Editing Communism

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'''Communism''' is the real movement to achieve dignity for the working class in a world of [[alienation]]. As [[Friedrich Engels]] said in his [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm Principles of Communism] "Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the [[proletariat]].". It emerged out of the social question, which occurred during the final stages of the process of [[Modernity]], in the form of 19th century Anglo Saxon capitalism.

Communism is related to [[Socialism]], the difference between the two being that Communism is the movement, while Socialism is the [[mode of production]]. 

Marx described communism in this way:

''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 '''sublates''' the present state of things.''<ref>https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a4</ref>

''Der Kommunismus ist für uns nicht ein Zustand, der hergestellt werden soll, ein Ideal, wonach die Wirklichkeit sich zu richten haben [wird]. Wir nennen Kommunismus die '''wirkliche Bewegung,''' welche den jetzigen Zustand '''aufhebt'''.''<ref>http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me03/me03_017.htm#I_I</ref>

The principal word here is ''sublate'', a translation of ''aufheben'', a technical philosophical term used by Hegel which basically means to cancel and preserve simultaneously. This is usually mistranslated and it has led many to think Marx meant communism is the movement which "abolishes" the present state of things and thus does away with tradition entirely, when in reality he meant communism would abolish ''capitalism''<ref>It shouldn't need to be said but of course abolition itself is a process; he did not mean we would press the destroy capitalism button one day and wake up living under socialism.</ref> but ''preserve'' tradition, adapting modernity to tradition and tradition to modernity, creating something new entirely. From this perspective, communism is the highest realization of all human tradition, and shows the infantile nature of both RETVRN-type "traditionalists" and fake "communists" who pose themselves against tradition. Most historical communists and most modern communists outside of the West, such as the Chinese, understood / understand this, which is why in socialist countries we always see a rejuvenation of the cultures of the various nationalities that live in these countries, and socialism adapted to their particular historical reality and traditions.  

Modernity, particularly in its later stages, comes in the form of the mode of production that is [[Capitalism]]. The human being, the worker, was atomized as just another cog in the machine, all of the cultural, social, and traditional, aspects of human life were abstracted into nothing, and world stopped making any sense to humanity. Society was not ruled based on cultural, social, traditional characteristics of each society, which had been the case for thousands of years. Instead society as a whole began to be ruled by the [[exchange-value|dollar]], the need to make [[profit]] triumphing over all others at this time. Communism began as a mass movement that would return to the traditions, cultural, and social, aspects of humanity, without compromising the material progress made by modernity. In other words, [[production]] would no longer be incompatible with the majority of people's lives. This movement would lead to some kind of mode of production in which we would work for humanity: Socialism.

Pseudo-Marxists claim that talking of a "return" is fascist talk, but they clearly either haven't read Marx or didn't understand him, since Marx himself talks of communism as:  <blockquote>''Communism'' as the ''positive'' transcendence of ''private property'' as ''human self-estrangement,'' and therefore as the real ''appropriation'' of the ''human'' essence by and for man; '''communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a ''social'' (i.e., human) being''' – a return accomplished consciously and '''embracing the entire wealth of previous development'''.<ref>https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm</ref> </blockquote>That is, embracing the entire history of cultural and civilizational development, i.e. tradition, not just developments material and cultural from the capitalist epoch, although these too are of course included.

The original Communist movements at this time had no social science or in-depth analysis of material conditions, but were based on [[idealism]], "If I want something It will happen" the idealist says, despite the fact that real, material, or concrete realities would probably not be able to fit what you "want." Many of these Communist movements believed that we can somehow go from point A to point B, easily. [[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels]] disagreed. They believed that we can't simply go from point A to point B, we can't go from one mode of production to another, simply based on [[will]]. They believed that there were (and are) real material forces and contradictions within this world that allow Capitalism to exist the way it does, that leads to it's demise, and to the awakening of a new mode of productions, not ideas, or metaphysics. The science in question, used by Marx and Engels, that allowed them to make such a claim was called [[Dialectical Materialism]]. This science, combined with communist or socialist politics is called [[Scientific Socialism]].
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