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The Communist Question

By Shaunak Sastry
So, since most of us seem to be in a tizzy as to what the format of this blog is supposed to be, I'll just start off with a question. While I am reading Engels and Lenin, some of my very basic misconceptions of Communism are being unraveled. So, Engels claims that it is proliferation of the 'big industry' (as exemplified by the steam engine, the power loom, etc.) that has created this class of people called the proletariat. But he also articulates the fact that it is only within a 'big industrial' system that the seeds for a proletariat revolution can be sown. Which is in effect saying that a Communist revolution can only exist within a capitalist system. This gets further clarified in Lenin, where he differentiates the Socialist from the Communist, in saying that the idealistic utopian ideals of the Socialist envisage an overthrow of Capitalism per se, which the Communist thinks is unproductive. So here are my questions.

1. If Communism operates within a 'capitalist' framework; how and why have popular conceptions of 'Communism' come to mean 'that which is not pro-Capitalist'? There seems to be a confusion over the meanings of 'capitalistic production' (in the sense of surplus-value), and private ownership of property by a few.
2. Engels and Marx talk about the development of societies and the individuals within those societies, say for instance, from feudal serfs to industrial proletariats. Does Marx consider Socialism to be a pre-Communist state? I say this because as I read Lenin, I get the feeling that he's saying that Communism is basically "Socialism + Socialism's unanswered questions." Perhaps it's a bit too early to discuss this, given that we haven't read Kapital as yet; but I'd appreciate your thoughts.
-Shaunak

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