• intensely_human
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    2 months ago

    Also they have to not want to trade. If someone starts trading, then the communism is over.

    Turns out when people are free to make economic arrangements as they please, capitalism happens.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Also they have to not want to trade. If someone starts trading, then the communism is over.

      Trading is not capitalism.
      Markets are not capitalism.
      Money is not capitalism.
      Those things have existed for millenia before capitalism came to exist, around 600 years ago, eventually, over the span of several hundred years, replacing previous socio-politico-economic systems, feudalism in particular.

      The first sentence from Wikipedia: Capitalism

      Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.

      The first sentence from Wikipedia: Socialism

      Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.

      Notice that both definitionally concern who owns the means of production.

      Communism:

      Communism is a mode of production characterized by common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes. The term is also used to refer to the movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of this mode of production.

      Communism is a movement toward socialism, with the ultimate goal of the erasing social class hierarchies.

        • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Edit to add: I think I see what you meant now. Yes, you could also say “socialism is a movement toward communism,” in the sense that socialism is a step in the path to communism.


          I don’t think so. Communism can’t be reached in one fell swoop. The reason why communist states didn’t and don’t have communism in their names is because—by their own admission—they aren’t yet communist, they’re socialist.

          First comes a transformation from a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to a dictatorship of the proletariat, where the working class has control of the state and the means of production. In other words, socialism. The end-goal of communism is to be rid of classes altogether, but it’s not possible jump straight to it. You can’t go to bed one day under capitalism and magically wake up the next under communism.

          Marxists define the state as a system by which the ruling class maintains its dominance other classes. So when we talk about the end-goal of a “classless, stateless society,” we mean that classlessness definitionally also means statelessness.