You are still evading the question I asked earlier.
I asked you to explain the mechanism by which the class character of the revolution remains primary if it is not expressed in the class character of the state that the revolution establishes. You still have not answered that. Instead, you have shifted again into a discussion of your personal political commitments, your preference for democracy, and your moral reasons for embracing communism. That is a different discussion. It does not resolve the theoretical issue I raised.
No one denied that people hold values, preferences, or moral commitments. That is not the point. The point is that materialist analysis does not begin from those commitments. It begins from the objective structure of social relations, class antagonism, and state power. You are repeatedly replacing the question of what a state is materially with the question of what kind of politics you would prefer to endorse. That is precisely why your replies keep sliding away from the issue.
You say democracy is necessary for communism to emerge. But you still leave “democracy” at the level of an abstract good rather than analyzing its class content. Democracy for which class, through what institutions, under what property relations, and against which class enemy? Bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy are not the same thing. A democracy that preserves bourgeois property is not a neutral framework within which communism gradually appears. It is one form of bourgeois rule. So simply invoking democracy explains nothing unless you specify its class basis.
You also misstate the issue when you contrast “personal intuition” with “arbitrary scientific laws that someone made up.” That is a false opposition. Marx did not “make up” Marxism in the sense of inventing a doctrine out of thin air any more than Newton invented gravity. Newton identified and documented a mechanism already operative in nature. In the same way, Marx identified and explained real mechanisms already operative in social development: class struggle, contradiction within the mode of production, and the conflict between the forces and relations of production. Marxism is not an a priori prophecy about the future. It is a scientific account of the real tendencies and antagonisms internal to class society. The point is not that history unfolds by wish or intuition, but that social forms have objective structures and move through determinate contradictions whether one finds that persuasive at the level of personal impression or not. Once again, instead of engaging those mechanisms, you retreat into skepticism about theory itself.
Your point about administrators shows the same confusion. Of course an administrator can occupy a distinct function within the division of labor. That was never in dispute. But function is not the same as class. A school principal, factory manager, a party cadre, a planner, a technician, a doctor, or a local official is not thereby a separate class merely by exercising authority. To become a distinct exploiting class, they would have to stand in a distinct relation to the means of production and the appropriation of surplus. If they do not privately own the means of production and do not appropriate surplus as a property-bearing class, then you have not demonstrated a new class, only a differentiated role within an ongoing socialist transition. You keep substituting differences in authority or political influence for differences in class position. That is a basic category mistake.
Likewise, when you say you are “speculating on the possible material interests of given social constructions,” that only confirms the problem. You are treating class analysis as a loose exercise in conjecture rather than a determination of structured relations within production. Material interests are not invented by speculation. They arise from an objectively given position within the relations of production. Without that anchor, the term “material interest” becomes empty and can be attached to almost any institutional arrangement you happen to distrust.
Your final question makes the confusion most obvious. You ask: if not on the basis of personal preferences, morals, or ideals, then on what basis embrace communist goals? But this again sidesteps the actual issue. Of course political commitment involves conviction. The question is not how an individual justifies commitment to communism at the level of ethics. The question is how communism is analyzed scientifically as the historical movement generated by capitalism’s own contradictions. You are collapsing two distinct levels: normative commitment and materialist analysis. Because you collapse them, you keep answering a question about why you might want communism when I am asking you how class power, state power, and transition are to be understood.
So the problem remains exactly where it started. You have not explained how the class character of a revolution can be primary while the class character of the state that issues from it is treated as secondary or even irrelevant. You have not explained how class ceases to be class once it rules without dissolving the entire concept. And you have not shown that differences in administrative function amount to a distinct class relation in the absence of distinct ownership and appropriation.
Also idealism and materialism are mutually exclusive because they begin from opposite answers to the most basic philosophical question: what is primary, consciousness or material reality? Idealism holds, in one form or another, that ideas, consciousness, spirit, or categories of thought are fundamental, and that social or historical reality is ultimately shaped by them. Materialism holds the reverse: matter exists independently of thought, and consciousness is a product of material conditions rather than their creator. They are compatible in the same way Last Thursdayism is compatible with Evolution.
The main issue here from my perspective is that you are trying to discuss class, state, and transition without the minimum political-economic precision those concepts require. You keep replacing analysis with preference, relation to production with institutional suspicion, and concrete class content with abstract democratic language.
You are still evading the question I asked earlier.
I asked you to explain the mechanism by which the class character of the revolution remains primary if it is not expressed in the class character of the state that the revolution establishes. You still have not answered that. Instead, you have shifted again into a discussion of your personal political commitments, your preference for democracy, and your moral reasons for embracing communism. That is a different discussion. It does not resolve the theoretical issue I raised.
No one denied that people hold values, preferences, or moral commitments. That is not the point. The point is that materialist analysis does not begin from those commitments. It begins from the objective structure of social relations, class antagonism, and state power. You are repeatedly replacing the question of what a state is materially with the question of what kind of politics you would prefer to endorse. That is precisely why your replies keep sliding away from the issue.
You say democracy is necessary for communism to emerge. But you still leave “democracy” at the level of an abstract good rather than analyzing its class content. Democracy for which class, through what institutions, under what property relations, and against which class enemy? Bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy are not the same thing. A democracy that preserves bourgeois property is not a neutral framework within which communism gradually appears. It is one form of bourgeois rule. So simply invoking democracy explains nothing unless you specify its class basis.
You also misstate the issue when you contrast “personal intuition” with “arbitrary scientific laws that someone made up.” That is a false opposition. Marx did not “make up” Marxism in the sense of inventing a doctrine out of thin air any more than Newton invented gravity. Newton identified and documented a mechanism already operative in nature. In the same way, Marx identified and explained real mechanisms already operative in social development: class struggle, contradiction within the mode of production, and the conflict between the forces and relations of production. Marxism is not an a priori prophecy about the future. It is a scientific account of the real tendencies and antagonisms internal to class society. The point is not that history unfolds by wish or intuition, but that social forms have objective structures and move through determinate contradictions whether one finds that persuasive at the level of personal impression or not. Once again, instead of engaging those mechanisms, you retreat into skepticism about theory itself.
Your point about administrators shows the same confusion. Of course an administrator can occupy a distinct function within the division of labor. That was never in dispute. But function is not the same as class. A school principal, factory manager, a party cadre, a planner, a technician, a doctor, or a local official is not thereby a separate class merely by exercising authority. To become a distinct exploiting class, they would have to stand in a distinct relation to the means of production and the appropriation of surplus. If they do not privately own the means of production and do not appropriate surplus as a property-bearing class, then you have not demonstrated a new class, only a differentiated role within an ongoing socialist transition. You keep substituting differences in authority or political influence for differences in class position. That is a basic category mistake.
Likewise, when you say you are “speculating on the possible material interests of given social constructions,” that only confirms the problem. You are treating class analysis as a loose exercise in conjecture rather than a determination of structured relations within production. Material interests are not invented by speculation. They arise from an objectively given position within the relations of production. Without that anchor, the term “material interest” becomes empty and can be attached to almost any institutional arrangement you happen to distrust.
Your final question makes the confusion most obvious. You ask: if not on the basis of personal preferences, morals, or ideals, then on what basis embrace communist goals? But this again sidesteps the actual issue. Of course political commitment involves conviction. The question is not how an individual justifies commitment to communism at the level of ethics. The question is how communism is analyzed scientifically as the historical movement generated by capitalism’s own contradictions. You are collapsing two distinct levels: normative commitment and materialist analysis. Because you collapse them, you keep answering a question about why you might want communism when I am asking you how class power, state power, and transition are to be understood.
So the problem remains exactly where it started. You have not explained how the class character of a revolution can be primary while the class character of the state that issues from it is treated as secondary or even irrelevant. You have not explained how class ceases to be class once it rules without dissolving the entire concept. And you have not shown that differences in administrative function amount to a distinct class relation in the absence of distinct ownership and appropriation.
Also idealism and materialism are mutually exclusive because they begin from opposite answers to the most basic philosophical question: what is primary, consciousness or material reality? Idealism holds, in one form or another, that ideas, consciousness, spirit, or categories of thought are fundamental, and that social or historical reality is ultimately shaped by them. Materialism holds the reverse: matter exists independently of thought, and consciousness is a product of material conditions rather than their creator. They are compatible in the same way Last Thursdayism is compatible with Evolution.
The main issue here from my perspective is that you are trying to discuss class, state, and transition without the minimum political-economic precision those concepts require. You keep replacing analysis with preference, relation to production with institutional suspicion, and concrete class content with abstract democratic language.