Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
local communities managing themselves (something like city states maybe?) and their relations to other communities
Your describing a Soviet you filthy commie.
But for real what your describing is communism as marx originally thought of it. The one example marx gave as a model for what communism would be was the Paris commune which adheres to a lot of what you said. Most leftist agree that that’s the end goal it’s just a matter of how to get there. Lenin originally pitched the Soviet Union as just that, a bunch of local councils(soviets) freely cooperating and making there own rules. He saw how the Paris commune’s openness and military indecisiveness led to it being brutally suppressed though and wanted an interim top down dictatorship and rapid brutal industrialization to handle this threat. The threat never went away though, first with the Nazis almost annihilating them then the u.s. pointing nukes at them, so neither did the dictatorship.
Their end goal was still avowedly the same though, and communism, to me at least, is about that goal. Their are a bunch of different theoretical paths to it, and there’s tonnes of infighting as to which ones the best, but all communists agree that the commune/Soviet/city state should have all the power.
Lenin did not seize absolute power out of some lofty ideal of protecting the workers. He was very motivated about reclaiming the Russian Empire and murdering any workers or separatists that were in his way. Even contemporary communists like Rosa Luxembourg recognized that. Lenin and Stalin had over 20 years to dismantle the state before the Nazis became a threat. Not to mention, the original plan was to ally with the Nazis! The leaders never had any interest in helping workers.
On your first point you should read the question of nationalities which Lenin wrote shortly before his death. He clearly wanted to take down the tsarist apparatus after all the existential threats to the Soviet Union were gone.
Where did Luxembourg say Lenin was trying to recreate the tsarist empire? She was critical of the Bolsheviks authoritarianism but If anything she was also critical of the Bolsheviks limited allowance for nationalism and would’ve suppressed nationalism further, she was a strict internationalist.
If they did dismantle the state apparatus before the Nazis came what do you think would happen? The Soviet Union was barely able to turn the tide of the war with a united front and 20 years of intense, brutal industrialization. If they had dismantled the state and Russia was just a bunch of rural locally run villages in a loose confederation in 1939 the Nazis would’ve steamrolled over them and genocided the population.
Thanks for the explanation.
The problem is exactly the “how”, as you described. And personally, I don’t really have any idea, since all the possible ways seem to involve somehow contradicting that goal “temporarily” (by using violence, limiting individual liberties, etc.), which I don’t like. I think maybe over time, (a very long time, perhaps?) the way of thinking of human societies will slowly (and through a painful process) shift to that direction (and maybe not! who knows!).
Either way, life is painful and world is cruel.
Reformism is the term for a path to socialism without the use of violence.
