Can anyone succinctly explain communism? Everything I’ve read in the past said that the state owns the means of production and in practice (in real life) that seems to be the reality. However I encountered a random idiot on the Internet that claimed in communism, there is no state and it is a stateless society. I immediately rejected this idea because it was counter to what I knew about communism irl. In searching using these keywords, I came across the ideas that in communism, it does strive to be a stateless society. So which one is it? If it’s supposed to be a stateless society, why are all real-life forms of communism authoritarian in nature?
Wouldn’t call him especially long lived
Oh yeah- that’s kind of the issue. I was more highlighting him for his deep ethical figure. Lenin was a complicated man and, if he had the time he may have turned into a pure dictator, but he really never got a chance. The October Revolution led directly into the Civil War and Lenin had a stroke midway through that. By the time the dust settled Lenin was already significantly impaired and on his last legs. It sucks because (while he wasn’t the nicest) he was a pretty cool dude and a true believer in the cause.
After his death everything immediately went to shit - with the death of Armand only Trotsky had the cloud to claim leadership and he was extremely militant. People romanticize him (understandably because the other option was a right turd) and if he had become Chairman the whole “ruler for life” thing probably wouldn’t have happened, but, Trotsky saw the only acceptable path forward as continual and total war to convert nations into soviet councils until nothing else remained. This would have meant a lot of suffering and inevitable collapse.
So instead of Trotsky some dickweed of a clerk said "Nuh, uh, with his last breath Lenin said I should be
Emperor, KingChairman? Nah, let’s call it “General Secretary” and be all humble… and that’s how we got the unpolished turd that was Stalin.