Spyke

Replies

latestagecapitalism

Comment on

Communism is the only path forward

Reply in thread

communism is a stateless, classless society based on the self-organization of workers and communities. The state is not the vehicle for achieving that society. It is one of the institutions that reproduces hierarchy and domination.

Marx certainly argued that the working class must overthrow capitalism and that there would be a transitional period after the revolution. But he also praised examples like the Paris Commune precisely because they dismantled the centralized state rather than strengthening it. His critique of alienation and exploitation was ultimately aimed at human emancipation, not at creating a new bureaucratic ruling class.

Marxism-Leninism departs from this in several fundamental ways. It replaces the self-emancipation of the working class with the rule of a centralized party claiming to act on its behalf. It builds an increasingly powerful state instead of dismantling state power. It substitutes workplace and community self-management with centralized planning directed from above. In practice, workers remained wage laborers under managers appointed by the state rather than collectively controlling production themselves.

Calling those societies "socialist" depends entirely on defining state ownership as socialism. A definition that is rejected by communism concepts. If workers do not directly control production and political power remains concentrated in a party-state, then capitalism has not been abolished in any meaningful sense. The employer has simply become the state.

As for being "the world's largest Marxist ideology," popularity does not settle theoretical questions. Christianity is the world's largest religion, but that does not resolve debates about theology. Likewise, the historical success of Marxism-Leninism in building states does not prove that it fulfilled Marx's emancipatory project or achieved communism.

So Marxism-Leninism's model of socialism is fundamentally different from the Marx's critique points toward: the direct self-emancipation of workers without a ruling party or a permanent state.

3
View in thread