Modern communists have bought into Marx's propaganda towards the proletariat wholesale, and forget that Marx's designation of the proletariat as revolutionary subject is purely pragmatical.
Communism, for Marx, is the liberation of humanity from the logic of capital and wage labour. He simply agitated the proletariat because it was politically expedient to do so: they are the majority, they are less intelligent on average and thus more receptive to agitation, and so forth. And in his propaganda to that end he romanticized its class characteristics, but never actually believed it himself. Marx understood, like all revolutionaries (and Lenin later made crystal clear), that the real drivers behind all revolutions are an elite cadre of intellectuals influencing the masses towards an aim.
Now, if you don't understand that elites (in some form or the other) are the actual drivers and the masses their tools, you are like a blood-and-soil fascist revolutionary who forgets that, in his agitation of the white working class towards class collaboration and the exclusion of other races, you actually secretly have contempt for the lower class, even those of your own race. This is the 'in the know' secret you must know and embrace inside as a revolutionary of any kind, but never make public to the subject you're trying to agitate. No revolutionary is 'egalitarian'. The egalitarian is naive enough to presuppose that his revolution would never need him. This is why horizontalists must believe themselves and their ideas to be superfluous.
That is not to say that Marx necessarily found the proletariat contemptible or disdainful. But that he knew they needed to be agitated by a well-crafted, easy to digest propaganda. And like all revolutionaries, he genuinely believes in his end goals and their nobility.
So my problem with Stalin or [insert failed revolutionary] would not be that he was a traitor to the cause or some egotist preoccupied with power and control while abandoning the cause of communism. No, he was simply not pragmatic enough.
Everything comes down to pragmatism. We should be communists because we believe it advances humanity in tangible ways, without being so naive as to fall for our own romanticisation of humanity.
>>2692342So we need to establish a society where elite cadres form the new ruling class while the ignorant low I Q masses slave away for them but without wage labor and capital?
Not really because this would boil down to idealism if it’s just intellectuals choosing any group to use for their arbitrary aims.
>>2692344Elite cadres at once liberate the world from the yoke of commodity production AND nurture the masses to embrace a responsible, sustainable way of life balancing growth, development and leisure as aims unto themselves, rather than for exchange (AKA Marxist 'communism' as hypothesized).
This notion that there could ever be a world without some type of 'elite' de facto existing is naive. We are not all equal, and neither Marx nor communism necessitate that we be! We are equal in death, that's it.
>>2692344Don't we already have that?
>>2692342Marx literally criticizes your view though
>>2692397marx also lived in a different time.
>>2692400Yeah but the facts of class society haven't shifted that much. What changed from Marx's time to now is the fact that the ruling classes have developed more sophisticated methods of control
>>2692381Nope. We need to change our slave owners to new ones that will prevent commodity production.
>>2692397I don't really care.
>>2692400>>2692407And not because we're in a different time. The mode of production is identical, save for the hybridization of the proletariat (many have been turned into abstract capitalists, able to own small properties, stocks, etc.), but capitalism was never primordially defined by class. And that's my main point: you could theoretically have a fully equitably owned system of firms, and it would still be the capitalist mode of production. Marx underlines this. The logical conclusion is that Marx's fixation on the proletariat in his time validates the notion that he merely saw them as politically expedient to the political aim of overthrowing capital and nothing more.
>>2692423If you want to interpret the fact that any given group of individuals in any mode of production will be broken down into a spectrum of varying levels of strength, ability (cognitive or physical), etc., either by nature or nurture, as necessitating a 'slave society', then call it what you will and we agree. You cannot flatten this spectrum and you will then surely not horizontalize society. Marx and other communists quickly realized that this is a given and quickly stopped wasting time defending their 'authoritarianism' from critics.
>>2692422>you could theoretically have a fully equitably owned system of firms, and it would still be the capitalist mode of production. Marx underlines thisHow so?
>>2692432A persistent argument he makes in Capital is that there are certain compulsions the commodity form and having labour as a commodity in particular enforces upon the whole economy, even the good-hearted philanthropist bourgeois like Owen and worker coops. For example if a worker coop exists in a society with a labor market, the coop still has to compete with other worker coops, and therefore has to operate on the same principles as a capitalist firm which implies looking for the cheapest labor pool, lowering wages, lengthening or shortening hours according to industry, expropriate the workers of the products of their labor, etc. Marx himself explains it better which is why you should read the book.
>>2692432From Capital 3:
>The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system; for instance, the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them… only because the labourers turned into their own capitalist, i. e., they use the means of production for the employment of their own labour.In other words, cooperatives still function by responding to price signals and produce for exchange, competing on the market with other cooperatives. They are firms and are and produce capital. The only difference is that the worker has now also taken over the role of the capitalist. This isn't inherently bad, and any kind of abandonment of the capitalist mode of production will go through some type of collectivization into cooperatives, state companies, etc. It's just important to emphasize that it's still capitalism, and without a general plan enacted by, again, a guiding organization (elites, de facto), will go nowhere. The point of communism is to do away with production for exchange and introduce a system of production for use.
>>2692422>politically expedient to the political aim of overthrowing capital While this is true I don't see how that invalidates the idea that the overthrow of capitalism must come as a result of the victory of the workers' struggle. Pretty much most Marxist parties believed this to be the case and this was proven correct. I'm not against vanguardism but attempts at achieving the aims of socialism with the state or a party as the primary actor have resulted in social democracy historically.
>>2692420I like consuming commodities though
>>2692442you can't consume commodities by definition though since commodities are things made exclusively for exchange, if you consume/use it, it is a use-value. this is like the first 20 pages of capital bro, just read the book
>>2692342This is just Blanquist thought.
Lenin wasn't standing atop the proletariat's shoulders, but the soldiers. Sure, you can call the red army soldiers proletariats organized through soviets, but they're still armed and not representative of the proletariat as a whole.
Same with Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Kim Il Sung.
If the study of revolutions has taught us anything, it's that securing loyalty of an armed force comes first and foremost.
>>2692342It is true that vanguardism of an elite cadre has played a role in most successful uprisings since late antiquity, and that uprising of a purely lower class vintage (especially peasant revolts and slave revolts) usually failed. but idk about your other conclusions. they seem a bit… overcooked.
>they are less intelligent on average and thus more receptive to agitation
kys polyp fuck
>>2693000This is all a distinction without a difference to me.
>securing loyalty of an armed force comes first and foremostWhen it's time to actually strike, yes. What comes first is the organized cadre of revolutionaries with a concrete programme and a receptive revolutionary subject.
>>2693185What parts are overcooked?
>>2693196<section of the population most deprived of education and wealth turns out to be less intelligent on average>polyp!