Communism has been the target of the largest smear campaign in history. I am here to set it right.
The Communist Manifesto was written in 1948, and it is often considered one of the most influential books in history. This sadly does not mean most people who have read it understood it. Communism is a stateless classless society, but all anybody reads is American and Soviet propaganda. That is why I am here to explain it carefully and fully to the best of my ability.
I urge you to read this and give it thought before you comment on it.
Class Struggles
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”.
That is the first sentence of the first chapter of the Communist manifesto. This was only taking into account recorded histories. Years later it was found out many primitive societies existed in which nobody owned the land and any could produce from it, the basis of communism. Only later when the state had become widespread did the classes emerge. Since at the time they only knew of histories recorded by the state, they had no knowledge of this. [1]
“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
As is the nature of hierarchical power structures one must labor for another to survive. In modern capitalism everybody must eat, so they must find a job for money to pay for food. The upper classes wish to get as much as they can out of that person's labor. The only way they can do this is by either forcing them to work harder or forcing them to work for less. The workers create unions to protect themselves. The capitalist tries to break the unions to protect his profit.
The second part is stating that reform does not work. Reform has been tried but it ends up playing into the hands of the powerful. They use this urge to reform in an effort to negate a revolution. Giving your slaves extra bread will not change whether they are slaves or not, but it may appease them temporarily.
“In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.”
In many authoritarian societies they split up the lower classes into sub-classes. This allows them to pit the working class against each other while taking most of what they produce. This is the strategy that most authoritarian systems and states use to keep their power. A soldier and a police officer are just working class people tricked or bribed into working against their fellow workers.
“The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.”
Many people see capitalism as a free system. In capitalism you still have the rich who control the poor through the government and businesses. They just do it in different ways. Now the struggle may be to buy a car and gas to get to work while before it was simply to eat. The new classes now are simply called lower, middle, and upper classes where wealth is concerned. It is very easy to slip from middle to lower, but very hard to climb back up in this society. In fact it is impossible for a majority of people to increase in class.
“Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”
The Bourgeoisie are the rich who own the means of production while the proletariat are those who slave away on it. Most of the money in the world goes to a select few who control vast amounts of resources and power. These resources must come from somewhere and that somewhere is the workers themselves. [2]
There is a book by german Anarchocapitalist Stefan Blankertz on Marxism. Also emphazising how Marx is widely misunderstood by both the left and the right and how he in many aspects argues like Anarchocapitalists today, pointing out to the destructiveness of the state in a capitalist economy. Of course we libertarians would disagree with his labor theory and such, but as a whole there are quite some statements to aprove in Marx' works.
Blankertz ' book is called: "Mit Marx gegen Marx", sadly I think there is no English translation of it. I think I will translate some of the parts in the next posts, Blankertz is a great mind.
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He did argue the problem with the state in capitalism but also understood capitalism can not exist without the state.
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But why has it been repeated multiple times without ever working?
Followed, because I'm curious
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It actually has worked before.
For example the syrian communist party has no major territory to my knowledge but is an active force in fighting isis.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works
This shows quite a few of the past communist territories.
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well, being an active force in fighting isis doesn't mean much about how their society works. That they for years now are backed by western powers and hyped by the same media you were critizising in your post, also doesn't make things better. While some of them seem to pretty anarchistic and thus not so deadly and brutal on the surface, I frankly wouldn't use these militant communist groups and branchoffs of the PKK as some great examples.
But of course, real communism as envisioned originally, namely ending in a stateless society of course work. There is no central planning in real anarchy, so there won't be much misery i presume.
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"as envisioned originally" The original communism had the transitional state that often fails and many people take for communism. Only the newer generations of communist want to go straight to anarchy.
Communists have split down the middle on this, however most are fully anarchist. The vanguard party is the only authoritarian one tolerated in the libertarian ranks and very few others even exist.
here is a nice example. Another one is the communist riots in Greece
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The Communist Manifesto, published on steemit
https://steemit.com/anarchism/@spacebeard/the-communist-manifesto-preface
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why bother? You can find that anywhere. Write your own truths and others will be more likely to listen
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because its an important truth to preserve on the blockchain.
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I would make an account dedicated to something like old leftist books instead of a personal account of some sort then. They are not useful if its hard to find them
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