this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
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You need a state for communism, no?
Any historical examples as for what communism actually is?
It's theorized that a state is necessary to transition to communism, but communism itself would be stateless by definition.
The state will never dissolve itself.
Perhaps, that theory may be incorrect. That doesn't change the definition of communism as stateless, though.
Definitions don't mean anything if they don't represent how it functions in practice
If it isn't stateless, it isn't communism in practice. The various "communist" parties have called themselves that because it was their stated end goal, not because they actually practiced the concept.
Many MLs believe that communism ends on a stateless goal but that it requires a state to get there
Is that not true?
Communism does not require a state, or even a transitionary state as the Marxist-Leninist's claim.
Communism would just mean there would be no private property (which is distinct from personal property like your house), so no factories owned by shareholders or a CEO, they would all be collectively owned by the people who worked in them.
We would also all chip in to provide each other with basic necessities for free, like housing, food, transportation, etc, all as a form of mutual aid. That would result in people only needing to contribute (voluntarily) about 3 months of labor out of the year, with the rest being free time to do with as you please.
Catalonia during the Spanish civil war demonstrated very effectively that communism can be achieved immediately without an authoritarian or centralized state.
That was an interesting documentary. Thanks for linking it.
No prob! :)
That's Socialism - a core philosophy shared by Anarchism and Communism. Communism includes this but is more than this
Was Anarchist, not Communist!
There was a lot of Communist activity suring the Spanish Civil War, but in the views of many contemporary and modern Anarchists, they collaborated with the Liberal State to put down the Anarchist Movement in Catalonia
"There was also concern among anarchists with the growing power of Marxist communists within the [Spanish] government. Anarchist Minister of Health Federica Montseny later explained: "At that time we only saw the reality of the situation created for us: the communists in the government and ourselves outside, the manifold possibilities, and all our achievements endangered"
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/geoff-bailey-anarchists-in-the-spanish-civil-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia
For a deeper read on this I'd recommend Chomsky's 'Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship', particularly Part II which covers the Spanish Civil War
Socialism isn't quite as nailed down as a definition compared to Communism, and some people in the past used the two terms interchangeably, though nowadays they can be more distinct. A gift-economy socialism that abolishes capitalism essentially is communism, while others may use the term to advocate for an advanced welfare state that still uses some form of wage labor.
You appear to be conflating communism with Marxist-Leninism/Stalinism. The quote from Federica Montseny is using communist as shorthand for the Stalinists who undermined the revolution at the time.
Most forms of Anarchism, as well as Marxist-Leninism advocate for an end-goal of Stateless Communism, though they differ drastically on the means to achieve it.
Anarchists believe that the state can be immediately abolished and a totally egalitarian non-hierarchical communism can be directly implemented upon a successful revolution, without the need for a transitional 'vanguard' state.
Marxist-Leninists believe that the state must be first controlled by an enlightened elite for some undetermined amount of time until the conditions are right to finally allow the state to 'wither away', which in practice never happens, and instead turns into a permanent authoritarian dictatorship every time.
While there are different types of Anarchism, such as individualist anarchism, the main form of of collectivist Anarchism is Anarcho-Communism (interchangeable with Libertarian-Communism), which as your first source from Geoff Bailey mentions, was the main thread of Anarchism in Catalonia.
The Spanish anarchists were largely educated on Anarcho-communist concepts as elaborated on by Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin, with their pamphlets being translated to Spanish and spread widely in Spain for many years before the revolution.
The method they chose of achieving that stateless Anarcho-Communism was through Anarcho-syndicalism, which was the concept of achieving revolutionary power and the ultimate destruction of the state through the use of militant unions, but their end-goal was the establishment of a stateless communism.
Without getting into an endless debate about various terms and subterms, you can surely appreciate that describing self-defined 'anarchist' achievements as 'communist', while they faced counter-revolutionary action from ML-Communists, in a thread about the differences between Anarchism and Communism, is at best muddying the waters
Anarchism was once called 'Libertarian Socialism' but I ain't gonna go into a thread about American Libertarianism and call the CNT an example of Libertarianism in action
I'm merely using the terms as commonly used by contemporary sources. I understand that not all Communism is Marxist-Leninist; I also find it unhelpful to try and categorise every leftist movement based on Socialism as a form of Communism based off a hypothetical final ideal of worker-controled Statelessness
I disagree, I think it's useful to detangle the term communism from the authoritarian dictatorships that called themselves communist (if anything, I think the compass in the OP is itself muddying the waters), in the same way that it is useful to detangle the term socialism from the Nazis which called their party socialist despite not being that at all (though that connotation is far less strong in the public consciousness compared to Communism and ML/Maoism)
However, Yliaster specifically asked if communism requires a state, as they likely had that common conception of communism being linked to authoritarian states. I do not think it would be helpful to further entrench that conception by saying "Yes, communism does require a state. Anarchism is a different thing." When that is not true.
I understand the usefulness of referring to stateless communism as socialism to avoid the connotation with ML's, especially among certain company who may shut down at the word communism (I sometimes even refer to Anarchism as Libertarian Socialism, depending on the crowd I'm talking to), but in the case of my response to Yliaster, it would not have made sense or brought any extra clarity to use those other terms, though I will admit I should've clarified that Anarcho-communism is a thing (but the video I linked to in my first comment clearly explains it was the Anarchists that achieved a socialist society in Spain, and explains how the stalinists betrayed them)
The bavarian socialist republic as it formed. There are also ukranian groups during the russian civil war that were actually communist
Makhno was a based anarchist crossdresser and I will not hear otherwise
If i may, please also read into Kurt Eisner. Its sad how germany (especially the bavarian state) tries to make him and the bavarian socialist state and how it got sabotaged by the SPD forgotten, shunning the people that rose up against the sieg of munich by the freikorps as just brutal blood thirsty maniacs. Taking Eisners "Free state of bavaria" as if it was a democratic slogan from post ww2. But no him, the jewish philosipher, who was imprisoned, and in my opinion was the only one in the 19th century trying to bring forth a true socalist society as invisioned by markx, made this saying!
Really read into him. He is so facinating!
Will check him out, thank you for the recommendation!
Literally defined as a stateless, classless, moneyless society