Why did communism always turn into a kind of dictatorship?
Why did communism always turn into a kind of dictatorship?
Afaik this happened with every single instance of a communist country. Communism seems like a pretty good idea on the surface, but then why does it always become autocratic?
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Because thats the end result of embiggening the state: The state gets bigger, and the oligarchs just changes faces.
It was something Marx remarked on later, post Paris Commune.
To clarify, Marx remarked that the existing Capitalist State cannot be merely siezed, it had to be replaced by a Proletarian State. This is because Marx viewed the State as an instrument of class oppression, as a Proletarian State gradually absorbs all Capital into the Public Sector as it sufficiently develops, it slowly erases class distinctions, the complete absorption marks the disappearance of the State along with the disappearance of classes. Government is not the same as the State for Marx.
Oh, I get what Marx had said... Marx also changed his view post Paris Commune. He started down the track that its impossible to abolish the state, after concentrating all power in the state, as those holding power will never give it up.
And yes, governance is not the state, and yes, Marx later agreed with that point, as well.
You're a bit confused here. I'm explaining the takeaways for Marx from the Paris Commune. When the Communards seized the state, they did so on the basis of the existing state, they did not replace it but take hold of it, and as such they only held power for a short period as it quickly transitioned back to Capitalism. Marx then saw the need to replace the State with a Proletarian State. It isn't impossible to abolish Marx's conception of the State, rather, when the Proletarian State is founded and eventually folds all property into the Public Sector, there ceases to be a proletariat and a bourgeoisie at all, and thus there ceases to be a State. The State isn't a special class, but an extension of the Class in power.
Marx started to rework (greatly) his ideas of "The state" and if it should be seized or abolished early. He started leaning to "abolished quickly, and early".
He leaned towards elimination of the Capitalist State but that a Proletarian State cannot be abolished by decree, only via sufficient development of the productive forces and gradually wresting from the Bourgeoisie their control as such productive forces develop. To suggest otherwise would go against the concept of Scientific Socialism. Engels puts it best in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, which Marx said in his written preface in 1880 "best characterizes the theoretical part of the book, and which constitutes what may be called an introduction to scientific socialism:"
When ultimately it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no social class to be held in subjection any longer, as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production existing up to now are eliminated together with the collisions and excesses arising from them, there is nothing more to repress, nothing necessitating a special repressive force, a state. The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society -- the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society -- is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not "abolished", it withers away. It is by this that one must evaluate the phrase "a free people's state" with respect both to its temporary agitational justification and to its ultimate scientific inadequacy, and it is by this that we must also evaluate the demand of the so-called anarchists that the state should be abolished overnight.
Another emphasis, from Marx himself in Manifesto of the Communist Party, which Marx stood by to the very end with only slight alterations regarding the immediate destruction of the bourgeois state and replacement with a proletarian state after the lessons of the Paris Commune:
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. 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.
Finally, Engels in Principles of Communism elaborating that the folding of Capital into the Public Sector is a gradual process and not an immediate one:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
Marx was not an Anarchist.
I never said he was an anarchist, and I never said he claimed it should or could be done in a single stroke.
Scientific Socialism requires one to learn from the past, and adapt as needed. It doesn't mean a dogmatic prescription of "how".
Then I fail to see how you can make this claim:
He started down the track that its impossible to abolish the state, after concentrating all power in the state, as those holding power will never give it up.
The withering away of the Proletarian State is not on the basis of "giving" anything "up." The basis is on the State folding everything into the Public Sector, at which point laws like Private Property Rights disappear alongside it. When the government has folded all property into the Public Sector, the State itself ceases to exist, there's nobody to "give up" and nobody to "give up" to. There is just the people, as they make up the "administration of things."
"Started down the track" is how I make that claim. He went from very staunchly "Seize the state, and use it to implement communism!" to "Well, thats not such a hot idea... we need to re-work that".
You know, the "scientific" part of "Scientific Socialism".
Simply because he shifted his position against the usage of the Bourgeois State into using a Proletarian State does not mean if he lived to today he would have gone any further than that. We must learn and adapt, yes, but not do so blindly. Ultraleftism out of dogma is flawed thinking that leads to incorrect conclusions, and I see no reason to believe he "started down the track" at all. Rather, he reframed, and this new frame has no theoretical basis for being a road at all unless you can make the case that central planning and public ownership of underdeveloped sectors of the economy is reasonable unilaterally.
and this new frame has no theoretical basis for being a road at all unless you can make the case that central planning and public ownership of underdeveloped sectors of the economy is reasonable unilaterally
There is no rational argument to say this. In fact, lessons borne out of past revolutionary experiments have shown us this is the route that leads to failure. Centralization of control, into the hands of the few, never leads to liberation of the working class.
That was a lesson he was learning, as well, and it was in its infancy at the time. We've had many more examples to learn from, and don't need to try it again.