So What The Hell Is Communism Anyway?

NOTE: We will be talking exclusively about Marxist critique of capitalism, and therefore, the basic ideas of communism. We will not be talking about the philosophical implications, but just the economic ideas he discussed in Das Kapital Volume 1.
I do not claim my understanding of Marx as absolute, or even anywhere near it. Please feel free to read the original texts and come to your own interpretations.

We will proceed in the following way:
1. First, what he proposed.
2. The explanation for his proposals according to the Marxist perspective.

PART 1:

Firstly, what he proposed:

1. All land, factories, and means of production BELONG TO THE PEOPLE, to all the people and not to the few.

2. That the conversion of capital and hoarding be stopped.

3. Absolute equal rights for all.

4. Profits AS THEFT be stopped.

5. That to each will be given ACCORDING TO WHAT THEY PRODUCE.

6. That renting be banned.

Quick clarifications (YOU CAN SKIP THIS IF YOU WANT AND GO TO THE NEXT SECTION):

For 1: not that the GOVERNMENT will own land, that means something completely different from the PEOPLE owning it).

For 4: this does not mean that small businesses cannot have profit, which is a popular misrepresentation of Marxism; this means that all the EMPLOYEES of that business must share the profits).

For 5: a misrepresentation of Marxism is that everyone will be paid equally, whereas Marx was simply stating that everyone will be paid according to what they produce, in this scenario, Ambani will be paid less than his janitor, for example)

PART 2:

Firstly, a lot of the talks about communism being anti-democratic and/or violent. It need not necessarily be so as this link below proves:

‘the Manifesto mentions that a “violent overthrow [gewaltsamen Sturz] of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat”. But we should be careful here in how we read ‘violent’, for the German word easily lends to a translation of an overthrow by force. That is, ‘gewaltsamen’ could be rendered as pertaining to a forcible overthrow, one that does not follow the currently established procedures (e.g. through election), but not necessarily one that is violent.”

(https://paradoxoftheday.com/differences-between-marxism-leninism-trotskyism-stalinism-and-maoism/)

Marx dreamt of communism as unlike what most believe it to be. He thought of it to be the logical finale of democracy: a pure system that truly puts power into the hands of the people.

The Marxist perspective of economics:

#1 The main driving force behind an economy is production.

a. All of economy depends on production: Not money, not jobs, not innovations, but production.

b. It is very evident that no one would be able to work, or do anything really, if there was no food.

We are too large a population to subsist on foraging. Therefore food must be grown. Therefore, it must be produced.

c. Apart from food, anything and everything that is needed to get something made needs to be extracted, produced, created etc.

 Therefore production is the driving force of the economy. Without production, there is no economy.

(Here’s a link: https://www.thoughtco.com/mode-of-production-definition-3026416)

#2 Since production is the groundwork of the economy, then whoever produces is utmost important in the economy.

To explain this, Marx talked about the “means of production”, which means anything that is used to produce.

This includes:
a. Factories.
b. Land.
c. Capital.
d. Even labour.

Whoever owns the means of production has the power of the economy.

#3 There are two classes of people taking part in the Industrial economy: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie

The bourgeoisie are the owners of the means of production, and the proletariat are the workers actually producing.

Again, the examples of means of production are: factories, land, farms, mines, etc.

(Side note: there is an argument by anti-marxists that Marx's idea was fallacious as it used a false dichotomy, however, Marx actually admits to more than two classes, the petty-bourgouis and farmers etc, but his statement was actually that the proletariats are the largest class, NOT the only other class).

# 4 The bourgeoisie actually do not "produce" anything themselves, and it is the "proletarian" who produce things and not the bourgeoisie.

 And thus the bourgeoisie own all that is produced by others on the mere basis of the fact that they "own" the means of production.

For example: I own the factory that you make shoes in. I also buy all the raw material that you use to make the shoes. Therefore, the shoes are mine, even though you made them.

#5 There is no real reason for the existence of private property.

Now this is starting to get a little radical, but bear with me.

Marxists state that there is no reason for someone to say that they "own" something simply because a piece of paper says they do.

An example, white men used to "own" black men as pieces of property, and claimed that it was theirs because they "paid for them". Of course, as we now know, this is horrendous and inhuman.

Marx stated that the means of production, I.e., private property, shouldn't be in the hands of anyone because it was such an important part of the economy and thus, of people's welfare.

(Many say that this is what he meant by abolishment of private property, not that everyone will have only one shirt, and pants etc).

Marx believed that such things as factories and land should belong to all, and that the fundamental right to own property was a privilege afforded to the few and a driver of class divide.

Think about it: why does anyone own a factory? Because they paid for it. But who did they pay? Someone else who owned it, and so on and so on…
If nothing, at the very least this perspective throws a shadow of a doubt on the institution of private property.

#6 That there should be an abolishment of classes, and a classless society.

This is the ultimate aim of communism, and possible only if the means of production rested with everyone, and not with the few.

#7. That profit is theft!

In an employer/employee situation, a golden rule is followed- an employer can only hire an employee if the employee makes more money for him than the salary he takes.

For example, I hire a carpenter to make chairs. Suppose he takes 50$ per hour. The only way I can afford to hire him is if he makes chairs worth MORE than 50$ per hour.

Otherwise the employer will go bankrupt (since he'll be paying more than he's producing, and cost will be more than selling price).

In this case: the employee PRODUCES goods worth, say, 60$, but gets money worth only 50$.

60$-50$=10$.

That 10$ is called profit.

Where has that 10$ come from? It has been "stolen" from the employee, and his hard labour, by paying him LESS than the value that he has "c…

#8 That the aim of capitalism was profit-mongering, and this was detrimental to the human life.

Profit was taken as more important than anything else, and therefore the drive was to profit, and not to a better society, under capitalism.

#9 That anyone charging money for something that is not "produced" are not contributing to the economy but are in fact inhibiting it: landlords or renters are thieves for the same reason that profit is theft.

Landlords charging rent are the classic Marxist example of the bourgeoisie not producing anything and still hoarding wealth.

Since they "own" the land they are renters of, the rentee has to pay them money. This money is essentially for NOTHING, as (as we discussed, production is the backbone of economy, and economy is stimulated through production), there is NO production involved in renting land (i.e., no more "land" is being "created" here) and therefore charging for NOTHING results in

a. Theft (in a similar vein as profit is theft).

b. Increased burden on the renter, without an increase in production.

(Side note: this idea was originally propounded by the modern founder of capitalism, Adam Smith. Here’s a link: reddit.com/r/adamsmith/comments/zche7/ysk_adam_smith_spoke_of_landlords_as_cruel/).

#10 The conversion of money into capital and the resulting hoarding of money:

Usually, money was a term used to denote a MEDIUM used for, basically, barter.

The formula it used was C-M-C.
(Here M is money, and C is commodity.)

Here we can clearly see that money is an intermediate in an exchange of two commodities:
1. I need bread, and I have a lot of beans.
2. I will SELL my beans IN ORDER TO BUY bread, which I need.
Here my first commodity, C1, is beans, which I EXCHANGE for MONEY, which I then exchange for C2, bread.

Therefore the formula is C1-M-C2:
Here clearly, the system uses one commodity which is NOT NEEDED and exchanged for another commodity which is NEEDED.

Thus, money here works as an intermediary, and is therefore, simply money.

PLEASE NOTE: here the end-goal was to give a commodity which you didn’t need (beans) and take a commodity you needed.
The end goal was an exchange of commodities.

However, in a capitalist system, the system turns on its head as traders BUY commodities simply to exchange it at a HIGHER PRICE.

Here we see, for example, a trader who trades in, say, cotton, buying cotton in December  at 100$ a bale, and WAITING for the price to rise to  sell it for 110$ a bale, thus making a PROFIT of 10$ a bale.

So, what happened there?

Was cotton sold to exchange it for another NEEDED commodity?
No.
What happened instead was MONEY was indirectly exchanged for MORE MONEY.

Here, hilariously, commodity has become the intermediary.

The formula has this become: M-C-M, where M is money, C is commodity (here, cotton).

The end goal has become to exchange money for more money.

According to Marxist economics, this whole process has resulted in NO production. And therefore, this is a stagnant and moot process.

This is the conversion of money to capital:
1. When money is used as a medium, with the END-GOAL being to trade commodities for use, it is MONEY.
2. When money is the END-GOAL to itself, and commodities are the mediums used to TRADE money for more money, money gets converted to CAPITAL.

And the WAITING is here called HOARDING.

PART 3- REITERATION:

 Now that we have a basis for a theoretical understanding of what Marx is actually saying, it makes sense now to see how capital and renters and the owning of the means of production by the few is resulting in a stagnation of the production economy, and an unfair system in which the proletariat are being stolen from.

I strongly suggest reading at least Engel’s Synopsis of Marx’s Das Kapital.
(https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Engels_Synopsis_of_Capital.pdf)

So therefore, Marx’s suggestion to change this logic of capitalism was:

1. All land, factories, and means of production BELONG TO THE PEOPLE, to all the people and not to the few.
(In the hands of the people, and not necessarily the government. They’re not both the same thing.)

2. That the conversion of capital and hoarding be stopped.
(Money return to being money instead of being capital, and no one hoards commodities in the hopes of selling it at a higher price, for example, sanitizers during the coronavirus crisis).

3. Equal rights for all.
(Only when everyone is treated equally can we have a classless society.
Some of the greatest and first feminists in the world were Marxist, for example, Simone de Beauvoir)

4. Profits AS THEFT be stopped.
(That is to say, as long as you do not take from people what they produce in exchange for a meagre wage. If a worker makes shoes worth 300$, the worker should be paid 300$ for it).

5. That to each will be given ACCORDING TO WHAT THEY PRODUCE.

6. That renting, and all such thievery, be banned.