The point I am trying to drive home is that if I am to build socialism in a given country, I can of course begin with an analysis of existing class society and the material conditions surrounding me. I can look to successes elswehere, and compare the general and the particular. What I cannot do is treat different societies as models or templates to emulate. Perhaps specific elements can be, but the particularities of each country detetmine the nature of socialist construction, and the fact that nothing is static means that socialism is a process and not an end.
That’s all fine. Would you at least deem it appropriate to evaluate a country on it’s likelihood of moving a society closer to communism? Or do you not see that as a relevant goal?
If a country is on the socialist road, it is moving towards communism. Communism is built on collectivized production and distribution, and this is economically compelled by the centralization of markets and even more compelled once socialized production becomes the principal aspect of the economy.
I find this idea dubious. I think that state control of the economy could lead to communism if that state is managed democratically by a majority underclass that does not own property, because such a class might develop a system of governance that abolishes class and private property and distributes political power. I do not see communism as an inevitable outcome of any given state run economy.
Workers in socialism collectively own the commanding heights of the economy, sometimes much more as in the DPRK. They are not an underclass, they are the ruling class. Communism isn’t inevitable, much can go wrong as was seen with the dissolution of the once great USSR. However, it remains that socialism is a process, and that process involves developing towards communism as is economically compelled.
I think that the process of an underclass becoming a ruling class is important in the development toward communism. It seems like you’re suggesting that there is only one metric with which a communist should evaluate a country and that is whether or not they have a socialized economy. Is that right?
No, it’s not right. Socialization is a process that happens in socialism (and even capitalism) that forms the economic basis for capitalism. It’s crucial for the working classes to have siezed and gained state power, ie political power and supremacy to develop society in their interest. Public ownership being the principal aspect of the economy goes along with that.
I was not asking about socialization in the Marxist sense. I’m asking whether your only metric for evaluating a country is public ownership of the means of production.
No, socialization of the economy is not the only metric. It is not even the key metric. The class character of the state is primary. Socialization is a single, highly important factor within that determination, but it remains derivative. A nationalized industry under bourgeois state command functions as state monopoly capital.
Evaluation proceeds from the principal contradiction to its secondary aspects. The principal question: which class holds monopoly over political power and the means of coercion? This determines the direction of all other processes. Secondary metrics, the rate and depth of socialization, the trajectory of productive forces, the composition of administrative personnel, the character of ideological struggle, these are not irrelevant. They are conditional. They either consolidate proletarian state power or undermine it. There is no neutral technical criterion. The same policy, e.g. grain procurement or industrial planning, produces opposite class effects depending on which class commands the state apparatus.
The state is not a passive vessel for economic measures. It is the organized expression of class rule. Transitionary societies contain multiple modes of production in contradiction. The state resolves which mode dominates. Empirical assessment must therefore begin with the class basis of political power.
I view the class character of a revolution as primary. Once in power, a certain class such as the Proletariat may be likely to democratize the economy and abolish all class. If they fail to do so, I fail to see a viable path to communism. A state apparatus that can be said to be run be “workers” is meaningless except as a motivator for this democratization.
What do you mean by taking the class character of the revolution as primary. The revolution is not an abstract event. It is the process by which a class seizes or establishes state power. To treat the revolution’s class character as separate from the state it produces seems to detach the act of seizure from the instrument seized. Can you clarify how you understand the relationship between the revolutionary moment and the state form that follows?
Also you seem to fundamentally misunderstand what “abolishing all classes” means in socialist theory and practice. It is not a moral injunction or an immediate erasure of social differentiation. It is a historical process where class distinctions disappear through the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, whose members are then, together with the peasantry, gradually folded into the proletariat through transformed relations of production. Once there is a single class, there is effectively no class antagonism. That is the endpoint.
Your phrasing that the proletariat “may be likely to democratize the economy” reveals an idealist lens on a structural question. This is not about likelihood or moral inclination. It is about material interest. The proletariat, as a class, has an objective interest in expropriating the petty and large bourgeoisie because its own emancipation requires the abolition of capitalist property relations. This interest does not depend on goodwill. It is inscribed in the position of the proletariat within the mode of production. To treat it as contingent is to substitute voluntarism for political economy.
Finally, the state is not an abstract motivator. It is the concrete instrument by which one class exercises rule over others and advances its class interest. Under bourgeois rule, the state organizes the accumulation of capital, reproduces wage labor, and suppresses challenges to private property. Under proletarian rule, the same apparatus, transformed in class content, organizes the socialization of production and the proletarianization of any remaining classes. The direction of transformation follows from which class commands the levers.
I’m not saying this to be accusatory, and I hope it lands as intended. It just feels like your grasp of communist theory and the history of socialist practice is shallow to put it mildly. I can give you some book recommendations that might clear some of this up if it would help.
The point I am trying to drive home is that if I am to build socialism in a given country, I can of course begin with an analysis of existing class society and the material conditions surrounding me. I can look to successes elswehere, and compare the general and the particular. What I cannot do is treat different societies as models or templates to emulate. Perhaps specific elements can be, but the particularities of each country detetmine the nature of socialist construction, and the fact that nothing is static means that socialism is a process and not an end.
That’s all fine. Would you at least deem it appropriate to evaluate a country on it’s likelihood of moving a society closer to communism? Or do you not see that as a relevant goal?
If a country is on the socialist road, it is moving towards communism. Communism is built on collectivized production and distribution, and this is economically compelled by the centralization of markets and even more compelled once socialized production becomes the principal aspect of the economy.
I find this idea dubious. I think that state control of the economy could lead to communism if that state is managed democratically by a majority underclass that does not own property, because such a class might develop a system of governance that abolishes class and private property and distributes political power. I do not see communism as an inevitable outcome of any given state run economy.
Workers in socialism collectively own the commanding heights of the economy, sometimes much more as in the DPRK. They are not an underclass, they are the ruling class. Communism isn’t inevitable, much can go wrong as was seen with the dissolution of the once great USSR. However, it remains that socialism is a process, and that process involves developing towards communism as is economically compelled.
I think that the process of an underclass becoming a ruling class is important in the development toward communism. It seems like you’re suggesting that there is only one metric with which a communist should evaluate a country and that is whether or not they have a socialized economy. Is that right?
No, it’s not right. Socialization is a process that happens in socialism (and even capitalism) that forms the economic basis for capitalism. It’s crucial for the working classes to have siezed and gained state power, ie political power and supremacy to develop society in their interest. Public ownership being the principal aspect of the economy goes along with that.
I was not asking about socialization in the Marxist sense. I’m asking whether your only metric for evaluating a country is public ownership of the means of production.
No, and I explained that that isn’t. What do you even mean by “evaluating a country?”
No, socialization of the economy is not the only metric. It is not even the key metric. The class character of the state is primary. Socialization is a single, highly important factor within that determination, but it remains derivative. A nationalized industry under bourgeois state command functions as state monopoly capital.
Evaluation proceeds from the principal contradiction to its secondary aspects. The principal question: which class holds monopoly over political power and the means of coercion? This determines the direction of all other processes. Secondary metrics, the rate and depth of socialization, the trajectory of productive forces, the composition of administrative personnel, the character of ideological struggle, these are not irrelevant. They are conditional. They either consolidate proletarian state power or undermine it. There is no neutral technical criterion. The same policy, e.g. grain procurement or industrial planning, produces opposite class effects depending on which class commands the state apparatus.
The state is not a passive vessel for economic measures. It is the organized expression of class rule. Transitionary societies contain multiple modes of production in contradiction. The state resolves which mode dominates. Empirical assessment must therefore begin with the class basis of political power.
I view the class character of a revolution as primary. Once in power, a certain class such as the Proletariat may be likely to democratize the economy and abolish all class. If they fail to do so, I fail to see a viable path to communism. A state apparatus that can be said to be run be “workers” is meaningless except as a motivator for this democratization.
What do you mean by taking the class character of the revolution as primary. The revolution is not an abstract event. It is the process by which a class seizes or establishes state power. To treat the revolution’s class character as separate from the state it produces seems to detach the act of seizure from the instrument seized. Can you clarify how you understand the relationship between the revolutionary moment and the state form that follows?
Also you seem to fundamentally misunderstand what “abolishing all classes” means in socialist theory and practice. It is not a moral injunction or an immediate erasure of social differentiation. It is a historical process where class distinctions disappear through the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, whose members are then, together with the peasantry, gradually folded into the proletariat through transformed relations of production. Once there is a single class, there is effectively no class antagonism. That is the endpoint.
Your phrasing that the proletariat “may be likely to democratize the economy” reveals an idealist lens on a structural question. This is not about likelihood or moral inclination. It is about material interest. The proletariat, as a class, has an objective interest in expropriating the petty and large bourgeoisie because its own emancipation requires the abolition of capitalist property relations. This interest does not depend on goodwill. It is inscribed in the position of the proletariat within the mode of production. To treat it as contingent is to substitute voluntarism for political economy.
Finally, the state is not an abstract motivator. It is the concrete instrument by which one class exercises rule over others and advances its class interest. Under bourgeois rule, the state organizes the accumulation of capital, reproduces wage labor, and suppresses challenges to private property. Under proletarian rule, the same apparatus, transformed in class content, organizes the socialization of production and the proletarianization of any remaining classes. The direction of transformation follows from which class commands the levers.
I’m not saying this to be accusatory, and I hope it lands as intended. It just feels like your grasp of communist theory and the history of socialist practice is shallow to put it mildly. I can give you some book recommendations that might clear some of this up if it would help.