Tag: Period of transition

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ON THE TRANSITION TO COMMUNISM


The following text is our latest contribution to a discussion we’re having with the group IDA about the revolutionary transition to communism, and specifically about the question how productive activity and the distribution of goods could be organized. The complete conversation between us and IDA can be found on a new page on our site, called “Debates”.

Dear S and A,

again, sorry for the delay. Our reply has become longer and took more time than anticipated. We have titled it:

WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR​?

We take the last sentence of your latest message as our point of departure. You wrote: If you can’t tell people what communism is, why should they fight for communism?

We assume the question is rhetorical, but it is indeed difficult to tell people what communism is. It is not a system of government that exists or existed, nor is it a recipe in the cookbook of the revolution. It is a movement rather than an ideology and thus by definition non-static, hard to pin down. A movement that is a material force resulting from the class struggle and thus conditioned by it. The working class struggle contains communism as an inherent dynamic that pushes for the abolition of classes, itself included, and the abolition of the economyi, an outside force that imposes its law on us, and for replacing it by communal and conscious deciding what we make, how we make it and how we share it, based not on property but on human needs alone.  

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ON THE TRANSITION TO COMMUNISM

Our report on a pro-revolutionary ‘summer camp’ of last August was critical of a discussion that took place there on the transition to communism. It can be read HERE. The comrades who gave the presentation, A and S of the group IDA, disagreed with our report and wrote a reaction which lead to the following debate.

December 27, 2025

Hi Sanderr and IP,

you write in your blog post:

“Therefore there was no discussion of the State and its nature, no discussion on value production, and no discussion on revolution or the revolutionary subject… only “communist firms”!”
https://internationalistperspective.org/reflections-on-a-summer-camp/

This is a gross misrepresentation of the discussion. If we recall correctly, you and your group missed our presentation and appeared in the middle of the discussion. Probably you should add that relevant information to your post.

Furthermore we just want to add that communism is about a new mode and new relations of production. So we have to discuss about the places where social production and reproduction actually happen. That includes the question of the distribution of the total product, as well as the question of the relation of production and consumption, without falling back into a new form of class domination or bureaucracy.  

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The Revolution and Beyond

We publish here a text on the period of transition; it was written for the conference held in Arezzo in June, 2024 by a member and a sympathiser of Internationalist Perspective.   The subject of the period of transition has not been given the attention it is due by the revolutionary milieu in recent years and we hope to receive further contributions.  

THE REVOLUTION AND BEYOND

1. Is the idea of a ‘period of transition’ to be jettisoned?

The great transformation of social relations all over the world during the revolutionary period will take a certain amount of time – how much time remains to be seen. But the notion of a distinct “period of transition,” characterized by a lower and higher stage of communism as Marx described in the Critique of the Gotha Program, is a concept that is now an impediment to revolutionary understanding.

According to Marx, the law of value would persist in the lower stage of communism, and only in the higher stage of communism would “society wholly cross the narrow horizon of bourgeois right and inscribe on its banner, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’” The German-Dutch left tried to theorize a way to supposedly circumvent the law of value in the lower stage by using labor-time accounting with individual labor vouchers, but without success.  

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