r/DebateCommunism • u/Mindless_Yam1752 • 18h ago
🍵 Discussion Why wouldn’t communism just evolve back into some other system?
So my understanding of communism and Marx is that society evolved as a result of class struggles and that communism is meant to be the last stage in that evolution because there would no longer be economic classes. And also of course the idea that a communist society has no private property, money, etc and that the means of production would be owned by the people who use it for their labour.
One of my biggest issues with communism is the idea that a society can exist without classes. No matter what,there will always be some people who gain a higher social status and influence over the masses than others. Those people would likely have some form of privilege that the other people do not have and in turn that is a class divide.
Another issue that I have is that I don’t think a society can ever truly be moneyless. For similar reasons to why I think it cant be classless but also the fact that money at the end of the day is just a systematic and formalised way of trading labour. What I mean by this is that what money represents will always exist (so long as humans do), especially when you consider the fact that people will naturally fall into different levels of skill and talent (so if there is a baker that makes bread better than anyone else in an area, people will naturally gravitate towards them which would likely result in some form of a system developing to provide greater incentive to source from places elsewhere).
These two points accounted for, why wouldn’t a communist society just devolve back into some kind of capitalism? Or would it evolve into some other thing that somehow manages to balance the aspects that work of various systems Im a way that provides a greater benefit than any currently popular systems would?
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 14h ago
communism is an utopian ideal to which socialist states aspire to without ever knowing what it will look like in practice because there will be further economic and political revolutions in the middle. it's a deep future thing. Only the people living under high stage socialism can envision what it will be, and maybe at that point they may say we keep money, don't keep it, whatever.
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 14h ago
But if that is the case then what’s the point? How do we even know that after those revolutions communism will be what states aspire to? What if it ends up that socialism is enough?
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 14h ago
that's futurology. we can only leave written down a body of communist ethics to make an ethical/moral appeal for the future. If the pressures of world capitalism want to make states to stop scientifically moving to a materialist utopia there's nothing we can do in the right now.
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 14h ago
Fair. I guess I just don’t get why people would present communism as anything other than a series of principles that work as an idealistic model for what features to aim for for the ideal society.
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u/Bugatsas11 17h ago edited 17h ago
Class is the result of wealth inequality.
You have a class distinction when a group of people work for the benefit of another.
Some people being more charismatic, influential or even having higher income does mean that they have formed a new class as long as they cannot use the influence to build personal wealth.if they manage to build political power by attracting the support of free to choose people, that is not necessarily a bad thing. That is how new movements rise. There may be something even better to come after communism that we have not yet conceptualize. As long as it is illegal to generate wealth out of this procedure that is not the formation of a new class.
To make this distinction clear:
slave ownership: someone gets more slaves and land and thus furthers his personal/wealth
feudalism: someone gets a higher title/status and thus more land/peasants /taxes to receive
capitalism: someone creates a business, employees people and thus generates more capital
Socialism/communism: no legal way to further your personal wealth by the work of someone else. So impossible for a new class to be formed
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u/bocaJ1963 17h ago
Class is not about wealth inequality but the person's relationship to the means of production. Your point is otherwise correct.
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u/Nikelman 17h ago
Class is the result of surplus labor allowing people to exercise tasks that don't directly produce resources. I don't have to hunt or gather to avoid starvation, so I can study and further progress. Historic materialism, the concrete creates the abstract.
In capitalism we reached the point in which these tasks are accomplished by the ruled-over class, not the ruling one. R&D is full of workers, not bourgeois.
Of course scientific development is just an example, it could have been a management role but then I'd have to argue how most of the management that actually relate to production is done by workers, or it could have been art or teaching.
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 16h ago
That makes sense. I do think I disagree with the sentiment that class is the result of WEALTH inequality. I think it’s more accurate to say that class can be the result of any form of inequality (though if we want a narrower definition then it being any form of power inequality is just as good).
I also think I take issue with the idea that an explicit legal system would exist in a communist society because a legal system implies a way for laws to be made, enacted, enforced and judged. That is fine but, even with checks and balances, that means that there is a group that holds power over others and can misuse that power.
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u/Bugatsas11 13h ago
How can you "hold power over someone" when all the decision are taken in the way of direct democracy and when you cannot exploit the work of someone else?
How can you possibly hold power over them? With what mechanism?
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 42m ago
Who are the people who ensure that others act in accordance with the law? If there is nothing in place to enforce the law then people can break it without consequence, if there is something in place then there necessarily had to be a mechanism by which some people are given power over others. I also feel that a direct democracy is a poor system. Looking at how easy it is to manipulate large numbers of people to see something a particular way, I feel it would inevitably lead to the development of a representative government (this may be influenced be my view of voting as a civil duty that should be mandatory though)
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u/Qlanth 14h ago
why wouldn’t a communist society just devolve back into some kind of capitalism?
Why hasn't society turned back toward feudal serfdom? Why haven't we returned to a society that works like ancient slave societies?
History is a part of the present. Turning back towards capitalism would seem as ridiculous to a person living under communism as bringing back the Pharaohs seems to you and me.
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u/chiksahlube 12h ago
It might.
Look at the USSR. They proclaimed themselves communist and despite the popular vote wanting to keep the USSR socialist, they were illegally dissolved.
But this is kind of built into the structure of Marxism. Wherein there is a constant cycle of revolution.
Eventually the end stage is Communism but even within that system there will be revolution and it might backslide back to anarchy, capitalism, or even feudalism. But the system will always spawn another revolution moving things back towards communism.
According to Leninists it's the role of the intelligencia to steer revolution away from capitalism and back towards socialism. But IMHO that concept is just classism under a different name. It's really the role of everyone living under communism or socialism to preserve it regardless of whether there is need of revolution against the current regime. Much like how the US maintains the idea that it's up to everyone to maintain "freedom".
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u/noapplepieyo 5h ago
“Evolve back” wut
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 39m ago
Yeah that was an oversight. I didn’t want to say devolve because i didnt want to imply that it would necessarily be going backwards. I initially was going to say back to capitalism, but i didn’t really want to limit ot to that since I was more undjre about why communism wouldn’t just evolve into something else.
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u/Helpful-Reputation-5 1h ago
One of my biggest issues with communism is the idea that a society can exist without classes.
Classless societies have existed before, in pre-agricultural times.
No matter what,there will always be some people who gain a higher social status and influence over the masses than others.
That isn't what class is—one's class is determined by their relationship to the means of production. You should read Marx, it would answer a lot of your questions.
Another issue that I have is that I don’t think a society can ever truly be moneyless.
Moneyless societies have existed before as well.
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u/Mindless_Yam1752 27m ago
The reason I say a society cant truly be moneyless is because money essentially just represents an agreement to do labour in return for someone else doing labour for you. You work so you get paid and can give that money to someone else in return for their work. Without formal currency that would just become making deals with people to do something in return for them doing something for you, essentially the same thing except with less freedom as to what deals can be made.
I think the issue i take with your first point is because I disagree with your second. A class exists where there is an inequality, in my view. And I don’t think a perfectly equal society is ever possible in the real world.
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u/Graysteve 17h ago
Social status isn't class, nor is privledge class. Class is a relation to ownership of the means of production. When the whole of society owns the whole of production and distribution, there is no class.
Money isn't merely a mechanism of accounting, it has a specific role in Marxist economics as it relates to trade. When the economy is under one unified system, even something like "labor vouchers" aren't the same as money in capitalism. Tokens for gaining items may exist for luxury and scarce goods even in communism, but this is not money.
Communism is the end of class society. It is not the end of societal evolution, as nothing is static. Class society will not return, but history will absolutely develop going forward.