What constitutes a legitimate definition of communism?

[Rojava Free State]

communism is that scary thing fox is worried about, but won't give reasons as to why they're worried.

[Mirjt]

Here's my take on this (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong):

Communism is the last stage of Marxism, which is as follows (super simplified, but basically the point):

According to Marx, the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat in capitalism, causing the proletariat - lead by intellectuals - to violently revolt against the system once they're aware of their "exploitation", instilling a dictatorship of the proletariat (a socialist dictatorship). In theory, once capitalism is wiped out from the world, society will (somehow (I don't know the details)) become stateless communes where workers are happy productive members of society, effectively reaching "communism".

Of course, due to human nature, Marxist dictators (Lenin, Mao, etc.) get stuck at the "dictatorship of the proletariat" part, and capitalism (fortunately, in my opinion) reigns supreme.

That is Marx's idea of communism. Marx did not invent socialism or communism. Though, before Marx, communism was not very well defined. Since Marx's publication of his Communist Manifesto, his definitions, ideology, conception, and so on became the dominant version of socialism/communism, however there are non-marxist socialists and communists. Marx basically wrote about what all the problems with capitalism were, why he believed capitalism would result in disaster for humanity, why capitalism was self-defeating, and why capitalism is immoral. He believed that it was just going to be a historical fact that eventually the working class would rebel against the capitalist class and that it was both inevitable and desirable. However, according to marxism, capitalists (both foreign and domestic) would never accept losing their wealth and power and would use the violent forces of the state to repress any socialistic or communist society, and the marxist response is to establish a dictatorship of working class until the idea of class ceases to be (either domestically or internationally), then because the accumulation of money would no longer occur and distribution can be done through other means eventually money would stop being used, then the people would no longer need religion for hope and religion would just stop, eventually the state would also have no role and would just wither away. Marxism suggests that you cannot begin the process of abolishing class until private property has been abolished and the economy is 100% socialized. There are many other ideologies based on marxism, such as trotskyist and marxist-lenninism, and then you have stalinism and maoism (though while most modern Maoists still revere Mao, they actually have very little in common with his ideology) which were based on marxist-lenninism. Many socialists (and not all socialists are communists) will often used ideas from marxism even if they are not marxists, including most religious socialists (such as Christian socialism) - though most religious/spiritual socialists (besides the Christian marxists) are against marxism due to Marx's materialism and anti-theism.

Capitalism is when you have private ownership and control of the factors of production and resources, within a market economy, for the purpose of profit, and where the autocratic employer-employee relationship is the primary way most people make a livelihood.

Economic Socialism is when the people have collective and democratic ownership and/or control over the factors of production, resources, their workplaces, and specific industries. This collective and democratic ownership can be through the government as public ownership (like public libraries), or it can be without the government through social ownership (like cooperatives), or communal ownership (like community land trusts), or common ownership (like a shared body of water that everyone has access to but no one owns), and so on.

There are also other aspects to socialism besides the economic aspect, which I think are well explained by the writings of Nathan Robbinson. He also explains how there are many, many, many different types of socialism and leftism and how most leftists are constantly arguing with one another over details.

Communism is a form of anarchism, which is a form of libertarian socialism. Communism is when you have an egalitarian classless, moneyless, stateless society where private property has been abolished. Complete socialism is a prerequisite to communism.

Anarchism is a form of libertarian socialism. Anarchism literally means rule by no one (though most anarchists support one form of local democracy - rule by the people - or another, or something similar such as isocracy). Anarchism is opposed to all forms of unjustified authority, all forms of unneccessary hierarchy, all forms of oppression, the state, and capitalism. Anarchism believes that all forms of authority that do exist must justify itself by proving that it provides something of value to the people and that whatever it provides cannot be better provided by something else, and that such authority should have as little hierarchy as possible, exists for the shortest time necessary, and that we should continue to seek and develop alternative. Many people associate anarchism with being anti-government, but that is not quite accurate as there are some kinds of anarchists whom support the concept of "stateless governments."

It is important to note that private property is not the same as personal property. Private property refers to the things you own but don't use and profit from or deprive others of. Personal property refers to the things you personally possess or use. For example a sweater you use is your personal property, a factory that you own but don't work in is private property, and a house is private property for a landlord and personal property for the residents.

It is also important to note that there is market socialism. Some socialists support markets (though they would still abolish or restrict private property in favor of social ownership), others support centralized planned economies, others support decentralized local planned economies, other support mixed economies, other support gift economies, and so on. Marxists tend to prefer public ownership (at least until the state is abolished) and centralized planned economies.

[Federal Republic Of America And The Cari]

A failed and widely discredited ideology whose legacy is poverty, mass starvation, cultural suicide and genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, infanticide, torture, mass murder, the dismantling of longstanding cultural and political institutions, state capitalism, greed, corruption, megalomania, ultranationalism, racism, homophobia, imperialism, neocolonialism, broken promises, outright lies, shameless propaganda, face-saving coverups, deadly viral pandemics, entitled, elitist, conservative, upper-class snobbery and the accompanying oppression and subjugation of the working poor, and fascism.

Communism is what China used to practice. Fascism is its legacy.

Also the official ideology of a group of rag-tag murderers and terrorists in Malaya and Sarawak during the Cold War, and drug lords and terrorists in Colombia.

An ideology that seeks to confiscate all of my property and see me and my family executed for being "capitalist roaders", "running dogs of Western imperialists" and "bourgeois reactionaries".

Good job

[Debate Proxy 1]

Here's my take on this (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong):

Communism is the last stage of Marxism, which is as follows (super simplified, but basically the point):

According to Marx, the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat in capitalism, causing the proletariat - lead by intellectuals - to violently revolt against the system once they're aware of their "exploitation", instilling a dictatorship of the proletariat (a socialist dictatorship). In theory, once capitalism is wiped out from the world, society will (somehow (I don't know the details)) become stateless communes where workers are happy productive members of society, effectively reaching "communism".

Of course, due to human nature, Marxist dictators (Lenin, Mao, etc.) get stuck at the "dictatorship of the proletariat" part, and capitalism (fortunately, in my opinion) reigns supreme.

That is Marx's idea of communism. Marx did not invent socialism or communism. Though, before Marx, communism was not very well defined. Since Marx's publication of his Communist Manifesto, his definitions, ideology, conception, and so on became the dominant version of socialism/communism, however there are non-marxist socialists and communists. Marx basically wrote about what all the problems with capitalism were, why he believed capitalism would result in disaster for humanity, why capitalism was self-defeating, and why capitalism is immoral. He believed that it was just going to be a historical fact that eventually the working class would rebel against the capitalist class and that it was both inevitable and desirable. However, according to marxism, capitalists (both foreign and domestic) would never accept losing their wealth and power and would use the violent forces of the state to repress any socialistic or communist society, and the marxist response is to establish a dictatorship of working class until the idea of class ceases to be (either domestically or internationally), then because the accumulation of money would no longer occur and distribution can be done through other means eventually money would stop being used, then the people would no longer need religion for hope and religion would just stop, eventually the state would also have no role and would just wither away. Marxism suggests that you cannot begin the process of abolishing class until private property has been abolished and the economy is 100% socialized. There are many other ideologies based on marxism, such as trotskyist and marxist-lenninism, and then you have stalinism and maoism (though while most modern Maoists still revere Mao, they actually have very little in common with his ideology) which were based on marxist-lenninism. Many socialists (and not all socialists are communists) will often used ideas from marxism even if they are not marxists, including most religious socialists (such as Christian socialism) - though most religious/spiritual socialists (besides the Christian marxists) are against marxism due to Marx's materialism and anti-theism.

Capitalism is when you have private ownership and control of the factors of production and resources, within a market economy, for the purpose of profit, and where the autocratic employer-employee relationship is the primary way most people make a livelihood.

Economic Socialism is when the people have collective and democratic ownership and/or control over the factors of production, resources, their workplaces, and specific industries. This collective and democratic ownership can be through the government as public ownership (like public libraries), or it can be without the government through social ownership (like cooperatives), or communal ownership (like community land trusts), or common ownership (like a shared body of water that everyone has access to but no one owns), and so on.

There are also other aspects to socialism besides the economic aspect, which I think are well explained by the writings of Nathan Robbinson. He also explains how there are many, many, many different types of socialism and leftism and how most leftists are constantly arguing with one another over details.

Communism is a form of anarchism, which is a form of libertarian socialism. Communism is when you have an egalitarian classless, moneyless, stateless society where private property has been abolished. Complete socialism is a prerequisite to communism.

Anarchism is a form of libertarian socialism. Anarchism literally means rule by no one (though most anarchists support one form of local democracy - rule by the people - or another, or something similar such as isocracy). Anarchism is opposed to all forms of unjustified authority, all forms of unneccessary hierarchy, all forms of oppression, the state, and capitalism. Anarchism believes that all forms of authority that do exist must justify itself by proving that it provides something of value to the people and that whatever it provides cannot be better provided by something else, and that such authority should have as little hierarchy as possible, exists for the shortest time necessary, and that we should continue to seek and develop alternative. Many people associate anarchism with being anti-government, but that is not quite accurate as there are some kinds of anarchists whom support the concept of "stateless governments."

It is important to note that private property is not the same as personal property. Private property refers to the things you own but don't use and profit from or deprive others of. Personal property refers to the things you personally possess or use. For example a sweater you use is your personal property, a factory that you own but don't work in is private property, and a house is private property for a landlord and personal property for the residents.

It is also important to note that there is market socialism. Some socialists support markets (though they would still abolish or restrict private property in favor of social ownership), others support centralized planned economies, others support decentralized local planned economies, other support mixed economies, other support gift economies, and so on. Marxists tend to prefer public ownership (at least until the state is abolished) and centralized planned economies.

Curiously, communism (referring to its final, classless stage... I think everyone can agree that all definitions have this somewhere in it) is related to anarchy in being a stateless form of society, but it is not the same. Anarchism's assumptions are fundamentally individualistic, while "the customs of the community" (Lenin's description) would be the basis of organization under commune society. Marx's model of communism shares with pre-state tribalism a basic assumption that all children would be brought up, almost, to think in a synchronized form by the community. Where anarchism means no rule, communism means rule by new but firmly-enforced traditions and customs. The difference looks slight, but it is possible to imagine, as happened among the tribes of North America, anarchistic rebels who split off from those customs and wars that started over it. A good example would be the conflicts between the Lakota and Assiniboine tribes, or the really deep and hateful split between the Creek and Seminole tribes.

Curiously, Marx claimed that private property was already "abolished" in the United States of his time. Yet according to the Fourth Amendment, a right to private property is a protected explicitly by name.

Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in Democracy in America, remarked that the family was abolished in America.

Are we misunderstanding these words, specifically the terms "private property", "family", and "abolish"?

In Europe, these terms referred to specific institutions, and to Europeans like Marx and Tocqueville, carried connotations that don't register in American minds. To Europeans, property was equivalent to land, and "family" was equivalent to a father's dictatorship over the household and its property inheritance, carried over from feudalism. Marx based his claim that private property was already abolished in America on the fact that for much of our history, most of the land wasn't deeded or parceled at all, and Tocqueville based his comments about America having no family on children being able to talk back to their fathers, and the easy and informal relationships between children and parents. Slavery was "abolished", but that didn't simultaneously outlaw BDSM practices. It removed the force of the state that was keeping people in a state of bondage.

Ever since the "closing of the frontier" by the Bureau of Land Management, people have been compelled, by law, to have private property in the European sense of the term. I say this as an owner of some property, but I still see no economic benefit from it, only obstructions to labor that are erected by government, and which force me to pay taxes for the welfare of landless urban people, because the land law isn't allowing them to feed themselves. Farmers, especially in animal husbandry, have to do roughly 18 times the work that nature would require, in order to feed 18 extra mouths who are forbidden by law from doing so.

For people who want private property, and keep yourselves and your work safe by the gun, that is one thing... but please keep the law and the government out of it. It's even an obstacle to running a small business now.

We still use these terms, "family" and "private property", but to mean totally different things than these two authors were talking about. I, my whole family, and many people would fight to the death to defend the property we make and sell, whether you want to call it private or personal property, but if you're referring to those European institutions the way Tocqueville and Marx were, and not to what I make, and want to keep or trade, and don't trust strangers (such as government) to touch, then maybe those do need to be abolished again for the good of the whole market. Thomas Paine certainly thought so.

[FutureAmerica]

Communism, by definition, is an ideology proposing the establishment of a hypothetical society in which class, state, and currency do not exist theoretically ensuring that everyone in this society is therefor totally equal in every way.

Putting aside how impossible it is to create, let alone sustain, such a society on a scale larger than a small town in the rural Midwest...

• A "Communist State" is a Socialist State aspiring to achieve Communism (the USSR and it's allies during the Cold War, essentially), as opposed to a state that practices it which would be an oxymoron.
• A "Communist Party" is the authority behind which Communism is theoretically supposed to be created and therefor their goal is - allegedly - to pursue the achievement of Communism.
• A "Communist" is someone/something that has embrace the ideology of Communism and works to achieve it's stated goals.

From all this we can deduce the following:

1. The PRC is not a Communist State, as it has shown absolutely zero interest in achieving Communism.
2. The CCP is not a Communist Party, as it has shown absolutely zero interest in achieving Communism.
3. Xi Jinping and his cronies are not Communists, as they have shown absolutely zero interest in achieving Communism.

How do we know this? Because the first step toward Communism is Socialism, and none of the aforementioned are even remotely Socialist in any way, shape, or form. The "People's Republic" of China is an Authoritarian, State Capitalist, Plutocratic, Han Chinese Nationalist, Totalitarian Police State that masquerades as a Communist State has been doing so since the Sino-Soviet Split when they realized just how unrealistic and impossible Communism actually is. Also because Mao got high on his own unlimited power, as most autocrats do.

The CCP is a False Communist Party. It advertises communism but instead tries to profit from greed and corruption.

[Farnhamia]

Communism, by definition, is an ideology proposing the establishment of a hypothetical society in which class, state, and currency do not exist theoretically ensuring that everyone in this society is therefor totally equal in every way.

Putting aside how impossible it is to create, let alone sustain, such a society on a scale larger than a small town in the rural Midwest...

• A "Communist State" is a Socialist State aspiring to achieve Communism (the USSR and it's allies during the Cold War, essentially), as opposed to a state that practices it which would be an oxymoron.
• A "Communist Party" is the authority behind which Communism is theoretically supposed to be created and therefor their goal is - allegedly - to pursue the achievement of Communism.
• A "Communist" is someone/something that has embrace the ideology of Communism and works to achieve it's stated goals.

From all this we can deduce the following:

1. The PRC is not a Communist State, as it has shown absolutely zero interest in achieving Communism.
2. The CCP is not a Communist Party, as it has shown absolutely zero interest in achieving Communism.
3. Xi Jinping and his cronies are not Communists, as they have shown absolutely zero interest in achieving Communism.

How do we know this? Because the first step toward Communism is Socialism, and none of the aforementioned are even remotely Socialist in any way, shape, or form. The "People's Republic" of China is an Authoritarian, State Capitalist, Plutocratic, Han Chinese Nationalist, Totalitarian Police State that masquerades as a Communist State has been doing so since the Sino-Soviet Split when they realized just how unrealistic and impossible Communism actually is. Also because Mao got high on his own unlimited power, as most autocrats do.

The CCP is a False Communist Party. It advertises communism but instead tries to profit from greed and corruption.

Don't post in threads that have not had a new post in more than four weeks.