First of all a quick side note, “authoritarianism” is an ill-defined and sociologically unsound concept, and there is no such thing as an “authoritarian” party or state. Isolated policies may have aspects on a sliding scale between libertarian and authoritarian, but from that you cannot infer anything about the government or the society. For instance, in 1933, selling alcohol was prohibited in the United States while it was legal in Nazi Germany, but not even the most ardent drinker would say that the US was more “authoritarian” than the Nazis based on that.
Also, the Marxist distinction between communism as the final goal of socialist society (lack of state, money, religion etc.) and socialist society itself (scarcity, need for defence against reaction, presence of state etc.) is not what the people who utter the phrase that “Communism only works on paper” typically have in mind when they say it. Their argument usually breaks down to a set of dogmatic conceptions they have about worker ownership of the means of production, economics of central planning, or quality of life under socialism.
To respond to the allegation that “Communism only works on paper” in good faith, as though it were a good-faith argument derived from the speculative nature of post-scarcity communism as opposed to actually existing socialism, is to completely ignore the context in which it is actually used, namely to signal the speaker’s disinterest in having an intellectually honest discussion about the merits and demerits of socialism in concrete situations. If you try to discuss it in the terms of Marxist theory, you will quickly discover (as you did way at the top of the comment chain) that already the premise of the argument is vacuous and nonsensical.
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First of all a quick side note, “authoritarianism” is an ill-defined and sociologically unsound concept, and there is no such thing as an “authoritarian” party or state. Isolated policies may have aspects on a sliding scale between libertarian and authoritarian, but from that you cannot infer anything about the government or the society. For instance, in 1933, selling alcohol was prohibited in the United States while it was legal in Nazi Germany, but not even the most ardent drinker would say that the US was more “authoritarian” than the Nazis based on that.
Also, the Marxist distinction between communism as the final goal of socialist society (lack of state, money, religion etc.) and socialist society itself (scarcity, need for defence against reaction, presence of state etc.) is not what the people who utter the phrase that “Communism only works on paper” typically have in mind when they say it. Their argument usually breaks down to a set of dogmatic conceptions they have about worker ownership of the means of production, economics of central planning, or quality of life under socialism.
To respond to the allegation that “Communism only works on paper” in good faith, as though it were a good-faith argument derived from the speculative nature of post-scarcity communism as opposed to actually existing socialism, is to completely ignore the context in which it is actually used, namely to signal the speaker’s disinterest in having an intellectually honest discussion about the merits and demerits of socialism in concrete situations. If you try to discuss it in the terms of Marxist theory, you will quickly discover (as you did way at the top of the comment chain) that already the premise of the argument is vacuous and nonsensical.
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