Communism
Communism or the higher stage of socialism is the society that will develop from the lower stage of socialism.[1] Those who seek to attain communism are known as communists.
Communism is based on common ownership of the means of production, cooperative labour, and freely associated producers (or, the free association of equal producers) that administer production on the basis of a social or common plan. The social character of labour, unlike in capitalism (see Law of value), is directly expressed (as social labour) via the association of producers. Consequently, communism is a society without commodity production, commodity exchange (and markets) and therefore without a universal equivalent (i.e. money). Value, the value-form, and the law of value have therefore also disappeared.[1][2]
The superstructure arising from this base or economic structure would be based on collective administration by free and social individuals, without the need for a special repressive body. Communism is therefore a stateless society.
Conditions
Emergence
The higher stage of socialism, communism, represents the total negation of the capitalist system and of class society in general, when the last remains of the old society fade away in favor of socialist practices. Thus, communism can only emerge when the inequalities found under capitalism are rectified, namely those between mental and physical labor, city and rural areas, sexes, etc.
Once these inequalities are done away with, the long-standing bourgeois restrictions on the means of production will no longer exist, allowing them to develop to a massive extent in which resource scarcity itself becomes a relic of the past. On this basis, society is able to operate on the principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Further, without the need for class struggle against the bourgeoisie and existence of socialism globally (as opposed to being present in only one or a few countries as under the lower stage of socialism), the need for a workers' state to combat reactionary and exploitative elements will disappear, prompting the state to wither away.[3]
As a movement
Communism also denotes the real movement seeking the abolition of private property, development of classless society, and other conditions which will emancipate the working class.[4] This movement arose in the 1840s when the revolutionary thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed the scientific framework of Marxism which provides a materialist theory for historical development, class struggle, and the nature of the capitalist system.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Marx. Critique of the Gotha Programme, Part I. "Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning."
- ↑ Stalin, J. Economic Problems of the USSR 3. The Law of Value Under Socialism
- ↑ Vladimir Lenin (1917). The State and Revolution, Ch. V: The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State.
"The economic basis for the complete withering away of the state is such a high state of development of communism at which the antithesis between mental and physical labor disappears, at which there consequently disappears one of the principal sources of modern social inequality-—a source, moreover, which cannot on any account be removed immediately by the mere conversion of the means of production into public property, by the mere expropriation of the capitalists.
This expropriation will make it possible for the productive forces to develop to a tremendous extent. And when we see how incredibly capitalism is already retarding this development, when we see how much progress could be achieved on the basis of the level of technique already attained, we are entitled to say with the fullest confidence that the expropriation of the capitalists will inevitably result in an enormous development of the productive forces of human society. But how rapidly this development will proceed, how soon it will reach the point of breaking away from the division of labor, of doing away with the antithesis between mental and physical labor, of transforming labor into 'life's prime want'—we do not and cannot know." - ↑ Friedrich Engels (1847). The Principles of Communism, 1. "What is Communism?".