So as Marxists, as I understand it, we’re supposed to consider systems like feudalism, capitalism and socialism as fundamentally transitory. I also understand that communism is different, being classless and therefore containing no contradictions that would drive any “autodynamic” or organic social change. Maybe I have a skewed understanding of our ideology, but this feels like a bold assertion. If history can be summarized as class struggle, and communism has no class struggle, is communism the end of history?

Hopefully this makes sense.

  • @CriticalResist8A
    15•2 years ago

    Slavers of old would have never imagined that one day you would not only pay your slave, and not own them. They would have even more trouble imagining that you do not own slaves, and in fact they own your vineyard and you work alongside them.

    It’s the same here, we have no possible frame to imagine a world beyond communism.

    You’re right that the big question is: what happens to the class struggle after there are no classes? Is it the resolution of the contradiction? But there will be new contradictions, that’s one thing we can be sure of at least. There will probably even be contradictions with the classless society on one hand and… something else on the other that we cannot imagine.

      • @cfgaussian
        4•2 years ago

        New class societies may re-emerge at certain times and in certain places, but they will be seen as undesirable aberrations and the results of disruptions of the normal functioning of advanced human society by natural disasters, ecological catastrophes, etc. temporary setbacks in the civilizational level of a society going back to world-historically outdated modes of production. The struggle will then be to reverse these backslides and prevent them from gaining enough strength to replicate themselves elsewhere. They will be treated like occasional outbreaks of a disease.

          • @cfgaussian
            3•2 years ago

            The difference there being that socialism is a more advanced mode of production than capitalism. The struggle for socialism in a capitalist society is therefore progressive. The re-emergence of class society in a communist world would be regressive, similar to how we today would view the re-emergence of slavery or feudalism (though the bourgeoisie would love to bring the former back if they could and is currently trying very hard to actually bring back the latter as corporate fiefdoms).