The communist moment is coming, but is the left ready with a real platform? Marxist boilerplate isn’t good enough
July 13th, 2018 •
The whole of bolshevism was a wasted opportunity and part of the problem was the wrong analysis of Marxism
November 24th, 2017 •
We have repeatedly criticized Marxism on the grounds of its theoretical limits.
Its historical materialism is a world view too constrained for us now, and the stages of production theory is simply wrong. There is no inherent law of historical setting a progression from feudalism to capitalism to communism. And this view of the matter resulted in a collision of liberalism and its supposed opposite in a communism that was never even specified in advance. The whole of bolshevism was a wasted opportunity and part of the problem was the wrong analysis of Marxism.
In our manifestos and many posts here we have suggested a new approach that is a hybrid of markets, planning (and a third autonomous lower level), a reformed political system as real democracy, based on a constitutional neo-communism or Commons.
This set up should invoke a new international, but it must be a version of ‘socialism in one country’ and be able to work on that basis.
The point here is that capitalism isn’t going to evolve into communism without the action of free agents to bring it about. It is easy however to derive a logical ‘inevitability’ based on the need for a shared foundation as real democracy beyond the bourgeois brand.
First is the evolutionary version which might generate its own revolutionary outcome. But the next opportunity must not be bogged down in Marxist fallacies and Marx worship.