Removed by mod

I’ll preface this explanation by acknowledging my biases: I consider myself something between a democratic socialist and an anarchist.

Communism is worker ownership of the means of production. That means that rather than individuals owning companies and having total authority over them, the workers would own their companies collectively. That’s the entire idea, but it’s vague and there are many ways it can be interpreted and many different ways people have proposed to implement it, which is why you’ll see so many different versions of communism and a lot of arguing and infighting between communists/socialists.

The version of communism that people who grew up in the US are familiar with is a twisted and distorted view of a very authoritarian and centralized version of communism established by the Bolsheviks after the Russian revolution. It’s important for people to understand that not only is this not the only version of communism, it’s an extremely controversial one that fractured the movement and created many of the different factions that exist in leftist spaces today.

Now a note and some definitions:

The common understanding today is that communism and socialism are just more and less extreme versions of the same thing, but the terms were coined for a different reason. Communism was originally stated to be the ideal end-goal to be strived towards, a classless, stateless society in which resources are distributed by need and labor is distributed according to ability, while socialism was stated to be a transitional state between capitalism and communism.

AES - Actually existing (or once existed) socialist states such as the USSR or China. It is heavily debated which states actually qualify as AES.

Private property - Best understood as “absentee ownership,” or claiming ownership of tools and resources that you hire others to use/develop/maintain in order to make a profit. Things like factories and office buildings that are owned by an individual rather than collectively by the workers count as private property, things like your house or your toothbrush do not.

Pluralism - The existence of competing parties with opposing views being represented in the same government.

Liberal democracy - A form of representative democracy that includes separation of powers, different branches of government acting as checks and balances to one another, and an emphasis on individual liberties (including private property, which anti-capitalists argue is not a right and is actually corrosive to the liberty of working people).

Hierarchy - An organized system in which people are subordinated to one another, meaning certain people - chosen or otherwise - can exercise authority over others.

This is already getting too long, so I’ll try to simplify it down and generalize it into just 3 different schools of thought, but note that they all share the belief that private property should be abolished, that workers are entitled to what they produce, and should collectively organize the distribution of those resources according to need, usually by creating social services and infrastructure. What they disagree on is how this is accomplished.

First are the Marxist-Leninists, who typically critically support AES states such as the USSR, China, Cuba, and sometimes even North Korea in the extreme cases. They argue that a centralized authority such as the state is necessary to defend socialism against capitalists so that communism can eventually be achieved, and that since the state is a public institution then if the state owns all industry it counts as collective ownership. They also oppose pluralism and liberal democracy, favoring a one-party government with a structured internal hierarchy in which only party members vote and the existing members approve new membership. They are criticized by the other factions for being authoritarian, are often called tankies, and tend to prefer revolution through armed struggle over reform.

Second are the Democratic Socialists, who are less likely to support AES states on the grounds that they are too authoritarian and do not adequately represent the workers enough to be considered true communism, Though they tend to have more nuanced opinions on some of the AES states. They argue for more egalitarian, decentralized, and democratic means of organizing production and distribution of resources, and support political pluralism. In practice this is typically envisioned as similar to a liberal democracy but where the state owns all industry (no private property), can be either representative or directly democratic, and prefer a flatter hierarchy with greater accountability. They are criticized by MLs as being naive or capitalist collaborators, called liberals as an insult (and they often do take it as one), and are criticized by anarchists also as being naive or statists. They tend to prefer reform through union organizing and collective bargaining over revolution.

Finally there are the Anarchists, who oppose hierarchy entirely. They make a distinction between a state and a government, arguing that states are inherently hierarchical and authoritarian, and that government can be done without the subordination of people to any other. Some argue that even direct democracy creates a “tyranny of the majority,” preferring some form of consensus-based decision making. Anarchists typically believe governments should look like loose, voluntary confederations of worker collectives - with no internal or external hierarchies - organizing production and distribution of resources collectively through direct democratic or consensus-based governance. They favor a library or gift economy in which people’s needs are provided for by collectively organized social services and infrastructure. They are criticized as being too idealistic. They tend to prefer revolution through rank-and-file union organizing, direct action, and mutual aid over reform.

To be a communist is to believe in a system that will only ever work if humans are subtracted from it.

In other words, hopeless ideal.