Can anyone succinctly explain communism? Everything I’ve read in the past said that the state owns the means of production and in practice (in real life) that seems to be the reality. However I encountered a random idiot on the Internet that claimed in communism, there is no state and it is a stateless society. I immediately rejected this idea because it was counter to what I knew about communism irl. In searching using these keywords, I came across the ideas that in communism, it does strive to be a stateless society. So which one is it? If it’s supposed to be a stateless society, why are all real-life forms of communism authoritarian in nature?

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    61·
    5 days ago

    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.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      42·
      4 days ago

      You’re a bit confused about the Marxist notion of the State, understandably if you aren’t a Marxist. For Marx, the state is the aspect of government that entrenches and enforces class distinctions, ergo once all property is public there are no classes, and thus no state, despite a government remaining. Per Engels:

      The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society – the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society – is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished”, it withers away. It is by this that one must evaluate the phrase “a free people’s state” with respect both to its temporary agitational justification and to its ultimate scientific inadequacy, and it is by this that we must also evaluate the demand of the so-called anarchists that the state should be abolished overnight.

      Additionally, money can only be abolished once an economy has fully socialized, at no point in the USSR’s history was that feasible. They even tried to move to a labor voucher system, but lacked the computerized means to make it truly practical.