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I'm like practically 40 and still don't really know what communism means in practice.
Communism
There’s literally a book, it’s pretty short, a manifesto if you will
Communism is a more extreme subset of socialism, where socialism, broadly, is an umbrella term for "we want government oversight on companies." Socialism can take many forms, such as government having direct oversight on companies, or government passing binding guidelines on what companies can or can't do, or government operating a company (while still allowing competitor companies to operate as normal). Note that government policies under socialism can and will depend on the industry. Healthcare might be subject to more government oversight than steel manufacturing, for instance.
Communism takes this idea and applies it to all companies in all industries. ie, the government has oversight on all companies. Note that there are also many forms of communism that interpret "oversight" in different ways. More classical forms of communism, for instance, recommends that the government directly manages companies and operates as executives
Except Communism is supposed to be stateless, there wouldn't really be any sort of central government to have oversight over anything.
Broadly speaking, there is no practical difference, hence I didn't make that distinction. Even in a stateless society, there must be some sort of regulatory body. Even a regulatory body made of the common people is, by definition, a regulatory body. And if this regulatory body has the power to enforce its will onto the entities that it has control over, then I fail to see how that is any different from a government.
It's not a governmental structure that we would be used to, but it's a government nonetheless. So at that point, what we're really arguing over is what methods the people should use to influence this regulatory body. Which is something that I explicitly did not comment on.
If we acknowledge that some form of government must exist in any form of communism, then we can roughly summarize Marxist communism as "the government, which consists of the people organized in a nonhierarchical manner, exerts total managerial and executive control over all industries." I consider this to be an accurate assessment of Marxist communism, just not phrased in the way that a leftist typically would phrase it
This is actually an incorrect definition. Communism is the final state of socialism.
The problem with capitalism is that it inherently disenfranchises most people. It pits capitalists against workers in a tense arrangement where both sides are trying to gain the upper hand in negotiations over salaries/benefits. There are obviously more workers than capitalists. Capitalists own stuff that can be used to make more stuff. Workers own their own labor. Workers are the ones whose labor leads to the production of stuff.
Governments develop as a result of the tension between the two classes. They exist to mediate conflicts between the capitalists and the workers. However, politicians/rulers are traditionally drawn from the capitalist classes and capitalists are able to lobby governments for rules that are favorable to them. This is easier for capitalists because capitalists individually have more stuff to bribe the government with. Also the politicians and the capitalists tend to be from the same group.
This is obviously a problem because for the workers to get anything done favorable to them, they need to all agree on what needs to be done. Since there's more people in the working class, this is harder to do. There's fewer capitalists, so it's easier to get them all on the same page.
Marx predicted that this unfair relationship between the capitalists and the workers would lead to constant conflict between the two classes. Eventually the workers would win (just by numbers) and assume control of the government. Since the government is designed to support the capitalist class, that means that this would produce a lot of tension as trying to shift a government to favor the workers is difficult. A lot of the rules that the workers would try to implement won't really make sense in the context of a capitalist structure. This period immediately after the revolution is called "socialism". It's marked by governments trying to strike a balance between supporting capitalist structures but also enabling workers, which is very difficult to do.
Marx theorized that eventually society as a whole will realize that the two cannot truly coexist. We can't both support the masses and pursue profit at the same time. He theorized that eventually we will realize that the capitalist machinery(including the government, borders and nations) must be shuddered in order to truly free everyone. When that happens, that's when "communism" will begin.
All governments that call themselves "communist" are just "socialist" with the expressed goal of achieving communism.
The way you define it is part of the American red scare definitions which inherently tries to discredit communism and push workers to not rise up against their bosses.
I fail to see how what I said conflicts with any of what you said. You give a more detailed summary, but what I said, from what I see, is still completely accurate. I make no claim for how society will develop over time, only that societies that operate under socialism or communism should operate in this manner. I also make no claim that the government under communism is the same continuous entity as the government that we currently exist under, only that a government must exist to enforce its will onto companies (a collective of the workers is still a government if it has the ability to enforce its will).
Your comment is informative for sure, and also a good summary of Marxist communism, but it does not directly answer the question posed, ie, how does a society theoretically operate under communism?
This is fascinating. I wonder if there are any Trump voters out there that are Communist accelerationists? The only way to get the numbers to overcome it would be to make everything so bad as to force everyone.
It also makes it sound like Communism is more of an ideal to strive for then an alternative governance model.
I've never voted for Trump but that's the only argument I could make to vote for him.
I agree. Tho I do think it might be achievable in the distant future, I doubt it'll be achievable in my children's time.
Sci Fi author Ursula K Le Guin has imagined what that might look like in several of her works, most notably "The Dispossessed" which I highly recommend.
because it likely is just shit made by dictators that isnt even real
but only to justify their rule
"Communism isn't real" wasn't on my Lemmy-bingo card for today.
i mean that communism is impossible to maintain
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