This graph is important
It’s based on the writings of professor Cheng Enfu, President of the Academy of Marxism at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and Director of the Academic Division of Marxist Studies of CASS.
Socialism and communism are not one and done processes. They are gradual changes, both Marx and Lenin have addressed this extensively. We can’t just instantly press the big communism button unfortunately.
Here’s a paper that goes way more in depth on the professor’s definitions: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/pdf/10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.159
I feel like the big question is who is doing the planning? Because if it’s the central government, not workers themselves, we’re fucked. Communism is bottom-up, not top down. There can be organizers and public servants but there cannot be executives.
communism ends up top down in every implementation we’ve seen in the wild. but maybe you should think of the question not as ‘who is doing the planning?’ and instead as ‘what do we actually need to plan centrally’. i think you’d be surprised about how little you actually need to plan centrally. I ended up settling on worker protections.
classical communism’s take is its the economy and the state. both which means its ripe to collapse into corruption/authoritarianism and its very hard to protect. particularly once the system has established itself and is relatively stable. gives time for bad actors to start needling into the processes and abusing them.
You’ll never be able to control ‘who is doing the planning’ in a reliable manner over a long term in a centralized system. just take a look at every tech company that gets majority market share. soon as it happens they begin abusing their control as people within the company shift. can also use political parties in democracies as an example, even with voters deciding on the final candidates there isnt really a choice. this is why communism in the wild has never had the bottom up result you’re claiming it has, and no i don’t care about the purist written version of communism I care how it plays out in practice.
and the distinction between public servant vs executive is fairly immaterial if they’re both functioning as ‘making the final decision for the group’ what matters isnt who the decision maker is but how that decision maker was chosen to speak for the group.
Not every implementation. Maybe every state implementation (widely recognized states tend to be at least somewhat authoritarian, and the existence of a state isn’t compatible with the ultimate goal of a state-less, class-less, & money-less society). But there are some not-as-recognized examples of somewhat successful, somewhat decentralized leftist organizations. (They tend to be in a constant state of war with surrounding right-wing death squads, though.)
To be clear, it makes sense that it’s easier to handle disagreements within an army or party without resorting to outright authoritarianism; people who disagree enough to lead to real conflict are more likely to join a different army/front/party than create chaos inside of it. Still, there might be one last example of a pseudo-state or pseudo-country that seems consistent with anti-authoritarian leftist values:
There was a variety of leftist political activity in the region and no clear leader or authority, at least not in a definite singular sense. Unfortunately, the right-wing nationalist death squad got to them after only about a year. I wish that someone had intervened in nationalist Spain the way there’d been de-Nazi-fication in nationalist Germany.
I was careful with my word choices. I said communism not leftists theories generally. Communism is by definition a state managed/centrally planned economy.
I have no issue with left wing movements in general. My criticism is of centrally managed governments regardless of their origin.
And I do believe its possible to structure a society align left wing values. just not through communism, at least not in a way that is stable.
i guess that the point i’m trying to make is that communism doesn’t mean central management. in fact, my personal definition of communism, in my mind, or at least to my understanding, contradicts highly authoritarian, centralized, or totalitarian government. you can’t have a classless, stateless society and also a CEO/dictator/president supported by an upper-caste/class of first-class citizens/oligarchs. what i disagree with you on is your conflation of communism with authoritarianism, something i’ve seen both pro- and anti-communists do
don’t let tankies re-define the real meaning of communism, which is worker control, not central control
You’re making up a personal definition of communism just like you’re accusing the tankies of, which is fine. But neither you or the tankies get to assert what communism is or is not.
And no, I’m not conflating communism with authoritarianism. I’m asserting that communism’s centrally managed economy collapses into authoritarianism by being highly susceptible to corruption. Again, I’ve been very careful in my word choice this entire time.
You disagree all you wish, you’re disagreeing with ideas I have not asserted. And I dont particularly have a problem with anything you’ve said outside of terms and definitions. I’ve mostly been debunking what you’ve been thinking I’ve said.
To recap: