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?
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?
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:”
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:
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:
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:
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.”
“Started down the track” is how I make that claim. He went from very staunchly “Seize the state, and use it to implement communism!” to “Well, thats not such a hot idea… we need to re-work that”.
You know, the “scientific” part of “Scientific Socialism”.
Simply because he shifted his position against the usage of the Bourgeois State into using a Proletarian State does not mean if he lived to today he would have gone any further than that. We must learn and adapt, yes, but not do so blindly. Ultraleftism out of dogma is flawed thinking that leads to incorrect conclusions, and I see no reason to believe he “started down the track” at all. Rather, he reframed, and this new frame has no theoretical basis for being a road at all unless you can make the case that central planning and public ownership of underdeveloped sectors of the economy is reasonable unilaterally.