Primitive accumulation against primitive communism

The fact that remnants survive of the way of life that existed under forms of what Engels (social-democratic buddy/sponsor of Marx) described as primitive communism enables us to study and perhaps even preserve these as a foundation for the future.

I'd really disagree with the characterization of Engels as a "social democrat," especially in the modern sense of the word. Just because he encouraged the development of socialist parties in Germany and elsewhere doesn't mean that he was only interested in "humanizing capitalism," which is the goal of most social democrats today. It's also true that both Marx and Engels made statements regarding the possibility of a peaceful/parliamentary road to socialism in certain countries (e.g. see Marx's comments on America and Britain in 1872), but they never restricted themselves to parliamentary means, nor argued that workers' tactics should be everywhere the same.

During Engels' time, the term "social democrat" itself also did not carry the same reformist connotations that it does today. It was basically synonymous with "socialist/communist," which is why revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg used it in works such as Social Reform or Revolution?.

The process of primitive accumulation is partly the process of creating free labour, i.e. freed of ties to the land that once sustained us. The acts of enclosure and the highland clearances are the most notables instances of primitive accumulation in England and Scotland respectively.

With respect to the creation of "free laborers" in the U.S., it's interesting to note that the creation of textile mills in places like New England was also accompanied by the undermining of farmers' and others' subsistence practices. The construction of dams and canals to help power the new textile mills disrupted the livelihoods of the lower classes who relied on such rivers as a food source (i.e. fishing) and in other ways. So in addition to workers' opposition to the emerging factory system from within the mills (e.g. the well-known opposition of the Factory Girls, as was captured in labor magazines like the Voice), there was also this resistance to the undermining of the lower classes' subsistence practices. Ted Steinberg discusses such developments in his book Down to Earth (see especially Ch. 4): "Long before water became a commodity for powering New England's factories, before the dams and canals produced energy, farmers relied on rivers and streams to provide food for the family economy" (58). I'm not sure to what extent such undermining of subsistence practices directly contributed to the creation of an American working class "freed" from any other means of surviving except working for a wage, but it certainly seems like the creation of textile mills in New England assisted that process.

To abbreviate Engels: this new social order will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production and institute a system with the participation of all members of society.

What could match the description of social-democracy Marx gave more than Engels' vision of a future society?

There’s nothing in Engels’ Principles of Communism, which was basically a preliminary version of the Communist Manifesto in catechism-form, that advocates for merely improving the condition of workers under capitalism, as is the goal of most social democrats today. In the quote above, Engels is saying that society as a whole should take control of industry, ending the isolated and chaotic production that characterizes capitalism, and conduct it according to a definite plan for meeting human needs (i.e. ending commodity production or production for exchange).

Engels also directly attacked bourgeois socialists (or modern-day social democrats) in the Principles of Communism (MECW Vol. 6, p. 355),

The second group [of socialists] consists of adherents of present society in whom the evils inseparable from it have awakened fears for its survival. They therefore endeavour to preserve present society but to remove the evils bound up with it. With this end in view, some of them propose measures of mere charity, and others grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretext of reorganising society, would retain the foundations of present society, and thus present society itself. These bourgeois socialists will also have to be continuously fought by the Communists, since they work for the enemies of the Communists and defend the society which it is the Communists’ aim to destroy.

You think that communism means "destroying society as whole"? What is that supposed to mean?

Engels, Marx, Luxemburg, Pannekoek etc were all Social Democrats and communists. It's just that word in its older meaning doesn't mean the same as it does now. The distinction between "social democracy" and "communism" comes with the Bolsheviks

Engels is saying that civil society as a whole should take control of industry. Precisely, there lies social-democracy. The communists, i.e. the proletariat, do not destroy society as a whole, just one element of it.

This discussion was intended to be about the destruction of primitive communism by means of primitive accumulation but has been derailed to a discussion whether Engels' petty bourgeois position within society led necessarily to his social-democracy or whether he is a true arbitrar of communism.

Your interpretation is off there mate. If not the economic order itself—the basis of class society and exploitation—then what other aspects of capitalist society do you think Engels was so eager to preserve? You also just quoted Engels saying that he was interested in destroying the whole of capitalist society, so it's unclear what you actually disagree with.

It's doubly strange that you're wanting to talk about Engels' account of primitive communism, as discussed in such works as the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, while you also (erroneously) describe him as nothing more than a "petty-bourgeois social democrat." If Engels' politics were no different from some modern-day social democrat's, then wouldn't that cast doubt on his description and praise of communistic societies (e.g. his description and praise of the Iroquois)? On the contrary, here's Engels praising the Iroquois for having mastery over their production in contrast to capitalist society, in which the whole of society is dominated by their own products/commodities (MECW Vol. 26, p. 216),

Engels wrote: The Iroquois were still far from controlling the forces of nature but within the limits set for them by nature they were masters of their production. Apart from poor harvests in their little gardens, the exhaustion of the fish stocks in their lakes and rivers, or of game in their forests, they knew what the outcome would be of their mode of gaining a livelihood. The outcome would be: means of sustenance, meagre or abundant; but it could never be unpremeditated social upheavals, the severing of gentile bonds, or the splitting of the members of gentes and tribes into antagonistic classes fighting each other. Production was carried on within the most restricted limits, but—the producers exercised control over their own product. This was the immense advantage of barbarian production that was lost with the advent of civilisation; and to win it back on the basis of the enormous control man now exercises over the forces of nature, and of the free association that is now possible, will be the task of the next generations.

The fact that remnants survive of the way of life that existed under forms of what Engels (social-democratic buddy/sponsor of Marx) described as primitive communism enables us to study and perhaps even preserve these as a foundation for the future.

The Eurocentric analysis of the periphery of primitive communism by Engels sits perfectly with his social-democracy.

So if Engels' account of primitive communism is so flawed and Euro-centric (as opposed to your favorite thinkers?), then I guess it doesn't actually enable us to learn all that much? You do also realize that "primitive communism" and "primitive/original accumulation" are not just generic terms and ideas, but rather terms and ideas coined and developed by Marx and Engels?

If you were to have also read Engels' Origin of the Family—the chief work that deals with primitive communism, which you're so eager to discuss—then you would know that he actually praises "barbarian" societies throughout the work. Engels' use of archaic terms like "barbarian" and "primitive" (which he adopted from Lewis H. Morgan, whose own anthropological writings greatly influenced Engels' work) does not signify any sort of negative appraisal of past societies or peoples. On the contrary, Engels regarded certain Indigenous peoples, such as the Iroquois, as models to emulate in terms of their mastery over production, as well as in terms of the higher social status accorded to women in such societies. He's far more critical of bourgeois "civilization" (naturally) and the modern bourgeois family, which he associates with the enslavement and degradation of women (MECW Vol. 26, p. 181),

Engels wrote: The modern individual family is based on the overt or covert domestic slavery of the woman; and modern society is a mass composed solely of individual families as its molecules. Today, in the great majority of cases, the man has to be the earner, the bread-winner of the family, at least among the propertied classes, and this gives him a dominating position which requires no special legal privileges. In the family, he is the bourgeois; the wife represents the proletariat.

I certainly wouldn't say that there is nothing to critique in Engels' Origin of the Family (e.g. we have better anthropological and historical evidence today as compared to 140 years ago), but you don't tell us what you actually disagree with.

Yet bourgeois man's control over the forces of nature transpires to be nothing of the sort. The dams that bourgeois man builds to expropriate energy are nothing but disasters waiting to happen when faced by inclement weather.

Where does Engels suggest that people can have "complete control over nature" (or that a communist society would simply continue using science and technology the same way as under capitalism)? It reminds me of a passage by Engels in the Dialectics of Nature, as quoted by John Bellamy Foster, which directly contradicts what you're saying,

Engels wrote: Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor, and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons. . . . Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.

If the ideas of Engels (co-author of the Communist Manifesto) were so antithetical to those of his life long collaborator Karl Marx it seems strange that Marx never noticed this nor commented on it.

The meaning of the word "social democracy", like all political terms, was always contentested, with its meaning changing over time.

The idea that Pannekoek and Luxemburg did not take proletarian self emancipation seriously is laughable. What evidence do you have for that?

I think your mistake is thinking that "social democracy" had some kind of fixed meaning - state ownership of means of production perhaps -when it didn't. Instead we have to look at what the people using the particular term at a particular time meant by it.

"I know that Engels is sometimes co-credited with authorship of the Manifesto but it does not ring true to me. I think that Jenny Marx probably had more input into its composition."

That's pamphlet had *always* been credited to them both. And nowhere has it been suggested otherwise. Why make stuff up? Weird.

Now you think someone was saying that Engels wanted to demolish all housing? Wow.

There's seems little point continuing this exchange.

Of course Engels was not a social democrat in today's sense -- but today's sense came about because of the strategy he and Marx insisted the working class follow, namely standing in elections. As Bakunin correctly predicted, this simply generated reformism.

I don’t really think Marx and Engels are responsible for the reformism of today’s social democrats, or the activities of any other "socialists/Marxists" (Stalin, Mao etc.) throughout history who claimed to have correctly embodied their ideas.

If you also want to talk about strategic blunders, then let's also mention Bakunin’s call on Russian student-radicals to “go to the people/narod” in 1873, which didn't quite succeed in making socialists out of the Russian peasantry. See for example his book Statism and Anarchy, which appeared in 1873 and directly contributed to the Going to the People Movement a year later,

Bakunin wrote: In such a situation, what can our intellectual proletariat do, our honest, sincere, utterly dedicated social-revolutionary Russian youth? Without question they must go to the people, because today—and this is true everywhere, but especially in Russia—outside of the people, outside of the multi-million-strong laboring masses, there is neither life, nor cause, nor future.

Bakunin wrote: However beclouded our peasant may be by his senseless historical faith in the tsar, he is finally beginning to understand that himself. And how could he help but understand it! For ten years now, from all corners of Russia he has been sending his deputies to petition the tsar, and they have all heard but one answer from the tsar’s own lips: “You will have no other freedom!”

No, say what you will, the Russian peasant may be ignorant, but he is no fool.

Rather than winning the peasantry over to socialism, the Movement mostly resulted in peasants turning the student-radicals—who had dressed up as peasants in order to infiltrate peasants’ communities—over to Tsarist authorities. Bakunin had even noted the reactionary character of the Russian peasantry (e.g. peasants’ admiration for the Tsar) in Statism and Anarchy, yet still portrayed them as if they were "ready to revolt."

If anything, Bakunin bore more direct responsibility for the imprisonment of Russian socialists, through his mistaken belief in the receptiveness of Russian peasants to revolutionary ideas, than Marx and Engels did for the reformism of today’s social democrats. Marx and Engels were not really to blame for the emergence of a reformist faction within the SPD, let alone the crushing of the German Revolution by this faction later on, especially when they consistently fought against such elements (e.g. see Marx and Engels' "Circular Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke and Others" from 1879).

While you're here by the way, you might also want to update the AFAQ and remove the part where you falsely claim that Marx "stole" the expression concerning the self-emancipation of the working class, as it appears in the 1864 Rules of the International, from Flora Tristan,

the AFAQ wrote: Marx’s use of the famous expression—"the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself"—dates from 1865, 17 years after Proudhon’s comment that "the proletariat must emancipate itself." Moreover, as Libertarian Marxist Paul Mattick pointed out, Marx was not even the first person to use the expression "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself" as Flora Tristan used it in 1843. [Marx and Keynes, p. 333] Thus a case could be made that Marx was, in fact, the third "major socialist thinker to make the principle of self-emancipation—the principle that socialism could only be brought into being by the self-mobilisation and self-organisation of the working class—a fundamental aspect of the socialist project."

First, Marx’s use of the "famous expression” in the Rules dates from 1864. Second, Tristan never even used the expression, and had you actually read her using it, then you would have directly quoted it—but you didn’t directly quote her, because her use of the expression doesn’t exist! It's true that Tristan says things similar to the “famous expression” in her 1843 book The Workers’ Union (as did countless people before her—there is nothing unique about the expression or idea itself), but she never used the exact wording as in the Rules of the International. It's also worth pointing out that Tristan, as evidenced by her book, appealed extensively to the upper classes in the process of securing the financial and other resources needed to construct her “workers' palaces.” As the translator's introduction to that book correctly notes, Tristan was far from a revolutionary socialist,

Beverly Livingston wrote: While recognizing the inherent antagonisms of class society, she nonetheless advocated co-operation for peaceful reform, believing bourgeois and upper-class participation feasible and desirable in the workers' struggle. Her challenge did not attempt to subvert private enterprise or deny the manufacturer's right to compete for profits, and she did not call for the total dismantling of the economic order; she simply and soundly demanded a fair share for the laboring poor.

I also have other corrections to the AFAQ if you'd like me to share.

Of course Engels was not a social democrat in today's sense -- but today's sense came about because of the strategy he and Marx insisted the working class follow, namely standing in elections. As Bakunin correctly predicted, this simply generated reformism.

Let's also not forget the time Bakunin, the supposed anarchist-abstentionist, encouraged his friend (no, not his murderer-friend Nechaev, who tried getting him out of translating Capital—arguably a far better use of his time—into Russian by sending some threatening letters) Carlo Gambuzzi to become a candidate for Deputy from Naples (Bakunin on Anarchy, p. 218),

Bakunin wrote: You will perhaps be surprised that I, a determined and passionate abstentionist from politics, should now advise my friends [members of the Alliance—Dolgoff] to become deputies—this is because circumstances have changed. First, all my friends, and most assuredly yourself, are so inspired by our ideas, our principles, that there is no danger that you will forget, deform, or abandon them, or that you will fall back into the old political habits. Second, times have become so grave, the danger menacing the liberty of all countries so formidable, that all men of good will must step into the breach, and especially our friends, who must be in a position to exercise the greatest possible influence on events. . . .

So you're also wrong about Bakunin's opposition to socialists standing in elections; he was for it so long as it was one of his dodgy "anarchist" friends.

About the main topic, Marx could name Primitive Accumulation something else and we could still understand from that chapter that process of expropriation was ruthless and bloody. Is that process still going? I think it is. When a kind of product or service becomes profitable, small producers or service providers will lose business (property) and they become wage slaves by larger corporations or capitalists or even states.
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About the other discussion, the problem with Marx and Engels concept of revolution is that they thought that a democratic state is necessary to lead workers to a classless anarchist society called communist society. What they couldn’t see is the force of desire to dominate in human beings - a cultural trend. This is why, contrary to what they wished, the working class didn’t get a party, they got many competing communist parties, parties that all were managed by authoritarian mentality. Revolution must be anti-authoritarianism to form a new way of living, which is an effort to create a new culture (way of living) for survival, prosperity, and recreation. We may have good jobs, enough money, and a lot of fun, but all of these are created through authoritarian mentality. It is not economics stupid; it is authoritarian mentality. Also, this is why Marxists cannot lead feminist revolution or real anti-imperialist revolution (without becoming one). Also, they cannot have a non-hierarchical organization.
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See, the problem with Marx and Marxists is not just the way they will behave after overthrowing the states, the problem is the way of doing it too. States must be overthrown by learned anti-authoritarian mentality. They wrongly think that the issue is just economic policy, missing the fact that the mind that make the policy is actively at work, not the “matter.”

I think sometimes words become problems and we need to go to definition in order not to become fools. So, I drop discussion about “social democracy” thing.
So far, this is my understanding and view of Marx and Engels’ plan when they were alive. I am always willing to change my mind. Don't forget, it is about social democracy, but without using the term.
My View:
I would call both Marx and Engels socialists who wanted to create a political party for the working class. Workers who accepted their program were those who have gained class consciousness. So, workers with class consciousness are those who have become socialists by Marxian terms. By Marx suggestion, their political party must get the state power. I think their way of having state power was not important for them, it could be by winning in election and becoming majority, or by violent uprising of working class, both under the hierarchical leadership of the party.
Both Marx and Engels were for gaining state power to plan socialist planning of the entire economy hoping that their historical materialism is correct and economic reform will create more class consciousness or socialist workers. This completely matches their view of the relationship between the structure of economy and ideology.
My assessment:
The problem with their plan (actually, their ideology) was (and is with current Marxists) that they couldn’t see that authoritarianism is a psychological mode which destroys the integrity of any political institution, and, by its definition, it should. Why couldn’t they see this fact? I think because they didn’t think well enough about their historical materialism. They simply ignored human mind hoping that their theory explains human mind.

Yes, I referenced Marxist Paul Mattick on the matter -- presumably he was claiming that Marx "stole" the expression as well? And I took him as a reliable source on the matter -- I did not have Tristian's book at the time (I have it now but not got around to read it yet -- sorry for not being able to read everything).

Mattick never even mentioned Tristan—he quoted Rubel who referenced her. Here's what Mattick actually said (with the quote originating from Rubel's "Reflections on Utopia and Revolution" in the anthology Socialist Humanism):

Mattick wrote: For a socialist revolution must mean precisely the creation of a social structure in which the producers themselves control their product and its distribution. It is conceivable only as one made by the working class which ends social class relations. "What Marx – and before him, in 1843, Flora Tristan – formulated in one single proposition, namely, that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself’, remains the implicit postulate of all genuine socialist thought" (Mattick 333).

If you wanted to cite/paraphrase the Rubel quote, then do that instead of falsely claiming that Mattick said that Tristan was first to employ the "famous expression" from the Rules. If I recall correctly, Rubel also never claimed that Tristan was the first to use any "expression," so you're really just making stuff up, guided as you are by your intense dislike of Marx and Engels.

I guess no one should make a comment on anything until they read everything related to it (I won't write another word on Marx and Engels until I finish all 50 volumes of their Collected Works...)

You shouldn't lie. And if you're so averse to doing actual research and honestly presenting your findings, then maybe you shouldn't write.

So the Russian socialists should have just ignored the peasantry and made no attempt to win them over to socialist ideas? Interesting. Presumably they should have waited until economic development ensured that the peasantry was eliminated? Also, I wonder if any town-based socialists were informed upon by workers?

Are you suggesting that Marx and Engels advocated the destruction of the Russian mir/commune and the development of capitalism in Russia, when Marx actually bitterly condemned such developments in numerous writings? Engels also wrote (e.g. "On Social Relations in Russia") about the possibility of Russia being spared from capitalist development through the success of revolution in Western Europe, so I'm not quite sure what you're talking about there. I also don't claim to know exactly which strategy socialists should have pursued in nineteenth-century Russia, but flocking to the peasantry (while also pretending to be peasants themselves) in order to convert them to socialist ideas would probably be on the lower end of my list of proposals. Of course Bakunin was also not the only influence on the student-radicals.

Ah, right, they are not responsible for the outcome of applying the strategy they advocated and split the International over. Seriously?

Yeah, Marx and Engels are not responsible for the bourgeois/reformist "socialists" of today who they repeatedly criticized in their own time, as should be obvious. They are also not responsible for the activities of any of the famous "socialists/Marxists" throughout the twentieth century (Stalin, Mao etc.) who claimed to have correctly embodied their ideas. I'm not quite sure what makes you think that they are.

@westartfromhere

"The working class, by necessity, is now the most resolute and determined section of civil society. We are as a whole, the communist party."

In manifesto they were not in a situation to have any party. So, they thought of a party as a possibility in future. What you are saying is their concept of what a worker’s party should be, it is not what they would do if they had the opportunity.

Also, this:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm

Do you think you can argue that Marx wouldn't join that Party in France if he could? I think you cannot.

@westartfromhere
I don't understand what you mean, Party Ouvrier was a political party.
Wish you well!

@westartfromhere

Manifesto was written by Marx and Engels. The Preamble is a good document to judge that Marx was interested in party politics. Also, Marx critique of Gotha program is another one.
what do you think about this:
"A rotten spirit is making itself felt in our Party in Germany, not so much among the masses as among the leaders (upper class and “workers”)."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/letters/77_10_19.htm

@westartfromhere

Do you agree that The Preamble and the letter gives us this idea that Marx had a sense of party belonging and that "his" party should participate in election if it is possible and useful?

Don't forget, what the party program should be is irrelevant here. Our discussion (and my discussion) is about if Marx was interested in forming political party for (or with) working class or not. Once we settle this, we will go to the next level.

You need to answer my question, otherwise we cannot go further.

@westartfromhere

OK, thanks for the topic and the dialogue.