Recently read Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State

And this passage in the book struck me:“As long as the oppressed class – in our case, therefore, the proletariat – is not yet ripe for its self-liberation, so long will it, in its majority, recognize the existing order of society as the only possible one and remain politically the tall of the capitalist class, its extreme left wing. But in the measure in which it matures towards its self-emancipation, in the same measure it constitutes itself as its own party and votes for its own representatives, not those of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is thus the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the modern state; but that is enough. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage shows boiling-point among the workers, they as well as the capitalists will know where they stand.”The reason it struck me is because it made me realize in terms of history analyzing it there were times of great class consciousness and times where it greatly receded. Engels points out that the democratic republic will be the means of how the proletariat organizes itself, earlier he talked about the bourgeoisie in the 17th and 18th centuries and their battles with monarchy, conditions which in feudal times allowed them over time to elevate themselves to equal status with the nobility giving it the means to truly end monarchy and set up democratic republics. What it made me realize is we’re such a long way before the proletariat is truly on equal footing with the bourgeoisie, we have to work both through using the institutions in place while at the same time raising the level of awareness of the proletariat -the Leninist part-. I guess one thing I think Marx and Engel underestimated was imperialism and the extent the bourgeoisie would take to protect themselves. What I also realized is Marxist, or rather anyone who calls themselves a Marxist should understand that there is no room for softening up, the bourgeoisie based on more knowledge we have now that Marx wouldn’t have had in the 19th century and the 20th century now the 21st has given us all the tools we need to fight this battle. I have a larger perspective on voting matters personally, at first thinking that voting progressives would be the best way to guide us down the path to raising the proletariat to a better level of awareness but no, we have to vote for revolutionaries at every opportunity. Use the democratic republic process to prop up those who will serve our interests for when the whole of the mass of proletariat hav finally reached that level of class consciousness they’ll be able to already have the tools in place from politicians to other organizations who will serve the revolution. Of course this is largely to do with 1st world countries due to the fact that they are the ones with lowest class consciousness than the rest of the world.I’m a third worldist but the 1st world is so important because of the reality of imperialism, as the third world cuts off the 1st world through their own revolutions so should we in the 1st world cut off the state and the bourgeoisie domestically putting its attention not abroad but inward where the final battle would take place which is I believe the 1st world.  via /r/communism https://ift.tt/3jwc229