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Communism, like libertarian capitalism, simplifies the human condition too much to win in a pure form. Both have important lessons, neither is sufficient.

At least, neither is sufficient for now; I can image fully automated luxury space communism working, once AI is good enough.




A post scarcity society is likely to be inerently more libertarian than communist, true post scarcity does not need a centrally managed economy.

Communism doesn’t simplify the human condition as much as it replaces it, the scary part of communism isn’t the economy but the eradication of the self in favor of a group identity.


Communism is not a centrally managed economy. It is an anarchistic form of society with no state. You might be confusing it with socialism which is what most states that are colloquially referred to as "Communist" really are. Socialism is supposed to be a short term form of government for transitioning to a communist society, but no real-world socialist state has made any significant progress at transitioning to communism.


Communism is certainly is a centrally manged state owned economic system.

Under communism there is no individual ownership and the state owns all of the means of production.


That is absolutely incorrect. Communism has no private property, but also has no state. You are thinking of socialism. That said, there are no large scale examples of real-world communist societies, so it is for the most part purely hypothetical, unlike socialism which has many real-world examples.

You may be confused because of all of the states where the main political party is called the Communist party, but those states do not self-identify as communist. They self-identify as socialist states that are in the process of transitioning to communism.


I’m not confused because communism does not exists in a vacuum a communist society will be a state.

The “abolishment” of the state under communism does not do so in practice but rather in principle when everyone belongs to the state there is no state but it’s an empty and meaningless starlet.

Communism also outside of some fringe Marxism and anarcho communism is not anarchist at all but rather very centralized.


Communism is by definition stateless, so any society where a state exists is not communism. You might say that this is impossible, and that would quite possibly be right, which is why there is no real-world example of a communist society.

I think the only way that it could possibly work is with post-scarcity or at least much less scarcity that currently exists.


How do you call a group of people with an shared identity and sovereignty?

No real-world example is a coupout and a no true scottsman all in one.

The stateless part is not what you think it means it just means that the state is not a separate entity to the individual mostly because individualism does not exist the only thing that exists is the group. When everyone is equal then there are no senators or presidents or mayors but everything is still centralized so some governing body forms or it’s total anarchy.

But that doesn’t matter as long as not everyone is commmunist you would have a communist and a none communist state unless due to the authoritarian nature of communism the non communist group is annihilated.

If anything the core principals of communism are much more abhorrent than any implementation of it we had so far.


Your reply finally encouraged me to (skim) read my copy of the Communist Manifesto.

Ironically, the very criticism you have of communism is their criticism of the bourgeoisie.

Now, I think I should go read my copy of The Wealth of Nations for balance…




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