Capitalism Owns Primitive Communism! Hell Yeah!

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• published: 12 Feb 2014
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_history Marx saw that each stage or epoch created a new class or invention that would lead to its downfall. However the downfall would not be an automatically negative event, since with each step humanity at large would benefit. Each passing stage would therefore raise the standard of living of the masses while at the same time be doomed to its own downfall because of internal contradictions and class conflicts. Only the last two epochs are spared from this fate. With Socialism the final oppressive class is overthrown and society is put under the dictatorship of the proletariat and thus advances into Communism. The first three stages are not given particular attention, since by Marx's time they had long come to pass. As such, he does not provide the principles of these stages as he does for Capitalism and the stages that follow. However these epochs have common characteristics nonetheless. 1: Primitive Communism The First Stage is usually called Primitive Communism. It has the following characteristics. . Shared Property . Hunting & Gathering . Proto-Democracy 2: Slave Society The Second Stage may be called Slave Society, considered to be the beginning of "class society" where private property appears. . Class . Statism . Agriculture . Democracy & Authoritarianism . Private Property 3: Feudalism The Third Stage may be called Feudalism; it appears after slave society collapses. This was most obvious during the European Dark Ages when society went from slavery to Feudalism. . Aristocracy . Theocracy . Hereditary Classes . Nation-States 4: Capitalism Capitalism may be considered the Fourth Stage in the sequence. It appears after the Bourgeois revolution when the Capitalists (or their merchant predecessors) overthrow the feudal system. Capitalism is categorized by the following. . Market Economy . Private Property . Parliamentary Democracy . Wages . Warfare . Financial Institutions . Monopolistic Tendencies 5: Socialism After the working class gains class consciousness and mounts a revolution against the capitalists, socialism, which may be considered the Fifth Stage, will be attained, if the workers are successful. Lenin divided Communism, the period following the overthrow of Capitalism, into two stages: First Socialism and then later, once the last vestiges of the old Capitalist ways have withered away, Stateless Communism or Pure Communism. Lenin based his 1917 work, 'The State & Revolution', on a thorough study of the writings of Marx and Engels. Marx uses the terms the "first phase" of Communism and the "higher phase" of Communism, but Lenin points to later remarks of Engels which suggest that what people commonly think of as Socialism equates to Marx's "first phase" of Communism. Socialism may be categorized by the following. . Decentralized Planned Economy . Common Property . Council Democracy . Labor Vouchers 6: Communism Some time after Socialism is established society leaps forward and everyone has plenty of personal possessions, but no one can exploit another person for private gain through the ownership of vast monopolies and so forth. Classes are thus abolished, and class society ended. Communism will have spread across the world and be worldwide. Eventually the state will "wither away" and become obsolete, as people administer their own lives without the need for governments or laws. Thus, stateless Communism or Pure Communism, which may be considered the Sixth Stage, is established, which has the following features. . Statelessness . Classlessness . Propertylessness In The Communist Manifesto Marx describes Communism as: "When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the Bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class and as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old Bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."