What is “Communism”
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Words are important and they can change meanings over time
The first written use of the word socialism was Robert Owenites in 1927 and later in French in 1832 by the Saint Simonians but the word communism first appeared in 1795.
Nicolas-Edme Rétif or Restif de la Bretonne, a sexual fantasist and pornographer, whose name, retifism, is applied to shoe fetishism, was the first who is recorded using the word communism in print. According to 1911 Britannica, Restif de la Bretonne was perhaps not entirely sane. (John Goodwyn Barmby is credited with the first use of the term in English, around 1840 acquiring the word from the followers of Babeuf and passing on details of the communist movement to Engels)
The French philosopher, Victor d’Hupay, author of Projet de communauté philosophe (Project for a Philosophical Community) in a private letter to Retif, describe himself as a “communist” author, whereupon Restif uses the information in a subsequent book review. Restif would go on to use the term frequently in his writing and was the first to describe communism as a form of government, where people “work together in the morning and play together in the afternoon”.
In this early period, “communism” implied a total transformation of institutions and did not have a special focus on working-class struggles.
Are we are returning to that original understanding?
alanjjohnstone wrote: “In this early period, “communism” implied a total transformation of institutions and did not have a special focus on working-class struggles.
Are we are returning to that original understanding?”
Hopefully not, as its lack of focus on ‘working-class struggles’ was remedied by Marx, who insisted that ‘communism’ could only mean ‘democratic communism’, as opposed to any form of ‘elite communism’, within which the active ‘transformer of institutions’ could be an elite, who pretended to ‘know better’ than the masses.
I’m sure that you know where I’m going with this comment, alan.
Think ‘physicists’, ‘mathematicians’, ‘logicians’, ‘scientists’, ‘specialists‘, as the ‘transformers’, not the ‘generalists‘.
Which ideology argues for that, in opposition to Marx’s ‘democratic communism’?
Any ‘transformation’ of ‘our reality’ can only be made by ‘working class struggles’, the self-activity of the masses, by democratic methods.
LBird, I was suggesting that the trigger for change and the strength of various social movements have not been originating in class struggles.
Perhaps that is why they have failed but the mass involvement of people have been in the environmental movement and as we see now, anti-racism resistance. The “self-activity” of the masses has had only a limited influence (albeit a very welcome one) on the organised unions. Economism, for the want of a better word, has failed to motivate the masses politically, even if economics and material conditions are the underlying causes of the discontent and dissent.
If we are to make them revolutionary working class struggles we have quite a task as they are viewed presently as stand-alone one-issue reformist campaigns. To make them class-based I think means transforming the socialist movement into a general umbrella movement to muster all people and all political and economic struggles under one banner.
I suppose i’m harkening back to my earlier “situationist” sympathies – the revolution of everyday life.
alan, I regard both the ‘environmental movement’ and the ‘anti-racism resistance’ as examples of ‘class struggles’.
I suppose it depends upon one’s definition of ‘class’.
I regard ‘class’ as ‘an exploitative relationship’.
This ‘exploitation’ is far more than mere ‘economic and material conditions’.
Again, I suppose it depends upon one’s definition of ‘conditions’.
I regard ‘conditions’ as ‘production’.
This ‘production’ includes both ‘theory and practice’, of all aspects of human production.
It’s always been a myth that the ‘material’ will determine ‘consciousness’ (or, ‘practice’ will determine ‘theory’).
It’s the ‘materialists’, like you, who will become disappointed at the ‘failure’ of the ‘economic and material conditions’ to ‘motivate the masses’.
Even now, your insistence that “economics and material conditions are the underlying causes of the discontent and dissent” shows that you still don’t understand Marx.
Of course, underlying your ideology is the erroneous claim that you are ‘motivated’ by ‘economics and material conditions’, so you can continue to blame the benighted ‘masses’, rather than blame the ‘materialists’ for their failure to read and understand Marx.
‘Communism’ is ‘democracy’, in all social production – ‘Communism’ is not ‘matter determining ideas’. The latter is an ideology of an elite.
Once again, LBird, I fail to meet the demands of your high bar.
“you can continue to blame the benighted ‘masses’, rather than blame the ‘materialists’ for their failure to read and understand Marx.”
Even though I made it clear that it is incumbent upon ourselves to convince fellow-workers, paraphrasing our Declaration of Principles. And if I wished to press the point on materialism, it is not “great men” that make history, not even Marx and it is an intriguing thought exercise to imagine if he never existed.
It may be a bit determinist but one only think revolutionary if he or she has a full belly (‘economic and material conditions’). And that is why when hunger and deprivation results in movements for immediate remedies and subside if those are achieved…a bit simplistic I accept, LBird, for ideas and slogans still do continue and endure, adding to the ideology of future class conflicts and sometimes making their objectives clearer.
alanjjohnstone wrote: “Once again, LBird, I fail to meet the demands of your high bar.”
Surely it’s not such a ‘high bar’, alan, to ask ‘materialists’ to actually read Marx, rather than continue to propagate myths about ‘matter determining thought’?
alanjjohnstone wrote: “Even though I made it clear that it is incumbent upon ourselves to convince fellow-workers…”
But… convince them of what? That ‘matter’ will tell them what to do?
It’s nonsense, alan.
We should be encouraging the proletariat to take control of ‘science’, not meekly obey what ‘science’ (supposedly) ‘says’.
Who currently is telling workers that Johnson et al are following ‘the science’?
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