Communism: A World-Historical Movement

The Social Solution for the Proletariat of Every Society

Nasser Paydar June 2003

“The difference between communism and all previous movements lies in the fact that communism overturns the basis of all prior relations of production and intercourse; for the first time, it consciously examines naturally evolved premises as creations of human beings who have existed hitherto, strips them of their natural character, and subjects them to the power of individuals. Consequently, its organization that is, the material production of the conditions for this unity is essentially economic. Communism transforms existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality that communism creates insofar as reality is, in any case, merely the product of the prior intercourse of individuals constitutes precisely the actual basis that renders impossible the existence of anything independent of human individuals.” (¹)

Those who oppose the possibility of communism without a world revolution and who staunchly defend the phasing of socialism and communism deceive not only others but themselves when they centre their arguments regarding the feasibility of communism on the concept of the “country.” The crux of their position is not merely a denial that communism can be realized within a single “country,” but a denial of communism’s existence as a living, active social movement within the arena of class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. They fabricate a wholly baseless legitimacy for themselves when they use the democratic critique of the “Camp’s” bourgeois communism as proof of the validity of their own erroneous claims!

This article aims to examine the question of whether communism is possible in a given society in the absence of a simultaneous, worldwide communist revolution. To this end, we do not limit ourselves to merely scrutinizing the arguments of those who propound theories of “impossibility”; rather, we conduct a more rigorous investigation into the specific components or assumptions characteristic of the capitalist mode of production and prevailing conditions that have been (or might be) cited as grounds for the impossibility of communism in specific parts of the world. Subsequently, we will examine Marx’s explicit remarks and observations regarding this specific issue. Throughout the text, we endeavour to distil the essence of the “impossibility” thesis (or theses) from the elaborate justifications heaped upon them, aiming to reveal the true root of the problem and the fundamental nature of the dilemma facing these theorists.

The global nature of capitalism, the alienation of labour, and the international division of capitalist labour.

The alienation of labour from the worker and of the human being from the product of their labour within the capitalist system along with the global nature of the capitalist mode of production and the international character of the division of labour forms a central pillar of the argument held by those who maintain that communism is impossible in the absence of a world revolution. They rightly emphasize that capital possesses a global-historical existence; the various segments of global capital or the aggregate social capital of societies across the world are interconnected through the process of value augmentation and the mechanisms that sustain the reproduction of this process. From this premise, they conclude that without abolishing the fundamental and intrinsic laws of the capitalist system either globally or within its most advanced sectors the proletariat of any single society is incapable of eliminating wage-labour relations within the sphere of its own working conditions and social life.

Among the set of theories and discussions about the impossibility of communism in a certain political geography, it seems that the discourse containing this argument is the most serious and fundamental. The departure point of this discourse is to examine the reality of the capitalist production method on the one hand and the economic and social coordinates of communism as a type of human society on the other hand. According to the owners of this opinion, the essence of capital, the way of division of labour, the economic structure of capitalist production and the general laws of capitalist accumulation are such that it makes communism impossible in the political geography of a country. Based on this, in order to examine this discourse and to recognize and judge its validity and accuracy, it is necessary to take a deep look at the features that are of interest to them, whether it is related to the production of capitalism or communism. We also start the problem from here.

Communism is the movement to transform the existing objective reality with the aim of establishing a specific social form of the life process one whose emergence and consolidation render impossible the existence of anything independent of human beings. This is the most comprehensive and precise definition of communism conceived as a social form of the life process that can be articulated in a brief phrase. It is an objective reality that must be dismantled by the class and social forces of this movement to realize such a way of life. This objective reality consists of the capitalist mode of production, the commodification of labour power, and the entire commodity economy. It is through the development of the commodity economy culminating in the emergence of the wage-labour relationship and the expansion and dominance of the capitalist mode of production that the material foundations for human control over the products of their own labour collapse and living labour falls ever more deeply into the captivity of dead labour. Communism is the movement to alter this situation and bring about a monumental historical revolution in the material foundations of this system. To grasp the social content of this movement and the nature of the historical revolution it entails, one must deeply analyse the defining components of capitalist objective reality. Insofar as they pertain to the specific focus of this article, these indicators and components are as follows:

1. Wage labour: The capitalist system rests upon the relationship of buying and selling labour power and the production of surplus value. Wage labour constitutes the material basis of capitalist property. Consequently, any form of property grounded in wage labour is capitalist property. Whether this form of appropriation is individual, state-owned, cooperative, or otherwise, it alters nothing regarding the fundamental nature of the capitalist mode of production. It is the mode of production that defines the reality of property; within the capitalist system, the relationship involving the buying and selling of labour power or, more precisely, wage labour along with the production of surplus value and the self-expansion of capital, elucidates the essence of this mode of production and the class character of property.

2. The fetishist character of the commodity and the product of labour: The fetishization of the product of labour under capitalism entails the dissolution of human social existence into the requirements for the continuous reproduction of the capitalist mode of production. In a commodity economy generally and under the dominance of wage labour specifically interactions between human beings become crystallized as relationships between things. Homogeneity of human activities establishes the form of equality between the value objects of work products, and the relationship between producers or owners of activities assigns its place to the social relationship between objects or work products. According to Marx, the mystical and foggy mask envelops the entire material face of the production process, as if the world of commodities and the confrontation of separate products of labour and production, and then the laws and contracts intertwined in this social confrontation, dissolves all the elements of existence, autonomy, expectation and desire, thought and morality, the basics of life and living standards, and everything human. The producers of the products, as human beings, do not face each other with thoughts, beliefs and social horizons arising from the needs and requirements of the free growth of all, and the collective view of these requirements and needs is not the theme of their dealings. On the contrary, the products of their work in the process of exchanging with each other determine the type of life, need, social behaviour, how to think, the content of people’s relationships and other issues of human and public life. In this way, this is the nature of the commodity economy, which destroys the bond of natural connection between human beings, replaces the conflict of socially necessary work time embedded in commodities with the interaction of the social activity of the people who produce the commodities, and the basis of the relationship between the huge population of the product producer and the producer of consumption values, under the influence of necessities, and the exchange of commodities, has fallen from its free existence.

Under the capitalist mode of production, this process transforms into a pervasive and all-encompassing reality. With the dominance of the labour-power exchange relationship over society and human social existence, the fetishist character of the products of human labour deepens and intensifies to the ultimate possible stage. Here, the entirety of human social relations becomes fossilized within the opaque depths of the colossal sediment of relations between things. In the blink of an eye, a vast world comprising food, carpets, clothing, household goods, housing and construction, roads and ports and transport networks, chemical products, arsenals teeming with weaponry and military hardware, mass media and sophisticated propaganda apparatuses, computer systems, narcotics, diverse industrial products, livestock and poultry and animal products, and finally, a galaxy of immeasurable scope consisting of tools of labour and production in the form of capital is exchanged. This entire world-sized volume of social labour and production represents the socially necessary labour time of the vast workforce the mass of the global working class. But this vast mass of billions has engaged in the production of these goods not as free agents exercising their own will, nor based on a free assessment of the requirements for their own material and spiritual well-being, nor with the aim of fostering a prosperous, humane life for all; rather in stark contradiction to all of this they have acted as coerced individuals, compelled by the fact that selling their labour power is the condition for their survival, while the consumption of that labour power is essential for capital’s profitability. They have placed their socially necessary labour time at the disposal of capital, while their own human essence and true selves have been dissolved into the requirements of capital’s reproduction and effectively stripped of their own existence. It is no longer a matter of the value, status, or existence of commodities, nor merely of the nature, power, and role of capital or the intricacies of its very being; rather, it is the laws governing the exchange of products and the principles of capital’s self-organization that have engulfed the ongoing interactions of the human world in their dense, dark, and murky fog. Human beings the possessors of the labour power that creates these products hold no place, standing, or significance in determining the destiny of their lives or the fruits of their labour. An absolute inversion of reality governs the very existence of all things.

“Whence arises the enigmatic character of the product of labour as soon as it assumes the form of a commodity? Clearly, its origin lies in that very form. The equality of human labours takes on the objective form of an equality of the value-objectivity of the products of labour; the measure of the expenditure of human labour-power by the duration of time takes the form of the magnitude of value of the products of labour; and finally, the relations between the producers within which the social character of their labours is determined assume the form of a social relation between the products of labour.” (²)

The essence and existential philosophy of the commodity’s fetishist role lie in veiling the exploitation of labour; specifically, within the capitalist mode of production, it casts the heaviest and darkest veil over the fundamental exploitation of labour-power by capital. The illusory, deceptive appearance of equality regarding the value-objectivity of products in the capitalist market acts as a thick, steel-like curtain drawn over the grim reality of the most savage form of worker exploitation by capital and the capitalist system. In a supreme act of inversion, the pretence is maintained that it is truly these objects or commodities that are being exchanged with one another, and that the worker, in return for the labour performed or the product created, has received the value of that labour or output! The fetishist character of the commodity and of capital in particular acts like a photographic lens through which the entirety of existence appears inverted. Capital or the products of human labour, themselves the direct fruit of the relentless draining of the lifeblood of the vast labour force over the course of history, and the immediate outcome of the ceaseless exploitation of legions of wage-slaves manifests itself across the landscape of human existence as a self-subsisting entity, a “natural” product of capital’s own generation.

3. The process of enabling humanity to master nature and its own destiny collapses into a deeply contradictory trajectory. The process of the growth of productive forces, the material evolution of social formations, and the historical trajectory of human social life rather than aligning with the expansion of human agency and our growing capacity to harness nature and master our own destiny instead undergo an inversion: all this agency, active role, and immense transformative power are surrendered entirely to capital. Dead-end work effectively dominates living labour; decisions regarding whether or not to produce, the reasons for production or non-production, the scale of output, and indeed all matters concerning the social labour process and the human destiny, are all transferred to the dominion of capital. The worker’s relationship to the product of their own labour transforms into a relationship with a profoundly alien object. The more the worker exhausts themselves, the more powerful and monstrous becomes the alien world they create embodied as capital as it imposes its rule over their social existence. The worker creates a world of wealth, affluence, and beauty; yet this entire product, appearing in the guise of capital as a brutal oppressor devoid of any beauty or humanity, renders the lives of the producers in every aspect hideous and unbearable. In the labour process, the very act of creating power simultaneously enacts the worker’s own dispossession and alienation from that power. Their engagement with the work process is dictated by the compulsion to survive, while the product of their labour becomes the overpowering force that imposes this very necessity.

“The worker’s relationship to his own labour is a relationship to an alien object. The more the worker pours himself into his work, the more powerful the alien world of objects he creates becomes against him and in opposition to him; his inner life grows emptier, and fewer objects belong to him. The same process occurs in religion: the more man devotes himself to God, the less he retains for himself. The worker devotes his life to the production of an object, yet his life no longer belongs to him but to that object. Consequently, the more extensive this activity becomes, the fewer objects the workers possess. Whatever the product of his labour may be, he is no longer himself; thus, the greater the product, the less he remains himself. The worker’s alienation from the products he creates means not only that his labour has transformed into an object and an external entity, but also that his labour exists outside of him independent of him as something alien to him, a power that confronts him”. (³)

4- At every stage of its development and evolution, capitalist production extends the process of dispossessing the producers and creators of use-values alienating them from control over the labour process to the realm of civil and political agreements and contracts, to the legal system, to the substance and function of institutions inherited from previous systems, and to the entire social structure of society. The worker’s total deprivation of the power to decide what to produce or not, or why and to what extent to produce, constitutes the material basis for the legal exclusion of the worker from any involvement in planning the conditions of their own work and social life. Laws, institutions, agreements, contracts, the political order, the very existence of the state, and the specific social superstructure all of which emerge from the deep-seated requirements of capital reproduction and serve as necessary conditions for fulfilling those requirements inevitably function as instruments for excluding and severing the worker from any form of social agency regarding their own destiny.

5- The process of the formation of wage labour and the establishment of the necessary preconditions for capitalist accumulation has historically coincided with the emergence of the most extensive form of the division of labour. From its very inception, large-scale industry linked the entire world together and shackled the working and downtrodden masses of humanity within a global division of labour driven by the imperatives of the reproduction of global capital. As Marx stated:

“It dissolved the natural uniqueness of distinct nations, stripped the division of labour of its last vestiges of natural character, and reduced all natural relations to monetary relations.” (⁴)

Capitalist production either eliminated the division of labour inherited from earlier modes of production along with their material and economic foundations or fundamentally transformed it to align with the prerequisites and imperatives of capital’s development, concentration, universal establishment, and globalization. It restructured the division of labour between town and country to favour the total dominance of cities and the eradication of the rural economy. In short, it reshaped the world and human life of the era everywhere in accordance with the laws of capital reproduction and to meet the fundamental conditions for capital to generate maximum profit, knitting them together in a cancerous, all-consuming fashion. The history of capitalism over the past two centuries has been a history of the deepening and comprehensive expansion of capital’s social division of labour into the remotest corners of human life across the globe. We currently face a world where every aspect of its inhabitants’ lives is structured around the imperatives of value creation and the maximization of capital profit. This encompasses the division of labour across various sectors of production and social activity industry, agriculture, construction, education, healthcare, and so forth; the determination of what is produced versus what is not, and which tasks are undertaken versus those that are not, within each sphere of work and production; the geographical division of the labour and production process determining where in the world any given moment or link of that process occurs; the division between the sector producing means of production and the sector producing means of consumption, along with the geographical distribution of these sectors; the division between manual and intellectual labour, extending throughout the entire social structure of the capitalist order; the division of labour corresponding to the allocation of capital across spheres exploiting productive versus unproductive labour; and the division among capitals concentrated in various links of the capital-organization chain such as between production and trade. These, along with a multitude of other critical factors, have collectively ossified and rigidified the living and working conditions of the global working class and the general structure of the capitalist world within the process of surplus-value production. The extent to which human life is permeated, expanded, and alienated within the framework of the capitalist social division of labour or the corresponding economic, political, civic, and social imperatives constitutes a reality whose accurate Marx’s understanding and anatomical analysis are of immense importance to the discourse on the feasibility of communism within a specific geographical area, in the absence of a simultaneous world revolution. The social division of labour under capital within the production process has advanced to such an extent that, in today’s world, determining and declaring for instance in which country and by which segment of the global working class a specific consumer good was manufactured has become exceedingly difficult, if not altogether unrealistic. Even the simplest industrial products have undergone a production process wherein each successive stage was completed in a different corner of the globe. Driven by a division of labour rooted in the exploitation of labour power, the production of commodities is continuously shifting from major industrial hubs to other zones of capital accumulation; concurrently, the employed workforce shrinks in some parts of the world while expanding dramatically in others. Furthermore, the division of labour between the productive and unproductive sectors of capital operating on a truly global scale increasingly dictates the fluctuations in employment levels among the working masses across diverse spheres of labour and across established geographical borders. The global capitalist division of labour has long distributed the production of various commodities ranging from food, clothing, and pharmaceuticals to all manner of industrial products and commodities in such an interconnected, chain-like fashion across the globe and among diverse spheres of capitalist accumulation that the potential closure of geographic borders, or the economic blockade of one part of the world by another, disrupts the very fabric of livelihood, labour, and social life for the inhabitants of the blockaded regions, often confronting them with serious crises. Contrary to the assumptions of many “social-nationalist” or “populist-nationalist” thinkers, this problem is by no means confined to societies they would label “underdeveloped”; rather, it affects even the most advanced and industrialized nations, albeit with varying degrees of severity.

The depth, scope, and impact of the capitalist division of labour on a global scale have long since caused private capital ownership in tandem with the deepening development of the capitalist mode of production to transcend the forms of individual or state ownership; increasingly, the boundaries of these holdings have been transformed into a function of the exploitation of the global working class as a whole by the international bourgeoisie. The legal guise of private, state, or monopoly ownership pertaining to the sphere of a nation’s social capital reproduction plays no truly fundamental role when contrasted with the compelling, intrinsic interconnectedness of the reproduction process of global capital as a whole. The legal form of a society’s social capital ownership is of negligible significance in determining the extent of the profit derived from exploiting the global working class; this is precisely because the profit arising from the exploitation of any nation’s proletariat can only be understood as that specific society’s share of the total surplus value produced by the global proletariat a share determined within the framework of the global capitalist division of labour and the laws governing the rate of profit shaped by this social division of labour. No research institution, regardless of the level of precision or accuracy, is capable of pinpointing the specific geographical locus where a particular capital generates profit, or identifying exactly which worker, group of workers, or even workers of which specific country played a role in its production; indeed, anyone attempting to do so clearly betrays a lack of understanding regarding the capitalist system and the characteristics of contemporary capitalism. One fact is evident: this profit represents a portion of the surplus value generated by the global workforce. The output produced by workers in a given society may governed by the dynamics of global capital and the imperatives of its reproduction find its way to any corner of the globe. Simultaneously, the surplus value embodied therein does not merely serve to expand the capital held by the state or private capitalists within the society where production took place; rather, it extends the scope for the deployment of capital across various other regions of the world.

A fundamental point worth discussing here is that the root of uneven industrial development lies in the very nature of wage labour and the system’s compulsory division of labour. What we clearly witness today is that, on the one hand, the capitalist mode of production has become dominant even in the most remote, underdeveloped villages across the globe; yet, on the other hand, in some of these countries, the level of industrial output, social labour productivity, the application of modern and ultra-modern technology, and the workforce’s level of education and specialization remain significantly lower than in others. The foundation of this uneven development is embedded in the nature of capital and within the capitalist social division of labour. The entire world is integrated into a labour process based on the capital-labour relationship and the production of surplus value. Nevertheless, capital driven by the imperatives of value augmentation has structured the world such that nations like Chad, Somalia, Eritrea, and Sierra Leone; China, Russia, Poland, Iran, and Argentina; and, ultimately, Sweden, Britain, France, Germany, and the United States all embody the capitalist cohesion of a single social division of labour. The mountain of volatile contradictions inherent in this development process represents the inevitable, necessary manifestation of the intrinsic contradiction of capitalist production a contradiction that reveals itself as uneven growth within the framework of the capitalist social division of labour. In short, the capitalist division of labour interlinks the labour and production processes with the exploitation of the global working class by international capital; it shapes the industrial development of various sectors of the capitalist world in accordance with the general process of capital valorisation and its inherent contradictions; it creates disparities in the degree of concentration and the organic composition of social capital across different societies; it influences the competitiveness of capital within distinct spheres of accumulation across the globe; and it affects the distribution among various segments of global capital of the surplus value generated by the labour of the working class in different countries.

The familiar and deeply rooted contradictions such as those between mental and manual labour, city and countryside, or the gender-based division of labour are integral and crucially important aspects of how the logic of the capitalist mode of production permeates human social life through the division of labour inherent to the capitalist system. Each of these factors, possessing its own specific significance, warrants careful consideration when examining the feasibility or impossibility of communism in any given part of the world.

The feasibility or impossibility of communism in a single country?

What has been outlined here constitutes the fundamental indicators and components characterizing capitalist society elements whose historical existence the working-class communist movement, and its culmination (the communist revolution of the working class), must bring to an end in the course of abolishing capitalism and establishing communism. If the feasibility or impossibility of a communist revolution within a given society is to be examined by referencing the material and social realities of the capitalist system, then, in principle, it is precisely these objective characteristics and fundamental indicators that must be subjected to concrete, tangible scrutiny. The discussion presented thus far, however brief, has aimed to do just that. Now, we must consider whether the communist transformation of a specific society in the absence of a global, all-encompassing revolution can and should be a subject of the working class’s ongoing struggle, or if such a notion is fundamentally utopian and falls outside the scope of the proletariat’s agenda and struggle. Answering this question hinges on clarifying another fundamental issue: how communism as the society resulting from the historical transcendence and abolition of all these specific determinations and indicators can be defined in terms of its concrete material, political, and human configuration. In which specific economic, social, and human transformations can one observe the termination of the capitalist mode of production and economic existence, as well as the elimination of the political, cultural, legal, and social consequences or the eradication of the lingering effects of this mode of production?

In the passage from Marx cited earlier at the beginning of this text, certain fundamental characteristics of communist society are emphasized as follows: all prior relations of production and exchange are overturned. Everything that historically evolved within the capitalist mode of production under the pressure of capital’s intrinsic nature into a force dominating humanity and human social existence, is brought increasingly and profoundly under the control of individuals. Communism transforms existing conditions into conditions of unity and renders impossible the existence of anything independent of individuals.

What Marx proposes here is a confirmation of the correctness of the assumptions we have emphasized so far. According to Marx, the communist society is a society that is born out of the movement to change the existing objectivity of the working class and the communist revolution of the workers. A society that has removed the effects of the components, laws, indicators and functions characteristic of capitalism; Mercenary work has been abolished in it; The fetishist position of the work product has been resolved and is objectively and clearly in the process of being resolved; A society without bearing the pressure of the social and political or legal and cultural structure arising from the necessity of wage labour and the idolatry of the work product, which demonstrates the unity of humans with the work process and work products and its social production; A society free from the control of the authority of capital and the process of capital being the product of labour, whose inhabitants have been freed from the abyss of being a candle in the capitalist social division of labour and the gross contradictions between manual and intellectual labour, the complications of gender division of labour, and the like.

The course of our discussion is now quite clear. The crux of the matter lies in determining under current historical conditions what material or social possibilities, capabilities, and premises are available to the proletariat of specific countries and the global working class as a whole, both for abolishing what must be eliminated and for establishing what must be instituted. Is a communist revolution feasible in a given society? Are the phasing of the workers’ revolution and the distinction between the socialist and communist stages an inevitable destiny for the proletariat, or does the materialist dialectic of history and the Marxist perspective on class struggle view the matter differently? Do the true grandeur and power of proletarian internationalism lie in affirming the possibility of communist revolution in this or that part of the world, or, conversely, in denying it? In short, we proceed by examining the process of the communist transformation of capitalist society, as well as the feasibility or lack thereof of abolishing and dismantling what must be removed to allow for the establishment of communism.

The abolition of wage labour is the pivot of the communist transformation of the capitalist system.

For wage labour to be abolished, an end must be put to the status of labour power as a commodity; no human being should have to sell their labour power to an individual, the state, or an institution. Naturally, this depends on ensuring that the guarantee of people’s livelihood and social welfare is entirely liberated from the compulsion to sell their labour power. In other words, making work voluntary is a necessary and indispensable condition for abolishing wage labour in society. However, the material prerequisites and assumptions required for the process of abolishing wage labour are by no means limited to merely declaring work to be voluntary. Abolishing wage labour and ending the commodity nature of labour power entails that the products of production and the fruits of human social labour no longer function as capital, nor are they transformed into capital. The abolition of wage labour also implies that the era of exchanging the products of labour based on the socially necessary labour time embodied within them has come to an end a fact that, in turn, signifies the momentous historical reality that the law of value has ceased to be valid. With these characteristics and components, the abolition of wage labour also marks the historical expiration of the era of the fetishism of the product of labour, for the very clear reason that the product of labour is no longer a commodity or capital. Ultimately, if we reflect deeply on the abolition of wage labour through a Marx’s lens, the unity of the worker as both human being and producer with the labour process, along with human mastery over the product of that labour, emerges as an integral and organic component of this transformation. Thus, in light of these explanations, the process of abolishing wage labour constitutes the precise pivot the robust and reliable nexus upon which all communist transformations of the capitalist system turn. The fundamental question arising here one demanding a clear and comprehensive answer is: upon what foundation or foundations does the abolition of wage labour, with its specific substance, facets, and scope, become a reality? If realizing this entails the elimination of exchange, the overthrow of the law of value, the end of the fetishism of the product of labour, the unification of the producer-worker with the social product of their labour, and the complete removal of the conditions that transform the product of labour into capital, then upon which specific events and changes occurring in which realms and spheres of human social life does its objective realization depend?

The answer is not overly complex. When the worker no longer sells their labour power and ceases to generate capital, the phenomenon known as “capital” ceases to exist leaving no entity to decide what is produced, what is not, the scale of production, or the distribution of the product. Consequently, the entirety of society’s ” Dead-end work ” which currently dominates the working class in the form of capital, the conditions of capital reproduction, and aggregate social capital will shift entirely into the sphere of direct intervention and the exercise of the collective, effective, council-based, and conscious will of all members of society. Questions such as what to produce, what not to produce, and in what quantities along with the economic and social content of the labour process and the policies governing labour planning and production will become integral to the routine lives and work of all individuals. This transition hinges on establishing a council-based, communist organization of social labour and production, driven by the direct, effective, conscious, and free participation of all individuals; this, in turn, entails the complete dismantling of the state and any institution that stands above the people.

In light of all these points and what has been discussed previously, the following fundamental transformations in the economic foundations and the structure of the social order must be realized to abolish wage labour within society:

_ The state must be eliminated and replaced by a communist council-based organization of labour, comprising all members of society. The effective, council-based participation of every individual in determining the destiny of labour, life, and the product of social labour is an indispensable condition for ending the exploitation of labour power and abolishing wage labour. Furthermore, the very existence of the state represents a terrifying abyss that devours a vast portion of the product of workers’ labour a fact that stands in stark contradiction to the principle of workers’ control over the fruits of their labour;

_All matters concerning labour, production, and social life such as what should or should not be produced?

_which activities should be undertaken as socially useful labour and which should not be placed on society’s agenda; and regarding what is to be produced, what quantities of goods and services (including welfare-related services) are required by society and must be generated or performed?

— Which part of socially useful work should be allocated to the development of production, the enhancement of scientific capacity, and the general welfare?

_How should the products of collective labour and production be distributed across the various spheres of consumption and social welfare? In short, how can the entire planning of social production and labour alongside all policymaking and the management of public affairs be transformed into the routine, everyday activity of the mass of citizens?

– The exchange of values ​​comes to a complete end, replaced by free, collective cooperation based on voluntary labour and free, universal, and shared planning.

– The capitalist social division of labour must be eliminated as an obstacle to the establishment of a council-based, communist organization of labour, production, and social life, ensuring that the contradiction between manual and intellectual labour, the gender-based division of labour, and the so-called urban-rural divide do not hinder the creation and establishment of communist society.

_work becomes a voluntary activity, and compulsion to work is no longer a necessary condition for securing people’s livelihood and social well-being. Marx describes the material and social components of the objective existence of such a society as follows:

“In a higher phase of communist society after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and with it the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not merely a means of life but life’s primary want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully transcended, and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (⁵)

The proletariat of societies and the possibility of abolishing wage labour in the absence of a world revolution.

Abolishing the state; establishing a council-based organization of labour and communist living rooted in the free and conscious cooperation of human beings; making labour voluntary; dismantling the system of exchange; overthrowing the law of value; and ultimately effectively curtailing or limiting the consequences of the capitalist division of labour in the social lives of individuals: these are all objectives that workers across a vast portion of the globe can achieve under current conditions. Workers have no homeland, and no worker is entitled to divorce their concern for their own fate and that of their ongoing class movement from their concern for the fate of all their fellow workers worldwide. But genuine internationalist spontaneity can only manifest itself within the living movement of workers in every region of the world as they strive to abolish and eradicate wage labour. On this basis, the aforementioned transformations must constitute both the long-term vision and the immediate substance of the working class’s struggles across nations. To speak of a living communist movement without grounding it in fundamental change to the pillars of the existing objective reality including the mobilization of the working masses to establish a free, communal organization of labour and human existence as the foundation of their class, political, and social life is to negate the authentic working-class or Marx’s narrative of the working class’s communist movement. Communism, as a form of actual life or human society, can only become a reality if it first transforms into the goal and class content of the working-class movement.

This is precisely what Marx terms the movement to transform the existing state of affairs and defines as communism-as-movement. A fundamental aspect of this conception of communism and its nature as a movement is the process by which the working masses are formed, gain consciousness, and undergo transformation within it. A movement that achieves victory with this content and orientation is a movement of the working masses who struggle with the prospect of realizing communism, with the vision of ending their alienation from the labour process and its products, and with the aim of dismantling the foundations of wage labour and the transformation of the fruits of production into capital, all while preparing themselves to replace the existing reality with communism. A working class that traverses the path of overthrowing the capitalist state under this banner, with this vision and this social and class alternative, will naturally be able following the victory of its social revolution to realize the ideal of abolishing wage labour and to replace the existing reality with a system of council-based organization of labour, production, and communist living. A vast segment of the Left which vehemently denies, or even denounces as heretical, the very possibility of communism in any given society consists of those who, alongside a host of other misconceptions, fail to grasp the Marx’s character of the working-class communist movement; nor do they examine, from a Marx’s and working-class perspective, the organic link between this movement and the prerequisites for realizing communism whether in a specific society or in general. The struggle for transformation as opposed to the mere reform of the status quo is precisely a process of class struggle through which the working masses prepare themselves to put an end to the very existence of wage labour. The social-reformist Left and that spectrum of communists who deny the possibility of communism in the absence of a world revolution do not believe in this movement, and neither have they ever, under any circumstances, placed its organization on the agenda of their political struggle.

A major departure from a historical understanding of Marx’s theory of communist revolution or, more broadly, from a materialist and class-based conception of the workers’ revolution lies precisely here. It is abundantly clear that the pro-democracy and syndicalist movement regardless of the intensity of its militancy and radicalism, or the degree to which it artificially attaches itself to the “idea” of communism and the name of Marx does not aim to replace the status quo with a communist organization of human labour and life.

For this spectrum, the concept of the “transitional period” serves as a “scriptural proof” a ​​miraculous justification for championing democracy under the banner of communism. A historical gap of 150 years separates the era when Marx spoke of the “transitional period” from our own time. Given the analytical frameworks and class perspectives of the various factions within this spectrum, this distinction holds no place on the agenda of the global working class’s class struggle. But there is another, far deeper and more critical issue that fails to disturb the slumber of these individuals: the fate of a proletariat that does not make communism the social content of its ongoing struggle against capitalism is precisely the horrific hell in which they are tormented, generation after generation all while, in the name of communism, the final rites are performed over every living communist movement and the very prerequisites for its growth and flourishing.

Marx’s formulation of the “transitional period” and the concept of the “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” rested on no metaphysical sanctity; rather, they were grounded in specific material and social foundations. At the most general level of abstraction, these foundations and factors were as follows:

a) The low level of social production was insufficient to sustain the principle of voluntary labour or the maxim “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”;

b) The working masses lacked the necessary level of awareness, knowledge, and expertise in short, the scientific and social capacity to immediately construct communist institutions for cooperative labour and living.

A cursory glance at the realities that surround and bear down upon us reveals the immense changes that have occurred in both of these fundamental components. The average figure for what bourgeois convention terms “per capita gross product” covering the United States, the UK, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Finland, Denmark, Canada, Belgium, Austria, and Australia rose from $351 in 1820 (⁶) to an average of $30,000 by the end of the twentieth century; an increase of approximately eighty-five-fold. (⁷)

Regarding the production volume of certain basic commodities in several countries—including Germany, the UK, the US, and France output rose during this period from approximately 400,000 tons annually (⁸) to the staggering figure of 21,800,000 tons per year (⁹). Average per capita income in capitalist nations including those formerly in the Eastern Bloc that have endured years of deep economic crisis ranges between $7,000 and $17,000 annually, while the average in Middle Eastern countries is around $9,000 (10). Is the value generated by the annual labour and production of the working class not sufficient to facilitate the transition to voluntary labour in these societies? Is it not the clear and incumbent duty of the proletariat in Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, Japan, Australia, and other regions to demand an end to the existence of wage labour, the dismantling of the state and the entire capitalist system, the establishment of a council-based organization for labour, production, and communist living, the shift to voluntary labour, and liberation from all the miseries of wage slavery? Is not a fundamental condition for the dynamism of the Communist International that the proletariat of these societies, with the support of the global working class, put an end to wage labour in each of these regions and simultaneously advance organically toward the victory of communism everywhere else in the world?

The next component concerns the proletariat’s readiness in terms of scientific capability, accumulated knowledge, educational background, experience, technical expertise, and the working class’s cultural maturity to replace the bourgeois state with a collective organization of their own labour and class life. In this regard, a cursory look at the condition of the working masses in a vast number of countries suffices to confirm the existence of this readiness among workers in those societies. We are not speaking of Germany, Sweden, France, Britain, the United States, Japan, Canada, or the Netherlands; rather, we look at Iranian society. According to available statistics, more than 450,000 individuals graduate annually from various secondary education streams, and over 100,000 graduates from the country’s universities and higher education institutions. Teachers whose minimum level of education is a secondary school diploma account for approximately 850,000 members of Iran’s working class. Another 200,000-plus are workers in health and medical centres.

Based on these same statistics, approximately 12 million members of working-class families possess an education ranging from the lower-secondary level (middle school) upwards. (¹¹) In Sweden, for many years, the entire working class has at a minimum completed a nine-year educational program combined with vocational training, and in most cases, has undergone secondary education supplemented by technical specialization courses. Similar figures apply with only minor variations to Germany, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Italy, and other regions. In Yugoslavia, in the years preceding the criminal capitalist war waged against the lives of the working people, there were more than 600 unemployed physicians seeking work in the city of Belgrade alone. When these factors are considered alongside the aforementioned fundamental element namely, the transformation of the working masses through the vast social praxis of the movement to abolish wage labour it becomes evident that the notion of the working class in these countries (or even in nations like Iran) lacking the readiness to undertake communist planning of labour and social production is deeply flawed and devoid of any material basis. The computerization of production and labour, along with the increasingly widespread replacement of specialized human roles by machinery, has also played a pivotal role in resolving this issue.

Regarding the economic, legal, cultural, and social consequences stemming from the nature of the labour-power exchange and the constraints of the capitalist social division of labour such as the conflict between manual and intellectual labour, the so-called urban-rural divide, or the gender-based division of labour it must be said that the level of industrial advancement, the evolution of productive forces, and the development of human knowledge and technological achievements have largely laid the material foundations for the working-class revolution and the movement to abolish wage labour to eliminate these disparities. Today, the phenomenon known as the urban-rural divide is no longer relevant not only in the US, Australia, the former Soviet bloc, Japan, and Southeast Asia, but effectively not even in the most remote regions of the capitalist world. In the wake of massive industrial and information-technology revolutions, the computerization of production and labour, and the rising levels of worker knowledge, expertise, and education, two points stand out: first, there is no task that women cannot perform; and second, the differentiation of work tasks based on individuals’ physical condition and bodily strength does not necessarily equate to the static effects of the capitalist division of labour. The contradiction between mental and manual labour is not an inevitable result of a low level of technology, knowledge, science, inventions, or education; rather, it is the necessary outcome of the existence and persistence of wage labour. With the abolition of wage labour and wherever the working-class movement succeeds in dismantling the system of wage labour the resolution of the contradiction between manual and mental labour will also become achievable.

Those who deny the possibility of realizing communism within the geopolitical confines of any given society stubbornly close their eyes to all these realities; yet, what they overlook is not limited to this alone. Driven by a profound disbelief in the organizational requirements of a living communist movement among the working masses and the consequent denial of communism’s feasibility these tendencies also fail to consider another crucial issue. While they ostensibly speak of overthrowing the bourgeois state and of a workers’ revolution, the stifling atmosphere of the pro-democracy movement causes them to demonstrate little genuine commitment to the material and class-based realities of their own professed beliefs. In the current historical context, the overthrow of the bourgeois state carries a meaning that does not necessarily align with what it signified 150 years ago. The capitalist state has long ceased to be merely an instrument for the suppression and military coercion of capital; its scope and nature are no longer confined to the simple dimensions of bourgeois prisons and kangaroo courts. The existing state constitutes the organizational framework encompassing the political, civil, legal, cultural, educational, and social spheres, as well as economic planning and the comprehensive exercise of power that enforces the wage-labour relationship upon the working class. At present, the state cannot be disentangled from the economy, politics, “civil society,” and the social order of wage slavery in all its various facets. The state is capital personified, embodied in laws, organizations, and legal, civil, educational, and social interactions. The integration of the state and the capitalist mode of production is so profound that speaking of overthrowing the capitalist state without the direct aim of abolishing wage slavery carries only one meaning and that meaning is utterly nonsensical. The implication of this nonsensical notion is that we should replace the existing bourgeois state with another bourgeois state albeit one operating under the banner of the proletariat and demand that this new state impose the buying and selling of labour power upon the working-class masses, ostensibly for the benefit of the proletariat, pending the advent of the world revolution!

In Marx’s political and class-based perspective and within the historical context of his era the transitional period, characterized by the political superstructure of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, held a very clear place and significance. Workers were dismantling the machinery of capitalist military coercion, yet the society’s economic conditions specifically its level of productive capacity and industrial growth did not allow for the voluntary organization of labour and life (free from the compulsion of work) while simultaneously satisfying all subsistence and welfare needs. In such a situation, the working class had to as an immediate and urgent measure content itself with establishing social ownership of the means of production in place of private ownership and implementing the principle of “to each according to their labour.” Socially necessary labour time or, in effect, the law of value continued to serve as the foundation of the social order, constrained by economic limitations and real resource scarcities. The inevitability of accepting these conditions, combined with the absence of the necessary economic and social prerequisites for the immediate establishment of a communist organization of labour and life and the voluntary nature of work, implied that the state could not simply be abolished overnight; rather, its eventual withering away required undergoing a process of economic and social transformation. At the same time, that government had the duty while planning for its own rapid withering away and advancing the process of abolishing wage labour to safeguard this transition against the threat of bourgeois encroachment. Today, in many societies across the globe, humanity faces conditions that bear no resemblance to that earlier era regarding the material and historical prerequisites for making labour voluntary and abolishing wage labour. Consider a society like Iran: after twenty-five years of deepening economic crisis, if the opportunity for communist planning of labour and production were to arise for the proletariat at this very moment if the proletariat could halt the production of what ought not be produced and instead produce what is necessary, and if it could organize production, labour, and education to meet livelihood needs, ensure general welfare, foster cultural and educational advancement, and facilitate the free development of all then declaring labour to be voluntary would be an entirely achievable goal. ‌But in the closing years of the first half of the nineteenth century, such a feat was not as easily attainable as it is today, even for the world’s most advanced industrial powers. Today, workers in Iran’s oil, electricity, railway, water, and iron-smelting sectors and indeed in every sphere of labour possess a capacity and potential for planning production and labour, as well as for managing social affairs and general welfare, that even the most advanced segments of the global working class lacked just a few decades ago.

Those who oppose the very possibility of communism as well as those who reject it as the immediate objective of the workers’ revolution blithely overlook all the fundamental, objective distinctions between the state of the capitalist world and the labour movement back then and today. By approaching Marx’s directives in a manner that is profoundly ahistorical and un-Marx, they steer the labour movement away from the revolutionary front dedicated to abolishing wage labour and organizing toward that goal; instead, they drive it into a wasteland of confusion, where the focus is reduced merely to seizing political power while relegating communism to an indefinite future.

The Communist Revolution and the Problem of Overcoming the Capitalist Division of worker

Organizing a movement to abolish wage labour is a pressing, immediate task for the working masses across the globe. Nowhere in the world does the working class have any other path available to overcome the poverty, misery, and wretchedness that plague it. This is a stark fact; yet, the crux of our current discussion is that the working class comprising a vast segment of the contemporary world possesses all the necessary conditions to realize a communist transformation of society, provided it organizes a powerful anti-capitalist movement and carries out a victorious workers’ communist revolution. Far from diminishing the importance and grandeur of working-class internationalism, this course represents the only way to give it genuine validity and true stature. There is no fundamental factor suggesting that this is impossible. The most complex challenge weighing upon the pursuit of this goal is the problem of the effects and consequences of the capitalist division of labour. This is an issue that must be acknowledged, and the scope of its decisive influence must be examined not dogmatically, but rather through a materialist lens. The crux of the problem is that, under the domination of the capitalist mode of production, it is capital that governs the entire labour process, and capital plays this role on a global scale. The components of the constant portion of a country’s social capital consist of a combination of technology, raw materials, auxiliary equipment, and supplies items where every element, large or small, has been transferred from some corner of the capitalist market to the specific society in question. The vast majority of consumer goods means of subsistence, and resources dedicated to the reproduction of labour power share this same characteristic. The exchange of these commodities is essentially an exchange of the socially necessary labour embodied within them. The surplus value contained in these commodities is distributed among the various sectors of global capital in accordance with the laws governing the general rate of profit. Large monopoly capitals, characterized by high social labour productivity, appropriate a vast share of the surplus value generated within the sphere of other capitals’ reproduction; this implies that the social capital of societies possessing access to or monopolies over advanced technological achievements and superior production conditions appropriates a significant portion of the surplus value derived from the labour of other societies.

Following its initial victories and in the course of the campaign to abolish and eradicate wage labour, the workers’ revolution faces immense pressure from a host of the aforementioned factors and variables. When we speak of the worker becoming one with the lab or process and the product of labour, and when we discuss the “impossibility of anything existing independently of individuals,” it implies that these challenges must be overcome to the greatest extent possible. While one could discuss these obstacles and the extent of their determining influence at length, here we shall highlight only the most fundamental ones, with the aim of examining how the workers’ and communist revolution confront them. These challenges are as follows:

1- The position of certain societies within the framework of the capitalist division of labour is such that, driven by the inherent laws governing the capitalist rate of profit, specific portions of the value produced by the working class in these countries are transformed into profits for concentrated international capital. This issue is unrelated to the direct advance of capital belonging to financial monopolies or the social capital of more advanced nations into the domestic markets of the societies in question; rather, the transfer of surplus value remains a stark reality even in the complete absence of this factor. Such transfers are a natural feature of ongoing exchanges between different segments of global capital. That segment of capital possessing a significantly higher organic composition and far greater lab or productivity the segment that plays a decisive role in setting the general rate of profit on the international market is capable of drawing toward itself a portion of the surplus value generated within the sphere of reproduction of other capitals.

2. As noted earlier, the constant capital of any country’s social capital is composed of materials, raw materials, technology, and commodities, each component of which has been transferred there from some corner of the global capital market. Means of subsistence or that which is consumed for the reproduction of labour power are no exception to this situation. These two factors undoubtedly play a significant role regarding the impact of the capitalist global division of labour on the process of communist transformation of the economy and social relations in post-revolutionary society. Furthermore, certain other factors such as the capitalist system’s barbaric onslaught against communism and the communist revolution, particularly in the economic sphere manifest themselves through these very channels. A working class that has already carried out the revolution and overthrown bourgeois political power, as it engages in the communist planning of labour, production, and social life, inevitably feels the pressure of these two dilemmas to varying degrees weighing upon it. But the reality of these problems differs fundamentally from the arguments put forward by the spectrum of opponents of “communism without world revolution” and by groups adhering to the concept of a phased progression toward communism.

The first dilemma plays no significant role or perhaps no role at all regarding Western and Northern European nations, North America, Japan, and the like. Should the proletariat in these countries organize a movement to abolish wage labour, dismantle capitalist political power, and initiate the establishment of a council-based organization of communist labour and production, they would not lose any of the fruits of their labour through their ongoing exchanges with parts of the capitalist world. However, the situation is the reverse for societies like Iran. The for the time being lower level of technology and social labour productivity, compared to that possessed by parts of the capitalist world, carries the risk that a portion of the output generated by the communist society’s population could be transformed into profit for global capital.

The second dilemma applies to all societies albeit with specific variations and constitutes one of the critical channels through which the global capitalist states, in their predatory fury, seek to encircle the proletarian communist revolution. Naturally, factors such as a higher level of social labour productivity, greater production capacity, more advanced technology and expertise, or the sheer scale of labour and production domains within a given society serve to mitigate the consequences of this dilemma.

Having outlined and examined all these factors and realities, we now approach the ultimate question of our discussion. We have stated that the communist proletariat in many regions of the globe is capable of abolishing wage labour upon successfully carrying out its class revolution; it is capable of putting an end to the buying and selling of labour power, to the commodification of produced values ​​and the products of labour, to commodity exchange, and to the rule of the law of value; it is capable of establishing voluntary labour. This is because what the working class has created throughout history through the labour of successive generations provides a sufficient basis for these transformations. This is neither a mere claim nor an illusion; indeed, it is even more demonstrable than simple mathematical propositions. We also stated that the proletariat of these countries is capable of accomplishing this task only if its revolution marks a decisive turning point a peak in the movement to abolish the long-standing system of wage labour. Nowhere in the world can the working masses lead their revolution to a communist transformation of the capitalist totality without organizing a nationwide anti-capitalist movement and engaging in political activity within the very heart of that movement. In the preceding section, we also touched upon the obstacles posed by the capitalist division of labour specifically, the most fundamental of these dilemmas. Having addressed all these points in a somewhat fragmentary and cursory manner, we must now resolve the ultimate question of our discussion.

The question is this: should the working class of Western Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea, Iran, Poland, Bulgaria, Iraq, Australia, and other countries not merely today, but as they should have done decades or even a century and a half ago organize (and continue to organize) a movement to abolish wage labour? Or must they wait for some promised historical moment and the advent of a world revolution?! If the bourgeois state were to be overthrown by this movement to abolish wage labour, would the proletariat in these countries be capable of establishing their own council-based organization of labour, production, and communist living, or is such a feat impossible in the absence of a world revolution?! The question is whether the working-class ought to and can make the abolition of wage labour the agenda of its ongoing struggle and set about remedying the consequences of the capitalist social division of labour, or whether, conversely, it should focus on the latter and abandon the former?!

Communists, deeply convinced of the existence of these problematics but viewing them through a Marx’s, class-based lens, respond that the movement to abolish wage labour must be organized. Capitalist political power must be destroyed, and the full force of the class must be mobilized to establish communist forms of labour, production, and social life within each of these societies; simultaneously, with communist insight and prudence, the pressures arising from the capitalist division of labour must be minimized. Communists firmly believe that the path to world revolution lies precisely here. Opponents, however, offer a contrary response. The spectrum of tendencies arguing that communism is impossible in the absence of world revolution adopting a non-Marx and dogmatic perspective dismisses the entire scope of the proletariat’s authority and potential to resolve these dilemmas. Consciously or otherwise, they shackle the proletariat of these societies within the gloomy confines of the pro-democracy movement. They effectively view the history of class struggle as a history of practicing the deepening of democracy, and this is the lesson they impart to the proletariat of these nations. For them, the path of communist revolution in any given country passes through the gateway of world revolution. They deeply deceive both themselves and others, for they fail to tell the workers: what guarantee is there for the occurrence of a world revolution without a robust, active movement of the proletariat dedicated to abolishing wage labour across all societies? They do not explain that if the working class of France or Iran leveraging the profound power of internationalist worker solidarity and organizing its own movement to abolish wage labour were to succeed in shattering the bourgeois state and the structures of capital’s political and civil power, why should it then refrain from establishing a communist organization of labour and production? Why should it not abolish wage labour? Why should it not practically implement communist transformations within the existing capitalist reality?

Those who dispute the feasibility of communism within individual countries warn the working class about the savagery of the bourgeoisie. Their argument in this regard mirrors their reasoning concerning the absolutization of the problem of the capitalist division of labour. From their political perspective, since the bourgeoisie would confront a workers’, revolution armed with its entire military apparatus and global arsenals, the possibility of a communist revolution within a single country absent a simultaneous global revolution is ruled out. It appears, however, that the workers of the world answered this objection long ago. The Russian working class was not defeated by the military might of the global bourgeoisie; on the contrary, amidst the bleak conditions of that era, it stood firm and powerful simultaneously confronting the Axis imperialists, the Allied imperialists, the overthrown Russian bourgeoisie, and the rabid Tsarist army and defeated them all. What ultimately defeated the Russian working class was precisely the same sort of delusions, beliefs, and incoherent notions that proponents of the impossibility of communism within individual countries are currently peddling to the global working class.

The proponents of the “impossibility” thesis fail to deeply analyse the glaring contradictions of the capitalist system from a Marx perspective. Contrary to their own claims, they do not factor the magnitude, power, and grandeur of working-class internationalism into their calculations. The global proletariat has historically demonstrated that, during a revolutionary upsurge, segments of the class movement at large do not remain indifferent to the fate of a specific revolution; the role of communists is to further deepen the capacity for this kind of internationalist intervention. The day the working masses of any given society organize their movement to abolish wage labour, the power of internationalist worker solidarity will acquire a concrete, tangible meaning, and the might of the global proletarian movement backing the workers’ revolution in any society will transform into an objective reality. The corrosive contradictions of the capitalist system; the impact of these contradictions on the potential to curb the savagery of rabid capitalist states against the communist revolution; international worker solidarity aimed at strengthening and advancing the movement to abolish wage labour within each society; and the comprehensive cooperation among various sectors of the global working class to ensure the victory of the workers’ communist revolution anywhere in the world all these constitute the real premises for the work of activists in the movement to abolish wage labour in every society. Proponents of the thesis that communism is impossible without a world revolution instead of making the organization of the working-class communist movement within each society the guarantee of the global workers’ communist movement’s victory; instead of seeking proletarian internationalism in the organization of movements to abolish wage labour across the globe; instead of viewing communist internationalism as the underpinning that ensures the triumph of the workers’ communist revolution in any given society instead of all this, they urge the labour movements of various nations to engage in the exercise of deepening democracy within the strongholds of capitalist power.

The Theory of the Stages of Communism and the Appeal to Marx

Proponents of the “impossibility thesis” sometimes cite Marx to substantiate their flawed conclusions, specifically where he states:

“Empirically, communism is possible only as the simultaneous act of all or at least the dominant nations, a condition that presupposes the global development of productive forces and the worldwide intercourse associated with them.” (¹²)

At other times, they appeal to a point made by Engels in *The Principles of Communism*, noting his assertion that:

“The realization of communism requires the occurrence of a communist revolution simultaneously across the entire civilized world, or at least in the three countries of America, England, and France.”

We have previously addressed the statements made by Marx and Engels or their references regarding the phasing of socialism and communism. Anyone who shares even the slightest class affinity with their teachings would not presume to replace a historical-materialist understanding of those teachings with a dogmatic or ideological attachment to them. Marx and Engels rightly grounded their analysis in the economic and social realities of the capitalist world of their time an era when the world’s leading industrial power, Britain, suffered from a lack of industrial growth compared to present-day South Korea. Their propositions remain valid today for any society that is not yet actually capable of making labour voluntary and implementing the principle of “to each according to their needs.” However, the greater part of the world has moved beyond this stage. In the year 2000, the combined annual profits of a few massive TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecom) monopolies were sufficient to liberate significant segments of a given country’s population from the constraints of market exchange regarding healthcare, education, food, and housing.

The immediate feasibility or lack thereof of communism cannot be assessed in the same way for today’s conditions as it was for Marx’s era. Nevertheless, the true and clear substance of Marx’s arguments directly refutes and rejects the interpretations held by dogmatic proponents of “stage theory.” Marx speaks of communism as a powerful movement within the global working class as a whole. He identifies the prerequisites for the existence or manifestation of this movement as, on the one hand, “the universal development of productive forces and the global intercourse associated with them,” and on the other, “the emergence of a mass of workers who are nothing but workers.” Marx discusses the global historical existence of the proletariat and the movement to transform the objective reality of this class a subtle yet crucial point that rigid adherents to the stage theory of communism (and the notion that communism is impossible without a world revolution) fail to grasp. He states: “Communism has a world-historical existence.” Since communism is the movement to abolish wage labour and dismantle the capitalist mode of production, its practical realization is contingent upon a stage of historical evolution in which the prevailing world order is capitalist. This does not mean, however, that establishing a communist society in the absence of a world revolution is not on the agenda of the labour movement in individual countries. On the contrary, it means that the globalization of capitalism has created all the necessary conditions for communism to become the rallying cry of the proletariat’s struggle on a global scale. In this context, Marx contrasts communism viewed as a global historical movement and revolution with its localized forms in antiquity. Indian communes and ancient forms of communal living were destined to vanish, as their relevance was confined to specific historical moments; the material evolution of history had not yet created the conditions for the realization of communism or its existence as a global historical phenomenon. In contrast, the emergence of capitalism and the globalization of this system have brought about all the necessary material and historical conditions.

“Without this global development of productive forces, communism could only exist as a local phenomenon; the forces of intercourse could not have developed into universal and thus intolerable forces, but would have remained confined to domestic, superstition-bound conditions, and any expansion of intercourse would have destroyed local communism.” (¹³)

Marx standing in direct opposition to proponents of the thesis that communism is impossible without a world revolution rightly and precisely insists on the relevance of the working-class movement to abolish wage labour on a global scale; for the globalization of capitalism has deeply established the material foundations for the triumph of this movement worldwide. Nowhere in Marx’s writings is there any suggestion that establishing a communist society is impossible in the absence of a world revolution.

Proponents of the “impossibility” thesis, while ostensibly championing the importance of internationalism, effectively undermine the very credibility and genuine relevance of working-class internationalism. To speak of commitment and adherence to internationalism while denying the actuality of the movement to abolish wage labour within individual countries is a complete falsehood. True internationalist communists make the following the guiding principles of their struggle in every corner of the globe: organizing the movement to abolish wage labour within societies; fostering the interconnection, shared struggle, and comprehensive unity of these movements to achieve the victory of communism in any given society and thereby across the world; and ensuring the practical, all-encompassing support of the global workers’ movement for the establishment of communism in any society, and consequently, throughout the world.

Footnotes:

1- Marx, *The German Ideology*;

2- Marx, *Capital*, Volume I;

3- Marx, *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts*;

4- Marx, *The German Ideology*;

5- Marx, *Critique of the Gotha Program*;

6- Angus Maddison, *Phases of Capitalist Development*;

7- Statistical Center of the Islamic Regime, sourced from the international statistics section;

8- Dudley Dillard, Swedish edition, page 232;

9- Source No. 7;

10- newspaper (Sweden);

11- Statistical Center of Iran, education statistics section;

12- Marx, *The German Ideology*

13- Marx, same source;