This page is still heavily Under construction
What is the Commodity Form?
A commodity is an object that has dual values: use and exchange that is produced to be exchanged for other commodities in accordance to its exchange value.
Use value: the aspect of an object that satisfies a social need.
EX: The edible properties of a loaf of bread used for feeding people.
Exchange value: Representation of the labor/work put into a produced object.
EX: the labor power someone put into producing that loaf of bread.
“Hence, commodities are first of all simply to be considered as values, independent of their exchange-relationship or from the form, in which they appear as exchange-values.”
-Karl Marx, The Commodity, 1867
Exchange value and use value are independent from each other IE they don’t directly change each other (The labor power it takes to bake a loaf of bread does not change its purpose and the fact that bread fulfills the social need of being eaten doesn’t change the amount of labor power it takes to produce).
Socially necessary labor time and exchange value.
Socially necessary labor time is the amount of labor under current conditions of production by which it takes to produce a commodity on average. Socially necessary labor time is the metric by which the exchange value of a commodity is determined.
“So it is only the quantum of socially necessary labour, or that labour-time which is socially necessary for the constitution of a use-value which determines the quantity of the value.”
-Karl Marx, The Commodity, 1867
NON COMMODITY ITEMS
“Air for example, grasslands, virgin soil, etc. are useful to people, but don’t constitute any value to them, because they aren’t the products of work and, consequentially, aren’t commodities. We can make ourselves objects for our own personal uses, but which can’t be useful for others; in such a case we don’t produce commodities; even less we produce commodities when we work on objects, which do not have any usefulness either for us or for others.”
-Carlo Cafiero, Karl Marx’s Capital, Page 8
As said above non commodity items are:
- Items without any use value
- Items made for personal consumption without use value to others.
- Valuable items that don’t involve human labor.
Currency/Money
Currency/Money is a commodity that represents exchange value and is guaranteed by some organized authority.
“Currency therefore is that commodity which, by custom and by legal sanction, has monopolized the position of the general equivalent.”
-Carlo Cafiero, Karl Marx’s Capital, Page 7
Commodity Production
Whether an economy is controlled primarily by state enterprises or private corporations doesn’t change its status as being engaged in commodity production.
What is Capitalism?
Capitalism is
What is class?
Sociological vs Social
Do you like the Soviet Union/China/Cuba/Etc
No.
Though the Russian Revolution of 1917 started out as a genuinely revolutionary movement, and the Bolsheviks part of a genuinely Communist Party, by the time the State had cemented itself as the Soviet Union it had already become a counter-revolutionary apparatus. For the entirety of its history, therefore, the Soviet Union was a state capitalist nation.
The Chinese Communist Party, from very early on and especially leading up to the Shanghai Commune which they betrayed, was a counter-revolutionary perversion of the Communist Programme towards the Bourgeois ends of national liberation. We do not believe that the Chinese Revolution was “bad”, but we do uphold that it was not Communist.
Cuba, as well at all other such national liberation movements since have been non-communist in nature, and we do not find them to be either “historically progressive” or something we should rally around to defend, as they are fundamentally Capitalist in nature.
Should the government run the economy?
No.
Should we vote for better candidates?
No.
Voting is a mechanism that is used by the ruling class to try to temper working class self activity. Regardless of which politician or party wins an election, government within capitalist society exists to ensure that the rule of capital is stable and the possibility of proletarian emancipation is prevented as much as possible. The only solution to bring about total transformation is for the proletariat of the world to unite and organize outside of and against the current political forms and systems. Voting is a form of distraction and division, the organization of our class towards the goal of revolution is all that we stand for.
What is Communism
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.
-Karl Marx, The German Ideology
Communism is to us therefore not to be confused with “Communist Society” the state of affairs which is to be established. We do not feel it incredibly important to call out others for confusing the terms, however for the sake of clarity we use the two non-interchangeably as such.
Communism is not something that we fight to create, but something already existing that we join. It is inseparable from the the Party (historic or formal), but it is not strictly confined to the Party. It is, essentially, a programme.
What is Left Communism?
Left Communism is a historical term that today refers to a broad category of tendencies associated with upholding the Communist positions of internationalism, workers independence, anti-capitalism, and state abolition. Italian Left Communism (so named because of its historical origins, not anything special about the Italian nation), Dutch-German Left Communism (refer to the last example), and Council Communism are all considered to be within the category of Left Communism, however they are not all identical movements with identical programmes.
What differentiates Communist Society from other social structures?
Good question, actual communism can be distinguished from the various flavors of liberalism as follows.
Communism Versus Liberalism
| Features | Communism | Stalinism
Stalinism is usually advocated under the name Marxism-Leninism, a term popularized by Stalin and which has very little to do with the actual policies of Lenin | Social Democracy | Fascism | Liberal Capitalism |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wage Labor |
Under communism, exchange value and therefore wages will be done away with |
Stalinism has historically preserved wage labor for the working class | |||
The Commodity Form
The fundamental unit of capitalist social relations, in which human labor and its products are alienated, objectified, and exchanged as values on the market. |
Getting rid of the commodity form is one of the fundamental traits of communism | ||||
| Small Ruling Class |
Under communism, the proletariat (everyone) is the ruling class |
Under Stalinism, the old bourgeoisie was replaced by a new bourgeoisie in the form of the bureaucracy |
Social Democracy retains bourgeois ownership of the means of production and therefore their control of the system | ||
| False Worker Control |
Under communism, workers will have real direct control through councils |
Stalinism proclaims that the bureaucratic state capitalist works in their interests and thus that since their interests are prioritized, they effectively have control. |
Social Democracy claims worker control through bourgeoisie systems of controlled democracy similarly to liberal capitalism. |
Fascism claims the workers have control via the state which acts as the representation of the shared interests of the nation. | |
| National Borders | |||||
| Imperialist Expansion |
Social Democracies rely on profits from imperialist expansion and exploitation to fund social programs for the national proletariat. Often, this expansion is done primarily through economic means rather than through expansion of national borders. | ||||
| Minorities Used As Political Tools |
Social Democrats use minority rights as political tools, often throwing those same groups under the bus once elected. Examples include Palestine and LGBTQ+ rights. | ||||
| Direct Worker Control Over Decisions | |||||
| Production and Exchange by Freely Associated Producers | |||||
| Socialist Aesthetics |