Reviews and Views
Volume Two
Nasser Paydar
In his book “Marx’s concept of the Alternative to Capitalism” by studying and analysing Marx’s important works, Hudis collected his scattered references, phrases and explanations about society beyond capitalism. He has devoted a lot of time to this matter. The achievement of his explorations is undoubtedly appreciable even for the opponents and critics of his conclusions. The main problem of Hudis’s work is that he did this work not from the perspective of Marx himself, nor from the perspective of the expectation of several billions of hungry, displaced, impoverished, exhausted and exhausted workers from the pressure of exploitation and barbarism of capitalism, which he followed from the common concerns and preoccupations of a philosopher, a follower and a Marx academic researcher. In 1845, Marx formulated the first thesis in the so-called Theses on Feuerbach:
“The main defect of all hitherto existing materialism (including Feuerbach’s materialism) is that it sees the object, reality and the sensible world not as the sensible activity of man, praxis and active man, but only as an object of cognition or observation. That is why the active aspect of man has been developed not by materialism but by idealism. Of course, in an abstract way, because idealism does not recognize the real and sensible activity of man in general. Feuerbach demands tangible and truly distinct objects from intellectual objects. But he does not see human activity itself as an objective activity. That is why in the essence of Christianity he considers the only true human behaviour to be theoretical behaviour and sees and shows praxis only in its dirty and Jewish manifestations. Thus, he does not understand the importance of “revolutionary” and “practical-critical” activity.” (1)
More than one hundred and seventy years have passed since Marx wrote his theses on Feuerbach. All Marx scholars and all the famous “Marxist” philosophers in the world have spoken, written articles about it, given lectures, defended it, and done other things throughout these years. But the fact is that the long record of research, analysis, theory-building, criticism, and interpretations of most of these eminent Marx scholars has not even had a glimmer of adherence to these few sentences of Marx. Hudis is undoubtedly among the best of this group, but he also bears the burden of the same problem. The book “On Marx’s Understanding of the Alternative to Capitalism” is a tale of his wandering in the trap of this same dilemma from beginning to end. Before we examine the author’s perversions and misguidance, let’s leaf through the book together.
In the introduction to his book, Hudis begins with the “return of public interest to Marx” in recent decades. He lists four reasons for this. The realization of Marx’s correct predictions about the globalization of capitalist production, the expansion of justice-seeking movements under the pressure of intensifying class inequalities, the economic crisis of capitalism, which on the one hand confirms Marx’s theory and on the other has increased the scope of discontent, and finally, the falling of the shameful bowl of this system from the roof and the increasingly exposed fact that capitalism has not and has not brought anything to humanity other than pain, suffering, and misery, constitute the general outlines of his four reasons.
What Hudis calls the return of public interest to Marx, whatever title it may deserve in reality, is highly distorted and irrelevant to call it interest in Marx’s strategies, horizons, and class praxis, or Marxian proletarian communism. The grounds and arguments he cite for this so-called return are also all clear evidence of the incongruity or irrelevance of this notion. It is frightening to claim that people’s interest in Marx has returned and to see the important reasons for their attachment or revival of interest as the confirmation of the truthfulness of Marx’s words about the globalization of capitalism, his theory of crisis, or even the growth of the scope of protests against the injustices and tragedies born of this system. True Marx enthusiasts are certainly not a group based on these arguments. This type of return, revival of interest, devotion is the character and tradition of Marx scholars and market traders. Marx’s true companions, sympathizers, and comrades-in-arms do not follow his path with suspicion of the correctness of his ideas. Without knowing a person named Marx, without having the possibility of researching and following his works, without being an expert in interpreting these works, without having the necessary facilities or opportunities for these tasks, they themselves, by virtue of their social and class existence, are the driving force of a great and historical movement in which Marx stands at the heart and from which the entirety of their Marxism derives. If we are to observe the return or non-return of human interest in Marx, we must look to the 5 billion cursed workers of the world. Only the organized radical anti-capitalist movement of these billions of exploited people and the targets of capital’s barbarity can be the story of the real elevation of genuine approaches and interests in Marx, in the Marxian’s critique of capitalism, and in the Marxian communism of the abolition of wage labour. Hudis says the opposite, if not explicitly, but implicitly. He speaks of the growth of public interest in Marx and explores this interest and enthusiasm in the existence of a group that has become fascinated by the correctness of Marx’s view on the globalization of capitalism!! On the very first page of the preface to his book, he bases his exploration of Marx or the arrangement of social forces inclined to the Marxist view of class struggle, society, and history not on the solid ground of exploitation, work, life, and the ongoing struggle of the working class, but on the rational estimates of scholars of the validity, soundness, and validity of ideas. This is something that rebelliously manifests itself in the entire fabric of Hudis’ discussions and searches about Marx and the Marxist alternative to capitalism, putting pressure on the process of judgments.
The second important point, in this introduction, is the explanation that Hudis makes of the assumptions of Marx scholars regarding Marx’s “disinterest” in the alternative plan of capitalism. In this specific context, he rightly disagrees with the aforementioned group. Unlike them, he believes that presenting the image of a society beyond the system of wage slavery was not only not unloved by Marx but also has an important place in all his works. Hudis has endeavoured to write this book to prove the correctness of his belief and the baselessness of the opponents’ inferences. For this reason, he has found it necessary to examine the reasons cited by Marx scholars to show Marx’s “disinterest” in the alternative plan of capitalism. He divides this group into two separate groups. The first group is those who consider Marx to be opposed to historical predictions and theoretical alternative creations. The second group considers the Marxian alternative to capitalism to be state-run camp capitalism. The author of the book “Marx’s Understanding of the Alternative to Capitalism” continues that both approaches, even with completely different points of departure, nevertheless consider Marx’s efforts to present a model for overcoming capitalist society to be futile and unrealistic.
Here, in explaining the context and roots of these circles’ perception of “Marx’s unwillingness to design a specific model of socialism,” the only thing that Hudis does not address is the material, earthly, and class foundations of beliefs and perceptions. He does not say which social forces these groups and populations speak for in the world of reality and on the ground of class society. Let’s look at the issue a little more closely. The first group mentioned by Hudis is very familiar, the spectrum of parties, academic Marxists, non-partisan political activists but seeking to form a party, and the like, who consider themselves “Leninists” on the one hand and critics of the former Soviet camp on the other, currents that see themselves and their parties and circles as an alternative to capitalism!! They have historically thought so, have done so, and now, in the midst of their historical decline, they also believe the same. From their perspective, if not in words, but in practice, the society beyond capitalism is made into a force that carries the banner of the struggle against the current bourgeois state. It is anti-regime. It seeks to seize political power. To do this, it uses all its power to rally the disobedient and dissatisfied masses behind its party. To convince them that in order to get rid of the existing hell and establish the promised society, they must place the party on the throne of power and entrust the mission of saving themselves and their future generations to it. The first group that Hudis speaks of are these forces and individuals. The forces that have been and are still distorting the liberation of the working masses from the system of wage slavery in this way, and the result of their distortion is what has been falling on the workers of the world in the most disastrous way since the beginning of the twentieth century. Like all Marx scholars, Hudis explores the flight path of their thoughts and opinions and talks about their ideological path and conduct. He uses the same method for the second group. He turns to examining thoughts and forgets the earthly, thinking people with specific class and social affiliations. He points out the wrong ideas, regarding the identification of the Marxist alternative to capitalism with the socialism of the camp narrative, but he does not go to the specific class forces that carry these ideas. Forces and currents whose identity is clear. The former camp bourgeoisie and their subsequent academic survivors and heirs, who, not in their former guise, but as great scholars and great thinkers with names, have filled the land and time of the working masses of the world with reformist prescriptions.
Hudis says about the theories and theorists claiming Marx’s inattention to the design of the model of the future society. This explains the comments. He criticizes this group, rejects their theories, bases of debates and arguments, does all these things, but does not say a word about which social strata and classes are the heart of the theories, why these strata and classes have such a view of Marx and Marxian socialism, what these forces have done to the class struggle of the proletariat and Marx’s narrative of communism during the 20th century and before, and many other questions. These points are all important and the working masses of the world need their radical recognition. The main issue here is not to quote the thoughts and beliefs of this or that party claiming Marx’s disinterest in the description of the model of the future society!! that the correct introduction of the class roots of ideas and the introduction of social forces have these beliefs.
The approaches that Hudis speaks of are not new. In the last years of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, we witnessed the rise and rise of movements whose class body was made up of workers, but whatever these movements were and whatever path they took, they were nowhere and to any extent a conscious anti-capitalist movement of the working class. The working masses of the world lined up within them and behind them, but their leaders, strategists, visionaries and leaders were not the leaders of the anti-capitalist communist proletariat. They carried the red banner of socialism on their shoulders, but at best they pursued the arrangement and reform of the system of wage slavery. There is no need to discuss the narrative of the Second International about social democracy. “Leninism” and what in Russia before and after the October Revolution and then in the vast part of the world beat the drum of communism with fragmentation and fire also ultimately pursued nothing other than replacing one type of capitalism with another.
In the midst of such conditions and the global political atmosphere, what was not gaining any place at all, was the Marxian alternative to capitalism. For the very obvious reason that this alternative, in its living and real, material and tangible form, with a real human body, with its living and present thinker skeleton, was held hostage by other movements, movements with the name and emblem of communism, was under the pressure of expropriation, metamorphosis and freezing, and was leaving behind the era of forced labour and service in the army of parties claiming to liberate man. During this period, the shipwrights of these peaceful or militant and overthrown capitalist reform movements, these expropriators of the real alternative to society, were present, who saw themselves as the only Marxist alternative to the wage slavery system. They were not supposed to call any other model by this name and seek it. The conversation about exploring the Marxist perspective of socialism begins when those who were waiting for the miracle of the October Revolution and Lenin’s strategies of class struggle also find the outcome of this revolution and the future of the Russian labour movement bleak. It is these who in those days spread the field of searching for an alternative, exerting all their efforts under the banner of introducing true Marxian socialism, but the more they delve, the deeper and harder they wander in the wilderness of seeking democracy. Their subsequent generations become much more democratized, more intellectually and philosophically inclined than their predecessors. With the collapse of the Soviet camp, the academic and intellectual community of the two groups discussed by Hudis also joined this group, disillusioned by the failure of their previous illusory dreams. Their overall characteristic is that they are either defenders of camp communism that has reached its twenties and has failed, or they are democratic critics of this version of communism. Regardless of which of these two groups they belong to, they form a more or less identical spectrum in the current historical conditions. A spectrum whose entire work is to try to create new delusions instead of the former eroding wastelands in front of the working masses of the world. What Hudis does not pay attention to and has not taken steps towards recognizing and portraying it correctly is this point. Why? The answer is clear. Hudis himself is also a member of this spectrum, and the basis of our disagreement with him lies precisely here. The content of the present article is also an analysis of this story, this type of view of Marx and the Marxist alternative to capitalism, including Hudis’ misleading inversions and inversions in this field. The main focus of our criticism of the book “Marx’s Understanding of the Alternative to Capitalism” is to show the anti-Marxist nature of this pursuit that the author is carrying out under the name of searching for this alternative. Marx, without any doubt, in every line of his works and words and with his entire class and movement praxis, has pointed to the real existence of the alternative to capitalism. There is no doubt about this. But what Hudis attributes to Marx under this name and label is not the Marxian alternative to capitalism at all. We will examine this issue.
As a researcher who is certain of Marx’s efforts to present a model of socialism or an alternative to the existing society, Hudis speaks in the introduction to his book of his four research paths to achieve this certainty. That Marx devoted many points to introducing this alternative in various places and in all his writings, that even if he had not done so, his self-dissection of capitalism is evidence of his definite eye for an alternative to this system. Third, Marx had a very firm and iron commitment to Hegel’s dialectic and under the pressure of this commitment he could not remain oblivious to his alternative plan for capitalism. Fourth, Marx was not a supporter of totalitarian states and socialist governments of the former Soviet style, he had a deep attachment to democracy and freedom, and on this basis, we must investigate and see what he thought about society beyond the current system and what image he presented.
It is worth considering that all four of Hudis’ research paths pass through a galaxy of ideas, and none of them have any contact with the earth of human life and the class struggle ongoing in history. He seeks a specific form of society that Marx saw as a future alternative to capitalism. To put it more precisely and explicitly, the model intended by Marx and the object of Hudis’ investigation is a society. A society composed of earthly humans, a society that must be built and founded following a great social revolution and the destruction of capitalism by a historical force against wage slavery, a society whose establishment, establishment, survival and development require the greatest preparation and readiness of humanity protesting the existence of the dominant mode of production and social relations of the day. Hudis is not seeking to understand the movement that Marx sees as the all-rounder, the seeker, the architect and builder of socialism. Not a word is written about this movement, a movement in which Marx linked the degree of victory or defeat, the truth or falsehood, the conformity or non-conformity of socialism with the ideal of human liberation to the way in which its forces are arranged, its consciousness, its organization, and its preparation. Marx’s alternative to capitalism, according to Heudis, is not a society that is the product of the struggle of a specific class or class movement. It is a model, an ideal, a plan, a utopia, and all his passion and effort is to prove that Marx really had such a model and introduced it in his works. This view of Marx’s alternative or model inevitably forces Hudis to abandon the material rock of the struggle between social classes, to completely cut Marx out of the process of this campaign. He makes him a philosopher who dissects capital, a radical critic of capitalism, and has a model for going beyond the boundaries of this system. For this very reason, the entire path of Hudis’s search for Marx’s socialist model also passes through a maze of ideas and leads to the subversion of Marx’s phrases and allusions in various writings. In this passage, he goes so far as to see an important reason for Marx’s indisputable concern to propose an alternative to capitalism as his firm and iron-clad adherence to Hegelian dialectics!!
Hudis says: “Marx never denied his faith in Hegel’s dialectic of negativity. Negativity in Hegel does not lead to emptiness. Instead, a positive emerges from the negation of negation, which Hegel called absolute negativity. Therefore, Marx’s undeniable faith in Hegel’s dialectic provides serious students of Marx with another reason to try to recognize and analyse the signs of the future that result from his critique of capital and other social forms that characterize present-day society” (p. 16 of the book). Over the past hundred years and several decades, the bourgeoisie and reformism on the right and left have made every possible distortion of Marx’s working-class communism. Comparing the dimensions of these distortions does not clarify anything, but if we are to make such an analogy, it must be stated that what Hudis does is no less than the rest. He has devoted all his efforts to proving that Marx was not indifferent to the alternative to capitalism. (Wow!!) And then he shines a light on all of Marx’s works and life to discover his interest in this alternative and show it to everyone. Among the signs and evidence, he finds is that the negation of Hegel’s negation leads to the acceptance of the positive. Marx was also fond of Hegel’s dialectic, so he must have had his own alternative to capitalism!! It is unlikely that a person like Marx can be further separated from the world of earthly realities of class struggle and the material process of historical developments and hang him on the gallows of philosophizing and positivist idealism. Here, in the context of Heudis’ calculations, we encounter a Marx who finds communism and the prospect of human liberation in the maze of philosophical beliefs and a kind of doctrinal epistemology!! Marx, whose entire life and all his other works must have been of this type!!, for example, owes his narrative of history to his journey through the dense dust of ideas!! He has brought politics out of the depths of philosophy and has learned class struggle from the famous philosophers of history!! He has also met the proletariat, sometimes in seclusion and austerity, in the desert of knowledge!! In his persistent exploration of Marx, Hudis discovers a Marx who, as the real Marx of the proletariat, began his process of becoming Marx by very consciously, critically, and radically escaping from such an existence. Marx did not find class struggle in philosophical clichés, he did not extract communism from the thoughts of Kant, Fichte, Bacon, Spinoza, Hegel, and Fourier. This is the tradition of all Marx scholars who have followed Marx’s life, identity, and social existence step by step within his philosophical studies and have seen the results of these investigations and knowledge gathering. Wherever they could, they have spoken about his immersion in the turbulent sea of Spinoza’s and Kant’s thoughts. His crippled body, sunken eyes and bloodless face were painted due to the bitterness of studying the works of previous philosophers. Marx’s camera was only in pursuit of these landscapes. What has never had any attraction for them, Marx belongs to real land and class campaigns. That a person like him has analysed the achievements of human knowledge in order to understand society and the world and the history of the evolution of human societies or the history of life and work and material and intellectual production and the dynamics of human struggle is an obvious explanation. The basic point is that Marx did all these explorations and excavations not as a seeker of knowledge, not to conquer the dark castles of philosophical and ideological ambiguities, which as an earthly human being with certain class and social ties and relationships, to cross the hard rocks of changing the material world, changing the world consisting of classes and unequal people, changing the world full of exploitation and misanthropy and the killing of freedoms, in order to change this world. From a young age, he entered the life and process of current events in society and the world as an active person in the field of social disputes and demanding the change of the existing situation. Hudis doesn’t see this part of Marx’s existence, which is the driving force and movement chain of all his works, including his studies, and because he doesn’t see, he meets a Marx who even explores his alternative for the current society from the depths of Hegel’s dialectic and the process of negating the negation of this dialectic. We will not enter into the discussion here that Marx’s view of Hegel’s dialectic is exactly the opposite of what Hudes attributes to him. Hegel’s dialectic, despite all its strengths and influences on the dynamics of material analysis of reality, ultimately hinged itself on the absolute spirit, and instead of fighting to radically change existing realities, it acknowledged the rationality of these realities and permitted their permanence. But our discussion here is not about Hudes’s problems like this. The real focus of the discussion is the one that was previously identified. The basis of his view and understanding of Marx’s alternative to capitalism is that it is profoundly incorrect and contradicts Marx’s view of the real alternative to existing society. Following the above remarks, in the very introduction to the book, Hudes searches for the foundations of Marx’s work in criticizing capitalism and, in this regard, the materials of his understanding for drawing a plan for socialism. Marx’s focus on “value” as a characteristic of present society and the negation of value as an essential indicator of the future order is a point that attracts Hudes’ attention. He says in this regard: “Marx’s main concern was not the origin of value. His main concern was the way in which social relations in modern society take the form of value. The main subject of his critique was the inverted character of social relations under capitalism, in which human relations take the form of relations between things. There is no doubt that Marx’s critique of capitalism focuses on the critique of the production of value, but what is less clear is what exactly Marx thinks is necessary for the mastery of the production of value” (p. 20).
Marx explains commodity production in general with the law of value. This is quite obvious. Capitalist production is also the highest phase of the commodity economy and is necessarily based on the production of value, and here surplus value. This is the deepest Marxian demarcation with the different reformist approaches of the right and left regarding the understanding of capitalism and socialism. All of this is correct, but Hudis does the same right thing with a non-Marxist and ideational starting point. The essence of his statement is that Marx, as a philosopher, thinker and scientist, has stared at the replacement of human relations with relations between objects! In the maze of this staring or philosophical research, he has explored the secret of this replacement, the secret of the personalization of objects and the objectification of humans! In this direction and to discover this secret, he has studied and studied again!!, in search of finding this secret, he has become an increasingly skilled and skilful diver in the sea of philosophy!! And it seems that it was finally in the process of this philosophical journey that he became aware of the fetishist nature of the commodity, value and capitalist relations or the relations that lead to the objectification of humans and the personalization of objects!! Everything revolves around the orbit of persistent rational explorations and investigations. The real meaning of Hudis’ words is that Marx, out of philosophical curiosity, observed the mysterious nature of the commodity!! And in the course of this observation and passing through the various stations of revelation, he discovered and met capitalism and finally the proletariat!! Of course, in the next section of the same book, in the chapter “Beyond Alienation”, he briefly and piecemeal refers to a kind of ideological symmetry between Marx’s advocacy of social justice and his philosophical explorations, but this reference does not occupy any important place in the process of Hudis’s attempt to understand the material, social, and class origins of Marx’s approach to the critique of Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophy, to set aside all of these, to focus deeply on the critique of political economy, and to dissect capitalism. On the contrary, the starting point everywhere is thought. It is the “universal spirit”, thought is free from the calamities and impurities of matter, which travels through horizons and souls!!, perfecting itself through dissolution in matter!! It continues this work and leaps towards a more transcendent orbit!!
To prove his point about Marx’s commitment to the necessity of proposing an alternative to capitalism, Hudis questions and invalidates all the indicators of his real Marx! It is possible to argue that the objective course of events was not like this at all. We can refer to the works of this period of Marx’s life, the manuscripts, the Jewish question, the introduction to Hegel’s Critique of the Philosophy of Right and especially and most importantly, the German Ideology. The time of preparation of all these texts goes back even before the poverty of philosophy. It is a pure deception to recognize Marx writing these books as a philosopher searching for the mystery of commodity fetishism or, worse, in the process of exploring the relationship of “is and ought”!! The thread and theme of the entire discussion is the rebellious outburst of consciousness, knowledge and awareness of a radical human being protesting the existence of capitalism. The article “Alien Labor” is the deepest intelligent and thoughtful excavation of the entire disaster that capital has caused to the life of the working class. These texts speak of the proletariat and its historical role in the liberation of mankind. The communism of the abolition of wage labour as the conscious existence of the working class is discussed. The Marx present in every page of these works is the raging Marx at the heart of the class struggle, the intervener, the activist, the root-finder, the solution-thinker, and the educator in the daily battlefield of the working and exploited masses. This Marx certainly cannot have descended from the sky of thought, from the peak of the galaxy of philosophy and the tower of philosophical exploration of the relationship between object and subject, to the rocky Taftan filled with all the complex earthly sevens. The person who writes the content of these texts has not come from philosophy to politics, society, people within society, to the struggle between classes, and current social events. On the contrary, he has extracted and given life to his thoughts, analyses, perspectives, and solutions from the depths of current earthly problems, from the core of human life and the economic and social relations that dominate them. Hudis sees the story upside down. This is his big problem, but it is not his only problem. All the above texts, and most clearly, the German Ideology, are very decisive and crushing manifestos against this very method of investigation and methodology of knowledge of Hudis. Marx has devoted the latter book entirely to explaining the material understanding of history and that ideas do not make life, it is the social existence of humans that determines their thoughts, beliefs, ethics, culture, consciousness and knowledge and gives content and direction. Hudis flips through Marx’s works page by page to recognize his alternative to the capitalist system, but in the context of this search, he completely loses Marx himself and the social and class existence that founded and made him Marx. Based on his Marx studies, Marx’s first earthly discovery in the world of philosophical revelations was to discover the secret of the originality of freedom versus necessity or of choice versus deterrence!! According to what Hudis believes, Marx has illuminated this secret of the heart after years of asceticism and arduous philosophical practice and through skilful contemplation of post-Aristotelian philosophy, and at the time of writing his doctoral thesis in philosophy, he raised it in this very text!!!
“Marx’s interest in the relationship between philosophy and reality determined the theme of his first theoretical work. His doctoral dissertation entitled [Differences in philosophy between natural democratic and epicurean philosophy], although a detailed analysis of this work is beyond the scope of this book, some aspects of it are worth reviewing. Marx is drawn to Epicurus because Epicurus praises sensual existence and at the same time emphasizes the idea of freedom in his theory of atom deviation. While Democritus’ theory, according to which atoms fall in straight lines, emphasizes predictability and determinism. Epicurus, who focuses on the deviation of the atom from straight lines, emphasizes free choice and free will…” (p. 62)
Perhaps the question arises as to what is wrong with Marx’s philosophical and theoretical investigations on issues such as freedom, necessity, and the like. Like all other human beings, he was immersed in ambiguities and wanderings and tried to resolve them or find his own mental answers. This question is correct in every respect and there is no problem with it. It is very obvious that Marx was a human being like all other human beings. For a long time, he saw and explored history, society, the world, man, economics, politics, law, and other issues in a way that was different or even opposite to the later years of his life, distinct or opposite to the period after 1844 and its continuation. Marx also achieved new analyses of all these phenomena and elements, slowly or quickly. He criticized his previous theories. He replaced them with new perceptions and thoughts. He has distanced himself from the philosophical beliefs of Kant, Fichte, and Spinoza, he has turned to Hegel, he has embraced liberalism. He has subjected all of these to the most radical criticism. He has done all of these things, and in this direction and following all these twists and turns, Marx has become. All of these are obvious, and it is very natural and assumed that this should be the case. Our point is that we should avoid any kind of mythologizing and fable-making about him. The basis of our disagreement with Hudis is naturally not these, but another very fundamental issue. This disagreement is absolutely not limited to how he understands Marx, the problem goes far beyond that and is related to the entire methodology or basis of Hudis’ understanding of man, of the relationship between human consciousness and their social existence. The disagreement is precisely of the same nature as the dispute that Marx had with the Neo-Hegelians and philosophers of his time and before him. That “consciousness does not determine life, life determines consciousness” Marx did not extract the validity of freedom, the importance of living freely, and the role of freedom in human life from his investigation and research into Epicurus’ philosophy. He did not discover his own version of freedom in the philosophical discussions of ancient Greece. Freedom is a vital and inevitable need of every human being. The overwhelming majority of humans have not been able to have its minimum throughout history and in all human societies. Certain social forces have deprived the majority of this minimum level of freedom. These forces have done so because they needed to preserve their property, power, and special interests. Freedom has had its own specific meaning and content for different sections of humans or different social classes in different periods. Let alone the depth of understanding of freedom among individuals of the same class, there are also differences. All these are earthly realities and the material flow of human life. Humans face all these issues in the difficult and deadly rocky terrain of their lives. They do not extract the gift of freedom and the miraculous role of freedom from the great philosophical treasures of Epicurus. Under the terrible and deadly pressure of the disenfranchised and the massacre of freedoms, they find themselves in need of a drop of it. In the same vein, without referring to the theory of the democratic movement, they touch the tragedy of deprivation of freedom and captivity in the clutches of the forces beyond themselves. The starting point is not thoughts, life, or beliefs, but human beings. Like every earthly person, Marx lived in a class society. A society in which the dominant class deprived all freedoms and rights from the inferior and exploited classes. The social existence of the exploited and the governed was in bondage, its bondage was painful due to the lack of freedoms and rights. Marx learned the subjectivity, importance, and urgency of freedom not from Epicurus’ philosophy, but from his own life and the life of the vast masses deprived of any rights and freedoms and under the whip of the rulers. Here, in the depths of social existence and the earth of human life, in the dry wilderness of dictatorship and the desert of Lut, devoid of freedom, the necessity of understanding freedom, understanding the factors that deprive the exploited of their freedom, the reasons for its deprivation, the social and class burden of freedom, or similar issues, envelops his thoughts and mind. To deepen this knowledge further, he investigates, studies, sees Epicurus’ atomic theory as an aid to deepening his perceptions, and criticizes Democritus’ theory of motion. Hudis reverses the story. In his opinion, it is the profound revelation in Epicurus’ philosophy that makes Marx realize the gift of freedom and its importance!!! He follows the same method of analysis in relation to the later years of Marx’s life. Everywhere he meets a man who is descending from heaven to earth. He is transferred from one stronghold of thought to another, in the orbit of thought, he conquers the fortresses of secrets one after the other and finally, through these revelations, he gradually approaches the earth of human life!! Hudis is dealing with a Marx who, until 1843, while being a critic of Hegel, is the scaffolding of his view on most Hegelian topics!! For example, he accepts Hegel’s explanation of the state as a basis!! He believes that Hegel has understood the realities of modern society!! And other things, none of which, at least as Hudis narrates, are true. It is enough to look at the book “Censorship and Freedom of the Press” from Marx’s writings of this period to sufficiently see the dimensions of the difference between his and Hegel’s discussions on issues related to “civil society” and, for example, the issue of “law”. In this book, although Marx has not yet begun the long path of criticizing the political economy of the bourgeoisie, although Marx is not the Marx of the proletariat and the communism of the abolition of wage labour, or even Marx of the “Communist League” and the First International, but in opposition to censorship and his definition of freedom of the press, he sees the freedom of humans, including the writer, from any kind of restraints over his head as a necessary and certain condition for the realization of this freedom.
Hudis generously covers all these facts and distinctions. He still looks at Marx who is immersed in philosophy and concepts. He judges the freedom and rights of people with the standards of the world of reason, comes from the sky to the earth, travels the opposite path, but ultimately, he is loyal to Hegel and hangs the reality on the idea. Marx, who observes earthly truths from the sea of thoughts, catches the false pearls of democracy in the depths of the sea of philosophy, becomes infatuated with it. A little further, he realizes that political democracy leaves the separation of man from man intact, amid the turbulent waves of these intellectual explorations, he reveals the secret of the need to leave civil society behind and the need for continuous revolution. Again, he continues and deepens his philosophical revelations, until he finally reaches proletariat and communism!!
“…the Critique of 1843 marks a decisive stage in Marx’s development. For through the study of the philosophy of right, he has come to a richer understanding of the contradictions and shortcomings of modern political reality. As a result, he now contemplates the future by asking the question: what kind of society can overcome these shortcomings…” (p. 82)
A few lines below, Hudis continues this discussion and adds: “… Marx clearly reaches out to an element within reality that can realize the ideal. Without having to abandon the philosophical clarification of the ideal. For this reason, Marx argues with two parties. The practical political party that turns to reality at the cost of abandoning philosophy, and the philosophical party that turns away from reality.” He continues: “Accordingly, what is the element within reality that is capable of realizing Marx’s philosophical ideals? That element is nothing but a class of civil society that does not belong to civil society. The social group that is the dissolution of all social groups.” The philosopher who studies Marx finally declares, as a clear and explicit conclusion of this part of his research, that:
“It is important to point out that Marx’s discovery of the proletariat as a revolutionary class precedes the study of economic issues that began later in 1844. Marx’s understanding of the proletariat was part of his attempt to solve a philosophical dilemma…” (Marx’s concept of the Alternative to Capitalism, p. 84).
The words of Hudis are very clear. Marx is a profound philosopher and a thinker of the indefatigable who has received everything he has thanks to philosophical revelations and the power of planning. In the words of the poet of Shiraz: “Every treasure of happiness that God gave to Hafez – he gave from the Yemen of the night prayer and the morning prayer”!! Marx has also been a follower and critic thanks to this same behaviour, who has determined his task with the thoughts of Kant and Fichte, and has managed to criticize Hegel. He has continued to search for the idea in the object and finally, at the head of one of the crowded alleys of philosophy, he has suddenly seen the rough material appearance of the proletariat in front of his eyes. He has shouted, “I have found it, I have found it!” He has gone to the proletariat!! He has opened a dialogue with it. He has given him, the proletariat, the good news that communism, the product of his philosophical investigations, is a cloak that is only suitable for his own stature. A short speech by a philosopher named Marx, during his philosophical contemplation, discovered communism with one hand and the proletariat with the other, and recognized them as appropriate!!! It is not without reason that Hudis considers all of Marx’s texts on the critique of political economy to be philosophical works and complementary to his studies and in-depth explorations in the world of philosophy.
If the ideas and beliefs of the author of “Marx’s concept of the Alternative to Capitalism” could be true, it would mean that Marx’s and the working class’s communism is essentially an ideology, a philosophical theory, a school and a doctrine of belief discovered and founded by a person named Marx through philosophical investigations. This is the same narrative of communism and class struggle that the leaders of the Second International invented, disseminated and gave branches to. The “Soviet Communist Party” and the Comintern made it the mechanism for designing “Marxism-Leninism”. Titles that were later supplemented with “Maoism”, Trotskyism and other extensions. The same recognition of the relationship between object and mind or social existence and thoughts, which sees communism as the product of the thinking of the elites of the wealthy classes. It denies its working-class roots and origins and has historically beaten the drum of this theory that the working class is a trade unionist mass, a salt marsh that does not grow the hyacinth of communism, and that in order to become communist, it needs to borrow the seeds of this “ideology” from intellectuals of the wealthy classes. These individuals, these messengers of human liberation, are the ones who invite the working class to accept “scientific socialism”, create a party for them, organize the activists of the labour movement within this party, overthrow the bourgeois government of the day, install a “workers’ government” in its place, overthrow capitalism and establish communism!! These constitute the homogeneous and organic components of this narrative of communism. Marx’s and the proletariat’s communism is in every way opposed to this capitalist-oriented ideological system or revolutionary reactionary strategy. Marx’s communism grows from the depths of the conditions of work and exploitation, life and struggle of the workers. Here it germinates and flourishes. Anti-capitalism is self-sufficient and inherent in the labour movement. Like any other living being, it is forced to go through various stages of development, growth and maturity. It must be nourished, learned, grown, and its consciousness and knowledge improved. For this, it needs Marxian and the conscious people of its class. It is not an ideology, creed, or philosophical school, but precisely a movement, the movement of the working masses to change the existing situation. A movement that is anti-capitalist in all areas of social life, from the struggle to increase the price of labour or improve working and living conditions to the achievement of political freedoms and basic human rights, to the elimination of sexual discrimination and the elimination of environmental pollution, to all other expectations and demands, and in all these areas it advances on the track of the struggle against the basis of capitalist existence.
The important and decisive point about Hudis is that in his discussions about the Marx narrative of socialism, he draws a line between Leninism and bourgeois communism as a whole. It should be very fair, he emphasized this line, praised it and respected it. Moreover, he has a different approach in this area than other academic Marx scholars, for example, with Meszaros, Harvey and the like. His escape from the many bourgeois interpretations of communism, his disagreement with the “autonomist Marxists”, with people like Michel Albert, Holloway, Negri and others is very striking, radical and Marxian. Wherever he speaks of socialism and communism as the future human society, he is closer to Marx than all the people we have mentioned. Hudis is among the few who have based their discussion of the Marxist version of socialism on the fundamental and essential indicator of the negation of the “law of value”. He carefully follows Marx’s discussions in the Grundrisse in relation to the critique of the socialism of the Proudhon’s Coupon Socialism and his English associates. In his pursuit, he dwells on a point in Marx’s words. Where he says: “The economic concept of value does not arise among the ancients. Value, separate from price, was a purely legal category, which was invoked against fraud, etc…
This concept is the most abstract manifestation of capital itself and the production based on it. In the concept of value, the secret of capital is revealed” (p. 170 of the book). Hudis quotes these and, referring to other parts of Marx’s critique of Proudhon’s bourgeois socialism or his other references to the economic relations of the future society, he draws the completely correct conclusion that Marx’s aim is to show the fundamental contradiction between socialism and the law of value. He then adds, following the quote, “Consequently, just as the production of value and exchange value did not dominate society before capital, they will not dominate after capitalism” (p. 170). This conclusion is not without flaws, because Marx’s argument is not only the negation of the dominance of the law of value but also its abolition. However, the fact that Hudis highlights this indicator is important and indicates his serious differences with many contemporary Marx scholars.
Hudis rightly tries to show that Marx calls any form of survival of commodity relations and exchange of products based on the “law of value” in the future society a baseless bourgeois idealization and an illusion of bourgeois socialists. He first quotes Marx as saying: “Thus, if it is assumed that all members of society are direct workers, the exchange of quantities equal to hours of labour is possible only on condition that there has been a prior agreement on the number of hours to be spent on material production. But such an agreement negates individual exchange.” Then he himself continues: “Marx here depicts a situation in which a social average acting behind the workers – socially necessary labour time – no longer dictates how much time the worker must spend on the production of a given product, but rather the associated producers have already agreed on the amount of time. Material production is now determined by the conscious decisions of the producers. Instead of being determined by the autonomous force of value production. Such a situation negates individual exchange, in that products are not exchanged on the basis of the amount of labour time embodied in them. Marx seems to be clear and explicit on this point. (p. 144)
In this context, and elsewhere in the same book, Hudis goes on to another point from Marx’s Grundrisse. Marx said, “…abolish the rise and fall of prices. That is, get rid of prices. This means abolishing exchange value, which in turn requires abolishing the system corresponding to the bourgeois system of society. The latter requires transforming bourgeois society economically. It was then clear from the very beginning that the evils of bourgeois society could not be alleviated by a vulgar transformation or the establishment of a rational monetary system.” Heudis, after quoting Marx, explains: “But why does Marx criticize the Proudhonists so strongly for proposing changes in the sphere of exchange? The reason is that the abolition of prices and exchange value presupposes a revolutionary transformation of the fundamental relations of production. Marx means by the transformation of bourgeois society in economic terms the radical transformation of the relations of production which, correspondingly, creates new relations of distribution…” (p. 150)
Based on his correct interpretation of Marx’s words, Hudis writes: “But the relations of production of socialist or communist society abolish abstract labour. The actions and tendencies of individuals are no longer subject to an abstract average that operates without regard to them. With this transformation, which involves the abolition of alienated labour, the production of value comes to an end. How is it possible, then, that the products of labour in such a society can be exchanged for one another? The answer is that they cannot be exchanged for one another.” (p. 266) He expresses the same correct inference from Marx’s words elsewhere in the book as follows: “In capitalism, the social character of production is established only after the fact, by the elevation of products to exchange values and the exchange of these values, while in socialism the social character of labour is presupposed and participation in the world of commodities, in consumption, does not occur through the mediation and exchange of the products of the labour of independent workers. This is done through the mediation of social production within which the individual continues his activity” (p. 159).
One of the highlights of Hudis’s arguments in this book is his careful attention to the fundamental contradiction between the camp discourse of the phasing of socialism and Marx’s own words on this particular subject. He rightly insists that Marx did not in any way phase the socialist transformation of the economy, did not distinguish between socialism and communism, saw them as one, and did not speak of distinct periods of socialism and communism. Hudis adds that Marx considered the abolition of wage labour to be the fundamental and identifying characteristic of socialism and never discussed the possibility of wage labour continuing in socialism even in the first stages of its establishment. “It is important to emphasize that Marx does not say that compensation for labour in the lower stage of socialism or communism depends on the level of output produced by the worker. Instead, it depends on the natural scale of labour, that is, on time, the actual number of hours worked by the individual. The difference between labour and labour time is a crucial analytical distinction, and confusing the two easily leads to a misunderstanding of Marx’s position. Marx does not propose that the principle operating in the lower stage of socialism or communism is ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his work.’ Such a formulation is found neither in the Critique of the Gotha Program nor in any of Marx’s works” (p. 270).
Heudis, of course, omits very important points in this part of his discussion. He makes no mention of the absolutely identity principle of “voluntariness of labour” in socialism, even in the very heyday of the domination of socialist planning of labour and production by the working masses. Moreover, although he has made the most thorough analysis to correctly understand Marx’s famous phrase “from each according to his ability, to each according to his labour” and has drawn the most precise conclusions, he has forgotten the issue of historicity and the historical necessity of seeing this discussion. The fact is that this entire part of Marx’s statements in the “Critique of the Gotha Program” is dedicated to the specific historical conditions of the period in which the aforementioned critique was written. A period in which the level of social production and the product of human labour in the most advanced societies was stunningly low and insignificant, not only in comparison with today, but even in comparison with 30 years later. It is clear that with the change in that situation and the galactic rise of the social product of labour and the production of the working masses, the relevance of “to each according to his work” was also eliminated. Hudis does not address these points, but he makes a correct and successful effort to present an accurate picture of the Marxian theory of “from each according to his ability and to each according to his work” and to extract the real carcass of this formula from the dense layers of capitalist distortions of the camp parties.
Hudis makes the necessary efforts to adhere to the important components of the abolition of wage labour, the complete abolition of the law of value, the role of “associated producers” in the planning of labour and production, or “conscious decisions of producers” in the social organization of labour, as identity indicators of the socialist transformation of the economy. To demonstrate the decisive importance of these indicators in the Marxian model of socialism, he reviews all of Marx’s works and provides readers with a detailed list of evidence. His work in this passage is, if not unparalleled, certainly rare and valuable. There is nothing to say about this. His problem is another important issue. An issue so fundamental that it questions and discredits his achievements in the field of understanding and recognizing the Marxist narrative of communism. The core of our discussion and the subject of this article’s criticism of Hudis also lies here. The purpose of writing the present article was to address this issue. What we have brought up so far has served as an introduction, albeit a longer introduction than the main subject, but a necessary and perhaps inevitable one, to enter one of the most fundamental issues of the class struggle of the proletariat and the anti-capitalist movement of the working class. Let’s see what is the story and what is the fundamental problem of Hudis in exploring the Marxist alternative to socialism?
In his search for an understanding of Marx’s alternative to capitalism, Hudis is caught up in exactly the same problem that he was struggling with throughout his quest to understand the twists and turns of Marx’s life or the dynamics of his social campaign, from the time of his critique of Kant and Fichte, to his passing through Spinoza, his joining Hegel, his radical critique of Hegel and old and new Hegelianism, to his ascent to the beating heart of the proletarian anti-capitalist struggle and the communism of the abolition of wage labour. We have said that at every point in these searches, he followed Marx, a man of philosophical conduct and a diver in the sea of ideas, never and nowhere did he look at the earth of life, at social existence, at the crude dialectic of the campaign, at the material troubles that dominated the lives of the people of whom Marx was a member, at the predicaments that beset these people. He only saw a Marx who gathers his belongings to a philosophical and ideological home, rebels against the philosophy, belief, and thought of the inhabitants of that home, continues on his path alone, ascends like a Simorgh from one nest to the next, and along the way achieves the union of the proletariat and communism. Hudis examines Marx’s understanding of the alternative to capitalism with exactly the same perspective. He looks at Marx who, following the above continuous journey and discoveries, has finally discovered the indicators and components of the society beyond capitalism and has retold its basic and identity indicators in the lines of his writings. He seems to think that all the misery or happiness, captivity or freedom, exploitation or liberation from exploitation, subordination or domination over work and life, self-alienation or egotism of the man of the era, is circled around the axis of not knowing or knowing the real indicators of socialism and is locked to this axis. He, who is everywhere and, in all searches, is a prisoner of the spiral of thoughts and instead of going from earth to heaven, here too, hangs everything on the crosshairs of belief. He is guilty of this great and very gross mistake that the root of all wandering lies in the inferiority of thoughts. Hudis sees an identity conflict between the communism of the Leninist camp or parties and the Marxist narrative of communism, but he seeks the basis of this conflict in the depths of the opposing ideas. He falls into the abyss of the worst mistake when he sees Marx’s alternative to capitalism in the very indicators of a society beyond capitalism or communism in the form of a society. A deep and Marxian understanding of these components is undoubtedly of great importance, but Marx’s alternative to the system of wage slavery is not the indicators and identifying signs of the future society, but the labour movement, and only the labour movement, has the capacity, power, preparation, intelligence, knowledge, efficiency, expertise, and readiness necessary to end the existence of the capital relationship and establish communism. It must be emphasized that this issue is the most vital and most identity-defining boundary between Marx’s radical anti-capitalist communism and camp communism and Leninist parties. Socialism will not exist without the abolition of wage labour, without the complete abolition of the law of value, without the active, conscious, free, interfering, creative, influential, and council participation of all members of the working masses in the planning of work, production, and social life. This is one of the most obvious axioms, but the real battle in the world of thought is not over the acceptance or non-acceptance of this issue. The battle is over which current and objective class movement, with which approach, which indicators, on which platform of struggle, with which understanding of the demands of the day, with which perspective, which organization, which practical strategy and tactics, which everyday solutions and solutions, which awareness and consciousness, which ability, and by passing through which rocks and spirals, will be able to overthrow capitalism and establish communism adorned with high real indicators. The living alternative to Marx is not that perspective, but this movement. Let us pay attention to this point. “No historical social system collapses before all the necessary productive forces have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace the old relations of production before the material conditions of its existence within the framework of the old society have reached maturity.” In the exploration of socialism as a society, the entire discussion is about the material conditions of its establishment, but these material conditions, contrary to the idea of Leninist parties, are absolutely not isolated from the growth and development of capitalism. The driving force, the decisive and determining force of everything in these material conditions, is only the movement of the working class to abolish wage labour. Marx’s statement about the emergence of the material conditions of a superior society within the core of the old society, when it is related to socialism, should be understood in this way. Here we witness the existence of differences compared to previous periods. The capitalist mode of production grew out of serfdom and feudal relations. The development of capitalism accompanied the dissolution of feudalism. The bourgeoisie entered history riding the wave of the development of the new mode of production and made the needs of the expansion and domination of capitalism the charter of its historical existence. The more and more the relationship of buying and selling labour power developed, the stronger the bourgeoisie became and the more it had to say. The process of the growth, development, and domination of capitalism was also the process of the rise, dominance, and power of the capitalist class. The bourgeoisie extracted its demands, expectations, outlook, politics, rights, civilization, model of government, planning of the economic order, thoughts, culture, ideology and everything else from the context of the needs of a certain mode of production that existed and was expanding. In the struggle against the monarchy and the church and the institutions of the old system, it prescribed the needs of this mode of production, demanded the right to vote and parliament and democracy, freedom of speech and the press, the creation of schools, the establishment of civil institutions, freedom of trade, customs tariffs, diplomacy and the like as mechanisms to pave the way for the development and domination of this mode of production. Such was the “growth of new superior relations within the framework of the old society” in relation to capitalism and for the bourgeoisie.
This is not the case with the growth and empowerment of communism and the proletariat under the rule of capitalism. Here, there is no such thing as a socialist mode of production that is growing. A new form of production does not develop so that the proletariat can use its power as a weapon in its campaign. Even if the growth of capitalism ends in a spiral, it is still the growth of capitalism. There is no doubt that capitalism creates the material foundations of socialism with its development, but the interpretation of the issue by the leaders of the Second International and Leninist parties is deeply unrealistic, not Marx’s, but a complete distortion of Marx’s words. Here, within the framework of capitalist rule, “new superior relations” are not taking shape and growing. What should be growing, branching out, and gaining strength is the movement for the abolition of wage labour by the working class. A movement who’s coming to power is a prerequisite for the establishment of socialism. Under the total domination of the barbarities, atrocities and holocausts of the bourgeoisie, it must grow, branch out, become aware, capable and efficient, and in the continuation of this process, seize the power to destroy the wage slavery system and liberate itself and humanity. The whole discussion is about this movement. If the bourgeoisie, under the domination of the serfdom and feudal system, made the requirements for the growth and establishment of a new and expanding mode of production the manifesto of its historical existence, power and dominance, the proletariat is only in attacking the real foundations of the existence of capitalism that it lays the real foundation of communism and builds and establishes the building of the future society. Precisely for this reason and in this regard, the labour movement, with any degree of deviation from the real track of the anti-capitalist struggle, with any degree of falling into the trap of right-wing union reformism or left-wing militant reformism of Leninism, also throws down the flag of the growth and establishment of communism. Because it complements the power of the bourgeoisie, both in its existence and in its absence, and strengthens the foundations for the survival of the ruling reactionary relations.
Nowhere in his Marx studies does Hudis glance at the proletariat’s communist and abolitionist movement. A movement without which, without its flourishing, expression, and powerful rebellion, talk of a real alternative to capitalism, talk of Marx’s communism and the working class would be a fantasy. By creating unions and parties and hanging the labour movement on the noose of unions and parties, one cannot pave the way to establishing a Marxist alternative to capitalism. This is the root of the problem. Marx, in direct opposition to what the author of “Marx’s Understanding of the Alternative to Capitalism” thinks, in a practice that is opposed to the prevailing and dominant communism of the twentieth century, in fundamental contradiction to the communism of Leninist parties, considers his real alternative to the system of wage slavery to be the living anti-capitalist movement of the working masses, a movement that is the true container of communism, has the capacity to truly abolish capitalism, but in order to do so and play such a role, it must be anti-capitalist in all aspects of its existence and be the embodiment of the growth of communism present in the depths of society. Marx hangs his great human ideals on the ups and downs of this movement. The proletariat is everything for Marx, and precisely for this reason, the way in which forces are arranged, the type of organization, the level of expectations and demands, the degree of awareness, the nature of the anti-regime, the horizon, strategy, solution and other issues of the day of the labour movement in the arena of struggle with the bourgeoisie, constitute the most decisive factors in his calculations for determining the fate of humanity and for the architecture of a world that guarantees human liberation. Based on his understanding of history and class struggle, and in contrast to the interpretations of the Second International and Lenin, Marx considers the proletariat and its self-propelling class anti-capitalism to be the source of communism. It is at this same boiling and raging source of anti-capitalism that he looks. Here, with the sharp eye of his dialectician, he observes the existence of a germ that is alive. It has the power to flourish; it has the capacity and fullness and the ability to branch out. It is a movement. A living and class movement that, like any other living being, requires a lot of work and a lot of work to grow, be consistent, strong, mature and triumph. Outside of that, there is no such thing as real communism, anti-wage labour and Marxist communism, but this living communism, innate in the working class or the labour movement, is exposed from the ground and the sky to the nightmare of right and left reformism. If it is not able to repel these nightmares, it will not flourish, will not gain strength, will not achieve the necessary skeleton, and in this case, there will be no talk of the real elimination of capitalism, of the communism of the abolition of wage labour as the only true alternative to the system of wage slavery. To understand Marx’s understanding of the alternative to capitalism, one must look at the movement for the abolition of wage labour by the proletariat and recognize this movement. Throughout the twentieth century and the years before and after it, all of Marx’s words on various issues related to the class struggle of the capitalist era have been distorted and distorted, but it can be boldly claimed that in the meantime, the basis of his understanding of a class called the proletariat has been distorted more, more deeply, and more catastrophically than all other issues. All Marx said was that the germ and germ of communism is the abolition of wage labour at the very core of the working class, in the material existence of the labour movement. Communism is not an idea, a theory, a philosophy or an ideal, but rather a fluid, dynamic, growing and maturing anti-capitalism of wage slaves. It is not an idea, model or ideal that was discovered by the master riders of the world of thought, the high-ranking scholars of the classes with means and equipment, but a crashing anti-wage labour movement of the working class that was born with the historical birth of this class. The real blood of Marx’s talk about communism and its source is, first of all, it’s being a movement and its working-class origin. The most essential boundary between Marx’s alternative to capitalism and Lenin’s version of communism is precisely here, a boundary that is the starting point of the complete separation of these two approaches in all areas of the proletariat’s class struggle. From this real source of difference is that one becomes a way to establish communism abolishing wage labour, while the second becomes a bourgeois solution to decorate and embellish the capitalist system in various ways. Communism for the leaders of the Second International, Bolshevism, Comintern, Leninist parties and all Leninists, is a school, ideology and Sharia. Sharia that is in search of its own movement and sees its movement as the way to liberate man. A scientific, revolutionary, overthrowing and anti-capitalist thought and ritual that has been discovered and invented by an individual, individuals or a group of radical intellectuals of the wealthy classes!! But it is the prescription for saving the working masses and all toiling people from the evil of capitalist exploitation and all forms of exploitation, lack of rights, oppression, the existence of classes and class society!! This communism is not a movement that must become conscious and thoughtful, on the contrary, it is an idea that must acquire a material body, the material is not a thinking, thinking, growing, and maturing phase, on the contrary, it is a theory and theory that in order to perform miracles, heal, and fulfil its human and historical mission, it must make the exploited and inferior masses its physical skeleton. This communism inevitably and by definition of its standard-bearers needs apostles, imams, intermediaries of grace, and elites. People from the world of philosophy, knowledge, wisdom, and people who have a high capacity for acquiring knowledge and the power to understand mysteries. The foundation of Lenin’s theory of the party, or more generally, the theory of the need to form a “communist party” in general, is here and is based on this narrative of communism. A party composed of people who believe, are faithful, loyal to the thought and Sharia called communism, who take on the mission of communicating this religion to the inferior masses and accept playing this role as their profession, job, and ideological duty. So far, in the dominance of this narrative, the working masses themselves are useless, they have no influence and no role. They are “unreasonable”, “unthinking”, “unfeeling”, and “unthinking”. Their liberation from these calamities depends on the role played by the party. They must fight for the overthrow of the political regime in the footsteps of the banner party. They must obey the programs, tactics, charters, resolutions and all the resolutions of the party’s congress and central committee, bring the party to power and consider the party’s power as their own power. The top and bottom of the existence or philosophy of the proletariat’s existence, in Lenin’s narrative of communism, can be summed up to this extent. A class that was born as a material mass, an instrument of history, and must remain forever as such an instrument!! Leninist parties, while decorating the entire world with the image of the proletariat as history-making, heroism, revolution and the only saviour of humanity!!! They degrade the role of this class in practice and in the process of material changes in history to such an extent that when this version of communism speaks of the proletariat, it only has in mind its party, committee, office and organizational apparatus. The proletariat with the magical revolutionary and history-making power it refers to is simply the proletariat that has the collar of obedience of its sect, organization and party around its neck.
The alternative to capitalism, this communist narrative, regardless of what its founders, supporters, supporters and standard-bearers say, regardless of any image they have on their minds or paint in their media, regardless of all this, is and cannot be anything other than a form of capitalist work and production planning or a type of economic, political, civil and legal order of wage slavery. This is even more obvious than the most obvious geometric theorems. The cornerstone of this communism is based on the miracle-working, mission, fieldwork and role-playing of the party and the party-based saviours on the one hand and the allegiance, support, military infantry and obedience of the working masses to the party and leaders on the other. But the transition from capitalism, the elimination of the relationship of buying and selling labour, the elimination of wage labour and the complete abolition of the law of value require the compulsory and inescapable presence of all individual workers. The working class, the vast majority of whose members have acquired the ability, efficiency, and necessary conditions to play this role from within a solid anti-capitalist soviet movement at war with the bourgeoisie in all spheres of social life. This movement, and only this movement, is the real alternative to capitalism. This movement has the capacity and power to establish communism, the abolition of wage labour, as a society, as an economic and social structure. When we talk about the Marxian alternative to capitalism, we must focus all our intelligence and senses on the real conditions and needs for the radical growth of this movement. If this movement succumbs to reformism, if it falls into the abyss of anti-people imperialism, if it follows the capitalist super-class anti-regime. If it dresses up as the infantry of the democratic revolution, if it plays the role of the army of the party above it, then the discussion of the Marxian alternative to capitalism will be a futile exercise.
Hudis does not see this reality. He is rightly critical of Soviet camp; he sees a fundamental conflict between the product of the October Revolution and Marx’s alternative to capitalism. He is right up to this point, but his fundamental problem lies from here on. What he does not see is that if the October Revolution gave birth to such an uneven, deformed, and octopus-like child, it would not have been because of the illiteracy and ignorance of the midwives of the revolution about the components of Marxian’s communism and the abolition of wage labour. The entire strategy and methods of Bolshevism, the entire Leninist orientation of Bolshevism, this group’s understanding of capitalism and socialism and the role of the labour movement, its organization, anti-regime, and the process of anti-capitalist struggle of this movement, all of this was fundamentally capitalist and in the service of establishing state capitalism, or camp communism. The twisted version of Bolshevism and Lenin’s approach to the labour movement not only did not help pave the way for the growth, rebellion, and dominance of the proletariat’s living communist alternative to capitalism, but it made this path rocky and impassable in every respect. Lenin’s theory of communism, first of all, denies the existence of the germ of an alternative to wage slavery in the social existence of the working class. Basically, it does not accept the existence of such a capacity, germ, and nucleus in the labour movement that would be capable of flourishing, branching out, and gaining ground. Secondly, and because of the denial of the existence of such a thing, it is an obstacle to any degree of growth, development and maturity of this alternative. The Leninist approach of communism is that the only mission that it assigns to the working masses is to pledge allegiance to the party, join the party, obey the party’s orders, play the role of infantry for the party, overthrow the state machine of the day of the bourgeoisie and bring the party to power. The discussion is not about formulations. It is about the tangible and visible earthly realities of the class struggle. It is about certain material events that have been dressed up as facts in history. All of this screams enough that in this approach or bourgeois and popular narrative of communism, the proletariat is merely a code name for the party, and the political power of the working class is nothing other than the party power machine. In this regard and for all these reasons, state capitalism or what was established after the October Revolution in Russia and then in part of the world, is the only destiny, alternative and horizon before Leninist parties. Communism, this approach, is not born in the land of the life, work, and struggle of the working class. It is not fundamentally the communism of the proletariat. Communism is the architected propaganda of other classes for the working masses. To be more precise, it is the communism of the bourgeoisie. By the intellectuals of this class, but under a false flag and in the form of unauthorized goods, under the name of Marx and adorned with the name, tradition, and prestige of the proletariat, it is supposed to replace one form of capitalist work planning and production with another.
Hudis throws a veil over all these realities. In his search for a Marx alternative to the system of wage slavery, he completely crosses out the existence of the proletariat, the living anti-wage labour movement of the working class, and what is the materialistic, intellectual carcass of this alternative, and instead lists the components and indicators of a society that can only be established by this movement and with its capable hands. Why does Hudis make this huge mistake? The answer is the same as we said above. Communism in his view is a kind of thought and theory. His idea is that the establishment of a real or unreal communist society is also a matter of various calculations and the limits and precision of thoughts. If people or party leaders know the Marx indicators of communism well and hang them on their minds and ears, they will definitely establish a communist society with workers’ and Marxian standards and criteria!!! If they do not do so and the promised architectural society does not possess these characteristics, one must doubt their understanding of the components and Marxian criteria of communism!!!
This is the basis of Hudis’s understanding of communism and the Marxist alternative to capitalism, despite all his profound Marxian research. An attitude that in turn is a way of looking at communism from the bourgeoisie or a form of expression of bourgeois communism. Hudis is by no means alone in this field, even in this path of searching for and explaining communism. A significant part of the “Marxists” who claim to criticize the Soviet camp belong to this same school and religion worldwide. In our society, “Mansour Hekmat” and his numerous supporters and associates viewed and continue to view the Marxist alternative to capitalism exactly in the way Hudis did and based on his understanding of communism. “Hekmat” insisted on his stubborn adherence to “Leninism”. He exposed the fundamental gap between Lenin’s approach to class struggle and Marxian communism and the abolition of wage labour. He summarized the entire beginning and end of his critique of Bolshevism’s record in Russia from 1902 to the end of the 1930s, without knowing the work of the Soviet Communist Party in the years after Lenin’s death and during Stalin’s rule. With these analyses and works, he fell into the abyss of bourgeois communism in all aspects of his orientations. Like any other approach of bourgeois communism, he also created the most controversies around communism and the working class, but practically and in the field of the ground class struggle, he completely denied the foundation of the existence, objectivity and role of the anti-capitalist movement of the masses of the working class as the only material alternative to capitalism and the necessary and inevitable condition for the destruction of the wage slavery system. He did not see communism in the social and class existence of the working masses, which he saw in the existence of the party, nor the communist movement as the clear flow of the growth, flourishing and maturity of the working class’s self-propelled anti-capitalism in the process of the ongoing class struggle against capital, which he explored in the ideologies, policies and role-playing of the party and party personalities. He reduced the objectivity of the proletariat’s existence to being an instrument of the party and playing the role of the party’s infantry above itself and alien to itself. The party substituted figures for the working class and the anti-capitalist movement, for the abolition of wage labour by the masses of this class. The communism of wisdom, even at its best, did not depart a millimetre from the familiar camp capitalism. This is something that the Leninist parties are unable to recognize and understand.
Communism is a twisted version of the thought and consciousness of the propertied classes, a communism that does not spring from the depths of the conditions of work, exploitation, life, and struggle of the working masses, a communism that does not have its germ of life in the spontaneous antagonism of the workers with capital, is bourgeois communism. No matter how much fuss and fuss the bourgeoisie that carries the banner of this communism makes, what claims full of intensity and absurdity it weaves together, how it adorns the office and the handiwork of its party with the name, symbol, and sayings of Marx, including the indicators and components he emphasized for an alternative to wage slavery, it does not fundamentally change the matter. The Marxist alternative to capitalism is, first and foremost, the ongoing, radical, and anti-wage labour movement of the masses of the working class, a movement that originates from the self-proclaimed class anti-capitalism of the workers and must grow, take shape, and gain strength in all areas of anti-capitalist and radical social life. When Marx speaks with emphasis of the origin of communism in the social existence of the proletariat, he is referring to precisely this internal anti-capitalism. The germ of this alternative is here, and now all that is being discussed is the conditions, requirements, path and manner of development and rebellion of this alternative, the barriers, obstacles and rocks in the way of this development, the mechanisms of challenging these barriers and crossing these rocks, and in a word, the resolution of all these issues in the context of life and the spiral of the ongoing class struggle of the working masses.
It is clear that the fundamental obstacle to the growth, structuring, and flourishing of the communist alternative to capitalism is the mode of production and the capitalist system itself in all aspects of its existence. Capital, with its emergence, development, process of seeking domination, and finally its complete and total domination, seals and mines all areas of life, the sphere of thought, the boundaries of expectations and demands, the standards of rights and entitlements, cultural and moral values, the nature of traditions and habits, the horizon ahead, the circle of protest, the twists and turns of struggle, and everything else of the working class with the criteria and standards of its own cycle of valorisation. In this same passage, the wage slavery system also reaches for all possible solutions for the insoluble contradictions between labour and capital and for containing the ongoing struggles arising from these contradictions. The most fundamental problem on the path to the growth of inherent anti-capitalism or the germ of internal communism of the working class, or the labour alternative to capitalism, is the dominant power and Cairo of capital, in the above areas. In order for the endogenous communism of the labour movement to flourish, flourish, and be an objective example of the growth of working-class communism, it must engage with capital in all areas and spheres of social life and take the path of struggle.
The first link in this chain is the arena of struggle over everyday demands. The basis of the capitalists and the capitalist system is to put the process of proposing these demands by the workers under the greatest possible pressure. To ensure that the price of the workers’ labour power remains as low as possible. The working conditions are as exhausting and inexpensive as possible. The longer the daily work and the more crushing the intensity and speed of work, the more the livelihood of the working masses is slaughtered, and their expectations are not raised. In short, the necessary labour force becomes lighter and lighter in favour of additional labour wherever possible. The capitalists and their government demand that the workers comply with this situation. The opposite trend applies to the workers. They naturally and conventionally demand that their working and living conditions be improved as much as possible. They want greater welfare and facilities; they demand greater physical comfort and higher mental peace. They see the scope of their real human needs as wider; they consider the fulfilment of these needs as their inalienable right and add to their urgent demands. Because of all this, they want to further increase the burden of necessary labour, at the expense of surplus labour, and impose their highest expectations on capitalists and the state. This is a completely natural and conventional process of confrontation between two classes, the capitalist and the working class, and what has the first and last word in this is only the power, vitality and presence of the classes of the sides of this confrontation. The power of the capitalist class is the power of capital. A power that is violent in all aspects of its existence. It is a huge mistake if we summarize the violence of the bourgeoisie in special forms of military, police, security or in the existence of prisons, courts, judicial courts, torture canters and generally its physical repression devices. Capital in the bond, the bond of existence itself is the manifestation of the totality of violence and oppression. Economic coercion in the form of livelihood massacre and imposing poverty, hunger, misery, displacement, unsanitary and uneducated on the working masses is the most common and at the same time the most crushing weapon of capital’s coercion. The educational system and the devices for producing thought, law, civility, ethics, culture, democracy, and religion are all institutions of capital power for the intellectual suppression of the working class.
Capital exercises this total power by force against the workers’ movement, and the internal communism or the internal anti-capitalism of this movement, in order to survive, to be proud and to rebel, must everywhere and in all areas of the campaign respond to the power of capital with anti-capitalist power and the violence of capital with violence against capital. We started from the circle of struggle over the urgent demands of the day. The internal communism of the workers’ movement in this circle, in the most basic, comprehensive and most coercive field of struggle, must and can rely on the gathering and application of the total fighting power of the masses of its class. The meaning of relying on class power is very clear and does not need interpretation. The real class power of the working masses cannot be hanged on the law, rights and civilization of capital. When this happens, it is no longer anti-capital power, but a very decisive part of the power of capital, in the service of the capitalist system, against the internal communism of the working class and a tool for the exercise of capital’s violence against any form of growth and development of the internal anti-capitalism of the workers’ movement. The process of struggle between the working masses and the bourgeoisie is not doomed to its own dissolution in the political, legal, and civil order of capital. Workers in the war for their economic and welfare demands can and have the capacity not to sign any pact, treaty, or contract that implies consensus with the bourgeoisie. They should see their weapon as their united, organized, soviet, and anti-capitalist power only, and make this power more aware, making the Marxist critique of political economy, the materialist and Marxist understanding of history, radical materialism, and Marxist practice the lifeblood and daily food of this power. They should use it as efficiently and consciously as possible on the battlefield to achieve their demands. The labour movement at every level, in every period, and under every circumstance has its own internal conscious people, and all of the above work can be done within this movement. Marx was also a product of this movement and an individual of it. The endogenous communism of the labour movement has the capacity to respond to the power of capital in all spheres with anti-capitalist power. It stops the wheel of labour and production from turning. It does this not within the framework of capitalist union treaties, but by relying on anti-capitalist soviet power. When the target of the onslaught of the forces of bourgeois violence is reached, it does not spread the rumour of the illegality of repression. It sees it as the inherent and vital law of capital and, to counter it, resorts to broader and more effective anti-capitalist power. It narrows the field for the cycle of capital’s profitability. It blocks the channels of profit and capital production more tightly. It makes education, health, medicine and treatment, care for the elderly and the elderly and many other welfare facilities free for the entire population of society at the cost of surplus labour and at the cost of reducing the volume of surplus values. It shortens the daily work in the same way and again by drying up the source of surplus value production on a wider scale.
Prohibit all forms of child labour and entrust the provision of the best facilities, education, and health to the surplus labour or profit of the capitalist class. Do whatever it takes to burden the necessary labour force, to put capital in a position where it cannot reproduce itself. Inexorably confront the crushing fall in the rate of profit and the storm of crisis and do much else.
The endogenous communism of the labour movement has the power to do the same in all other circles of association with capital. In the area of freedom-seeking, human rights, civilization, culture, ethics, social values that play the role of border guards and guardians of the profit-making territory for the bourgeoisie, it should raise its class and anti-capitalist banner, and seek the way to achieve any degree of freedom in changing the balance of forces of the day in favour of its class, in increasing its ability to attack the strongholds of capital power, in relying on the united power of the working masses to weaken, wear out, and disrupt the bourgeois state machine as widely and deeply as possible, in drying up as widely and crushingly as possible the sources of economic security for the octopus-like apparatuses of capital’s power by making the necessary labour force more crushing at the expense of surplus labour and the type of these levers. It should see the criterion of freedom everywhere, in every context and condition, as the most decisive reduction in the pressure of the domination of the law of value and the wage labour relation on social and human life, and it should tie the increased provision and further development of freedoms to the exercise of the most crushing power against the existence of capital.
the basis of the approach and nature of the orientations of the endogenous communism of the labour movement in other areas of class struggle and social disputes is and can be like this. In the fight against criminal sexual discrimination, catastrophic environmental pollution, child labour, the existence of poverty, hunger, displacement and homelessness, dictatorship, numerous forms of oppression and social injustice, everywhere the sharp mongoose of the urgent demands of the day is aimed at the heart of the existence of capital. It gathers together the whole of any kind of empty Martian sloganeering and makes a direct attack on the existence of capitalism, on the relation of production of surplus value, on the political order, civil society, the legal system and on all institutions of bourgeois power through the exercise of effective nationwide and soviet power.
The inherent anti-capitalism of the working class or the communism within the boiling of this class, in the process of expanding knowledge, raising consciousness and continuously developing its self-consciousness as its true class foundation, when it looks at capital and capitalism, it sees the relationship of buying and selling labour power, the relationship of producing surplus value, the relationship of separating man from labour and the means of labour and the product of labour, the relationship of excluding the worker from any interference in the fate of his life, it explains capitalism not with the anarchy of production and competition and the lack of centralized planning but with wage labour. When it speaks of socialism and its alternative to the system of wage slavery. It brings before it a society freed from wage labour, a society without any separation of people from their work and the fate of their work and life, a society based on the planning of work and production and the order of social life by councils consisting of all human beings and involving their more penetrating, creative, more aware and free intervention. It searches for communism in its own being and not in the grooves of the brains of the intellectuals of the upper classes. Anti-capitalist overthrow and not anti-democratic and bourgeois regimes are the agenda. Communism within the working class is Marxian’s in all these areas and arenas. It speaks with the language of Marx, investigates with the eyes of Marx, and advances with the intellect of Marx.
In this regard, on this basis, with this strategy and by resorting to these solutions, it can advance step by step in this hell of dirt and blood of wage slavery and establish the position and place of an independent and decisive class power. It will split capitalist society in two. It will place the power of anti-capitalist workers against capitalist society. With this strategy and path of struggle, the internal and homegrown communism of the working class can become a class movement that, despite being forced to be present in civil society, is not a member of this society but a radical power opposed to and at war with it. A class movement that is not dissolved in capitalism but is the standard-bearer and true manifestation of a class war on the ground for the complete dissolution of this system. A class movement that symbolizes the tolerance of all injustices and fights to uproot all injustices, seeking “not a historical position but a human position” for all humanity, not against the ruling political regime but against the existence of a society condemned to have a political regime over the people, a class movement that liberates all humanity with its freedom. In order to grow and gain strength, the endogenous communism of the workers’ movement needs to adopt such an approach and strategy and resort to such solutions and solutions, at all different stages and in all areas and spheres of confrontation with the bourgeoisie. In all these areas, it is engaged with capital in general and with all tendencies, layers and factions within the capitalist class. Different reformist approaches, including militant reformism, do the same thing as the entire bourgeoisie does in blocking the path to its flourishing and expression.
Marx’s alternative to capitalism is a radical, powerful, and militant labour movement that is the true and complete manifestation of the full development, flourishing, rebellion, and field of the endogenous communism of the working class. The container of this development, skeleton, and field is only the councils and the anti-capitalist council movement. The council here is not a specific organizational model or a type of organization. It is a movement. It is a manifestation of the development, growth, and rebellion of the internal communism of the working class. Here, all workers, from the most informed to the least informed, join hands. They do not depend on any force above them; they discuss their solutions and remedies; they make the Marxian understanding of capitalism their class consciousness and consciousness. They dig up the root of all injustices and injustices in capital and, in order to challenge and eliminate them, they attack the existence of capital and in any form the domination of capitalism over their working and living conditions. They prove their existence as a force ready and ready to plan the council of labour and socialist production. They become the standard-bearers of class war against class and against the entire system of wage slavery. They give the class struggle of the day the content and real face of the struggle between two classes over the existence and non-existence of capitalism. They become a living anti-capitalist force and the embodiment of the growth and maturity of their living alternative, Marx’s alternative to capitalism. Only this radical movement has the merit of being called the Marxian alternative to capitalism. In the world of his academic Marx studies, in his philosophical and ideological travels, Hudis has understood Marx’s words about the existence and non-existence of this or that economic-social formation well, much better than his other colleagues. An understanding that is commendable, but what he has found is not the Marxian alternative to capitalism, which at best is only what needs to be established by the capable hands of this alternative.
Marx’s alternative to capitalism is a radical, powerful, and fighter labour movement that is the true and complete manifestation of the full development, flourishing, rebellion, and field of the endogenous communism of the working class. The container of this development, skeleton, and field is only the councils and the anti-capitalist council movement. The council here is not a specific organizational model or a type of organization. It is a movement. It is a manifestation of the development, growth, and rebellion of the internal communism of the working class. Here, all workers, from the most informed to the least informed, join hands. They do not depend on any force above them; they discuss their solutions and remedies; they make the Marxian understanding of capitalism their class consciousness and consciousness. They dig up the root of all injustices and injustices in capital and, in order to challenge and eliminate them, they attack the existence of capital and in any form the domination of capitalism over their working and living conditions. They prove their existence as a force ready and ready to plan the council of labour and socialist production. They become the standard-bearers of class war against class and against the entire system of wage slavery. They give the class struggle of the day the content and real face of the struggle between two classes over the existence and non-existence of capitalism. They become a living anti-capitalist force and the embodiment of the growth and maturity of their living alternative, Marx’s alternative to capitalism. Only this radical movement has the merit of being called the Marxian alternative to capitalism. In the world of his academic Marx studies, in his philosophical and ideological travels, Hudis has understood Marx’s words about the existence and non-existence of this or that economic-social formation well, much better than his other colleagues. An understanding that is commendable, but what he has found is not the Marxian alternative to capitalism, which at best is only what needs to be established by the capable hands of this alternative. Communism, the abolition of wage labour, a classless human society freed from the misery of wage labour and the law of value, will only be built by a powerful workers’ movement that is a shining and radiant symbol of the growth and expression of the endogenous communism of the working class in the darkness of capitalist society and in the arena of struggle against capital. Marx’s real alternative to capitalism is this radical and tangible class movement. What Hudis has listed is merely the facade of the building that this movement and the vast mass of workers organized in its nationwide and soviet structure will build.
Social democracy, Leninist parties, the camp left and the whole of bourgeois communism deny the existence of spontaneous workers’ anti-capitalism or endogenous communism of the workers’ movement. All these trends, by insistently denying the origin of anti-wage labour communism in the conditions of work and life and the exploitation and struggle of the working masses, inevitably also deny and deny the possibility of the formation, structuring and growth of communism as an internal movement of the working class. The meaning and direct product of all their beliefs, ideas, and analyses is that communism is, in any case, a gift from the bourgeois sages to the working masses. Which is of course also true of their communism. But history, in its material and radical narrative, exposes all these deceptions and distortions. The history of class struggle is a vast repository of this great secret that the labour movement has brought its case of emergence to the ears of the world with its rebellious internal anti-capitalism, carrying the living seed and dream of communism. The uprising of the Italian workers led by the worker ” Ciompi Revolt ” in 1378 AD, with mixed demands for an increase in wages and political rights and the establishment of workers’ power, the great revolt of the workers of “Middlesex” in England in 1617 and their efforts to organize forces for a civil war against the bourgeoisie and the political regime defending the capitalists, the labour movement known as “Thuringia” in the region of “Mühlhausen” in Germany in the 18th century with the banner of establishing the revolutionary power of the “Eternal Council” and the demand for “socialization of all wealth” and participation of everyone in the production process, the abolition of any sovereignty and power over the heads of the masses of the population, the radical and anti-capitalist upsurge of the Chartist movement in England, the workers’ uprising that divided the city of Paris in the French Revolution of June 1848, the establishment of the First Workers’ International, the great and instructive workers’ revolution on March 18, 1871 and the establishment of the glorious workers’ power of the Paris Commune, the rebellious anti-capitalist radicalism of the workers of Russia during the last years The October Revolution, the uprising of the Anzal fishing workers in 1906, and their warning to the capitalist owner of the northern Iranian fisheries that their entire catch belonged to them and they would not give anything to the capitalist owner, are all real witnesses to the existence, defiance, and presence of this anti-capitalist movement, or the burgeoning and generative nucleus of the endogenous communism of the working class.
During these centuries, of course, approaches under the name of socialism, communism, and egalitarianism, with the claim of fighting for the liberation of the working masses from exploitation and oppression and the establishment of a classless society, have always expressed themselves within and on the margins of the world labour movement. They have done some work, have left limited or extensive effects. But these approaches have not had any similarity or homogeneity with the spontaneous anti-capitalism of the workers and with the communism within the working class. What imaginary socialists and people like Owen have put forward have been the misdirection’s of the likes of Proudhon and others of this type. Let us not forget that the homegrown communism of the working class, as its name suggests and in accordance with all the explanations we have given, is an approach. An approach that for a long time has not been normally accompanied by any concrete and planned perspective or any neat and tidy economic and social model. An approach that should be proud in the field of class struggle and its process of growth is at the same time a dynamic of organic preparation for planning the future society. Marxian communism is the clear, flourishing, well-built, mature and mature symbol of this approach. What the imaginary socialists before, during or after Marx have woven together and brought to the working masses, are not the alternatives fabricated by the bourgeoisie to mislead, corrupt and defeat this approach. Let us conclude the discussion. Marx’s alternative to capitalism in its essence, not communism as a structure, is first and foremost a living anti-capitalist movement and for the abolition of wage labour by the working masses. A movement that is the earthly manifestation and meaning of the development and field of the endogenous communism of the working class and the workers’ movement.
Nasser Paydar
March 2017