There were no actual efforts to establish communism in eastern europe. Only autocratic regimes backed by soviet russia.
It’s like saying democracy sucks because look at states like Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo and German Democratic Republic.
When people proclaim to be something doesn’t make it true.
I’m no too learned in the subject but what would “true” communism even look like on the large scale like a country? Would it even be feasible?
True communism in a country is impossible.
You can have socialism, or anarchy, which we’ve seen before, but communism cannot function in one country alone, unless said country is completely and absolutely self reliant.
A major part of communism is internationalism, which is why socialist countries had the Comintern. (Communist International). Besides a political/social system, communism has a strong basis as an economic system. You can’t apply communist economic system principles to the capitalist market.
To my knowledge, no existing country is self reliant to the point that they can completely cut off trade with the rest of the world. USSR didn’t do it, China didn’t do it and they were the two biggest countries at the time.
That, of course is all a very surface level ELI5, and if you want to ask something more specific or in depth, feel free to.
Unless you’re an ultra-orthodox marxist, there is no such thing as trüe communism™.
There always have been many different ideas what „communism“ is, e.g. there have been various „nationalist communist“ ideologies (complicated by the fact that the Russian SFSR called everything „nationalist“ that wasn’t 100% aligned with its ideas of the Soviet Union, e.g. Hungary).
There are also no clear boundaries between communism, socialism, and anarchism, e.g. Kropotkin with his theories of anarchist communism.
That being said, I don’t think communism is a system (either social or economic), it’s strictly an idealogy, meaning it’s a way to achieve something, i.e. the classless and stateless society. If you follow that thought to its logical end, you cannot even „achieve“ communism at all, since at this point e.g. the proletariat ceases to exist, and as a result you cannot have a „dictatorship of the proletariat“.
It’s… complicated.
In feel like you make it complicated to arrive at your conclusion here. Communism, as described by Marx and Engels and to some degree Lenin, is something very specific that covers most aspects of the society. Political, social and economic. Marx himself wrote books upon books on the economy of a socialist, communist system.
It is not an abstract “I don’t like capitalism so let’s try something different” approach. And yes, many have tried to adapt it, as you mentioned which is why those different approaches carry a different name ‘anarchist communism’ in your example. Because they are different enough from flat out communism.
No, I have a very easy explanation what communism is, it’s just that nobody else agrees is the issue.
different approaches carry a different name
Yeah, well… So let’s see, we have: Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Titoism, Gulyáskommunizmus (both, as mentioned before, considered „nationalist communism“ by other communists), Rätekommunismus, Realsozialismus, Maoism …
So, which one of those is the true communism?
Joking aside, most of the 20th century was spent with people killing other people because they had slightly different opinions on what true communism means, so it’s really not me who made things complicated.
And you keep using different names to describe them. As you should. Communism is not one thing and never was. But when people refer to base or true communism, the answer is just one.
It’s how it was defined in the communist manifesto in 1848. You could say it’s Marxism, but I dislike that naming since others played a big role on forming it as well, like Engels and others who based on Marx’s mostly economic study added the philosophical and political angles.
Every theme or name change after the manifesto (that is not found in later revisions by the communist international) is attempts at adapting it with different angles and for different purposes and circumstances, aka NOT base or pure communism. Don’t bundle everything in one basket and try to make sense, same way that bundling Putin’s Russian form of Capitalism with US’s imperialism and French Revolution’s early capitalism together doesn’t make sense either.
He asked for pure communism, I answered for that. If he asked about Trotsky, I’d focus more on the permanent revolution and the Fourth International. If he asked of Stalin, I’d talk about his socialism in one country theory
Yeah well, so you’re an orthodox Marxist and I disagree with you ¯\(ツ)/¯
But when people refer to base or true communism, the answer is just one.
Aha, is that so?
I dislike that naming since others played a big role on forming it as well
Yeah, you could say that!
So! Let’s talk about Restif de la Bretonne who was using „communist“ and „communism“ 60-70 years before Marx writes the „Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei“. Babeuf (who called himself a „communalist“) already tried to incite a communist revolution in the 1790s. De La Hodde calls the Parisian general strike in 1840 „inspired by communist ideas“. In 1841 the „Communistes Matérialistes“ publish „L’Humanitaire“, which Nettlau calls „the first libertarian communist publication“.
And how come that a certain bloke named Karl Marx in his 1842 essay „Der Kommunismus und die Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung" finds that communism had already become an international movement. Hey, I know that name! 🤔
Tell me, how exactly is Marxism (or whatever you want to call it) the one and only trüe communism™ when there’s decades of different variances of communism and movements of people calling themselves communists before the „Manifest“?
Just face it: your beloved Marxism is just one variant of communism, which for a variety of reasons has become the best known. But it’s certainly not „base communism“.
What do you think is anarchy? Without searching engine please.
Without search engine and without going into detail that is out of the scope, anarchy is a different path to a classless system. Said classless system is different enough from communism to warrant discussion but close enough for that discussion to be devolving into anarchy vs socialism most of the time to differentiate the path to that system.
Said path in anarchy is comprised of setting up collectives that start small, neighborhood small, and gradually evolve. Each collective shares almost everything between its members and there’s no leadership or ranking across its members.
Anything deeper than that leads to a long discussion that is out of the scope of this thread and definitely out of the scope of the ELI5 the post I originally replied to needed or had the philosophical basis to understand possibly. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but they are quite different approaches to a similar goal, a classless society that money does not rule all.
Anarchist checking in, so, y’know, bias and all that. But I’d say it’s just as impossible to have anarchism in one country. Bearing in mind, I’m an anarcho-communist, and not terribly familiar things like mutualism, so that may be different. I tend to view, as do (to my knowledge) most ancoms, communism and anarchism as synonyms. The difference is how we get to the end point, not the end point itself. A stateless, classless, moneyless society. We’ve had the Spanish anarchists, and some examples of societies like Madagascar, where there are villages and region that function in an anarchistic way, but True Anarchism™ couldn’t function in a single country/region. It needs to be international in it’s scope for all the same reasons communism needs to be international in it’s scope. Anarchist political methods can function at a smaller scale, but we can’t have a fully anarchist society until it’s global.
Which all just means that I’m an anarchist because I prefer the methods to achieving the shared goal, not because I disagree on the goal itself, if that makes sense.
Well, it is feasible. You just need to give people replicators and free living space, and they will eventually learn to use their skills to enrich the world we live in. And boldly go where no one has gone before.
Communism fails every time it is tried because it goes against human nature of constantly comparing yourself to others and trying to improve yourself. You will never do harder work if you can get the same reward for easier work, and you will look for other, less moral ways of getting the bigger reward.
Communism sounds great but it will never work until we have unlimited resources and completely automated labour.
Nah, that’s just wrong. You can compare yourself in other ways than how much fake money you earn. Fun thing is: truly communistic society would mean easier work for most people.
And communism does work in small scale enviroments. Families, cooperatives, tribes. Sometimes neighborhoods.
This whole “Sounds great but won’t work” rhethoric is just what the ones that would loose their power in communsim want you to think. If you dig into it you will see, that there were and are a lot of efforts to discredit the idea.
That’s a joke, right?
Right?
If you want to argue against that, fine by me. I have nothing against an honest duscussion. But this comment is neither funny nor smart.
I was about 99% this was a joke because I thought nobody could be this stupid. I don’t argue with jokes, that’s pointless.
But that is no joke at all. It is what every honest historian will tell you. If you take communism as it was defined by Marx (not that this would be the best system or even what I would propse, parts of it maybe) then no society actually tried that.
And here comes the guy who thinks he can do it better, this time without mass killings.
With capitalism we just outsource the death to 3rd world countries.
Oh here we go with “That wasn’t real communism!” as if any other communist state on this planet is any different.
I mean they violated some if tge main principles outlined by Marx, like the other states, who almost all followed the lenin-stalin-model, so yeah. Prove me wrong.
Why do we put so much stock into the handful of failed communist experiments but not the capitalistic societies that have turned autocratic?
Because that doesn’t fit the narrative.
No, because that’s not the topic of discussion. Not here to entertain projection and whataboutism as a defense mechanism of hurt feelings.
Eh, it’s kinda both. Yes, it’s nice to stay on one topic like how we can make communism the best it can be and learn lessons of the past. But when people look at some of those decisions/theories and say “that sounds terrible, I’d rather keep what I have” then you really gotta cross-compare. America is only as well off as it is because of slavery, corruption, death and destruction. It’s just not death and destruction of their own people and land, so most American citizens don’t “see” that. Or if they do, it’s a “well, that sucks, we should do better” kind of thing, but lack real recognition that the system benefits them so much. As well, the capitalist autocracies have been way more deadly and authoritarian and corrupt than anything communist, and it’s important for people to learn about the differences.
A: “Communism is authoritarian” B: “Wehll, sometimes, but capitalism is too, and it is MUCH worse” A: “Don’t commit whataboutism” B: “Uhhhh, but we have to compare systems to know which is better and which is worse…”
Just IMHO.
They are though. China, Vietnam and Cuba are all pretty drastically different and they are all communist countries.
China is state capitalist, not communist
The functioning of their government is absolutely unequivocally communist. They have allowed some form of capital interests, which I would not consider communist in definition, but the government retains control over nearly all those interests and the plan they’ve put forward from the beginning is to renationalize industries as they reach a point of competitive development with the western world.
I’m far from an expert on communism. But the government, and especially a single person, retaining power over the state and economy is far from communism, it’s more authoritarian. Communism in it’s very base is the citizens owning the means of production, not the state owning those. This in no way is represented in China, where the state has a lot of power over the economy and owns parts of some companies, but there are still capitalists owning factories and workers working there.
I’m going to preface this with saying I don’t support communism or centrally planned socialism, so this isn’t me handwaving things away. It’s just that this is a nuanced topic and definitions are important, and the red scare has sucessfully lied to most people about what these words mean.
The government being in control of everything is not the sole defining feature of communism. Socialism is where the people own the means of production (business assets), typically through the government owning it all. Communism takes that a step further by removing currency and markets from the system and using some other system to determine how to create and allocate goods and services. And for the people to own the means of production through the government, they need to have an actual say in the government.
Basically to have centrally-planned socialism or communism, you need the government owning all business assets in addition to something like a democracy or republic form of governmental policy. If you don’t have a governmental policy that is controlled by the people, then the people don’t own the means of production and by definition you don’t have socialism or communism. You have one of the various forms of autocracy/oligarchy/etc.
The issue we see here with people conflating modern day China, the USSR, etc with communism is that the change in government started out as socialist or communist movements, but then got coopted by fascists who removed political agency from the people, but also decided to keep calling themselves communists. However, overthrowing a form of government and pretending you’re still that form of government doesn’t magically make it true. North Korea isn’t democratic or a republic just because the rulers call themselves it. Similarly, China’s government is defined by its actions: state capitalist and not communist.
Give me an example of a capitalist society. Waiting.
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America is very close to being real market economy, that’s why it sucks so much.
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> According to https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking for instance, there are 24 countries in the world with freer economy than USA.
The right wing, climate change denying, Heritage Foundation is not a reliable source. That’s nowhere near an unbiased analysis, but an opinion piece. No one can seriously believe the US to be less “free market” than like half of western Europe.
That’s like asking the North Korean government to create an index of democracy.
McCarthy propaganda go brrrr
Also a terrible person. The world’s big enough for there to be many terrible people in it. You need to create a very robust bureaucracy to keep corruption out and maintaining one is a very unglamorous job. Revolutionaries rarely have that skill set.
Almost like we need a large state apparatus…
The US political spectrum is leaning so far to the right. A US left is a France center or moderate right. So what Americans consider communism is merely what French consider moderate leftist.
- I’m French living in the US
Yeah, it’s basically “If you keep calling all of the stuff I like ‘communism’, then I guess that makes me a communist.”
Or if you’re not a Nazi you’re a communist, then I’m a communist I guess.
Sure, but the meme refers to the communities on the internet that unironically go full tankie, praising Stalin and Mao.
Worst of all, tankies tend to inflitrate sane leftist spaces and slowly transform them. I’ve witnessed it many times, and that just makes me think that Marxists-Leninists are just the most dominant form of leftism on the internet, which is horrible.
This doesn’t mention Stalin or Mao.
It doesn’t, but in this thread’s we see a simultaneous claim of “We aren’t tankies, of course Stalin and Mao are not good examples of communists” and “Eastern european people were better off under the USSR”. Of course, I don’t think the same people are making both claims, but just the fact that some people can claim the latter and not get collectively shunned is indicative of a huge problem in leftist spaces, it’s disgusting frankly. Tankies are significant force, at least partially representing leftism to everyone else.
I think a lot of people give Mao a bad wrap.
For what it’s worth, Stalin is a monster, and the state of China right now is repugnant.
Mao didn’t intentionally lead tens of millions of people to starve in the same way Stalin did. Mao was trying to revolutionise agriculture (The Great Leap Forward) but didn’t understand the ecological and logistic principles required.
I’m convinced his intentions were good, he just wasn’t educated enough to implement something like this.
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boomers destroyed the earth beyond all belief, poisoned everyone with sketchy ass chemicals, destroyed the economy more than once (twice in my life), most of us will NEVER own a home because the housed your grand pappy paid 100k for is now worth 2.5 million and average yearly wage is less than 30,000… among a million other things. The greed and entitlement is baffling, mix that in with delusional red scare propaganda that a ton of people fall for and yall mfers spending time defending all this insane shit.
we effectively live in a corporate government where what the people want doesn’t matter alongside the million other ways we are lied to and exploited. Billionaires and trillionaires run the world and they keep pushing for “the next thing” like the metaverse, blockchain and going mars while most of us cant even afford to fucking eat. Suck it. I guarantee that you cant even define communism and point out how it differs from social policies even on a very basic fundamental level. Fuck dude
And Soviet communism was… better how? Just as (if not more) destructive to the environment, and their “billionaires” were called “party members” instead. What an improvement! Now they can jail/deport political dissenters without even having to pretend to hold a fair trial.
Now of course this is where communists usually go No True Scotsman, but consider for just ONE MOMENT that the concept of wealth inequality is not, in fact, unique to capitalism. Any economic system is vulnerable to greed. And that the countries with arguably the strongest social welfare, highest human development, etc. are… the Nordics. Hardly capitalist, hardly hellholes.
This is why people say communists are angsty teenagers. Capitalism is a deeply flawed system, but all of what you just pointed to is, in fact, not unique to capitalism. That’s just Americana. Pointing to the U.S. as a reason why “capitalism bad” is just as silly as pointing to N.K. as a reason why “communism bad”.
Typical American with a viewpoint so narrow you can’t see further than your nose. I’ve had lots of interesting discussions with French communists, and I agree with some of their viewpoints, but to start with you have to realize that capitalism is not the root of ALL evil, only of some specific systemic issues, which are only a small part of what’s wrong with the US.
counterpoint and some reading material for capitalism stans on here https://ia800309.us.archive.org/26/items/fp_Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum/Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum.pdf
Based comrade
Top: Filthy rich capitalists and Boomers that lick up their cool aid
Bottom: Global South that produces both their wealth
Blocking you I don’t want another reddit experience
How dare teenagers not become Neoliberals while growing up in a late capitalist hellscape where climate change can’t be taken seriously because it isn’t a profitable problem to solve.
There’s a lot a reasonability in the space between neoliberalism and “Stalin did nothing wrong”
There’s a lot of space in the left that isn’t stalinism. You can be a communist and have a deep critique of how 20th century communism worked, a learning from it and not wanting to repeat the bad parts.
In leftist circles in the US, weird Stalin and Lenin fans are loud, but ultimately not that common.
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western teenagers praising capitalism
the children sewing their clothes, harvesting their food, mining their metals, …
The question was not asked in the Baltic states or Uzbekistan. The question was also not asked in Soviet puppet states like Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, etc.
Most of those are also authoritarian. Tossing out one dictator for another is not going to leave people very satisfied.
The least racist westerner has logged on. Fuck what majority of people who lived in USSR think, it’s the people with blond hair and blue eyes whose opinions really matter.
Comments like this radicalize the right and alienate people on the left, you achive absolutely nothing, just culture war fuel for the right, people from the Warsaw pact are not subumans, you don’t even understand that you support a race biased perspective with a mentality like this
Nah, pointing out racist shit scumbags say here is not radicalizing the right or alienating anybody who is actually on the left. The fact that westerners focus on the opinions of predominantly white people in eastern europe over those in the rest of USSR is racist as fuck.
As I said Warsaw pact people are not subhuman, judging from your comments they are, and even if you want to go into pseudo science race theory, the poles are white slav like the majority, russian and the ukranians, Georgia is another state that is in the poll, yet is a white majority, so why did they left some of the biggest and most populous part of the USSR? You are the perfect example of extreme race ideas, just not the white mainstream ones, race is a social construct, used to divide the people to let them fight against each others, you fit the role perfectly, if you were communist you would say that racial war is a distraction to class war, or am I wrong?
You’re just making a straw man there because nobody said anything about Warsaw pact people being subhuman except you. What was actually said was that the opinions of white people in European parts of USSR are prioritized over those who lived in the rest of USSR in the west. Nobody is talking about any race war here except you. You keep trying to call me a racist for pointing this out shows the depths of your intellectual dishonesty. I’ve got nothing else to say to you.
Are you that fucking stupid? There are a ton of Russians, Belorusyans, and Ukrainians who are blond haired and blue eyed. They also did not include 36 million people in Uzbekistan which has very few blond haired blue eyed people. You know who also is not blond haired and blue eyed? Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan who see it as a benefit that the shitty Soviet Union broke up. But I guess you do not give a shit about them. That seems pretty racist of you.
It’s not racist to recognize that ignoring the over 100 million people that live in states that were either Soviet or Soviet puppet states kind of fucking skews the results.
Your argument makes no sense. Go back to summer school, child.
Meanwhile in the real world
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Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx
Oh and finally, this study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
So, take a sit there little buddy.
Nice copy pasta.
That Pew Research poll is 13 years old during a global financial crisis. A much more recent one (2019) shows that 7 in 10 Hungarians approve of the shift to a market economy.
That same poll showed that over 90% of Germans are happy with reunification. The article from Der Spiegel is 14 years old during a global financial crisis. I lived in Berlin around that time. There was a little bit of Ostalgie but honestly a lot of them were little more than neo Nazis and ended up supporting the AfD. If those are the communists you want to hang out with, be my guest.
Not sure why you devote so much space to the blond hair blue eyed Russians. Seems pretty racist.
Yugoslavia was not a Soviet puppet state nor Eastern Europe so not sure why you are bringing it up. There was also a lot more to Yugoslavia than Serbia.
Things haven’t gotten better in these countries in the past 13 years, and current pro western governments are looking pretty shaky as a result. Seethe and cope there child.
Citizens of those countries disagree with you. Seethe and cope, child.
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Didn’t the USSR just do state capitalism, and not actual communism or socialism? And weren’t they also totalitarian & also not a democracy? Are people actually asking for what was happening in astern Europe or something else?
That’s kind of the point of horseshoe economics, “the people own the economy” is impossible to implement without an intermediate agency to actually oversee the day to day of said economy.
What’s that entity? The government. Any conceptual type of non-state entity would just be governance in nature regardless of title, and therefore still essentially operate as “a state” if not the same state that the federal government exists as.
Though as someone who works in modern IT I foresee the future of robotics and AGI allowing for the kind of economic automation that would make communism inevitable eventually as jobs are reduced over time in the course of the next hundred or two hundred years.
In Germany the left leaning parties want that shit. It sucks. They side with Russia atm as well and a lot of them just have this odd nostalgia for the time
not to defend them, but capitalism is not doing very good recently, so that might give them points
Yes, I know. I’m not a fan of that myself.
But the idea that current day Russia has it better is insane. The Propaganda has survived through 30 years of non existence
There is a difference between Russia, communism and an authoritarian/totalitarian regime.
Communism is not necessarily authoritarian or totalitarian.
It always leads to absolute authoritarian hellholes. It never not has done that.
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What’s an existing current for. Of communism that hasn’t gone Auth or totalit?
Yup. Also shot the anarchists, that worked with them and wanted democracy, in the back of the head during a meeting, The USSR then also did imperialism in their neighboring countries, deported a ton of people from those countries to death camps in siberia and allied with the nazies dividing Europe in their treaty
Anarchists are the first victims of authoritarian regimes. The dictator goes for them first, even before their sworn enemies, e.g. fascists or, if it’s a fascist dictatorship, communists.
The story of ukrainian anarchist communist, Machno, is interesting in this resect. Bolsheviks treated his so well. Russian revolution, although started occasionally with good ideas, quickly revealed itself as authorithian russian nationist imperialism.
The USSR was definitely communist. They called themselves communist, were inspired by communists and implemented communist policies.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is definitely a democratic republic.
Making this meme took longer than opening a book to understand what communism actually is.
What everyone points to as “communism” shares more in common with capitalism than anything else. They had authoritarian rulers and a small wealthy class that lords over the rest of the populace.
There is nothing “worker owned” about these examples and it only serves to spread FUD about moving away from capitalism towards a more human centric economy
The Red Scare is still working it’s magic I see. I don’t think many people think that communism is the perfect system. Even the ones who support it. It’s just that after living in a capitalist hellhole our whole lives and watching the world burn, some of those ideas start to look like they are worth trying.
Star Trek is a good example of what the endgame of communism is supposed to look like. It’s just the process of getting there that is hard to figure out.
Star Trek is an example of a post scarcity society. I worry about persisting military rank instead of a horizontal power structure.
- Universal access to healthcare, food, water, shelter, electricity, and education without cost.
- Prohibit the operation of businesses or investments in basic necessities mentioned in previous point.
- Non-essential amenities such as entertainment, fashion, travel, luxury goods etc continue to be available for purchase.
- A reasonable tax structure that ensures higher taxes for the rich.
Is that Communism? Is that too much to ask for?
Meanwhile in the real world
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What does “praising” mean? Being critical of what we learned in school about the USSR?
What does “communism” mean here? Advocating for the type of social democracy that’s done pretty well in much of Europe?
I mean I know tankies “exist” but I rarely see them. Just because we’re all critical of capitalism doesn’t mean we’re all dumb enough to want to re try what the soviet union did. It’s almost like our kids will die under capitalism so we’re willing to think outside the box for once.
I’ve never seen anybody advocate for recreating USSR the way it existed. What people actually say is that USSR managed to accomplish a lot of positive things despite the problems it had, and there are a lot of valuable lessons that can be learned from it both positive and negative.
It’s also absurd that people keep fear mongering about existing Communist projects because each one of them is rooted in history, culture, and material conditions that it arose of. It’s pretty obvious that if socialism ever came to the west then it would have its own unique characteristics based on western culture and values. These are idiotic arguments designed to shut down discussion and scare people away from even thinking about communism as an alternative to the capitalist hellscape they live under.
Just because you’ve been blessed from limited exposure to lemmygrad (a Lemmy instance) doesn’t mean everyone has been so lucky.
Yes, they literally pine for the USSR. Yes, they literally venerate Stalin. They’re not just saying “capitalism bad”, they’re saying “the specific implementation of social and economic policies of the USSR is what we want”.
If lemmygrad is what op is commenting on, they left it out of the image and caption.
Ironically, they also ban communists
Define communism.
It’s true that this should not be about communism, but about soviet state, which was an authoritharian state dominated by russian nationalism, but under banner of communism. Their kind of messed up the banner of communism for everybody. If used, it should be discussed with care.
no one can, not even those who advocate for it. (aside from “not that thing that was repeatedly tried and failed”)
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
from Principles of Communism by Friedrich Engels.
And what would be those conditions?
common ownership and control of the means of production in a classless moneyless stateless society governed via collective mutual determination or similar horizontal system of power.
oh, i see, makes sense then why it was never tried. how are we going to have a society without a state to govern it? (i mean not to concern troll here, if a solution can be created for this that would be genuinely interesting, but for example that council the soviets created a century ago was clearly a state)
I love how you just keep flaunting your ignorance here. Communists aren’t imbeciles who think that you can simply snap your fingers and abolish the state, they recognize the need for a transitional socialist period from the current system to a communist one.
and how do you wish to avoid that the leaders of said transitional socialist period just cling to power?
as someone who has to live in the aftermath of one of those “transitional socialist periods” that predictably went nowhere and just broke the country’s spirit completely, i’m really damn curious. we are not talking about hypotheticals here.
Nah, people who advocate for communism are actually educated and can define it very easily. Communism is a political economic system where the working class holds power in society and the means of production are under a combination of public and cooperative ownership. Thinking that communism is difficult to define is the height of ignorance.
