You seem to have a serious misunderstanding of what communists are actually advocating for. Communists don’t advocate for the dissolution of the government but the dissolution of the state, which are 2 distinct things. The government serves a vital purpose of administration and organisation. The state is the arm of the government that enforces one classes rule over the others. If there is only one class (the proletariat) the state dissolves not out of some virtue but because it simply stops serving a purpose.
The point is whether that time and place would ever come into being. Will the gracious leaders a hundred years from now actually do that deed. Hope and a dream, which can just end up always being conveniently around the bend. What mechanism is in place to actually make it occurr? Who decides when the time/place is sufficient? In the meantime, people are in power alienating the workers just like everywhere else, and have no end in sight or real incentive to give it up. Theres a bridge to be sold if you think they’ll willingly and voluntarily give the power up after centuries out of the goodness and purity of their hearts.
You continue to misunderstand the communist position. You are projecting liberal idealism onto a framework based on historical materialism. You still seem to think we expect the state to be abolished by decree or that its existence relies on the graciousness of future leaders. This is entirely backward. The state is not a moral entity held together by the goodwill or greed of individuals. It is an instrument of class suppression dictated by economic relations.
Once class division becomes a thing of the past, which is structurally inevitable following the comprehensive collectivization of the means of production, the state simply ceases to have a material purpose. When an institution loses its underlying economic justification, it does not need to be ceremoniously abolished. It withers away as obsolete waste. If a prison has no one in it, it is only a matter of time before it is repurposed for something useful to the community. You do not need a committee of wardens to vote on dismantling an empty prison. The guard force naturally dissolves because maintaining it defies basic logic.
You ask what mechanism decides when the time is sufficient. The mechanism is the material development of the productive forces and the conscious reorganization of the relations of production. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, state power is held collectively by the working class to suppress the former ruling class and organize socialist construction. As class antagonisms disappear, the coercive apparatus of the state naturally recedes into mere public administration. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of technical processes.
Also, you fundamentally conflate two distinct theoretical concepts. Marx’s theory of alienation and his definition of capital are not the same thing. Capital is a very specific social relation characterized by the extraction of surplus value from wage labor to generate profit. When the means of production are collectively owned and production is planned for social need rather than market accumulation, capital simply ceases to exist. Alienation is the broader estrangement of humans from the products of their labor, the act of production, and their own human potential.
Marx describes alienation as the effects that capitalism has on workers. So what explains the alienation workers experience in China? It’s capitalism, just via the state’s direction. With a nice mix of private capital in there too still, just for fun.
following the comprehensive collectivization of the means of production, the state simply ceases to have a material purpose.
That’s the hope and assumption im claiming is false. Collectivising all the means of production doesnt make the state useless. To those currently in power at that time, it’s still very useful: keeping them in their extra perks and standards of living they currently enjoy. Unless youre suggesting the leaders of the CCP have the same standard of living as the workers? Unless they’re 100% selfless (the blind hope) they’ll try to retain that power when push comes to shove. When the means of production are completely centralized, the worker will still have to pry it from the leaders’ cold dead hands
You claim that Marx described alienation as the effect of capitalism on workers (when in reality it is the effect of private property and wage labour continuing to exist), completely ignoring the fundamental material reality that China is still in the primary stage of socialism. The alienation currently experienced by Chinese workers is precisely because private ownership and wage labor still objectively exist at this stage. However, this is by no means the state-led capitalism you claim, but rather a necessary material compromise during the transition period. Your remark about retaining private capital for fun completely exposes your superficial, vibes based analysis, devoid of any serious political economy. Retaining and developing the non-public sector is for the rapid development of productive forces. If you have even a basic understanding of history, you will know that the Soviet Union’s absolute egalitarianism and complete nationalization, even eliminating all private small and micro-enterprises, resulted in a massive black market small/micro firms. It was these black markets and underground economies, detached from the interests of the masses, that were easily exploited in the 1990s, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union and widespread suffering. China allows the existence of private capital to avoid repeating the Soviet Union’s mistakes; it is about utilizing capital while simultaneously controlling it, not surrendering to it.
As for your second paragraph, it’s utter nonsense, rife with baseless conspiracy theories and Western-centric arrogance. You conjure up a group of leaders who crave privilege and cling desperately to power, a complete misinterpretation of the behavior of Western bourgeois politicians and corrupt oligarchs and their application to China. You lack even the most basic common sense, consistently using the abbreviation “CCP,” a common Western media term, while refusing to use the official English abbreviation “CPC.” This directly exposes that you haven’t conducted even the most basic research on China; your understanding is entirely based on secondhand information fed by American anti-communist media.
The Chinese Communist Party has over 100 million members, the vast majority of whom are farmers, workers, frontline laborers, and professional technicians. This is a true vanguard representing the broad masses of working people, not the gang of a few greedy elites you imagine. Your claim that those in power enjoy extra privileges is utterly untenable in the face of the vast grassroots Party organization. The vast majority of government and Party cadres are at the grassroots and county levels; frankly, their living standards are exactly the same as ordinary workers, and sometimes even worse due to the heavy workload at the grassroots level. As for provincial-level and above cadres, the vast majority enjoy a standard of living comparable to ordinary workers, far inferior to that of Western politicians or genuine capitalists.
Your assumption that once the means of production are completely centralized, workers must wrest power from the cold hands of leaders is an anarchistic paranoia that completely ignores democratic centralism and the mass line. The source and maintenance of power do not rely on the selflessness or morality of leaders, but on strict organizational discipline, continuous party rectification, and direct supervision by the people. Attributing the demise of the state apparatus to whether leaders are willing to relinquish privileges is using vulgar personal interests to deconstruct the grand process of historical materialism. When class differences truly disappear on the basis of highly developed material conditions, the public power governing society will naturally lose its nature of political oppression. This requires no one’s benevolence; it is an inevitable objective law arising from the development of productive forces to a certain stage.
The purpose of a system is what it does, the fundamental attribute of the state is that of a special coercive organ of one class oppressing another. With the realization of full collectivisation of the means of production, the material basis for the emergence and existence of classes is completely eradicated, and the demise of class differences becomes an irreversible historical inevitability. When there are no longer any hostile classes to be suppressed or ruling classes to maintain their privileges in society, the political function of the state as an instrument of class rule completely loses its material premise for existence. This is not because the state apparatus subjectively chooses to cease operation, but because with the elimination of class antagonism, this special violent machine of the state naturally loses its original function.
You seem to have a serious misunderstanding of what communists are actually advocating for. Communists don’t advocate for the dissolution of the government but the dissolution of the state, which are 2 distinct things. The government serves a vital purpose of administration and organisation. The state is the arm of the government that enforces one classes rule over the others. If there is only one class (the proletariat) the state dissolves not out of some virtue but because it simply stops serving a purpose.
The point is whether that time and place would ever come into being. Will the gracious leaders a hundred years from now actually do that deed. Hope and a dream, which can just end up always being conveniently around the bend. What mechanism is in place to actually make it occurr? Who decides when the time/place is sufficient? In the meantime, people are in power alienating the workers just like everywhere else, and have no end in sight or real incentive to give it up. Theres a bridge to be sold if you think they’ll willingly and voluntarily give the power up after centuries out of the goodness and purity of their hearts.
You continue to misunderstand the communist position. You are projecting liberal idealism onto a framework based on historical materialism. You still seem to think we expect the state to be abolished by decree or that its existence relies on the graciousness of future leaders. This is entirely backward. The state is not a moral entity held together by the goodwill or greed of individuals. It is an instrument of class suppression dictated by economic relations.
Once class division becomes a thing of the past, which is structurally inevitable following the comprehensive collectivization of the means of production, the state simply ceases to have a material purpose. When an institution loses its underlying economic justification, it does not need to be ceremoniously abolished. It withers away as obsolete waste. If a prison has no one in it, it is only a matter of time before it is repurposed for something useful to the community. You do not need a committee of wardens to vote on dismantling an empty prison. The guard force naturally dissolves because maintaining it defies basic logic.
You ask what mechanism decides when the time is sufficient. The mechanism is the material development of the productive forces and the conscious reorganization of the relations of production. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, state power is held collectively by the working class to suppress the former ruling class and organize socialist construction. As class antagonisms disappear, the coercive apparatus of the state naturally recedes into mere public administration. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of technical processes.
Also, you fundamentally conflate two distinct theoretical concepts. Marx’s theory of alienation and his definition of capital are not the same thing. Capital is a very specific social relation characterized by the extraction of surplus value from wage labor to generate profit. When the means of production are collectively owned and production is planned for social need rather than market accumulation, capital simply ceases to exist. Alienation is the broader estrangement of humans from the products of their labor, the act of production, and their own human potential.
Marx describes alienation as the effects that capitalism has on workers. So what explains the alienation workers experience in China? It’s capitalism, just via the state’s direction. With a nice mix of private capital in there too still, just for fun.
That’s the hope and assumption im claiming is false. Collectivising all the means of production doesnt make the state useless. To those currently in power at that time, it’s still very useful: keeping them in their extra perks and standards of living they currently enjoy. Unless youre suggesting the leaders of the CCP have the same standard of living as the workers? Unless they’re 100% selfless (the blind hope) they’ll try to retain that power when push comes to shove. When the means of production are completely centralized, the worker will still have to pry it from the leaders’ cold dead hands
You claim that Marx described alienation as the effect of capitalism on workers (when in reality it is the effect of private property and wage labour continuing to exist), completely ignoring the fundamental material reality that China is still in the primary stage of socialism. The alienation currently experienced by Chinese workers is precisely because private ownership and wage labor still objectively exist at this stage. However, this is by no means the state-led capitalism you claim, but rather a necessary material compromise during the transition period. Your remark about retaining private capital for fun completely exposes your superficial, vibes based analysis, devoid of any serious political economy. Retaining and developing the non-public sector is for the rapid development of productive forces. If you have even a basic understanding of history, you will know that the Soviet Union’s absolute egalitarianism and complete nationalization, even eliminating all private small and micro-enterprises, resulted in a massive black market small/micro firms. It was these black markets and underground economies, detached from the interests of the masses, that were easily exploited in the 1990s, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union and widespread suffering. China allows the existence of private capital to avoid repeating the Soviet Union’s mistakes; it is about utilizing capital while simultaneously controlling it, not surrendering to it.
As for your second paragraph, it’s utter nonsense, rife with baseless conspiracy theories and Western-centric arrogance. You conjure up a group of leaders who crave privilege and cling desperately to power, a complete misinterpretation of the behavior of Western bourgeois politicians and corrupt oligarchs and their application to China. You lack even the most basic common sense, consistently using the abbreviation “CCP,” a common Western media term, while refusing to use the official English abbreviation “CPC.” This directly exposes that you haven’t conducted even the most basic research on China; your understanding is entirely based on secondhand information fed by American anti-communist media.
The Chinese Communist Party has over 100 million members, the vast majority of whom are farmers, workers, frontline laborers, and professional technicians. This is a true vanguard representing the broad masses of working people, not the gang of a few greedy elites you imagine. Your claim that those in power enjoy extra privileges is utterly untenable in the face of the vast grassroots Party organization. The vast majority of government and Party cadres are at the grassroots and county levels; frankly, their living standards are exactly the same as ordinary workers, and sometimes even worse due to the heavy workload at the grassroots level. As for provincial-level and above cadres, the vast majority enjoy a standard of living comparable to ordinary workers, far inferior to that of Western politicians or genuine capitalists.
Your assumption that once the means of production are completely centralized, workers must wrest power from the cold hands of leaders is an anarchistic paranoia that completely ignores democratic centralism and the mass line. The source and maintenance of power do not rely on the selflessness or morality of leaders, but on strict organizational discipline, continuous party rectification, and direct supervision by the people. Attributing the demise of the state apparatus to whether leaders are willing to relinquish privileges is using vulgar personal interests to deconstruct the grand process of historical materialism. When class differences truly disappear on the basis of highly developed material conditions, the public power governing society will naturally lose its nature of political oppression. This requires no one’s benevolence; it is an inevitable objective law arising from the development of productive forces to a certain stage.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
Not really a response to anything I said.
It won’t simply stop serving a purpose.
The purpose of a system is what it does, the fundamental attribute of the state is that of a special coercive organ of one class oppressing another. With the realization of full collectivisation of the means of production, the material basis for the emergence and existence of classes is completely eradicated, and the demise of class differences becomes an irreversible historical inevitability. When there are no longer any hostile classes to be suppressed or ruling classes to maintain their privileges in society, the political function of the state as an instrument of class rule completely loses its material premise for existence. This is not because the state apparatus subjectively chooses to cease operation, but because with the elimination of class antagonism, this special violent machine of the state naturally loses its original function.
The hostile class is the ones in control of the state. But the state never actually questions that, but purges and consolidates power into itself.
That’s the problem, those who want to eliminate the state are hostile to the ones in power.
I don’t think you understand what constitutes a class.
I’m sure your definition is very interesting but you’ll need to convince the people with guns of it.