Hey. I'm not left leaning, in fact I identify myself much more with right wing ideas. But I come here with real curiosity, I have a general / superficial knowledge of leftism, and I know there are a lot of differences inside the left. My question is the following: how do you plan on achieving a communist society? I know that marxism-leninism wants to do it through the State, they seize the power of the State and create the dictatorship of the proletariat, after some time, they eliminate the State and voila, communism. And, If I'm not wrong, anarchists in general want to immediately abolish the State to avoid any oppression and excessive use of power, and because they think people will organize themselves naturally or something like that.
My question is very specific though. I would like to know the process in detail, like, do you acquire the power of the State after a coup d'etat, after elections, after… Can it be achieved in one country, or does it needs almost the entire world in the same path? Explain as much as possible if you want.
Nuclear war or some other environmental collapse to cripple US hegemony and capitalist influence. Then comes the revolution and rebuilding of society from the ground up, may or may not involve alien comrades.
Evan Foster
So… you are just going to sit and wait till something bad happens and then try to seize power. How do you know the masses will turn communists in a economical collapse? What if they want another system? What if the strongest (armed groups) decides the new political system? And how do you know if nuclear war or environmental collapse will happen? May as well become a capitalist in the meanwhile. It could never happen.
Easton Smith
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality has to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”
Wyatt Barnes
Just stop posting this stupid quote (no wonder it's a favorite of leftcoms), please.
Juan Gutierrez
>>>/reddit/
Don't listen to the other guys, he's a retarded trot. To answer your op is not easy. Not only there is not a single theory on how to achieve it but there is also dependent on the marial circumstances atm. I mean you are basically asking a billion dollar question, not a single revolutionary in history would be able to answer that.
Camden Davis
u cant downgrade to communism without changing humans! humans will always be greedy and selfish, will not work for free.
Ryder Young
Yes, I've read this quote before. And to be honest, I think it's retarded to define a movement like that, it tells me nothing about the new society.
Kevin Davis
That quote is over used, but you asked a vague as fuck question. You want us to summarize in a post 200 years of theory? Be more specific with your question.
Anthony Cruz
Marx was really bad for that, but he was essentially saying that because communism would be such a radical departure from everything that came before, it would be impossible to say what it would look like for certain. Keep in mind that he’s referring to the higher stage of communism here, after the state has dissolved.
By whatever means are most expedient, which would vary greatly depending on the time and place. It’s all a question of assessing the political conditions in a country and working accordingly.
Eventually it needs to spread to a significant portion of the world, ideally the developed world. Part of what sunk socialism in the 20th century was that it began in a single country, and only managed to spread to the peripheries of the capitalist world. In other words it had an extremely precarious starting point. I’m of the position that socialism can only win if it begins in the heart of global capitalism, in America, China (again) or Western Europe.
Owen Taylor
So, at the end of the day you still think we need some kind of economic depression or environmental problem or war, as a prerequisite for communism to form?
Leo Reed
one of them, both, or neither. whatever works at the time, sometimes reforms can be useful to open up a space for further class consciousness. sometimes you shouldn't vote at all. depends on the exact circumstances. you can do socialism in one country but that country would become isolated and under constant attack from the outside capitalist world, eventually being forced to yield. still, a revolution in one country could be a catalyst to inspiring a worldwide revolution so there's no reason to be opposed to it.
In the broadest terms, the "plan" is for the workers to have so much of their surplus value extracted that they become aware the bosses need them more than they need the boss. Right now the obstacles are a very well bribed first world. However in recent years thats starting to disappear, as is the first world/third world distinction as a whole.
Joseph Kelly
Not him, but yes, absolutely. Not because it's impossible to achieve this society without it, but because radical politics simply can't get to the forefront without a crisis pulling people out of their comfort. We aren't seeking to destabilize our economies, the market economy does that on its own, we just have to be prepared when it happens.
Robert Thompson
What marx whole point was that the capitalist system will collapse under his contradictions and communism will be the only logical step forward so yes. Obviously things have to go bad. But this doesn't mean we have to wait around. Things are already pretty shitty, it will get even worse
not the quoted person but an economic crisis really helps people become interested in their role in the economic system. and because of the internal contradictions of capitalism they're inevitable anyway so its very likely that The Big Revolution would happen after some kind of global downturn or war(they usually go hand in hand)
Wyatt Gonzalez
Absolutely. In general these kinds of revolution don’t happen while the economic system and the political infrastructure that it supports remain intact. The French monarchy fell because feudalism was rapidly being supplanted by capitalism, and the state itself was severely weakened after the Seven Years War. Russia and China were both failed states when they had their revolutions. This is especially true of modern capitalism, which has additional measures of controlling the population such as the culture industry and cultural hegemony. However these mechanisms only work as long as capitalism provides a minimum standard of living to the people of the first world. It will take a disaster for people to finally be motivated to actually do something about it, and to consider a radical solution.
Brandon Morris
Marxists in general want to use state power to expropriate the bourgeoisie, then establish communism bit by bit as the state becomes superfluous, the anarkiddies claim to want to abolish the state and expropriate the bourgeoisie, but in practice they do the same as the marxists and use state power to achieve their aims but without calling it a state. Generally most of us on both the red and the black side intend a revolutionary extra-constitutional seizure of state power, whether by armed insurrection, coup, general strike, popular uprising, installation in power by a foreign government, nuclear armageddon with extraterrestrial support, etc. Some take a more reformist approach where we win elections and act within bourgeois liberal democratic structures of power. But good marxists don't particularly discriminate, whatever is most expedient is a given situation is the path that should be taken. In various contexts the methods applied will differ and overlap. The building of dual power, electoral work, strike action and armed insurrection can all play a part and play into eachother towards an overarching revolutionary take over of the state. As for the question of proletarian dictatorship in one country or many countries or all countries, the answer too is dependent very much on the material conditions of a particular revolution. The aim is always world revolution, but everything happens somewhere, everything is a local event and revolution too is going to start in one particular place, the question of how it will spread is the important one. Revolution can be spread merely by news, revolution in one place may well cause people in another to rise up too. Revolution can spread through force of arms, just as revolutionaries march from one building to the next, and from one town to the next, so too will revolutionaries march from one nationstate to the next, as far as we have the strength to, which hopefully will be all the way. The bourgeoisie is international, the bourgeois state is in fact international, though it may at first glance appear to be a multiplicity of states. The class war is a war to the death for the bourgeoisie and as long as it retains any slaves it lives and will seek to re-enslave all those who freed themselves. At the first blow of revolution the bourgeoisie may be disoriented and divided, but it will if given time form a united front to suppress the revolution as it realises well its own class interest. As such we cannot rest in our pursuit of the bourgeoisie, we cannot afford to give it time to collect itself and consolidate all the power of the bourgeois state against us. Our only hope is for the revolution to be as swift and widespread as all our means allow, the aim being the maximal expropriation of productive capital and seizure of state power in the industrial centres of the world so that their full productive and military capacity can be at once totally mobilised in the service of the proletarian dictatorship for the purpose of the complete elimination of the bourgeois class. While the immediate/rapid take over of all the world is unnecessary for this, passing the '50% of the world's industry and military strength' mark would hopefully be sufficient to overwhelm the bourgeois state worldwide and allow for the consolidation of the proletarian dictatorship's control before the final blow is struck.
This. People will only revolt against capitalism when the comfy lifes they have collapse. i.e.w hen internet stops working, when electricity fails. Right now majority of people just like us here on Zig Forums might complain but if the bubble still works and there's food inside the supermakets for people to buy, nobody will do jackshit.
endorsed but i'd point out that a successful revolution in the US would be almost an instawin as they are much more than 50% of world military power.
Dylan Morales
That's because communism is hardly a 'positive' movement, in the sense of coming along with a blueprint for how we're going to do things now. Rather, at least on the marxist side, it is a 'negative', that is critical, movement which recognises that we have the resources, the technology, the infrastructure, developed out of our need for them over centuries, to live in a world where our material needs are met without much effort and where we can focus on striving for self-development rather than for survival from one day to the next, and that we are merely held back from such a society by the obsolete forms of social organisation burdening us. What people forget is that Marx and Engels were fiercely libertarian, in the sense of seeing human liberty as a chief political aim. While it is frequently said that we just have no way of knowing what form communist society is going to take and it will have to account for the material conditions of the time, which is undoubtedly true, marxism also contains an implicit organicism, in the sense that once the obsolete modes of production restraining us are lifted off our shoulders, with the productive forces available to us, we will develop freely and healthily into a good society on our own. Not only are we unable to create a blueprint for 'communist society', but it is entriely unnecessary. A libertarian society of free individuals living for the sake of themselves in fraternal communities living for the sake of themselves will be the 'natural' outcome. To quote directly:
As others have pointed out, it is the entire basis of marxism. Were feudalism functional and didn't birth within itself that new society by its own internal contradictions, the 'crisis' that was capitalism would never arise. In much the same way, were capitalism functional and didn't birth within itself those internal contradictions which birth the class struggle, the 'crisis' that is communism won't arise. We are simply the next step in a journey much greater than capitalism. We are the future.
anarchy is the goal for stage one of the revolution. set pieces in motion to create an environment that fosters dissolution of the core human morality. the self. then destruction of the inner circle of human connection: the family. next up is the tribal connections: race/friendships. finally the the nationalistic patriotic tendencies.
once all existing genetic and capitalistic connections have been severed, we can programme the blank inner mind with the true communistic programming. for the final severing, anarchic revolution is the best vehicle.
Abolish the bourgeois property form, which in turn makes monopolizing the necessities of existence impossible. Through the rational ordering of production to fulfill needs instead of endlessly cranking out junk in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will want it, we can escape the exploitative oppression inherent in the capitalist productive model.
Nathan Brown
This is a bad post. People don't revolt because the electric grid collapses or there is no food in the supermarket. They revolt because they can't afford electricity and food.
Thomas Allen
...
Adam Watson
Using a vulgar Marxism tone:
When the relationship of production does not match, even counters the forces of production, revolution happens
