Why have so many modern marxists abandoned the notion the communism is inevitable?

Zizek's one isn't so bad, it seems to be more of a call to action than the lazy assumption that the perfect opportunity can occur while everyone sits at home waiting for the perfect opportunity. Didn't watch Wolff's because I'm tired and not particularly emotionally invested in him.

There's a reasonable chance the world will fucking end, that's why. If we treat Marxism as empirical, the data seems to be leading toward human extinction and less human emancipation.

"Socialism or barbarism" the idea that communism just magically appears on its own has never been a position within communism.

However, did Marx & Engels believe that sooner or later, no matter how many failures appears on the way, there would be communism? In all likelihood yes.

But Marx & Engels had the luxury of being ignorant of nuclear annihilation and climate collapse. In light of these developments, communism can no longer be seen as the only possible end of capitalism (or a some form of 'barbaric' post-capitalism), as an alternative we have extinction.

Thus, the rallying cry of the contemporary communism movement can't be anything but "Communism or Death".

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You don't even need philosophy for this one.

Think for just a second what communist society implies, what rational planning of production implies, what self-determination of groups of people imply.

Unlike capitalism communism does not and cannot fundamentally be left to run itself, it is a conscious and constant human effort, and what's more, a highly political effort even when it is mostly reduced to technocracy. The fact that people must consciously >will< communism to exist immediately blocks its inevitability.

Mass automation would be the end of capitalism. It has to exploit human labor to keep going, otherwise there would be no point it will fall apart.

Communism isn't inevitable, there's a bigger chance that humanity will kill itself instead. I still can't buy into capitalists finding a way to stabilize the system in any meaningful way. Capitalism remaining dominant would require a lot of people to just bend over and not resist.

In Marx's time it was reasonable to think that because the thought of climate change didn't exist. Now, there is that urgent threat, plus, we've seen a period (early 20th century) when the Left believed the end of capitalism was near, but that all came and went and we still have capitalism.

Capitalism wouldn't have lasted past the 30s if an entire continent wasn't destroyed during WWII. That bought the system extra time to redevelop in Europe and now we're at the end of that phase. Let's not fuck up again.

What would keep the rich from just producing luxury goods for themselves, while leaving the working class and petit bourgs in the dirt? (sure that would no longer be capitalism)

Capitalism is not a philosophy or a 'system'. Capitalism is the natural way. If a man catches a fish, he now has 'capital'. He can then cut this fish up and use it as bait to catch other, bigger fish. It works better than the worm he started with, which was 'capital'.
Now the man has a tremendous amount of fish he can trade for his neighbor's net work. Now the man has a nother form of 'capital'. With these nets he can catch enough fish to trade for a boat, even more 'capital'.
Capitalism is not a creed, philosophy, system, manifesto, or anything like that. Which is why these dumfaggot Reds can never get their hands on it.
Capitalism is the reversal of Entropy, the fundamental basis of the Universe, and something our very biology was designed to do. Our bodies are entropy accelerators, and capitalism as it's understood greatly accelerates Entropy.
It's the natural order, as fundamental as the fusion of hydrogen into helium and beyond. As fundamental as self-replicating chemicals.

Wolff is a Marxists you fucking retard.

that's what's happening now. except a lot of them actually support it and wouldn't dream of resisting

read a book then kill yourself

This is a really trite shitpost.

Because humans have proven to have an incredible capacity to endure and inflict suffering, and may well be too stupid for communism. It certainly looks like that.

if this is bait, fuck off. if it's not, kill yourself

You're misusing the term capital, retard. Also you're misusing entropy too. And you're also implying that natural things are inherently good. You're stupid as fuck.

Revolutions happen when people reach their breaking point. It just hasn't happened yet, that doesn't mean it's not going to. Decades of czarist repression passed by with relative passivity on behalf of the workers and peasants before the Russian Revolution finally happened.

Jesus Christ, nigger.
Read a fucking book.

We've only just entered into an age where leftist politics have been picking up momentum in the west again. People are not sitting down and taking it. If anything more people are slowly becoming aware of the issues of capitalism. They need to be made aware that there is an alternative.

More like "a man catches fish for a monthly wage, and has to give them to the owner of the lake, who then makes profit for himself selling them to customers".
literally Wealth of Nations.

This - it's pretty easy to prevent capitalism from happening and that is by manipulating the conciousness of people, which capitalists can do quite easily.

have you ever read anything from Wolff? Genuine question

Isn't that what happened to the kulaks?

relevant

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True. Modern Marxists that still cling to the inevitability and historical necessity of proletarian revolution are silly af.

people in today's west are not living like russian peasants in the 19th century. it's just unrealistic to compare a pre-industrial farmer living in abject misery and violent oppression to a relatively comfortable western suburbanite whose chief concerns include spectator sports and tv shows

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Or you will have Elysium where everything is owned by far away porkies and all the unemployed proles are kept in line by robot soldiers.

Global communism aka a global dictatorship is already here. The international banker owns all countries through debt, and direct their futures through loans. You can't do shit without money. Try to get out of it and they will assassinate you. Can't do that then they will start a war. Shits been going on since napoleon. Hell it's probably been going on all the way back, just on a smaller scale.

There will never be a communist revolution with these international bankers. Why do communists refuse to acknowledge this?

Fascism is an actual fucking solution to the contradictions in capitalism. Marx could of never imagined it

*could have

It was made in response to someone doing exactly what you said.

It's not that the idea has been abandoned as much as it was never part of marxism in the first place. "Socialism or barbarism" already implies contingency.

well nevermind, I guess there's no ethical shitposting under capitalism.

tl;dr

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Also, he is implying that the idea of communism is unnatural, while it clearly came out of a human brain,a (by)product of Nature
>inb4 muh repitilian jews

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no it's not, we'll instead just have Capitalism with welfare (UBI)

I'm not referring to Zizek and Wolff you fucking mouthbreathers, I'm talking about the "marxists who have abandoned the notion that communism is inevitable" that OP mentions.

Zizek once joked about it something like this at the end of an interview: see you either in communism or in hell

it is just realism, to consider that we all can die before communism is built. humanity isn't forever and capitalism could very well burn through before it truly collapses.

plus, I don't think Marx considered it "truly inevitable" in a determinist sense either. he just saw it as a political impossibility for capitalism to continue on and on and on - because at some point, the working class would've had enough as capitalisms contradictions would have intensified enough

Perhaps communism isn't inevitable
Capitalism will have its hiccups and crash, but can evolve into all sorts of nightmarish scenarios. This should only give us more resolve

the same material conditions that breeds communist revolutions usually breeds fascist coups

remember that guys

Got a source?

If you listen to Wolff regularly he makes it pretty clear that the idea that capitalism is the "end of history" or that it can last forever is "childish". I think you're misreading that interview.

He's a self-professed "Marxian," which is to say someone who takes one or two pieces of Marxist theory and then throws the rest in the trash.

ecological kektastrophie could happen first now

before the twentieth century the idea of human extinction was ridiculous

marxian economics is literally the name of the discipline

This is the kind of shit that really makes anprim really attractive, and depending on the future of climate, a lot of the world might not even have much of a choice but to embrace it.

we're headed towards the star trek, rich hide away in bunkers until everyone else starves and then implements space-socialism, aren't we?

Ecological crisis could kill us and my own pet hypothesis is that capitalism could reach a technological zenith at which point it would be invincible to destruction other than complete destruction of the world.

ok nazbol

We clearly do acknowledge this.The
abolition of the derivatives markets, stock and bond trading, and private property itself always has been and always will be a primary plank in the communist praxis.
Unless of course you are using this term as a dog whistle for da joos, in which case kill yourself and make the world a better place.

Engels predicted it. Also no, because it doesnt fix the falling profit rate problem, it just delays it.

Probably because "It's inevitable mister Anderson" has become a meme

Wolff is practicing incrementalism upon the unsuspecting liberal population, and showing by demonstration that something even slightly different is possible. It's an effort that I wish more people would take part in; of course you shouldn't give up the revolutionary struggle.

But giving people a working model of collective ownership before an economic or political catastrophe hits hard can't hurt when you're trying to reorganize society after the fact.

actually it makes the issue irrelevant, investors invest when an authoritarian regime tells them to invest - see china.

The idea that communism will be the end of history is also childish.

>dude just sit around waiting for capitalism to end, it's inevitable and has been for 90 years

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When everything that a human can do can be done better by a machine, what possible reason could capitalists have for keeping you alive? Why would any sane person want dirty, clumsy, stupid human slaves when they can have clean, efficient and intelligent machine servants?

Can you not count past 90, or are you just a very-young-Earth creationist who believes that nothing ever took longer than 90 years to happen?

Also Marx didn't believe that

It's a step. Communism is inevitable one way or the other, since private property followed to the end must negate itself like anything else. If anything Marx is lionizing "real life" here, whatever that means. Gotta love dat "so-called world history" tho.

Communism is inevitable because of the growth of the productive forces. Does Marx promise that most of the world will survive to see communism? I'm not aware of him saying that. The point is that it's more about the capital than it is about the people.

Even if there is a nuclear war and the porkies survive, humans will survive and eventually build communism through the supermachines that are inevitable.

The prospect of cataclysm is mainly in the air as deterrence to make us think we can't do anything, when in reality thinking creatively is the only way forward.

It is important for communists to stay on top of the cutting edge of the development of the productive forces.

But it's not just about waiting until the self-sustaining nanobots rearrange atoms to make whatever we want.

Marx was struggling in his lifetime for revolution although he suspected the means of production were nowhere near ready to implement muh full communism. The point of agitating now is that the earlier capital is used for humanity for-itself, the more needless suffering can be avoided.

All this hand wringing about nuclear war and ecological catastrophe is fucking retarded. Are you afraid to die? Big fucking deal.

I suspect in the future we will even have technology to raise people from the dead so everyone who died in the nuclear war and prior human history can be brought back to enjoy muh full communism. And if you doubt this, guess what you were already dead before it's like not even that big a deal.

Marx didn't promise YOU communism, he just promised communism. Eventually, human conflict will cease or all humans will perish.

And if all humans perish, then we will have abolished private property and moved on to the next stage. Disappointed? Communism was only ever going to get you to the heat death of the universe, comrade. "Real life" is some real shit.

This. If you do not believe in the inevitability of communism, you are NOT a Marxist, period.