Maybe you fellow comrades know any authors of communist views who write nice books,not abt politics?

When reading revolutionary works, it's very common to see the discussion of the contradiction between freedom and necessity, and that through the transformation of necessity, the "true realm of freedom" can come into existence.

Marx notes the following:

beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its basis.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/hist-mat/capital/vol3-ch48.htm

When discussing this topic in MIM Theory 9, they quote Marx as saying:

With his development of this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants.

and they explain with:

So freedom cannot happen just by meeting current necessity but by transforming it.

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/periodicals/mim-theory/mim-9.pdf

MIM later goes on to talk about how "freedom is the understanding of necessity and the transformation of necessity", but this leaves me wondering what is meant by necessity? As I understand it, what is meant by necessity is the overcoming of class society as a means of ending the oppression of humyns by humyns. Or is it the necessity for unleashing the creative power and true potential of the masses? Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around it.

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What would be the difference between the two? The concepts seem similar to me since they both abandon ineffective, ecologically disasterous and imperialistic methods. Why does one enjoy much support and the other one is met with harsh reactions among liberals and social fascists?

Maoism, as I understand it, is widely accepted to be a continuation of Marxism like how Lenin synthesized Marx's ideas in the early 20th century. Does Maoism have "room" to grow, and are there examples of such reading?

In the last 6 months, I, like many people, have become anti-capitalism and US to the point of not believing democracy can save us. In this time, I’ve turned to reading Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. and have joined the local communist movement here in my city.

As i’m still working to wrap my head around it all, i’m really trying to adsorb the language and make it digestible to my friends and family who I talk about this with. My friends are curious and not totally against the idea of a communist state, but they ask the simple questions:

• What would our jobs look like? Could we still buy homes and have families?
• Would restaurants, markets, etc. still exist?
• Would innovation stall?
• On a granular level, how would our every day lives look?
• How would crime be held accountable? Could we still ensure feeling safe at night walking home?
• As LGBTQ+ folks, is trans healthcare still available / what do these things look like?
• Do we all make the same amount of money? If I want to work more and save more, why couldn’t I own a bigger house or bigger land?

Please be kind of these are dumb questions — But storytelling I found is the most effective way to help explain these thoughts in the current and future tense and I’d like to be empowered with the answers to these questions, as they always seem to come up when I’m talking about communism with someone who is new to it.

Thanks!

why not make the entire romania to be an SSR or let it be incorporated into the socialist republic of romania? feel free to correct me if i'm wrong

Recently there was a protest in my area by immigrants demanding housing and I've heard a lot of working class compatriots claiming that these people don't have the right to make demands, some have been extremely violent and xenophobic. I understand that a lot of nationals have unmet needs but it's wrong to direct their anger at those who have even less, I know it's a systemic economic issue and that it's counterproductive for all working people to divide and fight over racial and national differences but it's difficult to explain these things in a way that's appealing to people. Could I get any advice on how I should approach this kind of rethoric? Both advice by yourself and sources to research are useful, thanks.

Do you not think it’s not replicable in other countries or do you have another issue with it? If a country could consistently achieve high living standards and a low-income disparity (also being incredibly happy) would that not be something to strive for rather than something much more extreme and less practical.

In Capital, Marx states that every commodity "may be looked at from the points of view of quality and quantity". But I don't understand the distinction between quality and quantity. Can't you say that quantity is just another qualitative property like color, texture etc.? That an apple is red, or round, or soft, or hard, those are qualitative properties, but if there are two apples, then suddenly that becomes its all own category, separate from quality. Why can't we say that the number of apples is itself a quality of the apple? Intuitively I find this distinction kind of arbitrary and it confuses me, so hopefully some of you can explain this to me.

I understand that private property is large equated with capital, or any material thing that can be used to produce wealth. This is presented as distinct from personal property, which, to my understanding, is private property that cannot be used to produce wealth.

I have two questions about this topic.

1. I am having a difficult time understanding how this distinction is precisely drawn. Take a computer for example. In an office space, it is certainly a means of production. At my home, it COULD be a means of production, even if I just use it to record music, make a youtube video, or create art. However, I could also just the computer for recreation. Does the private/personal distinction lay entirely on what the material thing is currently being used for? If I have a loom in my garage sitting there and gathering dust, is it not capital because I'm not using it?

2. Does communism inherently not care about non-capital possessions? I was always under the impression that equity of wealth is a key feature of communism. If my family has been accumulating and passing down wealth so that my home is relatively luxurious compared to other people, is that completely permissible? What about luxury goods like jewelry or high-end clothing? If they are acquired with only allotted income and do not produce wealth, are they completely outside of the control of anybody other than their owner? I would imagine that some people could blow their money on entertainment while another saves and accumulates, and that would produce inequity in the end. But those possessions are not capital, so they cannot be redistributed?

Thank you!

Even if individualism as a term was used as a term of critique by socialists, did its ideals predate capitalism?

I recently finished Michael Parenti's Blackshirts And Reds, and it opened my eyes to an incredible degree of things, one of them being that fascism emerges as something of a defense mechanism for the bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes against capitalism under attack and in decay. This made me wonder what forms fascism took in the West during the cold war, given capitalism was both under attack and in decay. My historical knowledge of the cold war era is not really much above surface level, and I would like to know what in forms fascism manifested, either partially or fully, during the cold war.

Hi, I'm trying to find the German original text of Comments on James Mill, Éléments D’économie Politique, but seems no good. Does anyone know a accesible place? Plus I don't speak German, could be one of the reason why. Thank you

Bolsonaro is a fascist, but there isn't any threat to the capitalist system in Brazil and there is no big organized communist movements in Brazil that could threaten capitalism in the country. Can someone explain how fascism is capitalism in decay?

I've read Lenin's definition, but my question is: why is it not enough to describe imperialism as exporting capital? If a country is exploiting the working class of another nation to bring profit to its own, wouldn't that be enough to be considered imperialist or at least not socialist?

I am of the understanding that Marx refers to objects as commodities and since people are subjects with inherent value, that should mean we cannot be viewed as commodities right? But how come black people, especially women, were treated as such during chattel slavery? They were viewed as property and bought and sold.

Perhaps in the modern day that black people in America are not commodities because we know are viewed as people by society. However, « blackness » can be commodified because it is a characteristic that is objectified as being valuable? Through workplace diversity initiatives for example. And that black performance is seen as desirable? (ex. Cultural appropriation, selling items inspired by black culture).

Or does this argument exist OUTSIDE of Marx since he could not imagine that objects could resist or speak (as black people did in the times of slave rebellions) because he did not consider commodities to be a human possibility ?

I'll give an example first:

Say that someone buys a chicken. They raise the chicken, selling the eggs that it lays. Later, they slaughter the chicken, and sell the meat from the chicken.

We can determine the value of the chicken meat and eggs laid together from the value of the chicken initially, the value of other commodities used in raising the chicken, and the average labour time to raise and slaughter the chicken.

However, how can we get the value of an egg alone? Or of the chicken meat alone? There doesn't seem to be a clear way to split the value between them at first glance.

So, my more general question is that, given some commodities (such as a chicken, chicken feed, ...) and a process that uses labour to turn these into multiple distinct commodities (such as eggs and chicken meat), how is the value of the set of commodities produced split between those commodities if they are sold separately?

They have correct stances against the EU and NATO, and I$rael; however, in some of their documents, they denounce marxism-leninism, calling it "stalinism", and it seems they often pander to the labour aristocracy.

I'm a novice marxist, and I still have a lot to learn from the knowledgeable posters here and reading theory. My current understanding is that in the EU, most "communist" political parties are not revolutionary. So I would like to ask specifically: are my suspicions of KSČM, and perhaps of most communist parties in the EU, being liberal valid? and are there any anti-revisionist communist parties I should know about and learn from?

E: Their stance against I$rael is not correct.

I recently was searching for a communist party/group/org in Arizona and stumbled upon something very unnerving. I have included a link (if allowed) to the article describing ARS 16.805 below. Am I understanding correctly that, being a communist, I am afforded no political rights here in AZ?

ARS 16.805 (AZ Government Website)

In 'Dialectical and Historical Materialism' by J.V. Stalin, the following is said:

Contrary to idealism, which regards the world as the embodiment of an "absolute idea," a "universal spirit," "consciousness," Marx's philosophical materialism holds that the world is by its very nature material, that the multifold phenomena of the world constitute different forms of matter in motion, that interconnection and interdependence of phenomena as established by the dialectical method, are a law of the development of moving matter, and that the world develops in accordance with the laws of movement of matter and stands in no need of a "universal spirit."

"The materialistic outlook on nature," says Engels, "means no more than simply conceiving nature just as it exists, without any foreign admixture." (Marx and Engels, Vol. XIV, p. 651.)

Speaking of the materialist views of the ancient philosopher Heraclitus, who held that "the world, the all in one, was not created by any god or any man, but was, is and ever will be a living flame, systematically flaring up and systematically dying down"' Lenin comments: "A very good exposition of the rudiments of dialectical materialism." (Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, p. 318.)

What exactly is said here? That Marxist philosophical Materialism holds that the world is composed out of matter? That it is not a creation of some God, idea or whatnot. The world is just matter, with nothing supernatural about it?

What is the difference between Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism? I keep seeing that Social Democracy is bad, is there a difference between the two?

And what decides if you are? Is it determined by how much money you make? What you do? Where you live? And are they excluded from being leftists?

Aside from the obvious answer that Islamic lands generally stand above unimaginable oil wealth, is there a theological reason or maybe an incompatibility with capitalist values, why Islamic doctrine is particularly picked as the dangerous side of the coin of religion?

In "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State" Engels distinguishes between the "family form" and the "system of kinship". What is the difference between these?

In general, Western workers are labelled as "labor aristocracy" in communist circles. But what does that say about third world immigrants coming to the imperial core? Is it dependent on what their class was in their home country?

Hej! I'm a M28 thats first now realize how aligned I am with communism, despite coming from a very capitalist friendly house hold with two upper middle class parents how voted right there entire life. I'm now trying to educate myself more and more but one thing I just can't seem to grasp is that a communist society would automatically increase the statues of marginalized communities. I heard the theoretical argument about how capitalism accumulate resources to the already well of there for increase the divide, but at the same time my owe experience says differently. I'm married to a Bulgarian woman and her parents and relatives are grown up under communisum and they are more racist, sexist and homophobic then basically anyone I talked to. I get that communisum before the fall might not have been it's ideal stat, but it was still communisum so if it supposed to be inherently better for solving these issues how do we square the theoretical argument with the empirical example?

Hello comrades

I've recently come across the book "Peasant Rebels Under Stalin Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance" by Lynne Viola (Soviet Historian with a Ph.D. from Princeton University).

As the title suggests it specifically deals with the collectivization of agriculture under Stalin after the NEP and its peasant resistance. I've only read the preface so far but it was already very loaded in rhetoric, as it starts: "Collectivization destroyed the peasant commune and left in its place a coercive enterprise, socialist in name only, that the Communist party would use to try to transform the peasantry into a cultural and economic colony." and "And, under the label of "kulak," prosperous, outspoken, or simply able peasant farmers were subject to arrest and deportation in one of the twentieth century's most horrific episodes of mass repression."

I will look at the sources and arguments posed in the book soon, but I've wanted to ask pre-emptively if you could could provide other sources in regards to the peasants popularity of the collectivization policy's after the NEP, as well how their relation to the means of production changed?

Since agricultural collectivization in the USSR is something I don't know much about yet except the exploitation the kulaks engaged in, would be great if I could look into this further!

thanks

In Marxism and the National Question, Stalin stated:

"A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture."

By this definition, is Kurdistan a nation? If yes, how should communists regard Kurdish movements like the PKK?

In my studies, and working with organizations and study groups, I’ve encountered a phenomenon of mutual aggression and derision between this perceived mileu. My question is: where in the theoretical development of socialism into “communism/anarchism” do these energetic disagreements arise?