COMMUNISM
Communism is the position that property can only be legitimately owned by the community and never by individuals.
Much confusion, disagreement, stupidity, and bloodshed resulted from conflating The Community with The State.
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(Contrast with PROPERTARIANISM and IDEOLOGICAL CAPITALISM.)
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In the 20th century, the term 'communism' came to mean communitarian statism.
As implemented at a national level, 20th-century communism was exclusively authoritarian.
An anarchist or anti-Statist conception of communism is of a free society of equals without private property. In anarchist communism (a.k.a. 'anarcho-communism'), all property is owned by the community or collective, freeing "the workers" from the exploitation of capitalism and the coercion of the State.
Karl Marx shared this definition of communism with the anarchists, but believed that the ultimate goal of an anarchist communism had to be preceded by state socialism -- a "dictatorship of the proletariat".
Vladimir Lenin called the Russian anarchists "Left-Wing Communists" and described their stance against state centralization as "an infantile disorder".
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Anarcho-communists, in contrast with their mutualist comrades, reject the market because they reject all forms of competition, and see all forms of trade as exploitative: someone wins and someone loses. To a communist anarchist, the very term 'free market' is self-contradictory.
bkMarcus, Reluctant Capitalist
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