It turns out that Marx’s early suspicion that the countries set to lead the revolution would be those at the cutting edge of capitalist modernity was right. Only now we know that means technology as much as politics, the Third Disruption as necessary a precursor as class consciousness and collective struggle. Creating communism before the Third Disruption is like creating a flying machine before the Second. You could conceive of it – and indeed no less a genius than Leonardo Da Vinci did precisely that – but you could not create it. This was not a failure of will or of intellect, but simply an inevitability of history.
What is more, the means by which the revolution of 1917 was won and defended, through an anti-liberal coup then subject to military invasion by every major power, further limited the possibility for social transformation. Inevitably, this shaped a regime which became supremely hierarchical. Given the odds it faced, both within and beyond its borders, its seven-decade survival remains one of the great political achievements of the last century.
Regardless of history’s ‘what ifs’, FALC is diferent. Instead it recognises the centrality of human rights, most importantly the right of personal happiness, and seeks to build a society where everyone can access the necessary resources to further that end. This is a politics centred around the recognition, as Franklin Roosevelt once put it, that necessitous people are not free people. In the absence of access to such resources – housing, education, transport, healthcare, information – freedom as self-authorship cannot be said to meaningfully exist. Liberal ends, specifically the individual being uniquely placed to determine their path in life, are impossible without communist means. The possibility of most people finding happiness and meaning is impossible as long as these things are commodities – subject to profit rather than need.
Popular Support
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