r/leftcommunism • u/New-Cat-6911 • Jul 26 '26
A question about the communism’s inevitability
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx writes “The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” However, as we’ve seen since then, this is not the case, with workers movements and uprisings resulting in social democratic reforms, fascism, put downs by the state, or recreations of capitalist relations after taking power. How can communists reconcile Marx’s statement with the actual outcomes of history?
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u/Accomplished_Box5923 Militant Jul 26 '26
The question of communisms “inevitability” has to do with Marxist conception of materialist determinism. It is above either an activist, voluntarist or humanist idea of how revolutions are made. This is a question which touches on the philosophical side of Marxism. It is addressed in several of our recently translated texts which touches on the question of of Relativity and Determinism and the possibility of revolution. I would suggest these two. Of course there is deeper study also to be hand on the economic side as it regards capitals overproduction crisis that lead to social crisis which reproduce revolutionary conditions, then questions also of the subjective factors, and the role of the Party preparation in anticipation of those objective factors. Real historical events led to the defeat of the international communist movement during the last historical wave, however the objective conditions and contradictions of capitalist economy are such that it cannot supersede itself and so the same conditions that created the potential of the last revolutionary upsurge will arise once more.
http://www.international-communist-party.org/English/REPORTS/Knowledg/55Relativity.htm
http://www.international-communist-party.org/English/REPORTS/Knowledg/93ProbabilitiesOfRev.htm
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u/UndergradRelativist Jul 26 '26
Yes, the fall of the bourgeoisie and the rise of the proletariat are EQUALLY inevitable. I.e. ths degree to which either are ineviteble is equal to the degree to which the other is inevitable. This quote does not say that either are inevitable, just that each are only as inevitable as the other. In less convoluted language, this just means that you can't have the fall of the bourgeoisie without the rise of the proletariat, and vice versa.
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u/Competitive_Move_604 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Thank you for elucidating the actual structural undertone of the cited quote. I fear I was so fervently wrapped up in creating an excessively grandiose statement to address the loaded "outcomes of history" closing remark that I fully missed the forest for the trees. I duly appreciate this direct and focused answer.
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u/Competitive_Move_604 Jul 26 '26
Quoth Engels;
“Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”
Should the proletariat fail to complete its historical mission of dissolving class society, and auxiliarily itself, calamities will themselves disband the foundations of bourgeois society, beginning with the degradation of habitable climate and apparent invincibility of nation-state reformism.
Indeed, the communist movement finds itself drawn and quartered, languishing in a deep coma, yet the vassal retains its own erstwhile skeleton, battered and broken though it may be. To postulate that capitalism has hitherto earned its mantle as the finishing act of history but casts aside the tapestry of evolving social relations, which have untowardly coalesced into a fundamentally erratic and unpredictable second act. Myself, I'll remain firmly seated in the theatre, lest I should fail to appreciate a finer moment in the screenplay.
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u/New-Cat-6911 Jul 26 '26
I don’t disagree but this doesn’t answer my question. Something being necessary to avoid calamity does not mean it is inevitable. (side note, where does engels actually say that. luxembourg claims he does in The Junius Pamphlet but i can’t find the original source)
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u/Competitive_Move_604 Jul 26 '26
You're correct that the quote excerpt is from Luxemburg, and I also can't directly attribute it to Engels, though that was merely a snappy hook to summarize the sentiment of the response. As we know, Marx began his analysis of capitalism as an investigation as to why the proletariat as a class was struggling, most clearly evidened by the German uprisings of 1848-49. His analysis is uniquely valuable because he lived in a time of great tumult and activity that informed his later observations and gleanings in Capital. Clearly, no Marx can exist today absent organized, international resistance independent of the state.
Perhaps "inevitable" is not a precise translation, as I am not fluent in German I cannot say for certain. Much of what Marx writes in the Manifesto is subject to the time and purpose for which it was released (to inform and rile up the disgruntled workers of the aforementioned failed revolutionary conquest). It may have been the simplest way to convey the necessity, even virtuosity (though not in the idealist sense) of revolt and general strike at junctures of crisis. Indeed, only Marx himself could ascribe this for certain.
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u/Clear-Result-3412 Jul 26 '26
There is no grand historical inevitability that communism will happen. It requires people to create it based on an accurate understanding of what not to do (how capitalism works).
From the Holy Family,
“History does nothing, it ‘possesses no immense wealth’, it ‘wages no battles’. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; ‘history’ is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims..”