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Marxism states that communism is the ultimate social form.

A revolution, in my present understanding, is that one class overruns another, something like changing from a feudal to capitalist society, or changing from a capitalist to socialist society.

Could such revolutions happen in communist countries?

Ben
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  • This question appears to be off-topic because it is about politics. – iphigenie Jul 30 '13 at 12:03
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    @iphigenie: it sounds like political philosophy - of the marxist flavour. Does that not count? – Mozibur Ullah Jul 30 '13 at 13:18
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    Politics is a subset of philosophy. You will also note that Plato's greatest work is actually called "Politics". – Captain Kenpachi Jul 30 '13 at 14:19
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    @Strauss: Yes, but there is a difference between politics & political philosophy - the two overlap. – Mozibur Ullah Jul 30 '13 at 14:54
  • @MoziburUllah. I think you're right on with your assessment of the question. Although it is worded oddly, the question is a legitimate in the political philosophy spectrum, which, as Juann Strauss correctly observed, is about as fundamentally philosophic as it gets (unless, of course, we decided not to call Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Locke, Hume, et al. philosophers, which would be blatantly foolish). A question about politics (that is, not political philosophy) would be about policy, historical political events or decisions, or thereabouts. – Jon Jul 30 '13 at 21:14
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    Socialism is not the same as communism, by the way. I would suggest you read Marx and Engel's descriptions of the differences between the two (as well as what they call true socialism) in Volume II of their German Ideology. It should be noted that familiarity with Hegel is paramount to understanding this work. – Jon Jul 30 '13 at 21:39
  • @Jon: Thats the distinction I was trying to put my finger on. But you've expressed it better. I'm curious about the origins of either movement. Did communism originate with Marx, or did he just provide the theory for it? Does it go back to the French Commune? How about Socialism? What would be a good book that views both these movements in historical context and not ideologically? – Mozibur Ullah Jul 31 '13 at 01:37
  • I voted to close and called the question "political" because I think that a question about actual political changes in actual countries/states is rather a political question than a philosophical because philosophy (even political philosophy) is supposed to formulate assertions independent of time and space. Asking what will happen in country X if condition Y is reached is political prediction, which has a lot to do with current affairs, sociology and other descriptive sciences. My opinion. – iphigenie Jul 31 '13 at 10:41
  • There are no communist countries. Can such revolutions happen in socialist countries? Probably. Clearly, the Marxist answer to your question is no, there can be no more revolutions in/after communism, because communism and only communism eliminates all contradictions in society that lead to revolutions. Communism is the last and absolute state of a society. – iphigenie Jul 31 '13 at 10:45
  • @MoziburUllah I don't think Marx ever practiced political philosophy. Economic, yes. The rest is normative sociology and lots of other things, but he's not a political philosopher. So no, I don't think it sounds like marxist political philosophy, I think it sounds like applying a theory to a concrete political situation, and that's not philosophy. – iphigenie Jul 31 '13 at 10:49
  • @Iphigenie: I'm sympathetic to a philosophy that is independent of time & space; but I find it difficult to comprehend how that could be possible. Surely both Plato & Aristotles writings on politics are also expressions of their time? After all, didn't Aristotle write The Athenian Constitution? Marx may have not practised political philosophy in the mainline of political theory in the West - I'm not really au fait with the literature to judge - but surely given how important economics is to politics, a critique of it can only be political? – Mozibur Ullah Jul 31 '13 at 11:02
  • @MoziburUllah Surely they did write as thinkers in their respective time - I'm not saying that philosophy can't be seen in light of its time. But whether The Athenian Constitution is a work of philosophy, just because its author was a philosopher, can be doubted. Also, I can see why you would say that its political implications make Marx' work political, but in his eyes, it was the other way around - economics was politic's foundation. So everything that was political could be expressed economically. Just as you say, but the other way around. – iphigenie Jul 31 '13 at 15:00
  • @iphigenie. Your statement that you "don't think Marx ever practiced political philosophy" is simply your opinion and is unsupported by the fact that he studied as a philosopher, was widely influenced by Hegel, and wrote works that are innately philosophic: see Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and The German Ideology for two manifest examples; Capital isn't not--but uses his political philosophy explicated in the two former examples; and, the Communist Manifesto was a propaganda piece, so it doesn't really "count" as a work. But look at the facts, and then pass judgement. – Jon Aug 01 '13 at 22:28
  • My statement is not simply my opinion, I read whole books on that. Also I didn't say Marx isn't a philosopher, I said he was no political philosopher. Where he is political, he is criticizing current affairs and, in so far, isn't philosophical. I did not, however, say he never is. No reason to get polemic. – iphigenie Aug 02 '13 at 09:16
  • @iphigenie. I didn't think I was being polemical; rather, I was citing works of Marx's that are political philosophy, and having great difficulty with the claim that somehow Marx did not write political philosophy. I don't know what book you read that asserted otherwise, but I'd like to find any argument saying that the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1944 and the German Ideology are not works of political philosophy. (And those are two of his most famous works!) To say his works are not political philosophy would be like claiming Newton was not a physicist because he relied on... – Jon Aug 05 '13 at 16:02
  • ...geometric proofs. – Jon Aug 05 '13 at 16:03
  • But, as for the assertion that "criticizing current affairs" is somehow non-philosophical, I'm having difficult withe the logic and criterion for such a claim--and it extends beyond the "Marx: political philosopher or not discussion." If criticism of the present were enough to disqualify works from political philosophy, then certainly Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Milton, Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, Burke, Tocqueville, Mill, Nietzsche, Dewey, Strauss, and more would be disqualified. – Jon Aug 05 '13 at 16:12
  • Take that to chat? I disagree. I claim, and I do not just happen to have opinions, that Marx would have to do more than just outline the communistic society to be a political philosopher like, say, Hobbes. What he does in his historical analysis is philosophical, but not political philosophy, but philosophy of history. That's what all of those you named (which I btw. call a polemical argument) have in common - a theory of what should be that's not afraid of being normative. Marx clearly avoids going into detail when it comes to communism - because it's not a theory but dialectical necessity – iphigenie Aug 05 '13 at 20:24
  • and therefore something that doesn't need a theory and can't, in fact, be described from the here and now. He gets there through a historical analysis - philosophy of history - and describes the effect of economical processes that lead to exactly this state and therefore to its resolution through revolution - philosophy of economics. No political philosophy needed. We could probably resolve our fight by defining the terms we're fighting about. I guess "political philosophy2 isn't the same everywhere. – iphigenie Aug 05 '13 at 20:27

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If your definition of revolution is conflict between classes, then a hypothetical ideal communist society would be classless, so the notion of revolution would be meaningless. Of course, actual regimes which call themselves communist are generally saying that they subscribe to Marx's ideology and that their (ostensible) goal is to achieve Marx's ideal communist society, not that their society at the present has attained that status yet. For one thing, Marx envisioned a stateless utopia, whereas those countries have governments and thus have a political class, so insofar as there is still class distinction in those countries, you could still have a revolution in your sense.

Keshav Srinivasan
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  • Alternatively, it could be the case that a classless society is unobtainable. – labreuer Oct 29 '13 at 21:24
  • @labreuer I think there are certain animal societies that are classless, so the argument would boil down to, is there something inherent in human nature that necessitates division into class? (In any case, if classless societies are indeed impossible, then it's vacuously true that no possible classless society can have a revolution :)) – Keshav Srinivasan Oct 29 '13 at 22:52
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A revolution is an inevitable part of socialism. The way in which a communist country usually guards itself against a revolution (known as a counter-revolution) is by military suppression and oppression of dissidents. The problem here is that you need to create unrest to overthrow the capitalists/bourgeoisie/nobility in order to free the proletariat. This means that the unrest needs lots of momentum. This momentum often cannot be stopped once started, even after the "oppressors" have been overthrown, and this leads to a second revolution, which may or may not be stopped by military intervention (euphemistically referred to as "normalization").

Yuri Bezmenov was the greatest source of information on communist revolutions I've ever come across. If you want to know more detail, I would suggest you start with him.

Captain Kenpachi
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    How does this differ from a police-force? All states appear to have them. – Mozibur Ullah Jul 30 '13 at 13:51
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    The police force normally protects the citizens from each other (theft, murder, etc). In the suppression of a (counter-) revolution, the police force is utilised to protect the government from its citizens. It is basically a corruption of the police's intended purpose. – Captain Kenpachi Jul 30 '13 at 14:22
  • Ok, I'm conflating policing with domestic-intelligence gathering - It's unlikely however that governments have popular support at all times from every single person. That means at least some domestic intelligence gathering is permissable, no? – Mozibur Ullah Jul 30 '13 at 14:53
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    That's probably a question on its own. – Captain Kenpachi Jul 30 '13 at 15:07
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    @JuannStrauss. Theoretically, there could always be non-violent, communist revolutions in social democracies; an example would be a complete employment of employee owned companies. Also, revolutions are not inevitable to socialism. You would need to cite anyone who said so. – Jon Jul 30 '13 at 21:44
  • @Strauss: I was under the impression that certain factions were trying to 'hurry up' the inevitable revolution - in which case they're trying to hurry up history. The one large-scale successful revolution we do know of, and that was touched upon in the question was the transition from Feudalism to States in Europe. Wasn't that a slow transitional change taking centuries? – Mozibur Ullah Jul 31 '13 at 01:46
  • I don't know enough about European history to answer yes or no. – Captain Kenpachi Oct 30 '13 at 07:53
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The answer for this question and many other similar questions you may have is: "why not?"

"Give a man a fish..."

BTW, this question may also be interesting for you: What are the requisites for political change?

Revolutions will only happen when their necessary conditions have been met and will always happen when their sufficient conditions are met.

This quote from JFK may provide some help: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

To finish up, my opinion. IMHO this is very similar to earthquakes, when there is a lot of pressure and tension it will be released rapidly (usually violently) but when the surfaces sliding are smooth then the movement is slow and there are no surprises.

Borrowing some concepts from constructal theory, does socialism guarantee "smooth surfaces" and a slow and constant flow of the currents in it?

IMHO it guarantees the opposite, by enforcing and forcing some equality à la Procustes as opposed to the freedom (for the flow of the currents) that other ideologies promote more.

But it really takes more than a few paragraphs to analyse this properly, I have seen many analyses but none that I like, I'd like one done using cybernetics and the concepts of convergence and stability in a system. Therefore the final answer is "why not?".

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First of all, I agree with Keshavs answer - if there's a communist society in the sense that economical classes do not exist, one class cannot overthrow the other.

However, if you apply a subjective definition of class, say any large sector of society that can identify common goals (wether thy really profit from them or not), one group could band around the goal to establish themselves as kings or whatever and attempt a putsch or revolution.

Granted, we are in the realm of semantics here - what do we mean by class - but that's what you get from asking on philosophy SE.

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