this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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Marx makes his case for it in Capital, specifically Volume 3, Chapter 13-15, though it's easier to digest Wage Labor and Capital and Value, Price and Profit. Essentially, competition forces prices lower, and automation and increased production lower the price floor. Automation is pursued because it temporarily allows you to outcompete, until other firms can produce at the same price, forcing prices to match at a new floor. This continues. It's more like gravity than an invisible hand, there do exist ways to push back against it, but the overall trend is negative, as the Rate of Profit falls to 0.
It can't, because Communism abolishes this system. Communism has a good track record when properly put into historical context and is definitely the correct goal to pursue.
Socialism is just the precursor to Communism. The USSR, Cuba, PRC, Vietnam, Laos, etc. are/were all Socialist, building towards Communism, I don't see why you say Communism has a bad track record but Socialism has a good track record, that seems contradictory. Further still, I don't see what birth rates have to do with anything.
I'd say that Marxism at least is fatally flawed. The idea that you start a Communist society by gathering all power to a central council is the issue. Once power is obtained it's never willingly dispersed. This has been the fate of existing all communist governments
This is a fundamental and critical misunderstanding of what Communism is, and what Marx refers to as a State. Marx makes himself clear in Critique of the Gotha Programme, but the State for Marx isn't just "government." Marx was vehemontly anti-Anarchist, not out of principle disagreements, but on a practical and rational basis.
For Marx, the State is the element of government by which class society sustains and protects itself. Ie, private property rights, and the police that protect it. Communism would have a government, its own police, and its own structures and administration through central planning. The State whithering away, as Marx puts it, is the slow lack of retaining the former elements of class society. For example, we no longer have Streetlamp Lighters, as streetlamps are electric now. This wasn't because they were targeted and eliminated, but simply fell out of favor with the progression of society.
This right here is the crux of your misunderstanding. Carrying over from the whithering away elaboration from my last paragraph, the government is not supposed to intentionally collapse itself, it's supposed to remain a democratic worker government, and continue to be built up over time.
Different AES states have seen their own issues, but none of them have been due to "not willingly giving up power," which is a fundamental misconception of how these AES States function, or what the Marxist path to Communism truly is.
I don't get how this just whithers away
It doesn't.
What does whither away are things like Private Property Rights and other elements by which Capitalist society maintains itself.
The "whithering away of the State" is one of the most commonly taken out of context aspects of Marxism, most people associate the State with all aspects of Government. Marx does not make that same association, and used the word State as shorthand for the aforementioned Capitalist elements of government.
This is why there's a big difference between Anarchism and Marxism. Anarchists seek horizontal organization, and Marxists are fine with central planning and endorse it.
Are there contemporary sources of how to implement this in practice?
What do you mean by contemporary? The theory hasn't really stagnated, Marxism has grown over time. There are AES states that have Marxism as the core model, but each are in different positions on the global sphere.