Can you clarify how you understand the relationship between the revolutionary moment and the state form that follows?
The revolution of a desolate majority underclass creates the material conditions that are, at least in theory, conducive to the development of a democratic state apparatus that distributes political power. The mutual interest of the members of that class should make the development of such a state likely. By the nature of their having collaborated effectively enough to effectuate such a revolution, we can assume that they have developed the capacity to organize in such a way as to realize that collective interest.
This is not about likelihood or moral inclination. It is about material interest.
I don’t consider moral inclination to be relevant to this analysis, but I do use probabilistic terminology, because I don’t view social theory as a hard science.
The direction of transformation follows from which class commands the levers.
One must be careful about the loss of information when labeling and subsequently using those labels. People can move between classes, or their material interests can change. A group of people who are members of the Proletariat can easily lose class solidarity if given outsized political power. I would only consider a class to have gained power if they succeed in doing so in a democratic context. Also, once they gain that power, I would not consider them to be the same class that they were before doing so.
It just feels like your grasp of communist theory and the history of socialist practice is shallow to put it mildly.
Maybe. But I suspect this impression may be due less to my lack of familiarity as much as a lack of orthodoxy. I don’t take much issue with picking and choosing ideas or reinterpreting them in a way that I think makes sense.
You still have not answered the actual question I posed.
I asked how the class character of the revolution operates independently of the state it produces. You did not explain that mechanism. Instead, you restated your preference for a democratic outcome after the revolution and described conditions you think make that outcome likely. That does not resolve the point. A revolution is not a free-floating event. It is the seizure or construction of political power by a class. If you say the revolution’s class character is primary, but then detach that from the state form that emerges from it, you are asserting a cause while refusing to identify its concrete political expression.
Your reply also shifts from class analysis to normative preference. You say you would only consider a class to have gained power if it succeeds in doing so in a democratic context. But that is not a meaningful definition of class power. It is an external political criterion you are imposing onto the analysis. The state is not validated by whether it conforms to an abstract democratic ideal. It is analyzed by which class holds power, through what institutions, in whose interests, and against which opposing classes.
You also continue to treat class as though it were mainly a question of sentiment, solidarity, or personal disposition. It is not. Class is defined by a group’s place within the social relations of production, its relation to the means of production, and its role in the social organization of labor. Individuals can move between classes, yes. Political degeneration is possible, yes. But none of that abolishes the category itself.
On your use of probabilistic language, the issue is that you retreat from determinate analysis into vague possibility. Substituting schema, impression, or what one finds unconvincing for concrete engagement with the real movement of social forces. To say the proletariat may or may not act in accordance with its structural position, and to leave it there, is not nuance. It is a refusal to complete the analysis. It is ridiculous to proceed by asking whether a development feels persuasive at the level of personal intuition. Instead one must ask what contradictions are operative, what class interests are materially constituted, and how they express themselves through political organization, struggle, and state form.
You also still do not understand class in a rigorous way. Administrator is not a class category. Administration is a function. Class is determined by relation to the means of production and to the appropriation of social surplus. So long as those administering do not privately own the means of production and do not expropriate surplus value as a distinct property-owning stratum, they do not thereby cease to be proletarian simply because they hold office or carry out administrative tasks. The socialist transition does not abolish the proletariat the moment it takes power. It is the period in which proletarian rule continues the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, suppresses restoration, and transforms the relations of production until class antagonisms are rendered void through the abolition of class society itself. The endpoint is not your abstract democratic test. The endpoint is the historical supersession of antagonistic classes through there ultimately being only the associated producers, at which point class in the antagonistic sense disappears.
On not being “hard science”. This is not a matter of arbitrary plausibility. Dialectical and historical materialism have repeatedly proven their explanatory force precisely because antagonisms and contradictions are the drivers of history. The contradiction between forces and relations of production, between exploited and exploiting classes, between an emergent mode of production and the decaying order that contains it, is the motor of historical development. That is why Marxism can explain the rise, development, crisis, and replacement of social orders with a seriousness your framework cannot match. Once you reduce these determinate antagonisms to mere probabilistic tendencies, you empty the theory of its strongest content and replace analysis with hesitation.
The problem is not heterodoxy as such. The problem is that you have tossed aside the core of the theoretical framework and replaced it with an eclectic mix of idealism and materialism, despite the fact that the two are incompatible as methods. You want to retain Marxist terminology while hollowing out what makes it coherent: class without a stable relation to production, revolution without determinate state expression, and political power judged by external moral-democratic criteria rather than by its material class content. That is not a serious reinterpretation. It is a conceptual patchwork. And eclecticism of that sort cannot critique Marxism from within because it has already abandoned the premises that make Marxist analysis possible in the first place.
Some books:
Lenin, The State and Revolution
Marx, The Civil War in France
Lenin, A Great Beginning
Mao, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Your reply also shifts from class analysis to normative preference.
Fundamentally everyone bases their political inclinations on some kind of preference. My preference is for the maximal utility to be realized for humanity. Democracy isn’t an end goal, but I view it as necessary for any kind of communist society to emerge.
It is ridiculous to proceed by asking whether a development feels persuasive at the level of personal intuition.
If you think that you are able to predict future history based on a priori scientific truths, you are sorely misguided. Personal intuition isn’t sufficient to understanding, but neither is adherence to arbitrary scientific laws that someone made up.
Class is defined by a group’s place within the social relations of production…Administrator is not a class category.
An administrator could certainly hold a different place within the social relations of production, and could have different material interests than, say, a factory worker. It would depend on how much social power they hold as administrator.
The problem is that you have tossed aside the core of the theoretical framework and replaced it with an eclectic mix of idealism and materialism, despite the fact that the two are incompatible as methods.
I’m not sure they are completely incompatible, but that’s beside the point. I’m not making an idealistic argument. I’m just speculating on the possible material interests of given social constructions.
political power judged by external moral-democratic criteria rather than by its material class content
If I am not to apply personal preferences, moral convictions, or political ideals, on what basis am I to embrace communist goals?
Some books
I have read 1, 2 and 6. Out of the rest, which would you most recommend to persuade me of your position or fill a gap in my understanding?
The revolution of a desolate majority underclass creates the material conditions that are, at least in theory, conducive to the development of a democratic state apparatus that distributes political power. The mutual interest of the members of that class should make the development of such a state likely. By the nature of their having collaborated effectively enough to effectuate such a revolution, we can assume that they have developed the capacity to organize in such a way as to realize that collective interest.
I don’t consider moral inclination to be relevant to this analysis, but I do use probabilistic terminology, because I don’t view social theory as a hard science.
One must be careful about the loss of information when labeling and subsequently using those labels. People can move between classes, or their material interests can change. A group of people who are members of the Proletariat can easily lose class solidarity if given outsized political power. I would only consider a class to have gained power if they succeed in doing so in a democratic context. Also, once they gain that power, I would not consider them to be the same class that they were before doing so.
Maybe. But I suspect this impression may be due less to my lack of familiarity as much as a lack of orthodoxy. I don’t take much issue with picking and choosing ideas or reinterpreting them in a way that I think makes sense.
Give me your top 3?
You still have not answered the actual question I posed.
I asked how the class character of the revolution operates independently of the state it produces. You did not explain that mechanism. Instead, you restated your preference for a democratic outcome after the revolution and described conditions you think make that outcome likely. That does not resolve the point. A revolution is not a free-floating event. It is the seizure or construction of political power by a class. If you say the revolution’s class character is primary, but then detach that from the state form that emerges from it, you are asserting a cause while refusing to identify its concrete political expression.
Your reply also shifts from class analysis to normative preference. You say you would only consider a class to have gained power if it succeeds in doing so in a democratic context. But that is not a meaningful definition of class power. It is an external political criterion you are imposing onto the analysis. The state is not validated by whether it conforms to an abstract democratic ideal. It is analyzed by which class holds power, through what institutions, in whose interests, and against which opposing classes.
You also continue to treat class as though it were mainly a question of sentiment, solidarity, or personal disposition. It is not. Class is defined by a group’s place within the social relations of production, its relation to the means of production, and its role in the social organization of labor. Individuals can move between classes, yes. Political degeneration is possible, yes. But none of that abolishes the category itself.
On your use of probabilistic language, the issue is that you retreat from determinate analysis into vague possibility. Substituting schema, impression, or what one finds unconvincing for concrete engagement with the real movement of social forces. To say the proletariat may or may not act in accordance with its structural position, and to leave it there, is not nuance. It is a refusal to complete the analysis. It is ridiculous to proceed by asking whether a development feels persuasive at the level of personal intuition. Instead one must ask what contradictions are operative, what class interests are materially constituted, and how they express themselves through political organization, struggle, and state form.
You also still do not understand class in a rigorous way. Administrator is not a class category. Administration is a function. Class is determined by relation to the means of production and to the appropriation of social surplus. So long as those administering do not privately own the means of production and do not expropriate surplus value as a distinct property-owning stratum, they do not thereby cease to be proletarian simply because they hold office or carry out administrative tasks. The socialist transition does not abolish the proletariat the moment it takes power. It is the period in which proletarian rule continues the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, suppresses restoration, and transforms the relations of production until class antagonisms are rendered void through the abolition of class society itself. The endpoint is not your abstract democratic test. The endpoint is the historical supersession of antagonistic classes through there ultimately being only the associated producers, at which point class in the antagonistic sense disappears.
On not being “hard science”. This is not a matter of arbitrary plausibility. Dialectical and historical materialism have repeatedly proven their explanatory force precisely because antagonisms and contradictions are the drivers of history. The contradiction between forces and relations of production, between exploited and exploiting classes, between an emergent mode of production and the decaying order that contains it, is the motor of historical development. That is why Marxism can explain the rise, development, crisis, and replacement of social orders with a seriousness your framework cannot match. Once you reduce these determinate antagonisms to mere probabilistic tendencies, you empty the theory of its strongest content and replace analysis with hesitation.
The problem is not heterodoxy as such. The problem is that you have tossed aside the core of the theoretical framework and replaced it with an eclectic mix of idealism and materialism, despite the fact that the two are incompatible as methods. You want to retain Marxist terminology while hollowing out what makes it coherent: class without a stable relation to production, revolution without determinate state expression, and political power judged by external moral-democratic criteria rather than by its material class content. That is not a serious reinterpretation. It is a conceptual patchwork. And eclecticism of that sort cannot critique Marxism from within because it has already abandoned the premises that make Marxist analysis possible in the first place.
Some books:
Lenin, The State and Revolution
Marx, The Civil War in France
Lenin, A Great Beginning
Mao, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Mao, On Contradiction
Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
You provide a lot to respond to.
Fundamentally everyone bases their political inclinations on some kind of preference. My preference is for the maximal utility to be realized for humanity. Democracy isn’t an end goal, but I view it as necessary for any kind of communist society to emerge.
If you think that you are able to predict future history based on a priori scientific truths, you are sorely misguided. Personal intuition isn’t sufficient to understanding, but neither is adherence to arbitrary scientific laws that someone made up.
An administrator could certainly hold a different place within the social relations of production, and could have different material interests than, say, a factory worker. It would depend on how much social power they hold as administrator.
I’m not sure they are completely incompatible, but that’s beside the point. I’m not making an idealistic argument. I’m just speculating on the possible material interests of given social constructions.
If I am not to apply personal preferences, moral convictions, or political ideals, on what basis am I to embrace communist goals?
I have read 1, 2 and 6. Out of the rest, which would you most recommend to persuade me of your position or fill a gap in my understanding?