Read theory, it's literally online for free. Join a reading group. You spend hours doom scrolling on Twitter to no end. All that's gotten you is deep knowledge of every twitter beef between 400 follower nazbols.

Edit: It’s not an issue with the site but online discourse about the left in general. Why are y'all upset about shoeonhead or black hammer or whatever new group of dumbasses is saying some new dumb shit. I'm talking about how every few days lots of leftists are surprised and upset that their fav twitter personality said something really stupid.

  • invalidusernamelol [he/him]M
    ·
    4 years ago

    I edited my comment with Marx's list of communist principles.

    Also, I think we're agreeing, but just have different definitions of the stages of communism.

    The "lower stages of communism" I always saw as socialism/dotp/that list. The higher stages would occur after the abolition of class, and the highest stage is the whole intellectual and physical division of labor thing which I don't really know about, because I'd say we're almost there under capitalism, at least with near universal education programs, so I don't really see that as a very uniquely communist thing.

    • gammison [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Fuck the edit glitched and deleted.

      Gist: lower phase really is after the abolition of capitalism, it's not the DOTP. The demands made in principles are a snapshot of early Marx where the bourgeois state and the proletarian "state" are not really articulated yet. Those demands are particular ones made to the bourgeois state that help get society on track to further progress to communism and would be significantly adjusted once the idea of the DOTP semi-state is developed. The quote about division of labor is more about how in higher communism we won't divide each other's labor in that someone may be a janitor and someone else is a mathematician, instead someone may be a janitor and the morning and a mathematician in the afternoon if that suits their individual drives and what labor they do does not dictate what they are given to socially reproduce. The full quote is

      In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

      I'm just harping a bit on this since I think it's very important to keep in mind what is and is not socialism and the DoTP otherwise we can kind of lose the plot of what we are aiming for. It's also important to remember what Marx thinks the forms of the state are and conditions of labor are and how they free us or not. Marx harped on this too, considering his early critiques in works like Private Property and Communism that then persist throughout his life.

      Last edit lol: pretty much all this disagreement is from Lenin trying to demarcate the lower and higher phase of communism more clearly than marx did (and then the ussr in the thirties trying to declare what they had socialism, which Lenin would not have done) and from mixing and matching different parts of Marx's work together without looking at context and difference, however by doing this we muddle Marx's own conception of communism. It's fine to take lenin's position, but I think it misses important elements of Marx's conception of communism

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]M
        ·
        4 years ago

        What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

        In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.

        That passage right before your one on higher communism. I still really don't see how that's so different. It's ambiguous enough with the labor voucher thing that it could be interpreted as currency backed by labor value and not oil/gold. Which is not totally incompatible with the idea of a centralized bank in the first stage of communism (who distributes and mediates the exchange of vouchers for social product?).

        I'm not under any impression that the goal of socializing production is meant to stop at the first phase, but I'm also aware that tools such as a central banking system and post office (even better if they're combined) and public transport are indespesible in the fight to reach a higher stage of development. The people won't accept a complete devaluation of their currency immediately and it will take time to supplant the existing financial systems, better to retool then to serve as more equitable versions of themselves and phase them out immediately.

        Once again, at no point does either Marx or Lenin say anything about how long any of these phases will take, there seems to be some people who assume that the first phase is meant to be short, but it could very well be a 200 year struggle as capitalism's was from the mercantilism of the 1600s.

    • Nagarjuna [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The “lower stages of communism” I always saw as socialism/dotp/that list.

      That's a Leninism. Marx defines it differently in the Gothacritik.

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]M
        ·
        4 years ago

        I just don't really see the big deal in the difference. Especially because a dotp exists with the goal of creating the conditions for the stages of communism so why is it separate from the stages of communism? Marx wasn't very clear even in Gothacritik about exactly how the lower stages would look, just that they'd "bear the birthmarks of capitalism", "have distribution of resources according to labor value". Also he frequently mentions the importance of an ever expanding democracy, which is primarily the introduction of democracy in production and formation of worker councils.

        Again, it feels like this difference is really splitting hairs as the end goal of both interpretations is the same. Hell, even the intermediate goals and initial goals are the same, they just have different terminology being used.

        "State capitalism" is just the highest stage of capitalism and is a vector by which Marx saw a transition to socialism happen in the industrialized nations. Lenin skipped that step with the use of peasant coalitions (which Marx pointed out as a viable option in The Civil War in France). The issue being that productive forces didn't exist in sufficient quantity in Russia to implement the lower or higher stages of communism.

        So you could say that the industrialization period and NEP/5 Year Plans were not socialism and in fact "state capitalism", but they were in service of developing industry without the massive human cost of capitalist industrialization (which was a success). So whatever they were, they differed from capitalist production in social equity and human cost. They were an example of a just expansion of production that didn't require reserve labor and wage slavery. Calling that "capitalism" would be wrong, it's an entirely different mode of production.