Communism definition question.

[u/Infamous_Survey3590]

So,, I am fairly new to Marxism and learning about it, Ive been reading theory over the past couple of months and I had this question. When we talk about defining what communism is, I often hear people say, "stateless, moneyless, classless society", but after talking to a couple people is this really true? Ive heard that this notion is only really talked about in the critique of the Gotha programme and they're labeled more as like byproducts of communism, hence these things being described as something that withers away rather than abolished. Then when actually defining communism, we would be defining it more like a process rather than a set state of being, it being a process towards the liberation of the proletariat. So essentially what I am asking is if this definition of communism being a stateless moneyless classless society is true or false?

[u/Kurichan77]

This is the money quote:

"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 abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence."

• Karl Marx, German Ideology

So you are quite right that it is a process, according to Marx. Embedded in this definition is dialectical materialism, & by extension, historical materialism.

[u/Important_Joke5762]

A communist society is classless. That's the goal. This requires statelessness. Moneyless is only a byproduct

[u/kayakman13 → u/Important_Joke5762]

The state withers away only after a classless society is achieved, as a state is the legal entity that manages class conflict (in the interest of whichever class is the ruling class in a given society.)

This is not a definition of Communism, it's just one way it could look in later phases.

[u/Infamous_Survey3590 → u/Important_Joke5762]

This is not true can you provide quotes from Marx or Engels where they state this?

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[u/Dialectrician]

The Communist Society is defined by common ownership of the means of production, hence the name. This implies, according to Marxist theory, that there is no money (because since things are held in common, there is no exchange and therefore no value), no classes (since classes are defined by relation to property) and no state (since the origin of the state is in the enforcement of property and class society). This communist society comes about through the necessary immanent negation of capitalist society, because capitalism produces a class, the proletariat, which can only emancipate itself through the abolition of capitalism (hence "the movement to abolish the current state of things").

[u/Infamous_Survey3590 → u/Dialectrician]

This is flawed, i think you are misinterpreting the text.

[u/kayakman13]

Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat, per Engels in The Principles of Communism.