No Stupid Questions

I think a lot of the disagreement here stems from the current circumstances vs the ideal. Or reality vs expectations, if you will.

IDEALLY there wouldn't be a state. But in practice there must be an organizing body. Sure, the workers can own and control everything themselves, but imagine how hard it must be to organize this ad-hoc for and with everyone. So from a managerial perspective, the state still has a function.

Sidenote: IDEALLY, the society would be without money as well, at least according to Lenin, but he quickly learned that this too presented practical problems to the point where it was simply easier to keep money around.

Note, I'm not a communist, I am just roughly explaining communism as I understand it in the context of the question, as neutrally as I can.

EDIT: Also see that other persons comment about Vanguardism, as that is also an important aspect of difference between the ideal and the practical.

Couple considerations: what is a nation to do when it constantly is on the verge of civil war, hasnt had breathing room to get its feet under it after a political revolution and is beset by brand new, world power level enemies doing everything they can to make sure your new nation fails?

Followup: when has this not been the case for a new communist nation? How many coups has the US backed? How many times did we try to assassinate Castro? Vietnam?

Finally: what does it look like when none of the above is true?

We tend to think of nations in a vacuum, but they exist along side each other and they have people like us inside them. Stupid, greedy, lying, shitbags that are full of empathy, love and curiousity, just like us. That makes them messy by definition, but its easy to forget.

Describing economic and political systems is tough because people have different interpretations of them and they can all be correct. Denmark and the US are both capitalist but their systems are incredibly different.

The simplest description that applies to all forms of communism but not to systems that aren't communist, is that the means of production (typically defined as land and capital) are state owned (with the intention that their use is decided democratically by the public).

Other descriptions could also apply but they're also not required. Like how a watch is still a watch whether or not it has a hand to indicate seconds.

In short, the authoritarianism happens because it requires a large amount of power to make the societal changes happen in the first place, which would then give rise to a generation that can maintain the system without overreach.

Now the problem obviously is that humans are corruptible, and very few people in the history of our species have ever been given totalitarian powers and not abused it for their own power and benefit.

https://lemmy.ml/post/22417306

why are all real-life forms of communism authoritarian in nature?

most likely due to "power syndrome"

something that doesn't work, easy.

Anyone wanting a deeper dive, check out the books and videos of Professor Richard D. Wolff.

Several communes in the us have evisted which look very socialist - they all died out as the children didn't share the parents ideals. (most died out as marx was publishing his theories - as such all had differences from what marx proposed)

The usual rhetoric is that you shouldn't look at the dozens of examples, and their consequences (1). Rather focus on the theory, and agree that that theory is perfect. And also that anything else is bad. Unless it's an attempt at being communist, then the bad things aren't bad. Unless they are undeniably bad, but in that case, it isn't real communism.

I find with things like this everyone has a slightly different view. Its like if someone mentions socialism some folks will say its not really socialism unless its like full on communism but others look at socialism as the other end of a spectrum with socialism and how a country operates is somewhere on the line. Some people think anarchy means everyone does what they want and others view it as very local democratic communities with no central authority. I have encountered folks who view something like the term social contract to only be applicable to how one writer spoke about it as opposed to a general concept.

One of those is the ideal version that Marx described as the ultimate goal and that can never be made by humans anyway because humans just don't behave like that. The other one is what you actually get if you follow the Marx Manifesto and his idea of an "intermediate state" that could bring you to the end goal. (And if you go compare it with plain OG Fascism, both look way too much alike.)

There are other things called "communism", both the word and the concept are way older than Marx. There are even ideas that begun in that umbrella but we don't actually group in any singular concept, and instead are "just the way things are" nowadays.