Dear Aaron,Let me cite from the Communist Manifesto:
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest by degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., ofthe proletariat organized as the ruling class"
Marx mentions a state and a ruling class here, this, so it seems to me, is in blatant contradiction with the dream you ascribe to him. I think it's fair to say that the abolishment of all sorts of government wasn't Marx's -or any communist's- first concern or dream. To cite onesmore from the Communist Manifesto:
"The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat."
That he did mention this utopia in which no government would exist is usually ascribed to anarchist influences. These were quite strong during the revolutions of 1848 and the French Commune of 1870.
In fact, Marx and Bakunin had such a big fight about whether socialists
had to form a government, or state, that the Communist International split up because of this.
I think mentioning a dream Marx is supposed to have had is a bit of a too simple way to do away with the 'communism' of the USSR. You might have a case, but at least you should be aware of the texts of Marx and Engels, Lenin and some defences of the USSR as a true socialist state. Besides that there exists loads of material discussing just this difference between the 'socialism existing in reality' and the ' 'real' communism' you mentioned.
I don't want to go into your forecasts about what kind of societies the world will never see. I just try and build the one I would like to live in. I'm looking forward to your reaction, or should I say 'correction', and those of everybody else
Riegholt
P.S. The Communist Manifesto is available almost everywhere in almost every language, but youcan get it for free at:
gopher://gopher.vt.edu:10010/02/120/1
or, together with 37 other Marx&Engels texts at:
http://un2s91.unige.ch/www/athena/
None.
