If communism is to mean anything, it means a qualitatively different kind of life from what we currently have in our current society. Communism is not merely this society but without classes—it means a whole transformation of life as we know it. Communism transforms all modes of organization and social relations between people.
We mention these things because we are appalled at the vulgarization of what communism means in Kas William P. Aguilar’s latest manifesto, “Towards a New Communism,” published on the Cosmonaut. Vulgarization of communist ideas must be challenged if communism is to mean the liberation of all, for it involves crucial questions concerning how principled communists ought conduct themselves in a revolutionary and post-revolutionary period. These are not some vague theoretical positions, but crucial ideas that have the potential to shape how a revolutionary process progresses. If we are to really learn from the mistakes of actually existing socialism, we must transcend their very mistakes.
On the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
In this section, Kas William makes the claim that bourgeois revolution transforms state power from protecting feudal property to protecting bourgeois property. He then makes the bizarre claim that the commodified nature of the bourgeois state apparatus does not alter the “fundamental universality of the state.” He makes this claim because he suggests that bourgeois ideology itself proclaims a certain “fundamental universality” about the mandate of bourgeois state power. These claims are crucial for Kas William’s argument that communist revolution could potentially transform bourgeois state power to protect communism.
This is befuddled. Kas William makes a basic mistake in thinking what the state claims about itself constitutes the reality about itself. Of course we can expect the bourgeois to make all kinds of claims about themself, but we must not make the mistake of thinking their liberal ideas constitute reality. Are we not materialists? Their ideological justifications of their rulership is not the material reality of their rulership.
Besides, the bourgeois state apparatus does not have a universal character simply because the modern state apparatus in its current form has always been about the protection of property and privilege. This truth is self-evident in Kas Marx’s time and holds even more true today. Where the left holds power today, the state apparatuses in these countries still very much protect property and privilege and those left movements rule as izquierda permitida—the permitted left—and not as izquierda radical—the radical left. There are quite literally too many examples to state here, from Nepali Maoists implementing neoliberalism and breaking strikes, Evo Morales’ compromises with the settler oligarchy and extractivist interests, or even actually existing libertarian socialist president Gabriel Boric continuing settler relations with regards to the indigenous Mapuche peoples.
Proletarian dictatorship fully abolishes the bourgeois state; it does not transform it. In its place, the dictatorship of the proletariat institutes a semi-state, whose rulership radically breaks with previous modes of the state. Bourgeois revolution is a transformation of one class society to another; it cannot be analogous to communist transformation that transforms a class society into a classless one.
On communism as a “classless” struggle
Kas William makes the claim that “no class within capitalism possesses an inherent revolutionary character,” and he may be true on that regard. He continues to claim that the communism is a struggle for the universal emancipation of humanity from the capitalist mode of production, and therefore implies the truly revolutionary are those who have betrayed their class interests in reproducing the capitalist mode of production and as such have become communist.
However, communism is not a “classless” struggle in the sense that “communists” consist of a revolutionary non-class. The struggle for communism is a struggle of those within class society destroying class society. Class distinctions are not eroded on the basis that one decides to become communist. Class distinctions are eroded on the basis of material reality, not ideological presumptions. This means the bourgeois desiring to be communists must cease to be bourgeois. For example, they must liquidate their ownership that dominates other people on the basis of wage-labor or rent and transform this ownership into collective property, housing or workplace cooperatives for example. To be a revolutionary class traitor has serious meaning. Magical Engels-like revolutionary traitors don’t drop from the sky, and even if they did, we’d beat them up for continuing to exploit when clearly they have the capacity to cooperativize.
On the negation of the proletariat
Kas William is surprisingly correct that the proletariat—as it currently exists—is not a revolutionary class. The proletariat is the class of capital when it continues to act in such a way as to reproduce capital. Social reproduction theory states that the everyday activity of people within a particular mode of production reproduces the basis of their life, including that mode of production. Workers reproduce the capitalist mode of production when they engage in wage-labor and valorization, when they pay rent and buy commodities, and so. Additionally, the struggle to increase wages is not an inherently revolutionary act.
However, Kas William continues, suggesting the proletariat could “negate its own existence” by embracing communism. Again, this is a deep vulgarization. The proletariat does not negate the conditions of their class by adopting communism, but by eroding their specific class characteristics in a real material sense. This erosion emerges not from ideology, but from materiality. Believing in communism is not a material condition, so the self-abolition of the proletariat does not begin from the adoption of communist ideas.
Kas William continues, suggesting that the communist process “de-commodifies” the proletariat by “reducing working hours.” This is also vulgarization. Communism means the ending the world of work as a separate sphere of activity, meaning that working hours would be reduced to zero and labor itself becoming transformed to a “means of life” and “life’s prime want,” to quote Marx from the Gothakritik. Work, as a historically-contingent activity as wage-labor under the capitalist mode of production, simply would not exist under communism. Besides, proletarians do not act in a revolutionary way when they move to improve the conditions of their proletarianization (through higher wages, less working hours), but rather the proletariat struggles in a revolutionary way when it interrupts proletarianization and the social reproduction of their class (i.e. expropriations, redistribution of goods without money, and such).
The self-abolition of the proletariat is the process by which the proletariat abolishes itself as a class, and thereby abolishing the state as state, to quote Engels from Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. It is the process by which the proletariat abolishes its class distinctions and all that it implies: proletarianization, alienation, separation from the means of living, et cetera. This negation, known as communism, does not spring from individual proletarians becoming communists.
On the negation of the Bourgeoisie
In the next section, Kas William continues, suggesting that the bourgeois can adopt communism as their “immediate interest” when the de-commodification of life is underway in a communist revolution. Kas William seems to argue that this de-commodification of needs would win the bourgeois over and thus negate the bourgeoisie.
However, the bourgeois does not become de-classed by becoming communists. The bourgeois who become communist are class traitors, acting against their own material interests. They cannot be won over by a general provision of needs. The bourgeois can only be de-classed if their material conditions change, that is to say, when they are dispossessed of their power. A revolutionary class traitor remains a bourgeois as long as their material conditions are based on private ownership and expropriation. This is why revolutionary class traitors must materially de-class themselves through liquidating their material ownership. In the same way, the bourgeois who refuse to betray their class interests must be forcefully de-classed through their dispossession, not through merely meeting their needs.
On the role of the communist party and the state
Kas William continues his assertion that the communist process transforms the capitalist state into a communist state. In our dealings with Kas William, it seems he is quite familiar to Marx’s famous statement in The Civil War in France where Marx says, “[b]ut the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” Kas Marx said this at a time when no socialist movement had ever won state power beyond the level of a city like the Paris Commune. His words remain true one hundred and fifty years later. Building upon Kas Marx and Engels, Lenin in State and Revolution upheld Kas Marx’s statement, arguing that the old bourgeois state must be “smashed” and replaced with a proletarian semi-state. However, Kas William seems to ignore these basic communist positions.
In the bourgeois state apparatus, Kas William argues that the communist party must propose “communist legislation, initiatives, and policies,” as if communism was a state of affairs to be established. We do not doubt Kas William’s familiarity with basic communist positions, so this is quite puzzling. As Marx writes in The German Ideology:
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. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
The communist process and all that implies—the abolition of wage-labor, de-commodification, abolition of the separation of the means of living, the end of alienation—will never be on the ballot. It can never be debated in parliament (or at least a bourgeois one). The party cannot will it into existence by entering the state.
Indeed, if the communists enter the bourgeois state apparatus, they will take on the duties of a bourgeois minister and will be forced to reproduce the bourgeois state apparatus. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote once, class struggle is the “sole method” of socialism (her term for communism). She continues that entering the bourgeois state apparatus could constitute a part of this class struggle, but it is a dangerous endeavor. This is not because socialists are afraid of government responsibilities, but that “a ministry is not, in general, a field of action for a party of the struggle of the proletarian classes.” She continues:
The character of a bourgeois government isn’t determined by the personal character of its members, but by its organic function in bourgeois society. The government of the modern state is essentially an organization of class domination, the regular functioning of which is one of the conditions of existence of the class state. With the entry of a socialist into the government, and class domination continuing to exist, the bourgeois government doesn’t transform itself into a socialist government, but a socialist transforms himself into a bourgeois minister. … While in parliament, or on the municipal council, we obtain useful reforms by combating the bourgeois government, while occupying a ministerial post we arrive at the same reforms by supporting the bourgeois state. The entry of a socialist into a bourgeois government is not, as it is thought, a partial conquest of the bourgeois state by the socialists, but a partial conquest of the socialist party by the bourgeois state. (My emphasis, “The Dreyfus Affair and the Millerand Case.”)
Kas William seems to say nothing on how he intends his communist party to prevent opportunism and co-option by the bourgeois state apparatus. Indeed, while Luxemburg is well aware of the dangers the conquest of the socialist party and counters it by centering class struggle, Kas William seems to ignore this matter altogether.
In the next section, Kas William is refreshingly explicit in rejecting the basic communist position of the withering away of the state and its final abolition. However, if one cannot imagine statelessness, then one cannot imagine communism. Communism means the end of classes and of the state. Communism means organization of the provision of needs by a free association of producers. The state, whether its bourgeois form or the proletarian semi-state form, guarantees class rule. The bourgeois state apparatus guarantees bourgeois class rule while the proletarian semi-state defends proletarian dictatorship over society while the proletariat abolishes itself as a class and thereby abolishing the state as state. If there is a state, there cannot be communism. If there is communism, there cannot be a state. States need classes to exist and classes need states to defend class society. Meanwhile, the proletarian semi-state uses its apparatus to destroy class society.
It is at this point that one would question Kas William’s commitment to communism if he refuses to even commit to basic communist positions. This revisionism is not some minor technical point, but concerns the grand questions of what communism would actually mean in practice.
Kas William continues, saying that instead of communist statelessness, the “communist state” would “continuously evolve to enhance its efficiency and provide comprehensive services to the population.” Again, this is dangerous revisionism. At this point, we are unsure if Kas William misunderstands what communism means or if he simply rejects communism and forwards something else in its name.
Rather than an efficient state, production under communism is done through the free association of producers. What we understand from this is that Kas William thinks that the state (whether bourgeois or “communist”) has paternalistic functions, that it has a duty to provide to its population. But the services provided by the state are precisely a function of its domination, of its reproduction of class society, of its usurpation of societal functions to force dependence upon its apparatus. What Kas William suggests is not a free communist society, but a society dependent upon the state. This is not communism, it is Lassallism. Calling Lassallism as communism does not transform it into communism. As Kas Engels once remarked,
These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world. (“On Authority”)
Kas Marx had already discredited this Lassallism in Gothakritik, but Kas William would seek to resurrect dead ideas from their grave to rule over living people.
Curiously, Kas William goes on to suggest that how this “communist state” would prevent authoritarian designs by “redirecting violence” from the “constituents” towards its own “officials.” He then recognizes that the “capitalist state is inherently plagued by corruption, self-interest, and graft.” First point: such violence against state officials would be totally unnecessary under communism because instead of a state apparatus, needs are met through the free association of producers. People meet needs, not because they gain money or reproduce privileges from it, but because communism is a system of solidarity and free association.
Second point: this rent-seeking, that Kas William terms as corruption, is essential to the bourgeois state apparatus. The bourgeois state apparatus evolved from the feudal rent-seeking apparatus. Rent-seeking is quite literally why the state emerged and is the reason why the state takes its form today. The proletarian dictatorship totally abolishes this putrid apparatus and replaces it with a semi-state that is already withering away and on its way towards abolition. This semi-state could include the meeting of needs, but as the semi-state is progressively abolished, these functions are progressively taken up by the free association of producers.
Third point: Why would there be corruption under Kas William’s “communist state” if commodities do not exist? If commodities do not exist, presumably money would not exist. But if corruption exists in Kas William’s state, then privilege must exist, and so must exist putrid features of the bourgeois state apparatus in red colors. Rather than attempting to further beg the question and answer this conundrum, we must drop the matter and conclude the incoherence of such a notion.
At this point we must congratulate the kasamang editors of Cosmonaut from removing the most vulgar of statements in Kas William’s earlier draft. We will not suffer the reader on the worse of what was removed on the matter of the “communist state.”
On Establishing Communism
Kas William continues in his manifesto, going on to state that his communist party would go on to win electoral victories, assume communist governance, and have communist leaders “excel as administrators” and “liberators,” generally winning people over from capitalist ideology to communism. Absent from his manifesto is the role of class struggle. It would seem for Kas William, communism is not a struggle for a class to abolish all classes, but as a struggle of communists to capture the state and implement a de-commodified welfare state. The role of the class struggle seems to be in winning proletarians and individual bourgeois over to “communism.” The self-activity of the proletariat striking at proletarianization is wholly absent from this manifesto.
Later on, Kas William declares that communism cannot wait for crises to occur but rather use welfare provision as the means for establishing “communism.” This deeply misunderstands the communist position. Communism is not about waiting for crisis to worsen but in building communal power and capacitating the proletariat for its own abolition. This is communism as a verb, as class struggle. Kas William continues, saying that this “communism” would improve the “people’s conditions through communist governance” and thus “undermines capitalism.” However, alleviating the conditions of work, rent, and the provision of state services is the reproduction of capitalism. Communism means the interruption of this reproduction.
While working within the bourgeois state apparatus does technically reproduce the state, there are specific circumstances that are the exception. On of these is the abolitionist notion of the non-reformist reforms. Reformist reforms naturally reproduce and entrenches harmful features of the bourgeois state apparatus. These reformist reforms can take the form of providing additional training for police—in the original abolitionist notion of this theory—thereby continuing the funding of the violence. The non-reformist reforms interrupt this violence. The classic notion of an abolitionist non-reformist reforms is defunding the police and funding community projects as a practical step towards police abolition. For the communists among us, non-reformist reforms could possibly look like pushing for mandated worker representation in the board of directors, mandated paying of company shares to workers, and other examples that assaults the ownership of the bourgeois.
Such notions of non-reformist reforms that are won through class struggle and can intensify class struggle are totally absent from Kas William’s manifesto.
Coda
Kas William has honest intentions in conceptualizing communism as a struggle against the commodified world. In this, he must be commended upon. However, his vulgarization and rejection of basic communist positions is dangerous. As Kas William continues to explore his role in the communist movement, he will inevitably influence the communist movement with these dangerous misconceptions. Alongside Kas William, we seek the reconstitution of a communist movement in the Philippines. As it is, the communist movement in the Philippines is already vulgarized by the ideas of Jose Maria Sison and his party of National Democracy that has consistently led the working class to subordinate itself to bourgeois factions. The worst crime of National Democracy was subordinating itself as the left wing of Duterte, the left wing of a fascist movement. The Philippine communist movement cannot afford more vulgarized interpretations of communism. The Philippine working class has been misled far too many times. To decenter the proletariat’s role in the abolition of all classes and to center the entering the bourgeois state apparatus is a denial of class struggle. We can at least commend National Democracy for not rejecting the class struggle, even if they seek to move the class struggle to class collaboration. We cannot say the same for Kas William.
We shall end with this: the struggle for communism is a struggle for the proletariat to abolish proletarianization, the conditions of their class, and thus in doing so, abolish all classes, and to abolish the state as state. We call communism that real movement to abolish the current state of things. The conditions of this communist movement result from the premises now in existence.
-Simoun Magsalin
