if it were a truly perfect reign, I imagine it would be more about balance and harmony, not control in the traditional sense. After all, if such an entity exists, it would ideally know what’s best for everyone. But yeah, I understand how the idea of total authority, even in a utopian context, can raise concerns. It’s a pretty complex topic.

something that I don’t get about communism: how do you prevent people from redistributing their wealth unequally over time?

I don’t really have any politic views because the discourse on it is so big and the issues so complex, but lean more towards socialism

There is also the great Documentary by Plastic Pills Project Cybersyn & The CIA Coup in Chile

Marx mentioned

So it’s stateless but there’s a state according to the common definition but not according to a different definition that is less common. Got it.

Yes, and eggs are perfect spheres in Vacuum. In real world, any and every attempt at communism will lead to a situation where government becomes an all encompassing over bearing State. that’s why Socialism is a far better and much more practical model than communism ever will be.

Or… perhaps… talk to people and try to understand why they think the way they do. Who knows, maybe you’d hear something that makes sense. Just an idea! :D

Libs when free, open source, distributed and community supported platforms are not made by people who love capitalism and corporations 🤯🤯🤯🤯

Which is why it’s a big irony when people come to Lemmy to complain about communism/socialism.

Like, man, you are on a decentralized network run by volunteers who don’t want to be monetized. You want to enjoy the benefits of socialism but somehow keep capitalism

You could literally describe early christianity as the spiritual arm of a revolutionary front.

Not to the early Christians it wasn’t. The early Christians movements (before they were co-opted by Empire) were radically egalitarian.

That would be irrelevant even if it was true. We are not in the second century. It is a very controversial position either way.

Egalitarian values certainly did emerge out of Christianity, and there was a change in that direction even then, but they were not egalitarian in the modern sense.

Also, please be careful when generalising early Christianty, as it was a very diverse group of sects that hardly agreed on anything.

Early religious communities sometimes were very accepting, and women played a role as well, but they still existed in a very patriarchal culture, so you should not expect their women to be equal to men in society, and there were absolutely positions of authority.

They opposed the empire because initially, they were not perceived by anyone as a group distinct from Jews, which were very hostile to it. However, there were appeals made by powerful Christians later to be recognized as a non-threat to imperial power, and ultimately, they succeeded.

Even so, the Jews simply wanted independence, not equality. The idea of social equality did not even exist then. They were equal in Christ, not in society.

Christianity was not coopted by the empire, it conquered it.

The idea that early christianity was somehow “more pure” I do not accept as well. I would say the Christian tradition has only been enriched over the years, and without a unified basic set of dogmas it would really make much sense.

Sure, but comparing what people thought 2000 years ago to what they think now is a fruitless endeavor.

The concept of democracy came about around that time too (at least the Greek one, which arguably wasn’t the first but I digress) but should we exclude women and foreigners from it? That’s what the early proponents of democracy wanted.

Lemmy.ml is run by MLs for the most part, so even if this isn’t an explicitly Communist instance there is Communist sympathy. The user you are replying to takes issue with that.

I do feel that that wording can cause confusion. Marxists and Anarchists have a different view of what the state even is to begin with, and thus very different end goals. Marxists see the state as an implementation of class oppression, Anarchists see it as a tool of hierarchy.

As a consequence, Marxists see Communism as a fully publicly owned and planned, democratic government, while Anarchists want decentralized networks of Communes. For Marxists, the Anarchist solution retains class distinctions as each commune only has internal ownership and thus class is retained, while for Anarchists the Marxist solution retains the state as it retains hierarchy.

This struggle over analysis drives the major distinctions between each major school of Leftist thought. That doesn’t mean we do not share a common anti-capitalist and anti-Imperialist struggle, but it does mean the strategies and ends are different. If it was simply a question of strategy and timeline specifically, there would not be as much friction outside of explicitly non-sectarian spaces.

The end? No, no, no. The point where the state is abolished is the beginning. We don’t pack up and go home after we abolish the state. We live in the world we created. Everything before the state is abolished is preamble.

Yes, I know communism is stateless. You shouldn’t be so willing to think other people don’t know what they’re talking about. You should be more charitable.

I actually take a critical eye to the word “work” itself and think that it’s too encompassing a term. In our society it’s a blanket word that covers all labor. From punitive, fruitless toil all the way up to invigorating, actualizing applications of trained skill. Lots of what we call “work” are actually things we could want for ourselves in a utopia and would miss without, while IRL we’re currently on the crest of an economic trend in which the majority of society are trapped in ultimately meaningless and forgettable toil under wage coercion. Literally just being kept occupied and oppressed.

Put very simply I think you can slice our current idea of what work is into two halves, work that removes happiness from ourselves and society and work that adds happiness to ourselves and society. As utopians I think a society that contains only the latter is a reasonable prize to keep our eyes on.

On calories housing and most everyday things we are post scarcity if we ignore distribution. In fact we over commission and under deliver all these things. We over produce food by a factor of around 1.5, housing is much less transferable but even there we’re unbelievably wastefull, energy is basically the only thing that isn’t outright overproduced but really only because when we have cheap energy we just tend to use it, often to produce more stuff.

So imo we are by bookkeeping standards post scarcity, delivery/distribution is just fucked and partially because of that we are creating tons of waste.

We could all live in comfort and those who want to could work less, and none of this would break. The real world economy(things, energy, housing , food, water, logistics capabilities…) is so large and secure it could support the world population. If not for the barriers and assumptions, the intrinsic I’ve got mine fuck you of the systems.

For me that is being there, and I hope that even if you can’t agree on that point, it at least illustrates that we are incredibly close to post scarcity.