this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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More like: People on the internet being critical of the current system, Americans on the internet saying "COMMUNISM BAD" as if USSR style state capitalism is the only other possible option.
How else would it work? You need some power structure that actively forbids a free market and private ownership. And that power will sooner or later be abused.
You can't just imagine some utopia where nobody has to work, and everything is free, and call that communism.
The core tenant of every form of Communism, regardless of if said party or organisation follows it, is as follows: that the means of production should belong to the workers who work them. If the means of production are not in the hands of the workers, then they are not communist. If they are in the hands of a CEO or a corporation, you have private capitalism or market capitalis like the US. If you put them in the hands of a state, they are in the state, you get state capitalism ala China or the USSR.
The power structure of the state protects an upper class, be it billionaires or "the party". If you abolish the state, but not capitalism, capitalism will rebuild the state (which is why Anarcho capitalism fails every time) and vice versa (which is what happens with Marxist Leninism).
For a Communist or communalist society to work it needs to be Anarchist or classically Libertarian (aka like Bakunin or Kropotkin proposed, not "money first"). It needs to have a horizontal and democratic decision making process that is decentralised, federated, and involves all the members of the community or communities effected. If there is to be a state, it should be to facilitate the colaboration of communities in a bottom up manner. These are the features of almost every single effective or successful Anarchist or Socialist movements from Rojava or the Zapatistas, as well as non-political movements like the Open Source Movement, railway preservatiion movement, and even the early RNLI.
The power structure thant would forbid a free market would be the collective weight of everyone else rather than a state that, sooner or later, becomes the jackboot of capital.
The system you describe cannot exist. An anarchist or libertarian state in the real world can neither regulate nor defend itself from other states. It's a fantasy that would collapse immediately upon implementation in all possible real world circumstances.
@MostlyBirds @abbiistabbii, anarchy is the system to which a mature and sovereign society automatically converges, but for this current humanity is still too young as specie, the evolutionary state can be compared with that of a child in puberty, regarding behavior. An anarchic system would necessarily lead to a collapse total of the current society (Lord of the Flies effect). A long way still to go.
This is completely made up nonsense. There's a reason no one takes anarchists seriously.
@MostlyBirds, imagine one moment the USA changing to an Anarchistic System, with the people they have, one moment only. It will be something like High Noon and Mad Max.
Changes are needed with urgency ending this capitalistic system, but you can't do it in one strikein a revolution like in France in the 18 century with the current population, it get corrupt in few days as most revolution, because you can't change the people in one day to another. This path must be done walking, not sprinting.