In order to collectively own everything, you must have a mechanism to decide the use of the means of production. Some things can be produced, but should not be, and leaving it up to local decision making will produce imbalances, as things that are easier or more fun to produce are produced more often than required.
You need a central nexus of control, and a person or group of people to be the final arbiter of decisions. Every time it’s been done in history, either the leaders of the revolution, or the people violent and powerful enough to stab them in the back and take control have landed in this position. Mysteriously, a small group of people controlling all production has only ever lead to tyranny.
Any communism that begins in revolution will devolve into tyranny, and there’s no words a dictionary can string together that will change that. Voluntary communes also seem to have problems, but it’s more often splintering, which is significantly less harmful.
In order to own anything at all, you need a mechanism to protect that property with violence. When you have to protect your own property with violence through hired guards, it’s feudalism. A necessary quality of capitalism is that the government protects your property with violence. Capitalism cannot exist without governments that defend property with violence or the threat of it.
All modern states are the final arbiters of decisions, just like the USSR and similar governments. If business contracts are signed in America, it’s the governments that force people to follow them. If you have a property dispute, the government decides who wins through laws. The government ensures that individual rights are protected through violence, from basic rights like the right to life, to the right to have private property. Laws are backed up by violence, as laws only matter when enforced.
The issue with attempts to establish communism in the past is that their democratic mechanism either failed, or never existed to begin with. When democratic workers councils disagreed with what Stalin wanted, he just ignored them. What could they do about it? When member states of the Soviet Union got upset with federal decisions, tanks were sent in to silence any dissent. These states enforced systems that centralized power and allowed small groups, or even a single person to make unilateral decisions and never have their power challenged.
![[META] Never change, lemmy.ml](https://i.imgur.com/1pxAyiq.jpg){kind=link}
In order to collectively own everything, you must have a mechanism to decide the use of the means of production. Some things can be produced, but should not be, and leaving it up to local decision making will produce imbalances, as things that are easier or more fun to produce are produced more often than required.
You need a central nexus of control, and a person or group of people to be the final arbiter of decisions. Every time it’s been done in history, either the leaders of the revolution, or the people violent and powerful enough to stab them in the back and take control have landed in this position. Mysteriously, a small group of people controlling all production has only ever lead to tyranny.
Any communism that begins in revolution will devolve into tyranny, and there’s no words a dictionary can string together that will change that. Voluntary communes also seem to have problems, but it’s more often splintering, which is significantly less harmful.
In order to own anything at all, you need a mechanism to protect that property with violence. When you have to protect your own property with violence through hired guards, it’s feudalism. A necessary quality of capitalism is that the government protects your property with violence. Capitalism cannot exist without governments that defend property with violence or the threat of it.
All modern states are the final arbiters of decisions, just like the USSR and similar governments. If business contracts are signed in America, it’s the governments that force people to follow them. If you have a property dispute, the government decides who wins through laws. The government ensures that individual rights are protected through violence, from basic rights like the right to life, to the right to have private property. Laws are backed up by violence, as laws only matter when enforced.
The issue with attempts to establish communism in the past is that their democratic mechanism either failed, or never existed to begin with. When democratic workers councils disagreed with what Stalin wanted, he just ignored them. What could they do about it? When member states of the Soviet Union got upset with federal decisions, tanks were sent in to silence any dissent. These states enforced systems that centralized power and allowed small groups, or even a single person to make unilateral decisions and never have their power challenged.