I don't think we're "moving toward a communist phase", as that requires a complete change in motivation.

I believe that people are selfish. Helping other people feels good (you're exerting power over someone my helping them), thus the wealthy are content to do so once their quest for riches has been fulfilled. Instead of the public owning the means of production (socialism), I think the wealthy will retain control, but give freely (or insanely cheaply) of the _fruits_ of production. The average person doesn't want control, they just want the fruits, and they're content to let the wealthy play their political games if they get what they want.

Instead of seeing a complete reversal of capitalism into socialism, I think it's _far_ more reasonable to expect something like UBI where everyone receives according to their need, but they still don't have control of the means of production, and society certainly won't be classless (there will always be the wealthy/powerful, but perhaps no "poor", esp with automation taking must labor jobs).

There is no "stages" in Marxism. That's a Stalinist bullshit that doesn't make any sense in the theoretical framework of Marx&Engels. The natural force that makes capitalism possible is commodity production because: as long as there are commodities this implies a division of labor where a labor produces something for the sole reason trade and thus implies social class; and as long as there is commodity production you'll have the accumulation of value. Communism is in direct opposition to social class and value. The Marxist idea is instead that communism is the society where the natural force that generates capitalism is somehow killed, this implies the society will not have social class, will not have value (and as an implication no trade, since in Marxism value is determined in the moment of trade, and that moment alone). Thus thinking about "stages" where some "State" is governing "towards" a classless, valueless, stateless society makes as much as the rest of Stalinism. Traditional Marxism predicts a communist revolution much like French Revolution.

And that's not what the OP said. Marx said there are stages to "society", which are (from the link):

- Primitive communism - tribes sharing everything - slavery - e.g. ancient Egypt - feudalism - kinds, fiefs, serfs - capitalism - current state - socialism - dictatorship of the proletariat - communism - stateless, classless society

Marx combines the last two into one "communist" stage, but distinguishes them as phases.

Traditional Marxism uses words differently than we do today. Yes, it predicts a revolution, though we'd term that a "socialist" revolution, not a communist one, because even Marx believed there needed to be a phase to transition to a stateless, classless society because society is affected by the previous stage.

Now, I completely disagree with Marx's assessment of things, but that's irrelevant.

"Dictatorship of the proletariat" is not a phase, the same way the dictatorship of bourgeoisie was/is not a phase. (also sidenote Marx used the word "dictatorship" a vastly different way than we use it today).

> because even Marx believed there needed to be a phase to transition

This is [[citation needed]] (if you're thinking of low phase communism, high phase communism (C. of Gotha Program), this is vastly misunderstood, so I could explain this in details but this is not a good argument is all I can say now). As I said, this doesn't make sense inside the framework of Marxism, since it only makes sense to classify societies based on material grounds, not idealistic grounds. So, the fundamental thesis of Marx is that society exists completely independent of politics, power hierarchies, ideas etc... You can disagree with this, but you cannot argue about Marx with semi-understanding of his thesis. The only time we can talk about a societal stage is when the economic structure changes, and these changes are well-defined, well-understood inside the framework of Marxism. As I keep repeating myself, Marxism claims there are fundamental "forces of nature" that make capitalism possible inside society (just like photons make light possible). While this force of nature is still alive, it doesn't make sense to say this society is not capitalistic. DotP is one possible way socialism can be achieved, it's not a stage as Marx intentionally does not explain the economic structure of such a society (it would be idealistic and inherently anti-Marxist).

In my experience in the internet most people argue about Marxism from his idealist "supporters" like Stalin or Mao, but such ideas rarely have much relation to both tradition Marxism (Marxian) or modern academic Marxism (world systems etc).

Ok, those phases may not have been as pronounced with Marx and Engels as later proponents of state socialism. But seems to me that the hard dichotomy between "the founders and the usurpers" that you propose is false, and indeed the token escape route from the obvious inhumanity of the Marxist societies that have evolved from this thinking for modern Marxists, hence the constant quarrel between these of who is most orthodox. An honest scholarly assessment seems to me to be that "scientific" historical determinism is embedded in the Marxist thinking from the outset (albeit not without contradictory tendencies), including the objective historical phases based on the means of production. It is a reductionist approach which plagues much scientific thinking, which, contrary to the actual scientific method as we understand it, assumes that we know all the basic variables (the 'atoms' of history as it were), or at least that the variables behave in a mechanistic cause/effect manner, a determinism that ultimately paves the way for the moral/ethical irresponsibility we've seen. [0]

That be as it may, in view of your fairly economist view ("the fundamental thesis of Marx is that society exists completely independent of politics, power hierarchies, ideas etc.."), it would be interesting to hear how you assess this letter of Engels from 1890, especially first and last paragraphs [1]

I would also be interested to know what you mean by "DotP is one possible way socialism can be achieved"

[0] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/scientis...

[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_...

> [first paragraph]

While I don't wanna get more into this debate, I should one more time state that reducing Marxism to "inhuman Marxist societies" is ad hominem and your argument doesn't have any value to me. Also you used/coined a word "state socialism" which to me is an oxymoron as I cannot conceptualize socialism that is not stateless.

Marxism may be reductionist or wrong (and it is) but it is almost by design wrong. Darwin was also vastly wrong and ignorant (he didn't even know genes). There is a very rich academic literature on Marxism, that is not written by laymen (like Stalin who I doubt ever read any Marx). Similarly, modern biology is almost all about evolution regardless whether Darwin's original ideas were accurate or not, they found their own way. Marx is outdated in a very similar fashion Freud or Darwin are outdated. Just 'cause some inhuman eugenics people thought we can apply "Darwinism" to kill people doesn't make Darwinism inhuman (unless you think it does, but I don't think so).

> [Engels talking about dilettantes and how not everything can be reduced to economy etc]

This sort of reduction wasn't what I was going for. To me Marxism is a tool, just like any other tool. It gives me a clear framework to conceptualize and analyze things, using a very similar analysis Marx used in the German Ideology, Capital etc (which people sometimes say reversed Hegelianism, but this is not very accurate). It's about when you observe the world what you see in abstract. Of course, in real life people still do stuff independent of their financial situation etc. This is not relevant imho.

OK thanks, we can leave it at that. I personally dropped Marxism (and joined the idealists) some 20 years ago when I became convinced that analysis doesn't portray reality as much as it creates it, and Marxism paints a more hopeless and sinister world than I actually adhere to. That said, agree that some aspects like class analysis are useful as analytical tools, that I still use to some degree.