Socialism

2952 readers

19 users here now

Beehaw's community for socialists, communists, anarchists, and non-authoritarian leftists (this means anti-capitalists) of all stripes. A place for all leftist and labor news and discussion, as long as you're nice about it.

Non-socialists are welcome to come to learn, though it's hard to get to in-depth discussions if the community is constantly fighting over the basics. We ask that non-socialists please be respectful and try not to turn this into a "left vs right" debate forum by asking leading questions or by trying to draw others into a fight.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Is Authoritarian Communism Really communism? (lemm.ee)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm sure this has been asked before, so sorry if it was.

But from my very surface level understanding of this, communism is about workers collectively owning the means of production. If a dictator is controlling the means, do the workers really own them? To me it just seems like centralised capitalism.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (13 children)

This is a very difficult question which probably needs a thesis to explain but here is my simplistic take.

Communism as a theory and communism in practice are two very different things.
In an ideal world, workers would take control of means of production and self organize. Coop style.
In the real world, factories need to coordinate with one another. Goods need to be transported to other parts of the country. Some kind of planning is needed if people prefer redistribution over free market.
Without a powerful central state, it would be nearly impossible to ensure that means of production are indeed not being owned by capitalist for exploitative profit.
Realistically, the only way to ensure the "revolution" is complete is through a very powerful forces, in the USSR and China's cases, that would be the state.
Anarchist communism exist in theory but we have not seen anyone implement it in the real world yet. At least not at state level.
Socialist democracy is a compromise between market economy and socialism. Currently, this model seems to be more preferable than authoritarian communism, at least for some people.
If you look at Chinese history, there is indeed a period of time when the communist are less oppressive and they seem to have found a different path than the Russian. Unfortunately, we cannot redo history to see how things would have played out if the more liberal communists (e.g. Zhao Ziyang) in China were allowed to run things.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

As an addendum to 4 - state level power is also required to protect aspiring communist societies (socialists) from antagonistic forces with state level resources. If your state is not strong enough, you will be undermined into destruction by external forces, colonial powers that will use this "failure" as both propaganda and a method of appropriating your resources to further colonial projects.

Also, as someone who lives in and was raised in the heart of empire, the amount of propaganda that we have ingested is unfathomable.

It is good practice when you find yourself asking about any topic that may be deemed antithetical to a settler colonial project to thoroughly examine the sources of the information you're basing your opinion on, and perhaps consider that while you may be a very intelligent and thoughtful individual, expertly crafted and ubiquitous propaganda can shape your opinion as well.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

Yes. This is a very important point. The failure of the Paris Commune was very influential. Quoting Marx:

While the Versailles government, as soon as it had recovered some spirit and strength, used the most violent means against the Commune; while it put down the free expression of opinion all over France, even to the forbidding of meetings of delegates from the large towns; while it subjected Versailles and the rest of France to an espionage far surpassing that of the Second Empire; while it burned by its gendarme inquisitors all papers printed at Paris, and sifted all correspondence from and to Paris; while in the National Assembly the most timid attempts to put in a word for Paris were howled down in a manner unknown even to the Chambre introuvable of 1816; with the savage warfare of Versailles outside, and its attempts at corruption and conspiracy inside Paris – would the Commune not have shamefully betrayed its trust by affecting to keep all the decencies and appearances of liberalism as in a time of profound peace? Had the government of the Commune been akin to that of M. Thiers, there would have been no more occasion to suppress Party of Order papers at Paris that there was to suppress Communal papers at Versailles.

So, when Lenin started his revolution, he made sure that the proletariat would not make the same mistake:

But two mistakes destroyed the fruits of the splendid victory. The proletariat stopped half-way: instead of setting about “expropriating the expropriators”, it allowed itself to be led astray by dreams of establishing a higher justice in the country united by a common national task; such institutions as the banks, for example, were not taken over, and Proudhonist theories about a “just exchange”, etc., still prevailed among the socialists. The second mistake was excessive magnanimity on the part of the proletariat: instead of destroying its enemies it sought to exert moral influence on them; it underestimated the significance of direct military operations in civil war, and instead of launching a resolute offensive against Versailles that would have crowned its victory in Paris, it tarried and gave the Versailles government time to gather the dark forces and prepare for the blood-soaked week of May.

While we might look back and say "why centralise power?" At the time of the revolution, the cost of failure is very high and the proletariat understands that their enemies will use every means to try to undermine them.

load more comments (11 replies)