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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