Communization

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Communization is a modern school of communist thought that says a revolution should immediately end capitalism’s social relations—like wage labor, private property, and the state—and replace them with direct, social ones. There is no separate, long transition to socialism. The revolution itself would create a communist society.

Origins and core idea
The idea arose in French ultra-left circles after May 1968 and later gained renewed attention as people criticized old ideas about how revolutions happen. A key claim is the self-abolition of the proletariat: rather than the working class affirming its own identity to seize power, it must abolish itself as a class as part of breaking the system that makes labor and capital depend on each other.

Critique of older strategies
Communization challenges what it calls “programmatism”—the traditional plan of building power through workers’ parties and unions to manage production. It argues that this path failed because capitalism has changed in fundamental ways, making a simple take-over of state power and a transitional socialist stage inadequate or impossible.

Three main currents
- Invariant communization (including Gilles Dauvé and the Troploin milieu): This view treats communization as something that could be possible at any time in the history of capitalism. The revolution should immediately destroy wage labor, property, and the state to create new, directly social relations.

- Historicist communization (Théorie Communiste and Endnotes): This school stresses that communization is tied to a specific present moment. They argue that capitalism’s current form—often called real subsumption of labor under capital—has changed what a revolution can look like. Struggles today reveal limits of the old program and point to a future rupture as the decisive moment.

- Anarchist/autonomist current (Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee): This view emphasizes immediate practice—forming communes, creating new ways of living, and seceding from capitalist institutions. It talks about “making common” what people use and share, focusing on life practices and ethical commitments rather than state power or large organization.

Challenges and debates
Critics say communization can be anti-political or anti-strategy: how could such immediate abolition be organized against strong states and armies? How would coordination happen? Some warn that the theory leans toward vague or fatalistic politics if it doesn’t explain how to move from present struggles to a real, lasting transformation.

There is also debate about whether communization is timeless (an invariant possibility) or only possible in today’s historical moment (a period-specific project). Dauvé argues against turning history into rigid stages, while Théorie Communiste argues that current conditions uniquely shape what revolution must be now.

Other criticisms focus on practical questions: how to organize and sustain a movement, how to handle power, and how to address differences within the working class—such as gender, race, and employment status—without reintroducing new forms of hierarchy.

Contemporary struggles and issues
Supporters see recent riots, strikes without clear demands, and occupations as evidence of a new class dynamic. They describe these actions as a “swerve” in class action: people act as a class but challenge their own social position in the process. They argue that these moments show the limitations of old strategies and point toward a form of revolution that dissolves capitalist relations rather than simply replacing one ruling group with another.

Gender and other social divisions
Abolishing gender and other social divisions is treated as part of the revolution, not a postrevolution issue. The idea is that true communism would remove all the social distinctions that sustain capitalist reproduction, including family and gender dynamics.

Ongoing debate and reception
Communization remains controversial. Some critics worry it lacks concrete, practical steps for achieving power and coordinating society. Others think it risks overlooking the complexity of modern capitalism or becoming an abstract critique detached from real-world organizing.

In essence, communization asks for a direct, immediate abolition of capitalist social relations through the act of revolution, while recognizing that there are multiple ways to understand when and how such a rupture might occur. It remains a lively, debated field with diverse strands that disagree about timing, methods, and the role of strategy in achieving a communist future.