(Reposted in this community cuz I didnāt get any responses in the original community that I posted this under)
This is how I understand the communist utopia: Workers seize means of production. Means of production thus, start working for the proletariat masses rather than the bourgeoisie class. Thus, technological progress stops being stifled and flourishes. Humanity achieves a post scarcity-like environment for most goods and services. Thus, money becomes irrelevant at a personal level.
In all this, I canāt see how we stop needing a state. How can we build bridges without a body capable of large scale organisation? How would we have a space program without a state for example? I clearly have gotten many things wrong here. However, Iām unable to find what Iāve gotten wrong on my own. Plz help <3
Edit: Okay, got a very clear and sensible answer from @Aidinthel@reddthat.com. Unfortunately, I donāt know how to link their comment. Hence, here is what they said:
Depends on how you define āstateā. IIRC, Marx drew a distinction between āstateā and āgovernmentā, where the former is all the coercive institutions (cops, prisons, courts, etc). In this framework, you need a āgovernmentā to do the things you refer to, but participation in that governmentās activities should be voluntary, without the threat of armed government agents showing up at your door if you donāt comply.
No - you explicitly do not. Itās impossible to get out of the trap of some claiming the power to nominally rightfully force the submission of others through some claiming the power to nominally rightfully force the submission of others.
The only way it can come about is if humanity evolves into it - grows the fuck up, collectively as well as individually.
Thatās the thing though: you canāt get out of the system without overthrowing it.
The people who are currently in charge of institutionalized authority have a lot of power and they got it, because they wanted it and used the current system to gain the power. They are not going to let go voluntarily.
And there is no opt-out of the system either. If a bunch of people act as if the authority doesnāt apply to them, theyāll get into trouble real quick. So doing this as a grassroots effort will also not work.
Thatās why the Communists that actually managed to communize a country all did so with a revolution and a state afterward. And yes, in the USSR they originally claimed they will only do the state-thing until the population is ready to go stateless, but whoād actually do that if you are Lenin or Stalin and that sweet sweet totalitarian power tastes so good?
It all depends on your definition of communism and state etc., but the Zapatistas seem to be quite successful with a grassroots approach.
Well, it started with a violent uprising in which 300 people where killed and the Wiki article you linked has a section called āgovernmentā which reads as follows:
Thatās direct democracy on a community level and representative democracy on a higher level. Pretty similar to what is practiced in many democratic countries.
And if they have a police agency and an army itās hard to call them anarchist.
And they themselves donāt do that either. Only outside anarchists project themselves onto them and say they are anarchists.
As I said, it depends on a lot of definitions of rather complex concepts.
The point I was trying to make, was that you donāt have to end up with a state, especially not a soviet style state, after a revolution. And in my opinion a violent uprising or an having an organized militant group does not mean you have a state. If I understand it correctly, the Zapatistas donāt have a principle of using violence to force others into their system - which is something central to states.
Itās kinda weird though that some people call for violent revolutions over what amounts to semantics.
Sadly, history has taught us, that there are only very few revolutions that end up with a more liberal political system. The Zaparistas are the first instance where I heard of something like that, and I am not nearly informed enough on the specifics of their system and how it works out in real-life to comment on them.
All other revolutions that I know about usually ended with a Robespierre, a Lenin/Stalin, a Hitler, a Mao Zedong or any of the hundreds of military dictatorships that came into power over the last century.
Not many people are able to first amass enough power to be stronger than the regular government and then idealistic enough to let go of all that power again.
I agree that there are a lot of revolutions ending up way more totalitarian than planned.
Iām not sure there are hundreds of them that had communism or a stateless society as a goal though. Many military dictatorships had a military dictatorship as a goal after all. But of course there were also many who had that goal, and failed on a huge scale.
There were more revolutions than just the Zapatistas that seemed to be promising though, like the Spanish Revolution and the the Makhnovshchina.
You are right, of course, that most revolutions donāt have communism as their goal.
But all successful ones lead to totalitarian states.
I find it difficult to judge the Zapatistas, same as the Spanish Revolution and the Makhovshchina, since they all nevever matured (or in the chase of the Zapatistas havenāt matured yet).
Generally speaking, during a revolution, the revolutionists (is that a word?) promise the people everything, because they need to gather support. Once they have driven out the old power/government and actually control the area, they usually tend to shift. This pattern occurs not only for communist revolutions, but for all types of revolution.
Generally speaking āSupport me becoming a totalitarian dictatorā isnāt really a good rallying call.
Iām not saying it canāt happen, only that it consistently hasnāt happened so far.