Did Karl Marx, by outlining the revolutionary steps toward communism (and turning a process which he claimed was inevitable) into a consciously directed political movement, paradoxically make the realization of true communism impossible? Since any attempt to implement his theory through organized revolution would inevitably recreate the hierarchies and domination it sought to abolish? (Also I would appreciate any further reading on why I’m wrong—I’m not asking this question because I’m pretentious enough to think I’m right but more because I tried looking for some discourse on this and found none)
This seems like a more esoteric version of the claim that Lenin ruined everything by creating a vanguard party. Apparently if communism is going to work, the need for spontaneity is so great that not only can you not have communist parties, you can’t even have communist theorists… I would say no, if a social system has any chance of working, writing manifestos about it and politically organizing on behalf of it should not be inherently fatal; quite the reverse.
If something has a stable equilibrium that would be reached one day anyway, pointing it out should make the process faster in general. (I am not claiming that communism is this, just speaking in general.) Analogically, in capitalism the prices are supposed to converge to some market equilibrium sooner or later, but if you had a reliable prediction machine which would announce publicly to all market participants what the equilibrium price is going to be, the process would only happen faster.
This is not absolutely reliable, for example if you have human adversaries, then pointing out how exactly things will happen could help them prepare a better defense. The possibility of defense seems to contradict the idea that the new equilibrium is inevitable, but in theory we could imagine a game for two players where the second player always has to lose in long term, and if both players keep moving randomly it will happen in 10 turns on average, but if you publish the entire decision tree, the second player can keep dragging the game for 100 turns.
As I see it, the problem with Marx was that he underestimated the adversary. Beating the capitalists is the easy part, beating Moloch is the hard part (Ephesians 6:12), and it’s definitely not going to happen automatically once the capitalists are defeated, as Marx seemed to assume. Capitalists are actually quite suicidal, for example these days they are competing to build a machine that will most likely kill them all. A sufficiently large and organized group of workers could in theory create a similar incentive trap for them. The problem is organizing the workers into something that is more than a destructive mob; it’s how to build a Friendly AI from the mass of billion apes. Lenin realized the impossibility of the task, so he tried to align a political party instead, and failed at that, too.
Did Karl Marx, by outlining the revolutionary steps toward communism (and turning a process which he claimed was inevitable) into a consciously directed political movement, paradoxically make the realization of true communism impossible? Since any attempt to implement his theory through organized revolution would inevitably recreate the hierarchies and domination it sought to abolish? (Also I would appreciate any further reading on why I’m wrong—I’m not asking this question because I’m pretentious enough to think I’m right but more because I tried looking for some discourse on this and found none)
This seems like a more esoteric version of the claim that Lenin ruined everything by creating a vanguard party. Apparently if communism is going to work, the need for spontaneity is so great that not only can you not have communist parties, you can’t even have communist theorists… I would say no, if a social system has any chance of working, writing manifestos about it and politically organizing on behalf of it should not be inherently fatal; quite the reverse.
If something has a stable equilibrium that would be reached one day anyway, pointing it out should make the process faster in general. (I am not claiming that communism is this, just speaking in general.) Analogically, in capitalism the prices are supposed to converge to some market equilibrium sooner or later, but if you had a reliable prediction machine which would announce publicly to all market participants what the equilibrium price is going to be, the process would only happen faster.
This is not absolutely reliable, for example if you have human adversaries, then pointing out how exactly things will happen could help them prepare a better defense. The possibility of defense seems to contradict the idea that the new equilibrium is inevitable, but in theory we could imagine a game for two players where the second player always has to lose in long term, and if both players keep moving randomly it will happen in 10 turns on average, but if you publish the entire decision tree, the second player can keep dragging the game for 100 turns.
As I see it, the problem with Marx was that he underestimated the adversary. Beating the capitalists is the easy part, beating Moloch is the hard part (Ephesians 6:12), and it’s definitely not going to happen automatically once the capitalists are defeated, as Marx seemed to assume. Capitalists are actually quite suicidal, for example these days they are competing to build a machine that will most likely kill them all. A sufficiently large and organized group of workers could in theory create a similar incentive trap for them. The problem is organizing the workers into something that is more than a destructive mob; it’s how to build a Friendly AI from the mass of billion apes. Lenin realized the impossibility of the task, so he tried to align a political party instead, and failed at that, too.