How do you propose to take away everyone's possessions and give them to the state without full blown authoritarianism? I assure you no one will do so out of the goodness of their heart.
> How do you propose to take away everyone's possessions and give them to the state without full blown authoritarianism?
Property is supported by the state. Property rights are meaningless if they aren't recognized and enforced legally.
Like I said, "communism" is very broad.
A central theme in communist ideology is that workers own the means of productions.
That can have many forms, but does not necessarily lead to a centralized state, like the Soviet one.
EDIT: I find that the bs jobs are a symptom of centralized/privatized means of productions. Which is why I made the "pretend to work" comment. Corp style jobs resemble soviet style labor.
Bureaucracies come in many forms. Some look like the USSR, some look like middle management.
>Property rights are meaningless if they aren't recognized and enforced legally.
They can be enforced illegally as well. Now that can be viewed as a shadow state and a shadow legal system operating within the primary one, but under such a view we would find that the state exists as soon as any two humans work together and as a consequence the common meanings of words become suspect.
I think a better way of looking at it is that property is supported by violence. Civilized society we give rights to that violence to society to deal with those who don't behave because in general it is more efficient for all of us, but if that society betrays our expectations we will resort to violence against even that society itself.
It also isn't just property rights. All basic concepts, including up to the right to life, follow the same pattern. Thus a society that can destroy property rights is free and capable to destroy rights to life or bodily integrity.
The concept of communism is in the name. Individuals don't own property. Everything is common to all. Hence, the need for force against those who want to individually own something.
If you're not willing to learn anything about the ideas you want to critique, why are you speaking up? Making arguments about something based entirely on the name of the thing is a six year olds game, you can do better I'm sure.
I've read the communist manifesto. The concept and reason for its downfall is all really obvious, and you can understand easily from the name why it is going to necessitate totalitarianism.
The employees in a company form a community.
The community of employees owns the company, aka worker owned company.
The profits of the company are distributed to the community.
This is a core idea in communism, everyone has a common stake.
Sure, on a small scale, where everyone buys into the concept. However, communism as a political ideology is a large scale, forced concept. This necessitate totalitarianism.
But it is more of a derived consequence. Maybe not all of their possessions, but enough that you don't enable people to engage in free trade and capitalism.
Agreed. Many people identify Communism with Stalinism, Stalinism with Marxism-Leninism, Marxism-Leninism with Marxism, Marxism with Marx & Engels, Marx & Engels with Marx, and finally Marx with Communism. All of these identifications are heavily suspect, and are considered as such by the relevant experts (whether philosophers, sociologists, historians or political scientists).
Unfortunately, few people on either "side" take the time to look deeply into the movement(s) they support or rally against.
Unfortunately, propaganda (from both sides) has made it synonymous with full blown authoritative Soviet unions style regimens.