it to fit upturned Hegelianism? If the operative word is socialist here, then this suggests that socialism is what is international (as you noted before), not communism per say.

This is odd, because I always thought it was the other way around; Marxist-Leninists always talk about achieving a socialist state in one country to build socialism prior to the eventual world overthrow of capitalism and resulting true internationalism. It seems to me that they put communism as being the operative international part, and socialism as simply economic collective proletarian ownership according to the Marxist labor value theory. You seem to be suggesting - from your reading of the relation of primitive communism to end stage communism - the opposite view, that you can have an isolated system that protects its property from other parties, but providing that this property is internally common and not private, then it can be designated communist, but not socialist communist/pure communist, as socialism can only be internationally common.

*phew*

You're a Trot, right? Have I stumbled upon the odd fact that Trotskyism is Marxist-Leninism inverted, or am I just getting confused?
#14427294
Technology wrote:So this state has to do what in order to become communist? Drop all immigration controls? Conquer all of the other countries and integrating them into an international system of its choosing?


The thing about full Communism needing to be a worldwide system is that in order to achieve communism, the State and its repressive apparatuses must be abolished. This pretty much requires total victory over the class and ideological enemy worldwide, or at least such a socialist geopolitical hegemony that class enemies waging a counterrevolutionary war against us is basically unthinkable.

To achieve socialism a workers' state needs to have collective property of the means of production and a democratically planned economy. Of course, in practice this requires being part of a solid and essentially self-sufficient Socialist Bloc in order to have socialist international trade relations. A workers' state in a globalized capitalist economy is pretty much shackled by capitalist trade relations and pressured back into state capitalism.

Comrade TIG's definitely a Trot, but we all love'im anyway.
#14427762
which isn't as unimportant as it seems


Oh agreed! I think political language is vitally important. I think that a lot of time is used in a good discussion in order to define the perimeters of what we're speaking about.

Wasn't it then a mistake by Marx to call it primitive communism if the prime reason is to shoehorn it to fit upturned Hegelianism? If the operative word is socialist here, then this suggests that socialism is what is international (as you noted before), not communism per say.


I think this is pretty valid. It is a form of communism in that property itself doesn't exist and whatnot and it is an international system in the sense that it is what everyone known to them in the world practiced. It was before nationalism in the 19th century sense of nationalism (that is, a nationstate that developed independent of the local aristocracy) so it wasn't, for Marx, nationalistic. I think the main conception was supposed to underline some part of the historiography that came with Marx's own inverted Hegelianism, that is to say, that history was based on material changes in society. In the paleolithic, people had far different physical means and whatnot and existed for the vast majority of human history in seeming darkness as we know nothing about it. Once property and class came about, we started having an actual history. This, in a broad sense, set the seeds for its own destruction a tens of thousands of years later when classes are broken down again. Thus, the end of history.

I believe what you said is a good summary of my understanding of the conception. Though you're right, it took me a few times to read it. This gets heavy pretty fast

You're a Trot, right? Have I stumbled upon the odd fact that Trotskyism is Marxist-Leninism inverted, or am I just getting confused?


If asked, I am more of a Connollyist than anything. This has its own problems in a lot of ways, but I do side with Trotsky over Stalin in those endless debates which is pretty much the big designator.

However, it should be pointed out (and I have done so many times 2, ) that Marx, Engels, and Lenin all agreed that socialism was an international system. Stalin was the aberration in declaring that it no longer was. I have tried to get into the dialectics of how this worked from a Marxist perspective, but have never had anyone really even try to do so.

So in this sense, I consider myself a pretty orthodox Marxist instead of a Trotskyist or a Connollyist. At least until someone can explain the reasoning for how and why Stalin proved Marx, Engels, Lenin, and every other Marxist not dependent upon him wrong...and then how reality completely failed Stalin's change of course and still proved him right.
#14427910
I was wondering if TIG was a supporter of Socialist Democracy.
They were the remnant of the old People's Democracy (Ireland's SDS) who disagreed with the majority decision to disband and merge with Sinn Fein. They had also decided to break with their old "New Leftism" though in favor of adopting Trotskyism (Sorry Mao!) and later after that hooked up with the SWP crowd.
#14427988
Gletkin, I'm probably pretty sure, knows more about mid and late 20th century Irish politics than I do. I'm increasingly sort of armchair because I'm usually mentally in the late 19th and early 20th century with my work and whatnot.

This said, the platform provided is one I agree with, but my support of Connolly generally comes from his orientation on how struggle should be waged, and Connolly's break with De Leon, something I see as a precursor to the Stalin/Trotsky break; which itself has a lot to do with the Menshevik/Bolshevik break. Most notably, Connolly, Lenin, and Trotsky lacked a kind of enforced conception of socialism existing as an absolute that people should conform to when there was no material change that had occurred. Connolly was most adamant about this, leaving religion, love, and other things up to generations of the future and society's relationship with the material instead of dictating certain standard or rules from an imagined place.

Connolly also, more than Lenin or Trotsky, was a part of the masses and careful to always stay as such and organize along these lines. I could probably be more specific or gush more but I'm on a bus on my phone and it's hard to concentrate.

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