Socialism

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Beehaw's community for socialists, communists, anarchists, and non-authoritarian leftists (this means anti-capitalists) of all stripes. A place for all leftist and labor news and discussion, as long as you're nice about it.

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Is Authoritarian Communism Really communism? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm sure this has been asked before, so sorry if it was.

But from my very surface level understanding of this, communism is about workers collectively owning the means of production. If a dictator is controlling the means, do the workers really own them? To me it just seems like centralised capitalism.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

many of them had central planning of the economy, and most of them had highly delegated (for example village bodies which elect city bodies which elect country bodies, etc.) or sectoral (for example X, Y, and Z interest groups must obligatorily be represented in decision-making) political systems that meant workers were represented at every level of government and decision-making.

These 'highly delegated' systems where 'workers were represented' was -and, more important, still is- part of these countries' official narratives. The reality is completely different. We saw and see this in all countries with so-called communist and socialist structures: Every 'delegate' who holds/expresses different views than the central Party is forced to resign as a delegate (and often faces harsh consequences, ranging from forced dissappearance, imprisonment, and even death penalty). The 'votings' of these delegates are highly.staged and have nothing to do with free elections.

Such systems produce the worst results of ultra-liberal capitalism where workers and the people have no say.

(I posted an article an hour or so ago here, but it got deleted without any reason provided. Which is bad, because it is a good example for what I just described.)

[Edit typo.]