Layla

That attitude also just plays into their "divide and conquer" strategy. If we bicker over which marginalized groups get to have rights and which we are willing to sacrifice, then we have lost solidarity. We win human rights for all by banding together.

Don't kink shame him

Agree, I'm anti-state and against central planning. But that's a separate topic. You haven't answered the question.

Ah, you don't want workers to own the means of production because you don't want those means of production to exist. Valid. Not my goal, but still valid.

But how would workers owning the means of production be directly contrary to eliminating coercive hierarchies?

Lol, I'm already an anarcho-communist. Don't tell me you're an ancap. Suddenly everything you've said would make sense.

The four times communism has been tried are the Paris Commune, Catalonia, Rojava, and possibly Cherán. None were authoritarian, or by definition they would not be communism.

"Where did you get “communism must never be attempted,”

You literally said it was authoritarian. That's the whole argument we've been having

It's a bit silly to expect me, one person, to single-handedly plan all of society. We're envisioning what a fair society would look like. You could have brainstormed with us what it would look like, or how to achieve it peacefully. Instead you attacked with nonsensical accusations you can't explain.

Also, you are once again implying that the status quo must always be defended no matter what it is, because you can only imagine change happening through violence.

Hundreds of thousands of battles over land happen in feudalism and capitalism, but in *one* of those one guy promised he might one day implement communism, but never did. Therefore you conclude that communism must never be attempted. That's pretty darned farfetched.

How is that relevant? Are you saying that bloodshed was caused by farmers owning their own farms? It was the opposite, it was caused by an elite group of people owning farms and taking all the wealth created by the workers - the same conditions as capitalism.

You haven't voiced a concern. You just keep repeating that it's authoritarian to dismantle authoritarianism. I have asked you to explain and you refuse.

Please tell me why farmers owning a farm, deciding how they work and what to do with the crops is authoritarian. I'm listening. /genuine

Well yeah when you've spent the whole time telling me to stop trying to picture a world where we are free from the current authoritarianism, unless I can 100% guarantee that any attempt to create that world wouldn't set off a bizarre chain of events that makes something bad happen

So you're against the very concept of change? No matter how dystopian or authoritarian a system is, even if it is causing genocide and extinction, the status quo must always be defended? Because any change of any kind has a chance of being corrupted?

You realize that incentivizes authoritarianism?

If I knew how to take down global superpowers and give the power to the people, I would have already done so.

But the question is moot at this stage. First we need to agree on a vision of what society we want before discussing how. No point in fighting until we know what we're fighting for.

Neither of those have implemented communism. Workers did not own the means of production in either. Those are two countries whose leaders claimed they would one day implement communism and have not done so.

Also, capitalism's death count is off the charts.

So when you said "Communism isn't good," you actually meant "Communism is very good but I personally can only imagine one possible way of making it happen and that one way would be bad"?

That's definitely not a clear way to communicate.

These are two separate issues:
1) What communism could be like once fully implemented
2) What we would need to do to be able to implement it

The discussion has now moved on to the second issue

Of course not. How to dismantle power is an extremely hard problem. But none of the arguments in this thread were about how to seize power to be able to implement it. You guys just now started talking about that.

But he didn't mention how it will be practiced, he mentioned how we would seize enough power to be able to start implementing it.

If you want to say something about how it would be practiced, then you will need to make a new argument.

Again, why would we be "evenly distributing wealth"?

I was trying so hard for so long to tell my colleagues that we needed unions and it was dismissed as nonsense. I wish I had been wrong. :-(

Thank you for helping me switch from adversarial discussion to finding common ground ❤️

I agree about effort to explain, but I believe that the reason for that is that we are fighting propaganda.

I no longer believe welfare concessions within capitalism are sustainable. The power is still concentrated, but the people just got thrown a few bones, which can easily be lost again.

Aha! So your worry isn't communism itself, but that our attempts to create it will be co-opted.

100% agree that's a hard problem! But I also think that creating a vision of the future is the first step to solving that hard problem. I'm not convinced that an army is the only way.

You too, and you're saying a lot of stuff that I used to say. I used to think Sweden's model was the answer.

I agree. Sometimes people are purely bad actors and cannot be reasoned with. I am not convinced that is the case here and I'm not prepared to jump to that conclusion so easily.

Please explain exactly how it is authoritarian for workers to decide over their own work and the wealth they create, but not authoritarian for a tiny percentage of people who don't work to control everything workers do and take everything workers create.

If you have communism, why do you also need to "distribute wealth evenly" in the first place?

As for your second question, humans are susceptible to greed, and that's why you believe we must continue giving all the wealth and power to a tiny percentage and fight anyone who wants to break up power?

I don't want to shatter anyone's ego. I want solidarity.

What would you like to call it when the workers own the means of production?

"The books that created communism"? These are abstract ideas that have been workshopped for at least a century. This reads like a religious person who got attached to a single line from a Bible and refuses to hear anything that contradicts their interpretation of that one line.