The Ten Planks of The Communist Manifesto are NOT the definition of Communism.

Taking the 10 Planks out of their context is where the basis of defining Socialism as "when the Government does stuff" comes from.

For a lot of people this small piece of the Manifesto is the only Marxist material they've ever been exposed to.  Which frankly would be like claiming to understand Christianity if your knowledge of The Gospel narrative ended on Good Friday.  I long ago used to think these were the entirety of the Manifesto from how people like Kent Hovind presented it, but the truth is they occur at the end of chapter 2 of a 4 chapter manifesto almost as an after thought.

The Definition of Communism is a Moneyless, Classless, Stateless Society.  The definition of Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production.  Most politically educated people know that the core disagreement between Anarchists and Marxists is on the transitional state.  However Marxism actually has two transitional states, Lower Phase Communism (which Lenin called Socialism) is itself the product of a prior transitional period.  Lenin on the eve of his death still did not believe Russia was Socialist yet but only almsot ready for it, and remember for Lenin Socialism referred specifically to the Lower Phase.  The 10 Planks are still State Capitalism even when genuine Communists are doing them.

The problem with someone like Casual Historian thinking they can critique how "Communist" America is by going down these planks and measuring how much they apply like some sort of Political Compass test is that Marxists do not support these measures inherently for their own sake.  They are the measures Revolutionaries are supposed to take after a Revolution.  A State doing these things is only even mildly Communist if it's a truly Proletarian State, if it's far more actually Democratic then The United States has ever been.  Or at the very least a State controlled by unapologetic Socialists, not merely mildly socially progressive Liberals who the Conservatives will call Socialists no matter what.

I am a Communist who does not in fact fully agree with these planks even in their proper context, but that's besides the point of this post.  Even to the most enthusiastic apologists of these planks, they are not themselves what Communism is.

The thing about the 2nd Plank, the Income Tax plank.  Is that even in a proper revolutionary context it is not compatible with an income tax on hourly wages.  In the context of what Marxist ideology is, it's obvious that Profits or Surplus is the income meant here, however the Manifesto didn't feel the need to explain that since I don't think the idea of taxing hourly wages was even proposed yet back then.  

Unfortunately in the modern U.S. the Taxation discussion has become so poisoned that everyone now thinks calling for any kind of Tax cuts much less abolition is inherently right wing.  But the truth is there is nothing Socialist about taxing wages, Marxist ideology is founded on the belief that wage laborers already aren't getting nearly the compensation they deserve even before they are Taxed. Liberal progressives and even many Social Democrats have convinced themselves that "paying taxes is how I contribute to society", but if it's only Corporate Profits being Taxed those Profits are still generated by the labor of the workers, it's still a contribution you are truly responsible for.  It's not greedy or selfish to want the Government to stop stealing from the already minimal compensation you were forced to accept.

After the Paris Commune Marx and Engels actually said that the 10 planks of the Manifesto should be rewritten to clarify that the Communists can't simply co-opt the existing state institutions, they are fundamentally Capitalist institutions at their core, so the Revolution needs to tare those down and rebuild them from scratch.

That leads me to Plank 5, the Central Bank.  The problem with saying The Federal Reserve can be a fulfilment of this plank is that in addition to all the context I provided above, a truly Socialist Central Bank would be actually Publicly owned not privately owned with alleged Government oversight.  A lot of supporters of our current monetary status quo really want to dismiss the Private nature of the Federal Reserve, saying it's only privately owned in the most technical sense. And yes I know a lot of the Anti-Federal Reserve rhetoric out there comes from a Right Wing conspiracy theorist world view, but that doesn't change that Socialists should also oppose such an institution.  The Fed being run by presidential appointments means nothing when the shareholders of the Fed are the same super rich people financing both major parties.

It's not always just Anti-Communists who misuse the Manifesto in this way.  Plank 8 for example is why there is any leftist opposition to The Basic Income.  And  I've also seen Leftists argue that we should ban Home Schooling by pointing to the 10th Plank.

Now Plank 10 is the one I most disagree with even in it's proper context, I'm agaisnt Public Education as a concept.  But regardless the current Prussian Model Public School system is a fundamentally Capitalist institution who's goal is to indoctrinate not educate, to create passive industrial wage laborers.  It's become long outdated even within the framework of Liberal Capitalism as society is now deindustrializing.  So it's certainly not something The Left should defend just because there is talk of Public Education in an 1848 Manifesto.

In my opinion Communists should themselves be doing Homeschooling and not subjecting our children to this broken and evil system.  If that comes with allowing Conservative Evangelicals to do their Right Wing home schooling then so be it.  Even Conservative Home Schooling is better then the existing School System which doesn't have a single redeeming quality.

The Marxist definition of Utopianism.

One of the things that annoys me about Marxists is how they create definitions of words but then treat those definition as the somehow true definitions.

They are most inclined to acknowledge other definitions exist when referring to the "Anarchist definition of The State" when addressing their disagreements with Anarchists.  Thing is the Anarchist Definition is also the objective definition, even pro-State conservatives and liberals can't really object to it.  It's only Marxists that use a different definition, yet they keep trying to frame the debate as if the Anarchist are the ones who fabricated a biased definition.

However the worst Marxist definition is their definition of Utopianism.  Whenever someone accuses Marx of Utopianism instead of engaging with that actual criticism they go "Ugh Marx invented criticizing Utopian Socialists so you clearly don't understand Marxism".  But the Marxist definition of Utopian is in fact not even close to being a valid definition.  At least with The State their definition is a reasonable alternate explanation for the same phenomena, but what Marxists mean when they say "Utopian Socialists" is not even related to what the root word "Utopia" means.

The reason I can say that so strongly is because I also know exactly what word they should be using instead, Idealist/Idealistic.  What Marxists keep saying is wrong with Utopianism is that it's a belief that a Platonic Ideal of Socialism already exists in the Platonic world of forms, and the way to finally make it work in the material world is to make a less imperfect copy of this predetermined form.  Anyone who actually is thinking that way I would disagree with, as rejecting Plato is one of the overarching storylines of this blog.

But I don't think everyone Marxists call Utopian are truly guilty of that, I have my doubts any really are.  My point is that's what their definition is, and their continually saying "Utopian" when they mean "Idealist" is simply bad use of language, period.

They sometimes call Anarchists "Utopian", but Anarchists in fact do just as much Material Class Analysis as they do, they simply come to different conclusions on issues like Economic Determinism.  But even with the writers most uncontroversial to describe as Utopian Socialists, I feel like maybe their critics are just taking them a little too literally.

If I wrote a work of fiction in which I depicted a Socialist society and included a lot of world building details on how it functions.  I would take it for granted that no one would assume I'm saying real world Socialism needs to match that exactly.  It's just a hypothetical idea I threw out to get people thinking.  Maybe Charles Fourier and Saint-Simon were simply doing the same in a non fiction format?  I don't know since I haven't and don't plan to actually read them.

However it's Moses Hess and Flora Tristan I most object to dismissing the way Marxists like to dismiss everyone before Marx as "Utopian".  Their approaches were just as Materialist as Marx and Bakunin, but Marxists are invested in a belief that no one was doing material Analysis before Marx.  So for the most part their very existence gets ignored.

In ContraPoints recent Video on Envy which I thought was pretty darn great even though I don't agree with everything, she calls Marxism "Utopian" because of it's deterministic belief in the inevitability of the fall of Capitalism to Socialism.  I don't think that's a great use of the word "Utopian" either, but it's still a valid criticism, as the idea is a comparison to the perceived ramifications of Christian belief in an inevitable Second Coming.  Which is a comparison that has been made before, just usually not using that word.

Marxists tend to insist they're more Optimistic then other Leftists precisely because of this belief in it's inevitability.  But no, Optimism is the Belief that you can Win and Pessimism the belief that you can't.  Believing victory is inevitable is a way to be Optimistic, but arguably not the most pragmatic way.  I think it's important to believe we can win, but we won't if we don't actually do anything but vote for Democrats.

Okay so enough with rambling about what Utopian doesn't mean. 

The Definition of Communism, a Moneyless, Classless, Stateless Society, is a Utopia, period.  Secular Leftists not liking the quasi religious connotations the word often has doesn't change that.  The word "Utopia" was being used to describe that idea long before the word "Communism" was, in fact the original hypothetical society the word was coined to describe was a Communist one.

Because the word has become so negatively connotated in the last century, among Leftists it keeps in some way being used a description of how to get there, they make it a Verb instead of a Noun.  I however say we reject the negative connotations and start calling ourselves Utopians as a badge of honor.