Communism would be a society that knows no class struggle. The obvious inference is that communism would be a perennially stable society – no wars, no revolutions. Technology would still advance, but in essence its organizational structure – marked by an absence of class division, labor division, and private property – would remain fixed. As communism resolved all alienation, human beings would no longer feel a need to overhaul their society; everyone would feel at home there, and care for one another. Yet in The German Ideology, Marx and Engels stated the following:
“For us, communism is not a state of affairs that should be created, an ideal to which reality will have to conform. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement arise from the premises that presently exist.”
The statement seems to describe communism as some sort of endless revolution, an ongoing movement of abolition and not a fixed “state of affairs that should be created.” What to think of this? If communism is not a state of affairs “that should be created,” then the statement is clearly not a call for action. This is very bizarre: Marx longs to see the workers spring into action in a great revolution, but then states that communism should not be actively created; reality will not have to be actively made to conform to it, as to an ideal. So the workers should actively revolt, but not actively establish communism?
Furthermore, when Marx emphasized that communism was not a “state of affairs,” does he not invalidate the communist promise – that of a world without class struggle? Is a classless society itself not “a state of affairs” rather than a “movement”? If communism cannot be a state of affairs – an established condition – then how could its classlessness remain? If the absence of classes is not to be kept as a fixed state of affairs, then class divisions will have to be introduced one way or another to allow the movement “which abolishes the present state of things” to continue. In that case, “a classless society” is no longer a correct definition of “real communism”.
Though the statement speaks of “the present state of things”, it does not explain how this “present” is to be interpreted. Does it only refer to the state of things in the 19th century? Does it extend for as long as capitalism exists? Or does it reach even beyond, forever perpetuating the “real movement which abolishes the present state of things”? (If communism cannot be a state of affairs, the movement can’t also have a final destination). Alas, Marx isn’t here anymore to elucidate his mysterious asseveration for us, but at least he concedes that, at the very minimum:
“[The working class] will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men.”
From this we can gather that “the present” spans a long historical period,[1] encompassing not just one historical process, but “a series” of them. Nevertheless, the use of the terms “present” and “presently existing” does set a limit to what needs to be abolished: only the “present” state of things. Neglecting for a moment the entirely arbitrary meaning of the term, the implication is nevertheless that, once the old states of affairs are gone, the “movement which abolishes the present state of things” will be over. But then communism will also have ended, as it is not “a state of affairs” but precisely this “movement” – this movement of abolition. Which means that communism’s final destination is its own abolition. Then what will society be like when all the previous states of affairs, and communism, have been abolished? Since communism is not a state of affairs to be created, nor an ideal reality should conform to, everything will have been abolished, but nothing new will have been created.
Then what is the definition of communism? Is communism an endless revolutionary movement? A temporary phase of abolition that creates nothing new? Or is it “the solution to the riddle of history”: the stable state of affairs that concludes the dialectic of class struggle? The semantic tangle with which Marx defines communism here can only be understood (though not resolved) from the framework of his theory of alienation, which holds that the total abolition of the unspecified “present state of affairs” would “liberate” humanity. The behavior of these liberated beings would be so radically different from ours that they’d naturally produce a classless society of charity and equal abundance for all. All of this suggests that by “communism” Marx meant both the revolution and its final destination (a “state of affairs”), only this state of affairs was not to be “created” – it would emerge spontaneously as the synthesis of the existing order and the destructive revolutionary force; and after all existing social conditions had been completely abolished. That said, any new society by definition constitutes a “state of affairs,” regardless of whether it appeared spontaneously or was created according to some predetermined ideal. But how can a “state of affairs” be called “real communism”, unless one is willing to discard Marx’ aforementioned statement? Is it still “real communism” then?
Excerpt from: Deconstructing Karl Marx & Communism
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[1] It is a statement Marx contradicts in Das Kapital, when he claims that the transition from capitalism to communal ownership would be a process “incomparably” less “protracted, violent, and difficult” than the transformation of scattered private property into the hands of capitalism.
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