Can anyone succinctly explain communism? Everything I’ve read in the past said that the state owns the means of production and in practice (in real life) that seems to be the reality. However I encountered a random idiot on the Internet that claimed in communism, there is no state and it is a stateless society. I immediately rejected this idea because it was counter to what I knew about communism irl. In searching using these keywords, I came across the ideas that in communism, it does strive to be a stateless society. So which one is it? If it’s supposed to be a stateless society, why are all real-life forms of communism authoritarian in nature?

  • lucullus
    2·
    3 days ago

    Maybe you can clarify for me, as I’m not knowlegeble in Marxism: When the state withers away, what is the central organisation called, that manages the means of production? I thought that would also be called functions of a state. Thanks

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      31·
      3 days ago

      Engels calls it “the Administration of Things,” I’d call it government. Really, the heart of the matter is that many people think Marx was advocating for decentralization, which does not logically follow from the rest of Marxism advocating for central planning and whatnot, leading to a weird misconception of a lot of centralization and somehow dissolving, which is evidently false.

      We can think of it as a “State” remaining as long as we recontextualize what that means with respect to Marxism, the modern colloquial sense of a State would remain in an altered form is all.

      • lucullus
        2·
        3 days ago

        Ah, so it is just a case of a specific definition of “state”. What are the attributes of a state in that definition (as they do not include "the Administration of Things)? Goes totally against my intuition with that word

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
          51·
          3 days ago

          The state is fundamentally a tool of class oppression. Such aspects would include private property rights, and other enshrinements of class distinctions, which are gradually erased as property is collectivized. Additionally, aspects like policing would transform to be more akin to social workers as the economic reasons for crime would be dramatically minimized, things like that.