Communism is a more extreme subset of socialism, where socialism, broadly, is an umbrella term for “we want government oversight on companies.” Socialism can take many forms, such as government having direct oversight on companies, or government passing binding guidelines on what companies can or can’t do, or government operating a company (while still allowing competitor companies to operate as normal). Note that government policies under socialism can and will depend on the industry. Healthcare might be subject to more government oversight than steel manufacturing, for instance.
Communism takes this idea and applies it to all companies in all industries. ie, the government has oversight on all companies. Note that there are also many forms of communism that interpret “oversight” in different ways. More classical forms of communism, for instance, recommends that the government directly manages companies and operates as executives
Broadly speaking, there is no practical difference, hence I didn’t make that distinction. Even in a stateless society, there must be some sort of regulatory body. Even a regulatory body made of the common people is, by definition, a regulatory body. And if this regulatory body has the power to enforce its will onto the entities that it has control over, then I fail to see how that is any different from a government.
It’s not a governmental structure that we would be used to, but it’s a government nonetheless. So at that point, what we’re really arguing over is what methods the people should use to influence this regulatory body. Which is something that I explicitly did not comment on.
If we acknowledge that some form of government must exist in any form of communism, then we can roughly summarize Marxist communism as “the government, which consists of the people organized in a nonhierarchical manner, exerts total managerial and executive control over all industries.” I consider this to be an accurate assessment of Marxist communism, just not phrased in the way that a leftist typically would phrase it
Communism is a more extreme subset of socialism, where socialism, broadly, is an umbrella term for “we want government oversight on companies.” Socialism can take many forms, such as government having direct oversight on companies, or government passing binding guidelines on what companies can or can’t do, or government operating a company (while still allowing competitor companies to operate as normal). Note that government policies under socialism can and will depend on the industry. Healthcare might be subject to more government oversight than steel manufacturing, for instance.
Communism takes this idea and applies it to all companies in all industries. ie, the government has oversight on all companies. Note that there are also many forms of communism that interpret “oversight” in different ways. More classical forms of communism, for instance, recommends that the government directly manages companies and operates as executives
Except Communism is supposed to be stateless, there wouldn’t really be any sort of central government to have oversight over anything.
Broadly speaking, there is no practical difference, hence I didn’t make that distinction. Even in a stateless society, there must be some sort of regulatory body. Even a regulatory body made of the common people is, by definition, a regulatory body. And if this regulatory body has the power to enforce its will onto the entities that it has control over, then I fail to see how that is any different from a government.
It’s not a governmental structure that we would be used to, but it’s a government nonetheless. So at that point, what we’re really arguing over is what methods the people should use to influence this regulatory body. Which is something that I explicitly did not comment on.
If we acknowledge that some form of government must exist in any form of communism, then we can roughly summarize Marxist communism as “the government, which consists of the people organized in a nonhierarchical manner, exerts total managerial and executive control over all industries.” I consider this to be an accurate assessment of Marxist communism, just not phrased in the way that a leftist typically would phrase it