A common pitfall I’ve seen is the tendency to describe some utopian future when people start asking what communism means. Like the whole moneyless, classless society where no one really knows the specifics of how that would operate. You get curious people asking about how that’s possible and rather than just directly say political goals are inexorably linked to capital, states, and the division of labor, they get into fantasy talking about hypothetical social organizations or completely automated factories or any number of things that simply do not exist currently. Not only is it unconvincing, but I really think it confuses the hell out of the average person when they have to square this concept of hypothetical classless society with currently existing communist projects and they have to do it without a good basis in theory or historical understanding.
Also yes, I do believe a moneyless, classless, stateless future is possible and inevitable but hell if I know how we get there from here other than the eventually victory of socialist countries worldwide and continual advocacy for my own immediate class interests.
Counterpoint: right libertarians have somehow convinced a lot of people that a stateless capitalist society can exist while money and private property (as we understand it today) are still a thing, so clearly people aren’t all that critical of utopian shit.
Actual historical materialism: any post-capitalist society will produce its own contradictions and future comrades will need to find a way to square that circle. But that’s not an argument you have with a clueless lib.
Counterpoint: right libertarians have somehow convinced a lot of people that a stateless capitalist society can exist while money and private property (as we understand it today) are still a thing, so clearly people aren’t all that critical of utopian shit.
Right libertarians usually just argue for a “small state”, but you’re right that people often aren’t that skeptical. Unfortunately, usually it’s “good thing = utopia”, so they’re still unlikely to be convinced by talk of far-off communist society.
The far off hypothetical society stuff is so unconvincing that I regularly see folks on our side get blindsided when liberals start poking holes in it. Granted, liberals critique it from the framework of “you can’t possibly fix every single problem so we shouldn’t even try” but our side falls into the trap and tries to go after “actually we can fix every problem.” It’s such a misstep we should avoid and it should be obvious we can’t promise utopia, we can offer concrete direct political goals right now. Probably mixed in with optimistic hopeful rhetoric too.
Right libertarians don’t occupy a very stable political niche in America and I don’t think the average person gives them much credence or had even heard of them. I’d wager they also come across as utopian cranks to most people, perhaps less than us because “communist” carries more connotations.
I think you’re right about this one. There is a time and place for imagining a far away utopian future but the left should never lose sight of the concrete struggles workers face and we should always be able to give good believable answers to what we would do to improve conditions for the working class here and now. Organising mutual aid and solidarity networks in the community does more to convince people you are on the side of the workers than dreaming of a perfect world 100 years in the future.
Mutual aid and direct organization strategies are in fact the way to get our feet in the door. The different meanings of the word “communist” must sound like nerd pedant shit on the outside. Like “actually there’s a difference between a communist country building socialism and a stateless communist society” might as well be verbal quaaludes to the average person. Absolute snore and it makes us sound nuts.
a passage i like, from anarchy by malatesta:
spoiler
That’s all very well, some say, and anarchy may be a perfect form of human society, but we don’t want to take a leap in the dark. Tell us therefore in detail how your society will be organised. And there follows a whole series of questions, which are very interesting if we were involved in studying the problems that will impose themselves on the liberated society, but which are useless, or absurd, even ridiculous, if we are expected to provide definitive solutions. What methods will be used to teach children? How will production be organised? Will there still be large cities, or will the population be evenly distributed over the whole surface of the earth? And supposing all the inhabitants of Siberia should want to spend the winter in Nice? And if everyone were to want to eat partridge and drink wine from the Chianti district? And who will do a miner’s job or be a seaman? And who will empty the privies? And will sick people be treated at home or in hospital? And who will establish the railway timetable? And what will be done if an engine-driver has a stomach-ache while the train is moving? … And so on to the point of assuming that we have all the knowledge and experience of the unknown future, and that in the name of anarchy, we should prescribe for future generations at what time they must go to bed, and on what days they must pare their corns.
If indeed our readers expect a reply from us to these questions, or at least to those which are really serious and important, which is more than our personal opinion at this particular moment, it means that we have failed in our attempt to explain to them what anarchism is about.
We are no more prophets than anyone else; and if we claimed to be able to give an official solution to all the problems that will arise in the course of the daily life of a future society, then what we meant by the abolition of government would be curious to say the least. For we would be declaring ourselves the government and would be prescribing, as do the religious legislators, a universal code for present and future generations. It is just as well that not having the stake or prisons with which to impose our bible, mankind would be free to laugh at us and at our pretensions with impunity!
We are very concerned with all the problems of social life, both in the interest of science, and because we reckon to see anarchy realised and to take part as best we can in the organisation of the new society. Therefore we do have our solutions which, depending on the circumstances, appear to us either definitive or transitory — and but for space considerations we would say something on this here. But the fact that because today, with the evidence we have, we think in a certain way on a given problem does not mean that this is how it must be dealt with in the future. Who can foresee the activities which will grow when mankind is freed from poverty and oppression, when there will no longer be either slaves or masters, and when the struggle between peoples, and the hatred and bitterness that are engendered as a result, will no longer be an essential part of existence? Who can predict the progress in science and in the means of production, of communication and so on?
What is important is that a society should be brought into being in which the exploitation and domination of man by man is not possible; in which everybody has free access to the means of life, of development and of work, and that all can participate, as they wish and know how, in the organisation of social life. In such a society obviously all will be done to best satisfy the needs of everybody within the framework of existing knowledge and conditions; and all will change for the better with the growth of knowledge and the means.
I’ve never read this person but I really should. Seems like what I’ve observed isn’t a new thing.
I usually just offer up Star Trek as an example of a communist society. Seems to work most of the time.
