How does Karl Marx’s political vision, views, or advocacy differ from communism as realized in places like Soviet Russia?

Question

Since learning a bit more about Marxism, the question has been opened in my mind, to what extent a common perception of what a communist society is supposed to be like - for example, the USSR - is something that matches what Karl Marx himself actually explicitly discussed in his theoretical writings.

I believe, for example, there is a quote that is commonly falsely attributed to Marx: “The last thing the capitalist will sell us is the rope we hang him with,” or something. In other words, it is at least possible that something bordering on “McCarthyism” has affected modern public understanding and perception of Marxism, perhaps at least in the Western world - possibly, through straw man arguments, what is decried and dispelled as “Marxism” is not actually what Karl Marx said or advocated. Thus, Marxism may be vilified, but unjustly, because the thing that is being countered may be bad, but it may not be (authentically) “Marxism”.

Since leaning towards this conviction, I have been forced to acknowledge that I really don’t know very much, either about what Marx actually wrote, as well as what communist states that arose were actually like. It is possible that Marx’s political leanings may have been more in that direction than I realize.

So, what is the disparity between “Marxism” vs. “communism”, as commonly known? How similar or different are they really? With textual evidence, what can we know Marx actually believed or advocated?

By far the most important thing in answers to this question is textual evidence. Please show what Karl Marx actually wrote, in addition to what orchestrators of communist states, like Lenin or Mao, actually wrote, or actual laws or policies they had.

Answer 1

Some variation of "the capitalists will sell us the rope we hang them with" is attributed to Lenin (1870-1924), the Soviet leader, although brief research on my part suggests this is only reported anecdotally through other sources who claimed to have heard Lenin speak.

The general concept itself though - of things containing some force or tendency which can contribute to its own harm - isn't original. Lenin's quote is a twist on an earlier one attributed to Hegel (1770-1831): "every civilization contains the seeds of its own destruction".

The most modern example of this theme is probably China's seizure of the world's manufacturing economy from the liberal West, by offering Western capitalists larger profits to offshore to China than when they were previously compelled to employ their local working class.

The more general question of how communist regimes differ from Marx's (and Engels') personal vision is probably a more appropriate topic for a volume of written works than a Q&A.

Marx was only one thinker however, and whilst his writings on critical analysis of capitalism continue to be held in regard (even by intellectual proponents of capitalism), his prescriptions for change were really quite vague, and much larger bodies of people subsequently have actually devised practical details of "communist" regimes.

Those like Lenin only claimed to be inspired by Marx, rather than following a detailed blueprint left by Marx, so that contrasting the two presupposes they each produced something that could be compared on equal terms.

In reality, contrasts often take the form of comparing the practical behaviour of the Soviet regime (for example) with only some general principle derived from the writings of Marx.

Not really very dissimilar to how "the teachings of Jesus" are always either on the side of a protagonist of Christianity, or how an antagonist of Christianity can always find deep and irreconcilable contradictions in the same teachings, but no sensible person attempts to put Jesus on the hook either for describing exactly the society we live in today, or for all its perceived failings.

Answer 2

Karl Marx described Communism in his works. That was built in Soviet Russia is Socialism that is a different order, even if it was presented as the transitional stage (that never ended).

Communism as described in the "Manifest" includes abolishement of money, abolishement of the family institution, no nationalities, no right of inheritance and some other very radical steps that were not implemented. Socialism is no longer Capitalism but retains more similarly. While services like health, education and transportation were free or cheap, there were still money and salaries. Family was not touched. One single party remained, it should be no any under Communism. Worker and peasant classes even officially also remained.

The differences between these two societies seem well defined in Lenin's works. Soviet Union never claimed it has built exactly Communism, addressing the mentioned differences itself.

Answer 3

Marx's basic understanding of the world is that large-scale social problems arise from a condition in which a particular class of people exercises control over the means of production, reducing all other classes of people to a dependency akin to slavery. For a clear (but over-simplified) example, we might appreciate the old saw: "If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day; if you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime". That's fair enough, but Marx would suggest that some class of people will hear that and immediately go out and secure control over all the bodies of water where someone might fish. They might buy them up and then charge admission (in the capitalist model), or seize them by force and grant licenses for a tithe (the feudal model), but in either case the people who were taught how to fish (the fisherman class) is entirely dependent on the will and grace of the people who control the fishing spots (the owner class). This leads inevitable to exploitation and abuses, because these people must fish to live, and so must do what is asked of them for the privilege of access.

So, Marx's political vision was to establish world without socioeconomic classes, so that there were no choke-points where one might be subject to another's domination merely to be allowed to produce. This (somewhat utopian) vision is Marxism proper (or sometimes Marxist communism). It doesn't specify what the means of production are, or how they are administered without classes; it merely suggests that when class structures are erased, many, many social problems are erased with them.

Socialism for Marx was a post-capitalist stage, not a goal in itself. Marx saw socialism as a condition where private ownership of the means of production is taken over by the state, so that the state acts as a class in the name of laborers. Marx assumed (arguably correctly, looking at history) that however earnest the initial socialist state was in preserving the interests of laborers, it would eventually develop into a monolithic capitalist class of its own, as though a single corporation had taken over all industry. This would lead to further revolution(s) as these socialist classes were removed and replaced with different proxies for the laboring class. This would continue until class itself was dissipated, and people stopped trying to divide into dominance groups. Lenin knew this, but decided that it was time to actively push for a socialist state (instead of waiting for a proletarian uprising). Mao came to a similar conclusion, but settled own a more corporatist/communist model (given the differing conditions in China.

So Russia prior to WWII, and the USSR afterwards, followed a pure socialist model, nationalizing industry and treating the entire population as 'employees' that the state was to look out for. This rapidly deteriorated into an authoritarian class system under Stalin. China, by contrast, organized its many remote, impoverished villages into communes, and designed its state apparatus along corporate lines, leading to its current party-class structure (tantamount to a diversified single owner capitalist system). Neither of these would satisfy Marx, since neither effectively removed class structures from society.

Answer 4

With regards to sources, his magnum opus would be "Das Kapital" (which disclaimer I haven't read), where he apparently intended to give a run down of the inner workings (and failings) of the capitalist mode of production, in three volumes, of which he only managed to write one in his lifetime, while volume two and three were pieced together, after his death, by Engels, based on unfinished manuscripts and fragments.

While if you're short on time the obvious go to(s) would be, the probably even more famous, "Manifest der kommunistischen Partei" ("Communist Manifesto") or his "Kritik des Gothaer Programms" (Critique of the Gotha Programme). Links are to Wikipedia, where you should also be able to find links to the original material. The Communist manifesto is a pamphlet commissioned by the communist league which he wrote with Engels, so it's supposed to be some short easily digestible run down of their philosophy and action plans (how digestible that is for an audience almost 200 years later is a different question but at least it's somewhat short. The original was apparently 23-pages a later edition about 30 pages). While the Critique of the Gotha Program is... well it's a Critique of the Program of the Social Democratic Worker's Party of Germany (one of the ancestors of the modern SPD), which was released in Gotha (a German city) and which did not find Marx's approval and hence his rant about it is somewhat revealing as to what he would have done instead.

So right off the bat, Marx didn't actually wrote all that much about how a communist society should look like. I mean the concept is pretty much in the name (commune - ism). And the idea is pretty old that people form egalitarian communities without social hierarchies. According to wiki Marx/Engels took this idea of "Urkommunismus" (primitive communism) as the original form of societies and as what the hunter gatherers were doing. Later this concept was merged with ideas of the Greek Polis, Thomas More's book "Utopia", upcoming ideas of democratization and whatnot into "utopian socialism".

So even if hundreds of people give thousands of definitions of what "communism" is. The ideal of a free and equal society of people working collectively together towards their individual and collective goals and organize democratically and without social hierarchies and so on, is not actually that hard to grasp. And neither is it hard to grasp that the reality looks not very much like that. Even worse in Marx's time where absolute monarchs still were a common occurrence, where inequality was rampant and where production was largely organized top down by the rich who could afford to make people work for them. So that "communism" was revolutionary different from the systems that were in place was also pretty damn obvious.

So it's not really that Marx made a name for himself by inventing or defining communism, he more or less took a definition that was already there and popular, which is probably also why that doesn't look all too dissimilar to what anarchists were arguing for.

So with this in mind is the USSR communist (in the sense of this utopian ideal)? Well, hell no. A top down organized society, brutally controlled by a centralized authority, a cult of personality around the leader, a mode of production that relies on exploitation of the working class. However you pictured a utopian communism it should be pretty obvious that that is not even close. Which is why Lenin retroactively made a distinction between communism and another synonym for such a utopian system: Socialism. Where he argued that what they were doing isn't actually communism (duh!), but a lower form of communism called socialism, based on Marx briefly mentioning such "lower forms" and "transitioning periods" between revolutionary actions and the development of communism, as well as using the term "dictatorship of the proletariat". Which apparently Marx used exactly 4 times and largely in the sense of "government of the working class", but which apparently got a life of it's own outside of Marx's usage. You can read about that in the Critique of the Gotha Program how Marx used it, but what Marx barely mentioned was developed by Lenin into a system of it's own justifying his own mode of government.

However after Marx, and certainly after Lenin, and Stalin (who developed Lenin's practical measures into the political philosophy of Marxism-Leninism (smart enough not to use his own name though)) it's also quite possible, that when people speak about communism they have all but forgotten or never heard of any utopian ideal and are straight up thinking of the theory and praxis of one of those Marxist-Leninist parties. As most of these "communist parties" are formed after that Stalinist blueprint before turning adding a "with [local] characteristics" and do something else.

For what it's worth Marx wrote a Manifesto of THE communist party and had a leading role in the "first international" (workingmen's association), so often enough Marxism and communism are used interchangeably and not because Marx shaped the vision of what communism is like, but he shaped popularized the idea of communist parties, which Lenin and afterwards many people draw inspiration from even if their interpretation is often very loose.

So what did Marx do differently?

As said, while utopian socialists envisioned a future, Marx looked in the opposite direction and developed a theory of the past and the presence (see the first chapters of the Communist Manifesto). Essentially he argues that societal structures are shaped by their mode of production and that societies evolve with the evolution of their material conditions, which is a progress propelled by class struggle. So more or less the oppressed either fade away or leapfrog the oppressor by developing a new mode of production, upon which they become the new oppressor and so on.

However where past societies tried to freeze the social conditions in place by all sorts of narrative devices and carefully crafted caste structures. He argues that bourgeoisie (political capitalism) does constantly revolutionize and has to constantly revolutionize to sustain itself. It no longer satisfies a local market of consumers but a global market. Therefore it needs more people, more tech, more resources, better communication, transportation, centralization and so on. Which pushes it to grow further and further:

The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

Sounds familiar? In other words he problem of capitalism is no longer a problem of scarcity but a problem of finding people urgently willing to buy what is produced in such large quantities, in order to extract value from them through this exchange.

Is that the quote you were looking for?

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

Essentially upon growing so fast that one achieves overproduction one also achieves post scarcity, so all that the working class would need to do is take over the means of production capable of supplying a world market (they already know how to operate them as they already do that) and just not destroy the output or seek "new markets" (he thought the global market would be the limit) but make use of it to liberate the people from work and have them be able to live communally and establish a true democracy where everyone has the time to participate.

So for him communism wasn't so much a political goal it was the, almost inevitable, result of the materialist progression of history or as he called it "historic materialism".

But as capitalism seeks more and more new markets and revolutionizes old structure of oppression that simplifies social hierarchies into workers and capitalists or proletariat and bourgeoisie (which he uses not just as economic classes but as social groups with common political interests due to shared economic and social relations). Upon which the working class would become so numerous that they can exercise their democratic mandate with or without the consent of the bourgeoisie.

That being said he has phrased that as:

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Though while the proletariat is likely to be understood as a global mass movement (after all he ends that pamphlet with "workers of the world unite!"), you can also read statements like that as affirmations of taking over the government and top down playing the capitalist until overproduction is achieved. Which is apparently how Lenin read it.

And the specific language here, doesn't help:

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

Essentially he wants government regulation of the mode of production. Which a capitalist would read as "how dare you", but which again if you read the proletariat not as a political party in the current sense, but as the collective of all workers, is asking for democratic control over the economy rather than the despotic rule that the capitalists would otherwise have.

He then lists a 10 point action plan for the most advanced industrial countries:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

Though in the appendix he basically walks that back (emphasize by me):

However much that state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there, some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’ s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.)

Essentially in 1872 Marx also argued that the plan that was popular in socialist circles at the time and that Lenin based his vanguard party upon, to just seize the state and utilize it as a means to establish the material conditions DOES NOT WORK.

Also if one looks at Marxist-Leninist relation to class antagonism, then it seems much more driven by a personalized antagonism closer to a racism, than what Marx describes where it's a difference in material conditions. So a capitalist without capital is no capitalist, while if you define capitalists not -ism as the antagonist even a broke capitalist is a capitalist.

So there's probably plenty of inspiration in Marx's writing to mimic what the USSR was doing, but that it's a direct progression from one to the other is not that obvious.

Though Marx's entire reasoning based on historic materialism might have been okaish in the past and might hit some notes that still ring true, but as a collective whole looks very sketchy. And one of the reasons why Lenin changed so much was basically that many of Marx's predictions simply didn't come to fruition. Like the revolutions weren't happening in the most industrialized parts of the world, but rather the least where the situation was the least bearable. Pure centralization and exploitation alone also didn't create better means of production. Occasionally, but it's not just force you also need some liberty in that. Also humans have unfortunately proven to adapt to capitalism and are still able to find new desires (and thus markets) even if we would be largely satisfied by 19th century standards.

So there is a lot of it wrong and I guess Popper already argued that Marx left enough outs to qualify as pseudo-science at least the Marxist-Leninist version. While Marx wanted that to be an economic science so would have had to adapt when wrong.