Can Communism be achieved through Democracy?

Never! Only by surrendering all power to the Party and its Supreme Leader (blessings and peace be upon them) can the True Revolution of Communism be achieved!!

Generalized* commodity production (capitalism), and because it's the defining genesis of the capitalist mode of production.

It would if companies didn't repress speech.

Look at Japan's and Russia's communist parties. They're both large and powerful, but electoral rules make it difficult for their messages to spread.

what is 'generalized commodity production' specifically?

The ambivalence of commodities (objects created first and foremost to be exchanged, only second for their utility) and their production (necessarily through the appropriation of labour's surpluses, because value is in and of itself not acquired in exchange).

So when socialists say they want to end commodity production, they want to end the production of things for exchange, and have production oriented towards directly meeting human needs. No money, no measuring of (exchange) value, no mediation of relationships between people through objects. This later thing is what Marxists mean with production creating something "inhuman"; the relationship generates economic forces that are constantly upheld by man, but not controlled by him. The depository of these forces are what drive the capitalist mode of production into disfunction and by extension demand things like amputating (what is left of) the commons, conning the proletariat into killing itself by going to war, and so on.

Check this out: libcom.org/library/capitalism-communism-gilles-dauve.

Yes. The only issue is but all that means is being careful with how you deal with nations like the US.

Yes. The Sandinistas and Unidad Populare were both democratically elected, and Ho Chi Minh was projected to take 80% in the first Vietnamese elections, which is why the Americans cancelled them.

Ok.

Voting is nice, but democracy is better. I don't see how what we have now is democratic in any way.

Source faggot. This isn't Holla Forums.

people elect other people to represent them, which gives the state legitimacy through consent of the governed
it's representative democracy m8

And who chooses which candidates are electable? How are campaign advertisements paid for? How do candidates get media attention?

Where is the socialism in these countries?

the people

people's money from donations

by gaining popularity among people and making noise

While I would say that porky domination of the electoral process is largely unquestionable, it isn't absolute. I mean electoral upsets across the world today like Brexit, the Succdem surge, etc. are clearly not in the interests of the ruling class. Bourgeois elections have the capacity to completely unseat bourgeois power, which is why porkies work so hard to undermine and influence them. I think that a transition to socialism is possible (barring an outside intervention like a coup) through the parliamentary system, especially in a situation like today where all the porky conditioning and propaganda is directly opposed to people's everyday experiences, and is thus ineffective.

It was deposed by a coup and dismantled by revisionism respectively. Hardly the fault of the electoral process. The point is that parliamentary elections put in power parties who, at least initially, were on the road to socialism.

At best Marx believed that the working class could utilize democracy to its advantage, but that it would merely remain a tool and that the influence of a properly revolutionary working class guiding society further under a proletarian dictatorship would be the only means to the end. Again this is non-negotiable as anarchists should know by now; all the revolutions they were involved in started with them holding their principles high, and yet their path to failure was also littered with labour camps, secret police and innately undemocratic decision-making. At least here I can respect the anarcho-communists and platformist anarchists because they've actually smelled the roses on this question.

Furthermore, in Principles of Communism, which Engels authored in correspondence with Marx while he was in England, it's outlined just how reproductive and meaningless democracy really is as a means to make an actual end to the capitalist mode of production. It will not be a consciously majoritarian affair within neither bourgeois society or a proletarian dictatorship because it cannot be, even closely, and this is because the ruling ideas of society are the ruling ideas of the mode of production. You can't "vote in" proletarian self-abolition; you impose it by making the proletarian (wage labourer) condition impossible.

You are a fool if you think blaming your failure on capitalists will save you from admitting that it is the task of the communists to defend the revolution from counterrevolutionary forces, because this will inevitably happen. Allende failed and reformism is inevitably dismantled.

Do you seriously believe they could make a capitalist state suddenly work for socialism? When the institutions of the state are tailored to suit the needs of the bourgeois. It is inevitable and it seems to me that people here don't study the history of these movements, because none managed to achieve socialism in any way.

Just Look at Chile, We Had Allende and he was Killed, now we have Bachelet and everyone shits on her.

You're kidding right? All you'd achieve is social democracy on steroids. Go any further, and you get Allende'd.

Most democracies are market-compliant.
Meaning that the economical level is more important than the political one and that all politicians are shitters who were too stupid to make it big in corporations.

If socialists take command of it then they can dismantle and reconstruct its institutions as they see fit. Your assumption is that this has to be done from scratch rather than through a kind of cannibalization of already existing infrastructure.

How so? Is there any real reason why would couldn't socialize the MoP, institute workplace democracy, economic planning, abolish markets, etc?

As for the possibility of a coup, this is the real issue, which would vary from place to place depending on the strength and determination of the local porkies, international interests, etc. Tbh I think a good praxis is to implement sweeping socialist reforms with the intention of provoking a reactionary coup, then crushing it and using it as an excuse to sweep away the remnants of capitalism in one fell swoop.

this

It's never been achieved through any means

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ass

yes, first stage communism (or as it's more commonly known, socialism - just to trigger leftcoms) will be a big advance in democratic control.
just like bourgeoise however it'll come with restrictions, more or less severe, against the bourgeoise, depending on the situation. this will be the path to a higher stage of communism.

also the bourgeoise parliament will have it's place and we are to use it for us, but it wont be the bourgeoise institutions that are able to bring communism forward, it'll rather be in a struggle against them.

whether i rephrase it out of memory mixed with my understanding of it and so on, which will become a textwall, or just refer you to a much better source on this shouldn't be an issue, so i'll just leave this here:
“Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder
Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch07.htm

I love this guy.

Theoretically yes if the constitution can be changed. But in practice not as we can see from the failure of social democracy.

No, it can certainly be implemented by a party that is the majority - but the very core of democracy is the great "compromise" between different sections (most importantly classes) of society.

Communism is the abolition of the very conditions which gives rise to said classes - it can thus never be such a compromise, it must always be a total rejection of the current order.

This is the point of Bordiga, and Zizek in his introduction to Terrorism and Communism (though I hate to appear to be someone who invokes him at every opportunity).

The strengths that global capitalism can summon if one country would go socialist (like Chile) is insane. You'd have to coordinate some kind of demsoc wave all across the developed world which is never ever gonna happen.

the failure of social democracy is its adhering to parliamentarism and believing it to be a tool for revolution to work with rather than against. genuine revolutionary efforts will always lead to a reaction by the bourgeoise. taking for example Venezuela the mistake is continuing with the parliamentary system after being repeatedly attacked through unconstitutional, illegal means. they had the legitimation to end it right then, but they didn't, because they cannot let go of the bourgeoise institutions.

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You'll face a civil war if you ever have a chance at it. That's actually a good thing though because you're going to get a lot more people defending a legitimate socialist government than you'll get participating in a socialist uprising. You just need to keep it in mind, and prepare for you Spanish civil war mk 2 in advance

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