this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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Afaik this happened with every single instance of a communist country. Communism seems like a pretty good idea on the surface, but then why does it always become autocratic?

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

This is an incorrect interpretation of the phrase "withering away of the state," which I elaborated on here.

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not really talking about Marxist communism. See my other comment, but in any realistic scenarios, communism is unlikely to form spontaneously as the first form of government in a new society.

And since revolution on a large scale requires centralized coordination and leadership, there will always be someone or some group given centralized power that is unlikely to allow for decentralization to happen on a large scale and is actually more likely to grab the power of the previous government system and keep it centralized, "for the good of the people" or "to defend the people" or whatever. Even well meaning revolutionaries are highly likely to crave control and be unlikely to want to allow "someone else" to change what they put in place. This then leaves in place the centralization indefinitely and never leads to communism.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Communism is centralized. Central Planning and Public Ownership are the core foundations of the economy in Communism. You're talking about Anarchism as though Marxists were trying to achieve that, and you're calling Anarchism "Communism."

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.world 1 points 56 minutes ago (1 children)

But communism is less centralized than representative democracy or dictatorship or whatever the pre-revolution government likely was. These portions of the government must decentralize as part of the process of moving between government types. That decentralization is essential or it's not true communism, it's the fake things that pretend to be communism like PRC, USSR, DPRK, etc.

The only way that some amount of decentralization doesn't need to happen is if were talking about a society with no previous need for government forming into a communist state, which is what I mentioned was extremely unlikely, even if there were societies isolated enough to still exist without any form of centralized government.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 minute ago

No, Communism is centralization. It isn't less decentralized than pre-revolution government, but more. That's the point, to fold the entire private sector eventually into the Public, with Central Planning. You keep saying "decentralization is essential for Communism" but that's Anarchism. AES are examples of Socialist States trying to work towards Communism.

Where on Earth are you getting your ideas? It certainly isn't Marx.