Afaik this happened with every single instance of a communist country. Communism seems like a pretty good idea on the surface, but then why does it always become autocratic?
Marx opined that certain material conditions had to be achieved before a socialist state could be successfully made. These material conditions include bourgeois capitalist democracy. Marx explicitly said that capitalism forges the tools with which it will be destroyed.
A certain subset of communists known as Marxist-Leninists decided that bourgeois capitalist democracy wasn’t necessary if you just oppressed people REALLY hard, you could skip straight to a socialist state. And because they ‘succeeded’ in overthrowing traditional Marxists in 1917 Russia and getting the full power of a massive country to spread their ideology, they’ve had bootlickers calling their particular brand of insanity the only ‘real’ form of communism ever since.
When we think of ‘communist’ countries, we think of Marxist-Leninist countries which tried to jump from feudal societies to socialist societies, which, quite obviously from the results, doesn’t work. Doesn’t stop the cultists from licking boots, of course.
There’s also a story in the hammer and sickle itself. It was spun as a symbol of ‘all workers’ but its original purpose was to depict an alliance between farmers (who owned the land they worked) and the tiny population of wage earners in Russia’s largest cities (who didn’t even own their homes). The farmers saw no reason for the new policies so concessions had to be made.
Lenin’s Russia had to leverage the state apparatus to fiercely industrialize and capitalize, effectively creating an enormous business conglomerate with a company store that encompassed nearly every product in the nation outside the black market. But with all the complacency of abject monopoly. They couldn’t skip generalized capitalism, and so they created it in a way that seriously disadvantaged workers as capitalism does.
because of a few things
a) when you start a game of monopoly, everybody is equal. by the end of the game, wealth (think of wealth as an analog to power) snowballs and only one or two people will have all the resources.
when you start a communist government, it’s not a fresh game of monopoly. it’s a continuation of the previous game. and the vast majority of people are joining in after the wealth has been accumulated. therefore, power remains in the hand of the powerful
b) there is a large variance in human capabilities. to be frank, the vast majority of people are sheep. their world view is narrow and motivation stunted. they don’t really care very much about things outside of their life and they don’t want to learn, grow, etc. there isn’t anything wrong with that, and there’s sort of a whole religion based on this
but some people are very talented, ambitious, and greedy. these people will end up at higher positions, no matter your form of government. humans tend to naturally distribute ourselves in hierarchies. aka pyramids
this goes all the way back to our primate roots. look at chimps where the male leader of the pack has dibs on which female monkey he wants to mate with. the weaker monkeys have to bow their head and take what they can get.
tldr: hierarchy and pyramids are in the very fabric of human existence. doesn’t matter what form of government or economic system you pick. pyramid will develop somehow, someway
Because extremes don’t work.
From what I’ve seen over the past 100 years, pure capitalist societies fail (hello Americans!) just lie pure communist societies (hello Russia!)
What works well are free societies that mix strong capitalism systems to fund strong social systems and safety nets (hello, north west Europe!)
So to begin with all communism so far has never been democratically voted in as far as I know and pretty much starts with an ideological military government that then needs to transition back to democracy.
Many do transition to a one party system where all democracy is contained within the party and essentially becomes a “primaries only” type.
Then slowly over time power consolidations and purges bring it towards a dictatorship because there are no checks and balances against it.
So it seems to me that the only way to get to the ideological communism is through democracy and constitutional changes, proportional representation and coalition governments that don’t allow any one toxic pernon to consolidate power.
There’s a lot of confusion in these comments regarding Marxist theory, presumably from people who haven’t actually engaged with the source material, so I want to clarify something I see repeated frequently in this thread with little pushback. The Marxist theory of the State is not the same as the Anarchist, nor the liberal. Marx defined the State as a tool of class oppression.
The reason I state this is because there’s a confused notion that Marxists think there should be
- An unaccountable Vanguard
- The Vanguard does stuff. At a certain arbitrary point the Vanguard dissolves and society embraces full horizontalism
I’ll address these in order. First, the Vanguard is in no-way meant to be unaccountable, nor a small group of elites, but the most politically active, practiced, and experienced among the proletariat elected by the rest of the proletariat. The concept of the “Mass Line” is crucial to Marxist theory, that is, the insepperability of the Vanguard from the masses. If this line is broken, the Vanguard loses legitimacy and ceases to be effective, whether it falls into Tailism or Commandism. These tendencies must be fought daily, and don’t simply vanish by decree.
Secondly, the basis for Marxian Communism is the developmental trends of Capitalism. Markets start highly decentralized, but gradually the better Capitalists outcompete and grow, and as they grow they must develop new methods of accounting and planning. Capital concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, yet socialization increases as these conglomerations begin to reach monstrous heights and require incredibly complex planning. The development of such methods and tools is the real, scientific foundation of Public Ownership and Central Planning.
Continuing, once the Proletariat takes control and creates a Proletarian State, the Proletariat, the more experienced among them the Vanguard, gradually wrests from the bourgeoisie their Capital with respect to that industries and sectors that have sufficiently developed. This process continues until all Capital has been folded into the Public Sector, at which point laws meant for restraining the bourgeoisie begin to become superfluous and “die out.” The Vanguard doesn’t “dissolve” or “cede power,” but itself as a concept also dies out, as over time new methods of planning and infrastructure make its role more superfluous. Classes in general are abolished once all property is in the Public Sector, and as such the State no longer exists either, as there isn’t a class to oppress.
This is why Marxists say the State “withers away.” It isn’t about demolishing itself, but that Marx and Engels had a particular vision of what the State even is, and why they said it could not be abolished overnight.
Hope that helped! As a side note, asking this on Lemmy.world, an anti-Marxist instance, is only ever going to get you answers biased in that direction. I suggest asking on other instances as well to get a more complete view.
Lemmy.world, an anti-Marxist instance
I wouldn’t call Lemmy.world anti-Marxist. I would say there has definitely been some knee-jerk to the heavy-handed moderation of Lemmy.ml, but being opposed to the more extreme methods of Lemmy.ml doesn’t mean opposition to Marxism in concept. It means you’ll get a broader set of responses since criticism won’t get deleted by the mods/admins, but there are still plenty of leftists on Lemmy.world.
Similar to how opposing Stalinism doesn’t mean one opposes Marxism, you know?
Lemmy.world defederated from the largest explicitly Marxist aligned instances, their thread going over why spells out pretty clearly that opposition to liberalism was the key determining factor in doing so. Lemmy.ml isn’t even a Marxist instance, only admin’d and moderated by Marxists, yet is the instance with undeniably the most conflict with Lemmy.world currently among their federated instances. Moreover, many lemmy.world mods have expressed negative opinions towards Marxism directly, here’s an example.
Lemmy.world is a liberal instance, is admin’d and moderated largely as such, and has taken deliberate measures against Marxism and Marxists. I believe it’s fair to consider Lemmy.world to overall be anti-Marxist. Does that mean no users share Marxist sympathies? No, of course not, but overall the bias is clear. Similarly, by defederating from the larger Marxist-aligned instances, a thread on Lemmy.world is shutting out the viewpoints of most of the Marxists, rather than having a “broad” view, this minimizes the variance in responses.
Just my 2 cents.
Sounds sensible from an economics perspective but what about violence? How can state wither away when there needs to be control of violence?
Because it is not human nature and has to be forced on people. Eventually even those who are in charge of it fall into the normal human nature of social structures and such.
People will help those they know personally (e.g. family units) and even then only to a point. Harboring resources for yourself is innate. Most organisms exhibit a form of territoriality to protect their resources. Communism breeds apathy, a struggle for resources and hopelessness, just ask anyone who has actually lived through a communist government.
Because people like Communism and they don’t understand it, so dictators lie and say they are communist to get in power.
Because Communism only works on paper. (lolol idiots can down vote me to Hell) Name ONE country communism has worked in.
Just one.
Cuba exists and has better rankings than the US in higher education, and life expectancy.
Is “working” a sliding goalpost for you, or can you define it? You made the claim that Communism only works on paper and are asking people to disprove your claim, rather than substantiate your claim yourself. Surely you can see why others find your comment unproductive, correct?
Because it is a dictatorship.
A dictatorship of the proletariat.
For real though we’ve not seen communism yet.
It’s the opportunist problem. We see this throughout rebellions in history, not just when communist countries are made. Basically, anytime conditions are bad enough for the people to demand change it’s really easy for someone to trade on their ignorance. They can push policies that sound like they’ll help but really consolidate power. And if anyone speaks up, they’re an enemy of the people.
For a non Communist example of this in modern history check out the French Revolution.
Check USA right now.
Because thats the end result of embiggening the state: The state gets bigger, and the oligarchs just changes faces.
It was something Marx remarked on later, post Paris Commune.
To clarify, Marx remarked that the existing Capitalist State cannot be merely siezed, it had to be replaced by a Proletarian State. This is because Marx viewed the State as an instrument of class oppression, as a Proletarian State gradually absorbs all Capital into the Public Sector as it sufficiently develops, it slowly erases class distinctions, the complete absorption marks the disappearance of the State along with the disappearance of classes. Government is not the same as the State for Marx.
Oh, I get what Marx had said… Marx also changed his view post Paris Commune. He started down the track that its impossible to abolish the state, after concentrating all power in the state, as those holding power will never give it up.
And yes, governance is not the state, and yes, Marx later agreed with that point, as well.
You’re a bit confused here. I’m explaining the takeaways for Marx from the Paris Commune. When the Communards seized the state, they did so on the basis of the existing state, they did not replace it but take hold of it, and as such they only held power for a short period as it quickly transitioned back to Capitalism. Marx then saw the need to replace the State with a Proletarian State. It isn’t impossible to abolish Marx’s conception of the State, rather, when the Proletarian State is founded and eventually folds all property into the Public Sector, there ceases to be a proletariat and a bourgeoisie at all, and thus there ceases to be a State. The State isn’t a special class, but an extension of the Class in power.
Marx started to rework (greatly) his ideas of “The state” and if it should be seized or abolished early. He started leaning to “abolished quickly, and early”.
He leaned towards elimination of the Capitalist State but that a Proletarian State cannot be abolished by decree, only via sufficient development of the productive forces and gradually wresting from the Bourgeoisie their control as such productive forces develop. To suggest otherwise would go against the concept of Scientific Socialism. Engels puts it best in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, which Marx said in his written preface in 1880 “best characterizes the theoretical part of the book, and which constitutes what may be called an introduction to scientific socialism:”
When ultimately it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no social class to be held in subjection any longer, as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production existing up to now are eliminated together with the collisions and excesses arising from them, there is nothing more to repress, nothing necessitating a special repressive force, a state. The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society – the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society – is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished”, it withers away. It is by this that one must evaluate the phrase “a free people’s state” with respect both to its temporary agitational justification and to its ultimate scientific inadequacy, and it is by this that we must also evaluate the demand of the so-called anarchists that the state should be abolished overnight.
Another emphasis, from Marx himself in Manifesto of the Communist Party, which Marx stood by to the very end with only slight alterations regarding the immediate destruction of the bourgeois state and replacement with a proletarian state after the lessons of the Paris Commune:
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
Finally, Engels in Principles of Communism elaborating that the folding of Capital into the Public Sector is a gradual process and not an immediate one:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
Marx was not an Anarchist.
I never said he was an anarchist, and I never said he claimed it should or could be done in a single stroke.
Scientific Socialism requires one to learn from the past, and adapt as needed. It doesn’t mean a dogmatic prescription of “how”.
Then I fail to see how you can make this claim:
He started down the track that its impossible to abolish the state, after concentrating all power in the state, as those holding power will never give it up.
The withering away of the Proletarian State is not on the basis of “giving” anything “up.” The basis is on the State folding everything into the Public Sector, at which point laws like Private Property Rights disappear alongside it. When the government has folded all property into the Public Sector, the State itself ceases to exist, there’s nobody to “give up” and nobody to “give up” to. There is just the people, as they make up the “administration of things.”
I don’t think that is exclusive to communism. I rather assume that this has more to do with how the government is structured. Long-running politicians tend to being more open to corruption.
I can easily see Trump going the same way. He has assembled enough power within the system to break it from within like most dictators did.
Bureaucratic systems world based on control of information and decision making. If there are insufficient mechanisms for maintaining checks on power accumulation, those systems can be abused by psychopaths and used to accumulate power. The same applies to capitalist structures.
Because of bad ideology. States, classes, inequalities, and hierarchies are good and desirable. Try to build a system ignorant of the primary components and then wonder why it always fails.
And this right here is fascist ideology
Chiapas doesn’t seem to be failing. Going on 30 years now. Rojava isn’t failing either, due to it’s system, but rather being attacked on the regular by imperialist nations like Russia and the US.
By its nature, communism requires large amounts of control, as it’s a centrally planned economy. The state decides if it needs more coal, wheat, tools, steel, etc, then conscipts people as workers for various industries. Instead of an economy controlled by demand business owners, it is controlled by the state.
To maintain that control you need to maintain control of the people.
