this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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Gotcha! I'll try to respond to your comment here.
Minor technical correction, the PRC has 8 political parties in addition to the CPC that collaborate and advise the CPC in special interest areas. More to the point, however, the idea that a multi-party system is necessary for socialism is born from liberal conceptions of democracy. The PRC is a socialist economy, run collaboratively. The state in any given society is representative of a single class above all else, and in the PRC that class is the proletariat. Liberal democracy that focuses on competition over collaboration is poor at achieving long-term progress, while not adding democracy.
It's possible thst revisionism and liberalism can infect communist parties, but the possibility of this does not translate to them being unjustifiable, which is more of a moral argument than a materialist one.
All states are authoritarian, in that all states are mechanisms by which one class wields a monopoly on violence to forward their own class interests. The idea that there is a "non-authoritarian state" is itself flawed. Either way, the PRC's electoral structure has room for recall elections, and candidates are elected locally and ladder upward indirectly. There is thus a connection from the top to the bottom.
I'm not sure what you're actually arguing for. A multiparty, liberal form of democracy? That isn't what the people of China want. Mechanisms for overturning communist rule? Historically very easy to take advantage of by foreign powers. The CPC maintains direct connection to the people via the Mass Line, and conducts constant polling.
To clarify, I'm an anarchist. I don't think the state should exist, period, and I think it's self-defeating to try to impose communism via the state.
But more to the point, my original comment was in response to your analysis of OP's questioning of China's alleged human rights abuses. I was interested in your dialectical thinking because I hadn't seen it applied so clearly before and I wanted to use it as a learning opportunity. I'm coming away feeling more educated, which I'm grateful for. But I'm also not convinced your analysis allays worries about potential abuses mentioned in the OP, and I wanted to say as much. So ultimately, I'm not really arguing for anything specific, mainly because I don't pretend to have concrete answers. If anything, I'm arguing for greater political imagination. Liberal democracy is obviously not the answer, but I'm not convinced an authoritarian socialist state is either. So how could we build on the works of Marx and other communist thinkers to come up with a way to implement communism that avoids the pitfalls you yourself have admitted are potential problems with a communist-party-controlled state?
Communism can only be established via the state. You cannot go from capitalism straight to a fully collectivized system of production and distribution, class struggle does not disappear overnight. Anarchists tend to propose something entirely different, something more communalist in nature, but this is not the same as communism from a Marxist perspective.
Understood.
I want to clarify something: contradictions are not avoidable. All change proceeds through a resolution of contradictions. It is not feasible to totally avoid any and all problems encountered in the building of socialism and communism in real life. As I said earlier, class struggle itself continues into socialism. The process of building communism itself is a gradual, protracted process of resolving contradictions.
If you have a proposed alternative to existing socialist democracy, then we can discuss that, but you will not be able to avoid the problem of class struggle.
I understand what you mean I think, and I want to be clear that I'm not some utopian anarchist who thinks we can just magically become communist overnight. As you said, class struggle will continue. My point isn't that we should try to avoid the contradiction, it's that a socialist state is not a great way to navigate its resolution and that we should try to imagine other ways of doing so that don't run the real risk of becoming abusive and/or failing to adhere to the will and needs of the people. It's hard to write out a concrete idea here because it's not something we've collectively spent a ton of resources trying to imagine. But people are wildly creative, and I think it'd be a disservice to us to not at least try to imagine something better.
I disagree with the notion that people haven't spent a ton of time thinking of alternative structures. This, however, is ultimately quite similar to utopianism. I fail to see how you can end class struggle without going through a period where the proletariat dominates the bourgeoisie, unless you mean to change the name of this structure from a state without changing the structure itself. How does the proletariat dominate the bourgeoisie while both exist, without a state?
Imagine a community of workers who, through ground-up organizing (say, through unions or mutual aid networks), collectively overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize the means of production. The bourgeoisie need to be prevented from taking the means of production back while the workers implement communism, so the workers organize a militant force that, through consensus, can be temporarily spun up to defend the revolution--but only for as long as everyone agrees the defense is necessary. Then the reactionaries are kept in check, but the power to perform this subjugation is firmly rooted in the will of the people, without the risk of the power becoming disembodied or consolidated in the hands of the few.
Obviously there are lots of immediate concerns about this (how do you ensure reactionaries don't throw a wrench into the whole thing, etc.). But this is where I think more imagination is needed. Surely it's possible to solve these issues without giving up on the idea that power should be fully in the hands of the proletariat and not a disembodied structure?
This is still a state, though. Existing socialist states are run by the many, and rooted in the will of the people. Further, your example assumes 100% alignment, and the second one goes against the grain it is de jure dissolved, but de facto has no actual mechanism for doing so.
Let me ask you a different question because I feel like we're talking past each other on this: what do you mean exactly when you talk about "dominating the bourgeoisie"?
As long as class struggle exists, there will exist a state that serves as the monopoly on violence in the hands of a given class. If the proletariat does not take hold of the bourgeois state, smash it, and replace it with a proletarian one, then the bourgeois state will prevent the establishment of socialism. Either the proletariat is subjugated by the bourgeoisie, or the bourgeoisie is subjugated by the proletariat. The purpose of maintaining a monopoly on violence over the bourgeoisie is so that you can gradually collectivize production and distribution, negating the proletariat and bourgeoisie as classes.
So, it seems like you're saying two separate things here: (1) class struggle inherently involves a monopoly on violence, and (2) a monopoly on violence is strategically necessary for the proletariat in order to build a classless, stateless society. Can you clarify which one you mean, or if you mean both?
Both. The state is a necessary product of class struggle, and exists until class struggle is negated.
Ok, so this is where I'm lost. I can understand why one would find a monopoly on violence to be strategically necessary to achieve the goals of the revolution (though I disagree). I don't understand how you can argue class struggle inherently involves a monopoly on violence, unless you are just defining class by who happens to have a monopoly on violence (which would defeat the whole point of class struggle). The entire concept of "a monopoly on violence" is a product of bourgeois society--they are the ones who built the structures that legitimized certain types of violence while restricting and punishing other types. So to negate the existence of the bourgeoisie, we negate the existence of those structures. Which fundamentally means tearing down mechanisms by which anyone can wield a monopoly on violence.
States are far older than the bourgeoisie, states arose when class first arose in early slave-based modes of production. Class struggle, the existence of classes, is what gives rise to the state. The state cannot exist when there is no class, but we cannot negate class without collectivizing all production and distribution globally. Since this will be a gradual process, we must create a proletarian state that will strip the bourgeoisie of its property. As it does so, the state itself withers with respect to how far class struggle has erased.
When you say we tear down the mechanisms by which anyone can wield a monopoly on violence, you either are saying you wish to reset all of human progress to anarcho-primitivism, before class struggle arose, or are agreeing with me that we must finally abolish the basis of the state by gradually collectivizing production and distribution, which requires a proletarian state. There is no third option.
Fuck, I'm tired. I was thinking "upper class" but said "bourgeoisie"--you're totally right on that lol.
Nonetheless, my point still stands, and your second paragraph feels spiritually on the level of a democrat giving an ultimatum about voting for the "lesser of two evils". You're taking a really complex problem that has plagued us for thousands of years and claiming that the only solutions are either (a) undo all of civilization, or (b) do what this German guy suggested a century ago. That is a lack of political imagination.
To your point, the state was constructed over the centuries via class (and gender and ethnic and neurotype and ) struggle between the subjugating and the subjugated. It continues to exist because those contradictions still exist. Even after centuries of revolutions of various kinds, all with the goal of leveling inequalities and boosting the position of the subjugated, we still have this same state of affairs--just with a rotating class of subjugators. How's this one going to be different? Because this time the subjugated are using dialectics? Because we want to eliminate class? I don't find that convincing. The only way we're ever going to eliminate class and other categories of subjugation is by eliminating the mechanisms by which they exist. The fact that you can't think of any way to do this that isn't reverting to anarcho-primitivism is not a valid reason to reject the premise.
The reason why the proletariat is the class that will actually end class struggle, is because this time it will be the working classes that are on top, not another ruling class like with bourgeois revolutions. The mechanisms for the existence of class are in the mode of production and distribution, we erase class by collectivizing production and distribution, which erases the basis of class struggle and therefore the state.
It isn't at all because I lack political imagination. If you have class, you have a state. The only way to get rid of class overnight is nuclear apocalypse or similar disaster bringing about early tribal cooperative formations, but this only sets the clock back. After revolution, the bourgeoisie will still exist, and proletarians still working for them, which necessitates the use of a proletarian state.
It isn't a lack of imagination. Since we cannot skip to communism, the only way to immediately achieve classless society is to nuke it all. You cannot both have class and classlessness.
Incorrect, though. Previous revolutions have been aristocratic or bourgeois revolutions, with the exception of socialist revolutions in the 20th and 21st centuries. These socialist revolutions are building socialism in real life, and moved beyond the "present state of affairs" in capitalist countries, but must constantly be vigilant or else face backsliding like the USSR.
Proletarians as the ruling class, ie working class leadership, are not an exploiting class. This is the prime distinction between previous states. Socialist countries do not have leadership of exploiters.
Because the rule by a working class that can only achieve liberation by collectivizing production and distribution for all is the basis of ending class society.
Sure, which requires collectivizing all of production and distribution, which requires a proletarian-run state. This abolishes class struggle and therefore the basis of the state.
You have not given an explanation for how class can exist without the state, while also agreeing that we cannot abolish class overnight. If you can disprove class struggle as the basis of the state, or otherwise prove how to instantly collectivize all of production and distribution, then we might have somewhere to take this, but for now it seems you don't have an answer, you just don't like the existing answer.