When Marx famously declared that “Communism is not an ideal to be constructed,” he was not offering a vague platitude. He was defining the movement exclusively by its negative character. There is no “Step 2” separate from “Step 1.” In dialectics, the act of clearing away the debris is in itself the act of revealing the new path. To ask for a “Step 2” is to ask for a return to the drawing board of an architect, rejecting the material reality of the one doing the sculpting.
I. The Definition of the Real Movement
We can find the core definition of this “negative” doctrine in The German Ideology, where Marx and Engels write:
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.”
So what we can take from this is that a utopian socialist acts as an architect, drawing up plans for a “Phalanstery” or a “perfect city” that finds its existence only in their mind. A materialist communist therefore acts almost as a demolition expert. They identify the specific chains that currently exist and seek to break them.
II. The Sculptor vs. The Architect
Lets look at this through the Analogy of the Sculptor:
The Architect (Utopianism): Tries to build a structure from scratch using new materials. They must invent a new human nature, a new morality, and new laws. This fails because it has no basis in material reality.
The Sculptor (Marxism): Stands before a block of stone (Capitalism). The “statue” (Communism) is already inside the stone, meaning the social cooperation, the global supply chains, and the productive capacity already exist. The sculptor’s job is not to add clay, but to chip away the stone that encases the form.
The “stone” being chipped away represents the capitalist social relations (private property, profit, the state). Once these are removed, the socialized production that already exists is set free.
III. The Inventory of Abolitions
The communist program is almost entirely defined by what it intends to negate. It does not promise to “give” the workers new things (or in the case of this reply, things the workers “miss” from “the good (old) times; things Capitalism “took away” from them) it promises to remove the barriers preventing them from controlling what they already produce.
Abolition of Private Property: Not to be confused with “personal property”. This negates the legal right of an individual to own the means of production.
Abolition of the State: We do not seek to build a “Good State.” We seek the withering away of the political state as an inherent tool of class oppression, replacing it with the “administration of things.”
Abolition of the Law of Value: We do not seek “fair wages.” We seek the abolition of the wage system entirely, ending the reduction of human life to a monetary cost.
Abolition of Classes: We do not seek to make the proletariat the new ruling class forever. Instead, we seek to abolish the proletariat as a class, thereby abolishing class distinctions altogether.
IV. The Negation of the Negation
In dialectics, this process is known as the Negation of the Negation. While often simplified (and erroneously attributed to Hegel) as the triad of “Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis,” the actual movement described by Marx is one of historical development through contradiction and higher unity.
Affirmation / Primitive Unity (Primitive Communism): Early humanity lives in stateless, classless tribes. There is freedom and unity, but it is “undifferentiated” and plagued by scarcity and weakness against nature.
Negation / Alienation (Capitalism): Class society arises. It negates the primitive unity. It creates slavery, a specific kind of hierarchy, and alienation. However, it also creates massive industrial power and abundance.
Negation of the Negation (Communism): The proletariat negates capitalism. We do not go back to the tribe (a circular return to scarcity). We move forward to a higher unity that preserves the abundance and technology created by capitalism, but destroys the alienating class structure.
V. The “Aufheben” Fallacy: A Textual and Historical Analysis
The summary statement of communist theory is “the Aufhebung des Privateigentums or “Abolition of Private Property””, a focal point of significant translational and interpretive debate. The German term Aufhebung is famously complex, particularly within the philosophical tradition of G.W.F. Hegel, where it carries a threefold meaning: to abolish, to preserve, and to elevate to a higher level. This has led to an interpretation, common in some Marxist circles (such as the “Conservative Communists” I have already critiqued elsewhere), that Marx intended a metaphysical “sublation” of private property, a process of gentle transcendence rather than outright destruction.
However, as I have argued in one of my other articles, a close analysis of the term’s context within the Communist Manifesto, its meaning in German legal and common parlance, and the logic of Marx’s historical argument suggests a far more direct and unambiguous meaning. This analysis will demonstrate that “abolition” is not merely a simplification, but the most accurate and intellectually honest rendering of Marx’s thesis, by examining key texts from across his work.
(This section serves as a short summary of the article linked above, so if you already read it, feel free to skip the following section)
1. The Double Context: Philosophy vs. Law It is undeniable that the Hegelian concept of Aufhebung (sublation) was a cornerstone of the dialectical method that Marx adapted. In Hegel’s idealism, a concept is negated but its rational core is preserved and carried forward into a higher synthesis. If this were the only context, interpreting Marx’s use of the term as “sublation” would be plausible.
However, as seen in my Article „A short Note: On the Aufhebung of Private Property“, Marx was not writing a philosophical treatise for academics. He was co-authoring a political manifesto. Furthermore, his own background was in law. In 19th-century German legal and common usage, Aufhebung had a much more concrete and definitive meaning: abolition, annulment, repeal, or cancellation. When a law or a contract is aufgehoben, it is not preserved and elevated; it is simply rendered null and void. It ceases to have legal force.
Given that the Manifesto is a practical, political document intended to be clear and forceful, it is methodologically sound to begin with the term’s most direct and material meaning, rather than its most abstract and philosophical one.
2. A Textual Analysis of the Manifesto
The most compelling evidence for the meaning of Aufhebung comes from the immediate context of the text itself. Marx and Engels do not introduce the concept in a vacuum. They build their case by analyzing a concrete historical process, and in doing so, they use a different, unambiguous word: Abschaffung, which means “abolition.”
Let us examine the preceding paragraphs:
“They [the theoretical conclusions of the Communists] are merely general expressions of actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition [Abschaffung] of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished [schaffte ab] feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.”
Here, the argument is explicitly historical, not philosophical. The authors establish a clear precedent: revolutionary change has always involved the abolition of prior property forms. The French Revolution did not “sublate” feudal property; it violently smashed it and replaced it with a new system. The term used is direct and destructive.
Only after establishing this material, historical context of Abschaffung do they summarize their own program using the term Aufhebung. It is clear from the flow of the argument that Aufhebung is being used here as a powerful synonym for the concrete, historical process of abolition they have just described, not as an introduction of a new, metaphysical concept of “preservation and elevation.”
3. The “Negation of the Negation” in Capital
The “sublationist” interpretation often draws heavily on the famous passage at the end of Chapter 32 of Capital, Volume 1, where Marx describes the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation as a “negation of the negation.” This is seen as proof of a purely Hegelian, developmental logic at play.
However, as noted in my analysis, a careful reading shows that Marx is using Hegelian language to describe a material, antagonistic process, not an idealist one. The first negation is the expropriation of the small, independent producer by capital. The second negation is the expropriation of the capitalist by the associated producers.
“The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of the negation.”
This second negation is not a gentle “sublation.” It is the moment when the “integument is burst asunder” and the “expropriators are expropriated.” The property form that is “preserved” is not bourgeois private property, but the social character of production that capitalism developed. The thing that is “abolished” is the private character of appropriation. The “elevation” is to a new mode of production based on common possession. The process is one of rupture and transformation, not a smooth ‘synthesis’ that preserves the core of the old system.
4. The Commune and the Abolition of “Class Property”
Further clarification is found in Marx’s analysis of the Paris Commune. In The Civil War in France, he describes the Commune’s intentions regarding property. This passage is crucial because it shows Marx grappling with the language needed to describe a post-capitalist property form.
“The Commune, they exclaim, intends to abolish property, the basis of all civilization! Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labor of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land, and capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of free and associated labor.”
The “sublationist” might seize on the phrase “make individual property a truth” as proof of preservation. But this misses the entire point. Marx is engaging in a polemic. He is turning the bourgeoisie’s own ideology against it. The “individual property” that the Commune would make a “truth” is the direct possession of the means of subsistence by the producers, a right that is a fiction for the proletariat under capitalism. The condition for this is the abolition of class property: the private ownership of the means of production. The means of production are not to be preserved as private property; they are to be transformed into “instruments of free and associated labor,” i.e., common property. The passage is a call for the abolition of the form of property that makes real individual possession impossible for the vast majority.
5. The Critique of the Gotha Programme: Beyond Bourgeois Right
Nowhere is the destructive and transformative nature of the communist program clearer than in Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme. Here, Marx is not writing a polemical manifesto for a broad audience, but an internal critique against the confused, reformist ideas of the German workers’ party.
In this text, Marx describes the lower phase of communism. Society has just emerged from the womb of capitalism and is still stamped with its birthmarks. Here, the means of production are held in common, but the principle of distribution is still based on a form of equal right: the producer receives back from society, after deductions have been made, exactly what they give to it in the form of labor.
This system of labor vouchers is a radical break, but Marx notes it is still a form of “bourgeois right.” It is a transitional phase. The ultimate goal, the higher phase of communism, requires the abolition of this principle itself:
“In a higher phase of communist society... only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
This passage is a final blow to the “sublationist” interpretation. The communist project does not “preserve and elevate” bourgeois right; its explicitly stated goal is to cross it in its entirety. The entire legal and philosophical framework of rights, which is the highest expression of bourgeois property relations, is not to be sublated, but to be rendered obsolete and left behind. This is a program of total abolition, not partial preservation.
6. The Finality of Bourgeois Property
The logical core of the argument rests on the specific nature of bourgeois property. The Hegelian concept of sublation implies a developmental continuity, where a partial or incomplete truth is carried forward. This could arguably be applied to the transition from feudal to bourgeois property. The bourgeoisie abolished the feudal guild system, but it “preserved” the principle of private property and “elevated” it to a more universal, mobile form based on commodity exchange.
However, Marx and Engels argue that this developmental path reaches its terminus with capitalism.
“But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.”
The term “final and most complete” is important here. It signifies that bourgeois property is not another incomplete stage to be sublated, but the ultimate and purest form of class exploitation. It is the end of the line for a society based on private property and class antagonism. Beyond it lies not a “higher” form of private property, but the negation of the entire premise of private property itself.
So, i ask: What, precisely, would be “preserved” and “elevated” in the transition to communism?
The wage-labor relation? The commodity form? The alienation of the producer from their product? These are the very essences of bourgeois property. They are not elements to be preserved in a higher state. They are the exact chains that must be broken. The transition from capitalism to communism is therefore not a developmental sublation but a total, antagonistic abolition, a rupture. It is the material act of abolition that ends the long historical sequence of class-based property relations.
VI. Who is the Real Utopian?
This brings us to the core of the specific polemic raised by “Conservative Communists.” They argue that Capitalism is the true abolitionist force. Destroying the Nation, the Family, and Tradition. Therefore, they claim, the communist movement must be a force of restoration. In their view, those of us who accept the abolition of the Nation-State are the “Architects” (Utopians), trying to impose an unnatural “globalist” ideal on a humanity that they believe is naturally nationalist and traditional.
This is nothing but an inversion of reality.
1. Everything is Global
Let us return to the Sculptor. What is the “statue” inside the stone of capitalism? It is the socialized, global character of production. The clothes you wear, the phone in your hand, and the food you eat are already the products of a unified world labor process. The supply chain is international. The proletariat is a global class. The material base of society has already rendered the Nation-State obsolete; borders now act only as fetters on production and tools of labor control.
2. The Reactionary as Architect
It is the “Conservative Communist” who is the Utopian Architect. They look at a world where production is irrecoverably global, and they try to construct a fantasy of national sovereignty on top of it. They try to force the butterfly back into the chrysalis.
To maintain the “Nation” in a globalized economy requires the artificial construction of borders, tariffs, and myths that contradict the economic reality.
To maintain the “Bourgeois Family” requires the artificial subjugation of women and children, contradicting the material reality where women are part of the social workforce.
The abolitionist is not a Utopian for recognizing that the Nation is dead as an economic unit. We are just the only ones willing to read the autopsy report. The Utopian is the one trying to prop up the corpse and then call it “Tradition.”
VII. The Fetish of “Productive Forces”
We must confront the most common rejoinder to the abolitionist position, recently popularized by the user Zemiath in response to RTSG. Their argument is explicit: “Step two is how you make the abolition possible. You all want to... skip the whole building the productive forces phase and jump straight to post scarcity superabundance.” They further accuse abolitionists of “butchering Marx’s quote” and promoting “infantile abolish everything overnight bullshit.”
This argument rests on a profound chronological error. It mistakes the tasks of 1917 Russia (a semi-feudal society) for the reality of the 21st century.
1. The “Building Phase” Was Capitalism The historic mission of capitalism was precisely to “build the productive forces.” It has done so. We now live in a world of superabundance, where food is destroyed to maintain prices and homes sit empty to maintain equity values. To argue that we must establish a “Socialist State” to continuebuilding productive forces before we can abolish value is to argue for a repetition of the capitalist phase under a red flag.
Step 1: Capitalism builds the productive forces (Done).
Step 2: The Proletariat abolishes the value-form that constrains those forces.
There is no “Step 3” where we build more factories while retaining the wage system. That is just state capitalism.
2. Who is Establishing an Ideal? Zemiath claims that immediate abolition is the “ideal to which reality must adjust.” This is a spectacular inversion of the text.
The Abolitionist: Looks at the existing material abundance (homes without people, food thrown in dumpsters) and says, “The material reality is ready. We must remove the artificial fetters (money/state) to let it flow.” This aligns with the “Real Movement.”
The “Step 2” Builder: Looks at the existing abundance and says, “No, we must ignore this reality. We must artificially maintain the wage system, the state, and the commodity form because my theory says we need a developmentalist stage.”
It is the “builder” who is imposing an outdated ideal (19th-century developmentalism) on a reality that has radically outgrown it. They are trying to solve a problem (scarcity) that capitalism has already solved, instead of solving the problem (social relations) that capitalism cannot solve.
VIII. Some Statements/conclusion
I. Communism is not an ideal to be constructed, nor a state of affairs to be established; it is the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. To demand a “Step 2” of construction before the “Step 1” of abolition is to demand that the prisoner build a better cell before they are allowed to break the lock.
II. The “building of productive forces” is the historical mission of Capital, not Communism. Capital has fulfilled this mission, creating a world of potential superabundance strangled by the value-form. The task of the Communist is not to continue the work of Capital under a red flag, but to abolish the form that prevents the existing forces from serving human need.
III. Those who claim that abolition is “utopian” while seeking to restore the Nation, the Family, and the Developmentalist State are the true Utopians. They seek to impose the dead forms of the 19th century upon the living, globalized reality of the 21st. The Abolitionist is the only Realist, for they alone accept the material verdict of history: that the old world is already dead, and waits only for its burial.