To clarify, I’m an anarchist. I don’t think the state should exist, period, and I think it’s self-defeating to try to impose communism via the state.
Communism can only be established via the state. You cannot go from capitalism straight to a fully collectivized system of production and distribution, class struggle does not disappear overnight. Anarchists tend to propose something entirely different, something more communalist in nature, but this is not the same as communism from a Marxist perspective.
But more to the point, my original comment was in response to your analysis of OP’s questioning of China’s alleged human rights abuses. I was interested in your dialectical thinking because I hadn’t seen it applied so clearly before and I wanted to use it as a learning opportunity. I’m coming away feeling more educated, which I’m grateful for. But I’m also not convinced your analysis allays worries about potential abuses mentioned in the OP, and I wanted to say as much.
Understood.
So ultimately, I’m not really arguing for anything specific, mainly because I don’t pretend to have concrete answers. If anything, I’m arguing for greater political imagination. Liberal democracy is obviously not the answer, but I’m not convinced an authoritarian socialist state is either. So how could we build on the works of Marx and other communist thinkers to come up with a way to implement communism that avoids the pitfalls you yourself have admitted are potential problems with a communist-party-controlled state?
I want to clarify something: contradictions are not avoidable. All change proceeds through a resolution of contradictions. It is not feasible to totally avoid any and all problems encountered in the building of socialism and communism in real life. As I said earlier, class struggle itself continues into socialism. The process of building communism itself is a gradual, protracted process of resolving contradictions.
If you have a proposed alternative to existing socialist democracy, then we can discuss that, but you will not be able to avoid the problem of class struggle.
I understand what you mean I think, and I want to be clear that I’m not some utopian anarchist who thinks we can just magically become communist overnight. As you said, class struggle will continue. My point isn’t that we should try to avoid the contradiction, it’s that a socialist state is not a great way to navigate its resolution and that we should try to imagine other ways of doing so that don’t run the real risk of becoming abusive and/or failing to adhere to the will and needs of the people. It’s hard to write out a concrete idea here because it’s not something we’ve collectively spent a ton of resources trying to imagine. But people are wildly creative, and I think it’d be a disservice to us to not at least try to imagine something better.
I disagree with the notion that people haven’t spent a ton of time thinking of alternative structures. This, however, is ultimately quite similar to utopianism. I fail to see how you can end class struggle without going through a period where the proletariat dominates the bourgeoisie, unless you mean to change the name of this structure from a state without changing the structure itself. How does the proletariat dominate the bourgeoisie while both exist, without a state?
Imagine a community of workers who, through ground-up organizing (say, through unions or mutual aid networks), collectively overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize the means of production. The bourgeoisie need to be prevented from taking the means of production back while the workers implement communism, so the workers organize a militant force that, through consensus, can be temporarily spun up to defend the revolution–but only for as long as everyone agrees the defense is necessary. Then the reactionaries are kept in check, but the power to perform this subjugation is firmly rooted in the will of the people, without the risk of the power becoming disembodied or consolidated in the hands of the few.
Obviously there are lots of immediate concerns about this (how do you ensure reactionaries don’t throw a wrench into the whole thing, etc.). But this is where I think more imagination is needed. Surely it’s possible to solve these issues without giving up on the idea that power should be fully in the hands of the proletariat and not a disembodied structure?
This is still a state, though. Existing socialist states are run by the many, and rooted in the will of the people. Further, your example assumes 100% alignment, and the second one goes against the grain it is de jure dissolved, but de facto has no actual mechanism for doing so.
Let me ask you a different question because I feel like we’re talking past each other on this: what do you mean exactly when you talk about “dominating the bourgeoisie”?
As long as class struggle exists, there will exist a state that serves as the monopoly on violence in the hands of a given class. If the proletariat does not take hold of the bourgeois state, smash it, and replace it with a proletarian one, then the bourgeois state will prevent the establishment of socialism. Either the proletariat is subjugated by the bourgeoisie, or the bourgeoisie is subjugated by the proletariat. The purpose of maintaining a monopoly on violence over the bourgeoisie is so that you can gradually collectivize production and distribution, negating the proletariat and bourgeoisie as classes.
So, it seems like you’re saying two separate things here: (1) class struggle inherently involves a monopoly on violence, and (2) a monopoly on violence is strategically necessary for the proletariat in order to build a classless, stateless society. Can you clarify which one you mean, or if you mean both?
Communism can only be established via the state. You cannot go from capitalism straight to a fully collectivized system of production and distribution, class struggle does not disappear overnight. Anarchists tend to propose something entirely different, something more communalist in nature, but this is not the same as communism from a Marxist perspective.
Understood.
I want to clarify something: contradictions are not avoidable. All change proceeds through a resolution of contradictions. It is not feasible to totally avoid any and all problems encountered in the building of socialism and communism in real life. As I said earlier, class struggle itself continues into socialism. The process of building communism itself is a gradual, protracted process of resolving contradictions.
If you have a proposed alternative to existing socialist democracy, then we can discuss that, but you will not be able to avoid the problem of class struggle.
I understand what you mean I think, and I want to be clear that I’m not some utopian anarchist who thinks we can just magically become communist overnight. As you said, class struggle will continue. My point isn’t that we should try to avoid the contradiction, it’s that a socialist state is not a great way to navigate its resolution and that we should try to imagine other ways of doing so that don’t run the real risk of becoming abusive and/or failing to adhere to the will and needs of the people. It’s hard to write out a concrete idea here because it’s not something we’ve collectively spent a ton of resources trying to imagine. But people are wildly creative, and I think it’d be a disservice to us to not at least try to imagine something better.
I disagree with the notion that people haven’t spent a ton of time thinking of alternative structures. This, however, is ultimately quite similar to utopianism. I fail to see how you can end class struggle without going through a period where the proletariat dominates the bourgeoisie, unless you mean to change the name of this structure from a state without changing the structure itself. How does the proletariat dominate the bourgeoisie while both exist, without a state?
Imagine a community of workers who, through ground-up organizing (say, through unions or mutual aid networks), collectively overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize the means of production. The bourgeoisie need to be prevented from taking the means of production back while the workers implement communism, so the workers organize a militant force that, through consensus, can be temporarily spun up to defend the revolution–but only for as long as everyone agrees the defense is necessary. Then the reactionaries are kept in check, but the power to perform this subjugation is firmly rooted in the will of the people, without the risk of the power becoming disembodied or consolidated in the hands of the few.
Obviously there are lots of immediate concerns about this (how do you ensure reactionaries don’t throw a wrench into the whole thing, etc.). But this is where I think more imagination is needed. Surely it’s possible to solve these issues without giving up on the idea that power should be fully in the hands of the proletariat and not a disembodied structure?
This is still a state, though. Existing socialist states are run by the many, and rooted in the will of the people. Further, your example assumes 100% alignment, and the second one goes against the grain it is de jure dissolved, but de facto has no actual mechanism for doing so.
Let me ask you a different question because I feel like we’re talking past each other on this: what do you mean exactly when you talk about “dominating the bourgeoisie”?
As long as class struggle exists, there will exist a state that serves as the monopoly on violence in the hands of a given class. If the proletariat does not take hold of the bourgeois state, smash it, and replace it with a proletarian one, then the bourgeois state will prevent the establishment of socialism. Either the proletariat is subjugated by the bourgeoisie, or the bourgeoisie is subjugated by the proletariat. The purpose of maintaining a monopoly on violence over the bourgeoisie is so that you can gradually collectivize production and distribution, negating the proletariat and bourgeoisie as classes.
So, it seems like you’re saying two separate things here: (1) class struggle inherently involves a monopoly on violence, and (2) a monopoly on violence is strategically necessary for the proletariat in order to build a classless, stateless society. Can you clarify which one you mean, or if you mean both?
Both. The state is a necessary product of class struggle, and exists until class struggle is negated.