I often see these words used interchangeably, though as I understand it there is a difference between the two ideologies, no?
I often see these words used interchangeably, though as I understand it there is a difference between the two ideologies, no?
That’s an anarchist society
At that point it’s potato, potay-toh. Marx and pretty much every communist philosopher defined it as stateless.
This makes me very confused because I believe there was nothing stateless about the USSR, even early on following the October revolution. The red army, the new economic policies, the food seizures, forced conscription, the supremacy of the politburo… weren’t they literally banning strikes in factories by claiming all the social issues had been resolved through the soviets, when it wasn’t the case at all (the small bourgeoisie/managers came back and we’re still somewhat in charge)? When I look at it, the power of the Soviet state was omnipresent. But maybe I’m not knowledgeable enough?
The USSR was not communist. They had a communist ideology, sure, but the definition essentially comes down to a communist society being stateless while also being a dictatorship of the proletariat (that is, ALL the workers are essentially the leader at the same time and they make decisions collectively through direct democracy). And the USSR could only barely fit that definition for about one or two years before Lenin essentially steered it into a regular autocratic dictatorship with communist aesthetics.
So essentially, communism is defined as something that cannot exist in reality.
Yes, not at large scales. There are too many people around nowadays for something like this to work.
Human society was communist for over a hundred thousand years before the idea of empires and cities came along. Indigenous communities lived under what we would call communism in the modern day until feudalism was invented.
Some communities, I’d say. I’m pretty sure the systems in indigenous communities were diverse (and they still are, at many places).
No, ancient tribes were not soviets.
They sort of were. They just didn’t have a word for it.