Outline for Upcoming Ep: "The Principles of Communism" with Millennials are Killing Capitalism

These are the questions I was asked by Jared from MaKC, and Im VERY excited to release this episode in a week or two, as I truly l think its one of the better episodes I've done in a while!

Here are the questions Ill be answering in detail:

- One of the things I find interesting is that supposedly earlier versions of this were known as the Communist Catechism or Confession of Faith. And I find that really interesting, because obviously I know that Engles is famous for advocating a scientific orientation to communism to differentiate it from idealistic notions. But I do think it’s really important to situate that Marx and Engels came up in a world where there were a lot of faith-based advocates of a socialism of one form or another. I know we’ll get into that a bit more later as we talk about some of the differentiation Engels makes between types of socialists. I know you’ve spent many years now studying communist history and philosophy through the work you do on your podcasts as well as I’m sure through your organizing. So I was just curious if you had any thoughts on these ideas of faith, and catechism and even manifestos as documents often coming out of certain religious traditions in Europe, and maybe if it doesn’t say something specifically about Marx & Engels, perhaps it does say something about the people they were seeking to relate to in their own efforts at building a revolutionary movement.

- So to kind of continue on this point and to get us into the text a bit. What are some of the important interventions or clarifications you think that Engels is making in this piece? (and feel free to just quote or read aloud portions of the text or just summarize whatever works best for you)

- For folks who may not have as much of a background in the rationale behind the centrality of the proletariat in communist theory, can you say a bit about Engels’ remarks on the proletariat here in the text. He spends some time laying out what is meant by that term, explaining why it is central to the communist program, and then comparing the proletariat to various other kinds of groups of workers, artisans, serfs, slaves, and so on. Obviously today we could add even more categories to this document, and many folks get very focused on this idea of who is and who is not the actual proletariat, and then many folks probably don’t spend enough time thinking about this at all. What do you think was the importance of Engels doing this in this text and how useful of an exercise do you think it is for folks today?

- The Abolition of Private Property is central to communism and as such it makes sense that it would be central here. What stood out to you in this discussion of private property, the rationale behind that horizon, and the method that Engles lays out for achieving that in the text? Obviously he can’t lay out everything in terms of what a communist society would entail or a transition to communism, but he does lay out some key principles here. So what stood out to you in this discussion of the abolition of private property.

- I wanted to read one quote here: "Just as the peasants and manufacturing workers of the last century changed their whole way of life and became quite different people when they were drawn into big industry, in the same way, communal control over production by society as a whole,and the resulting new development, will both require an entirely different kind of human material." This was a passage we discussed a bit with China Miéville last year regarding his book on the Communist Manifesto. And Engels goes on to talk a bit more about what he means here. What do you see within this text and within your broader engagement with communist thought as the implications for humanity and the type of evolution or revolution in human development that would be enabled by communism?

- There’s not a lot of discussion here about the implications for familial relations and patriarchy, but there are some important comments made which have significant implications. I know you have also done episodes along with your co-host Alyson on the Red Menace on Engels’ text, "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State," and I wondered if you saw seeds of that text here or perhaps some really important comments that Engels would further elaborate in that text. 

- So there is a section also where he delineates between socialists and communists. And from my understanding this distinction might be a bit specific to the period, because socialists in that period - at least as I understand it - were a bit different from the ways we might use that term today. As in, the socialists he describes here it seems to me are not scientific socialists but a range of groups who held on to certain idealistic notions of socialism or regressive or reactionary or bourgeois ideas. Now even though distinguishing between these groups as “socialists” on the one hand and “Communists” on the other, may no longer be as common, I think his critiques of these groups do still apply to many groups on the left today. What were your thoughts on this section? 

- Obviously this is a text that was written almost 180 years ago and it is a text that was written primarily through consideration of capitalist development in England and Germany. Are there parts of this document that you think if read dogmatically could lead to bad practice? In other words are there any formulations by Engels here that you took issue with in reading this text or think, well maybe that applied well to the concrete situation he was analyzing, but it might need to be supplemented or reformulated in other contexts?