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Is the ultimate conclusion of any capitalist state communism?

You're basically saying that they're not mutually exclusive, or at least that Communist aspects exist in Capitalism.

Capitalism caters to widespread needs, though not everyone's needs as Communism would. Socialism would cater to more needs that Capitalism. Communism is really an ideal that one can't necessarily expect.

Yeah Capitalism is built on exploitation.
 
You're basically saying that they're not mutually exclusive, or at least that Communist aspects exist in Capitalism.

Capitalism caters to widespread needs, though not everyone's needs as Communism would. Socialism would cater to more needs that Capitalism. Communism is really an ideal that one can't necessarily expect.

Yeah Capitalism is built on exploitation.

Exploitation is an inevitable outcome in a capitalist society. Its social darwinism in action. The most sucessful members of the species float to the top and accrue gross amounts of fiilthy reeking lucre while hte poor languish in purpose built ghettos. The rich have rigged thre game so that in a system with limited wealth they own the greatest portion creating perpetual suffering.
This could all be resolved by forcing the rich to give up some of their vast fortunes. Thats just not human nature however,: thes people would sooner have it prized from their dead fingers.
 
Exploitation is an inevitable outcome in a capitalist society.

Well exploitation is both an outcome and a function of Capitalism. According to Marx, the workers are always exploited by the owners, or they're paid less than they're actually worth. This is true and logical. Why pay someone to do something if it won't be worth it and you can do it yourself with less loss.
 
Ho Chi Min said:
You're basically saying that they're not mutually exclusive, or at least that Communist aspects exist in Capitalism.

Not really. Marx himself argued that objective capacities for bringing communism to fruition (namely, widespread cooperative labor in means of production requiring numerous workers laboring toward a common goal) would develop under competitive capitalism, the possibility of the use of these capacities to fulfill widespread human need fettered by private ownership. It would be only under communism that such capacities could be brought to fruition. Engels only extended this line of argument, establishing that under oligopolic capitalism, further collaborative capacities would develop, these too fettered by private ownership.

ebola
 
P A said:
is the supreme reluctance and/or inability of Marx/Engels to describe their glorious new society in a sufficient amount of detail to make their sweeping, quasi-utopian claims comprehensible (i.e., internally consistent, lacking the gaping holes so prevalent in sociopolitical theories, etc.) or politically actionable in any humanly meaningful way.

Indeed. Marx's descriptions of life under communism actually most closely resemble what a feudal lord might do when acting as a complete dilettante ("A fisherman in the morning, a herder in the afternoon, a philosophical critic in the evening"). Marx's theories of what a transitional socialist state might look like or how this state is to usher in communism (ie, how it is to "wither away) are even vaguer. This is just as true in Capital as it is in his more tractable texts.

rudy said:
Another revolution would have to take place which would leave a power vacuum.

I think the solution might have to be extremely wide, equitable (ie, decentralized) distribution of power, where this isn't a vacuum but rather a homogenous mass of low-pressure gas.

ebola
 
I think the solution might have to be extremely wide, equitable (ie, decentralized) distribution of power, where this isn't a vacuum but rather a homogenous mass of low-pressure gas.

And don't forget: The revolution need not be won in a single day. The systematic dismantling of key power structures over extended periods of time (e.g. anarchists growing their own food in lieu of indirectly funding United Fruit et al.) could serve both to provide a sturdy foundation for and smoothly usher in the climactic final transition. Any resulting power vacuum would be thereby diminished in direct proportion to the socioeconomic self-/communal sufficiency of the masses.

[This is certainly not to say that such a scenario is plausible, but it's a relevant theoretical consideration nevertheless]
 
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The revolution need not be won in a single day. The systematic dismantling of keu power structures over extended periods of time

Perhaps complementarily, revolution (of the type we're speaking about) now cannot viably be won in a single day. Insofar as they are, we have coups de'ta, which reinscribe the forms of domination the social movements underpinning them originally oppose.

ebola
 
Insofar as they are, we have coups de'ta, which reinscribe the forms of domination the social movements underpinning them originally oppose.

I think this sort of scenario was roughly in step with what Rudy had in mind.
 
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