So solve some of my doubts commies

So solve some of my doubts commies

The word has been thrown around about what it fucking is
Give me a fucking tl;dr of what it is. Communism at this point may as well not be real and was the parents all along.

For real, left wing is highly collectivist, how are you collectivist but an anarchist at the same time. Or anarcho communism is just some dumb fucking concept with no practical use and contradictory just like I thought.

thanks for your attention.

are you netaslichu who just tried to join the anarchy discord?

Communism is stateless, classless, and moneyless where productive forces are held in common. Anarcho-communists wish to instantly dissolve the state and capitalism where as other non anarchist varieties wish to go at it a bit slower.

What's the point in getting spoonfeed by others and their opinions when you can do a little research and then come to conclusions by yourself and/or study the subject further? Skimming couple wikipages would give you the answers you seek.

ye.

I said I was a centrist and got banned.

dm me if you want.

Marxism is anti-shareholder, anti-landlord, pro-regulation, and so on. Historical communism is generally authoritarian and far right wing

The abolition of private property

No, quite the contrary.

He also stopped by the /leftyweebpol/ discord.

because I'm interested in other anons opinions

Classless, stateless, moneyless society where the workers control the means of production and the economy is managed democratically.

You mean liberalism, capitalism isn't an ideology.

Marxism, and because it's far more internally consistent than liberalism and also less servile. Liberalism constantly required leaps of faith to resolve contradictions and assertions that didn't match reality and also asked me to lick the boots of people I knew full well to be corrupt, incompetent layabouts and praise them as the very best among us.

It's like Marxist communism, but they believe in the immediate abolition of the state, where as Marxism generally supports a transitional workers' state to wipe away the remnants of bourgeois society before progressing into communism.

How do you define collectivist, exactly? For us, it mostly refers to horizontalist, democratic organization. Is this that meme where the individual is supposed to sacrifice for the group and the "greater good", because you'll find that's closer to liberal and fascist ideology.

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sure thing kiddo

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The end goal: a classless, moneyless, stateless society. Socialism is the road to get there.
Dual-power libertarian socialism. I choose this over capitalism because capitalism is going to collapse into either socialism or fascism due to advancing automation, and I would much prefer socialism.
I would examine this more practically:
Can a horizontally organized dual power network provide healthcare, food, water, protection to people without help from the state or a hierarchal corporation/organization? Yes. Ask this issue-for-issue and if the answer is yes, then in this case yes.
It depends on how you look at it. It's dependent on mutual aid (for a time, at least) but this doesn't necessarily require a state, especially when you consider that ancoms often have a different definition of what a state is as compared to what you for example might have.

Communism is when the commodity form is abolished, private property is abolished, and production is "centralized" i.e. planned for use value instead of exchange value. I'm a communalist because I believe in abolishing the commodity form but also believe in abolishing hierarchy and domination. Collectivism doesn't mean enslavement to the majority, and you can be an individualist and a collectivist at the same time.

Abolishing of private property and trade to replace it with centralized distribution for the sake of efficiency.
To provide all people with as much access to resources as they need, no more and no less.
Hopefully by not getting embargoed by 2/3 of the planet after barely surviving 3 back to back wars this time.

Then why do you adopt Lenin's weird revisionism that makes socialism something distinct from communism?

I think it's useful even if it's not how Marx used the terminology.

Meh just use google or read Kapital.
Leftism is generally about giving the worker the value of their labor (i.e the factory worker owning what he makes and the machines he uses to make those things as opposed to private property owning landlords) and also doing away with the class system so there is only the laborer.
theres different ideas on how to do that, communism being one of them.

Centrism, in my country at least, is about having no strong ideology or economic theory. Lets take an extreme example, if one side were to say "lets drown a bag of cats" and another "lets not do that you fucking lunatic" the R A D I C A L centrist is there to say "lets just drown SOME of the cats" at the end of the day your still drowning the animals. replace drowning cats with the exploitative nature of late stage capitalism and your good to go on your way and read some books.

Theres lots to do with approaches to history, as well as theory. good luck bucko.

I am curious, why do you want to know? you seem like a fed.

Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society where the economy is managed by the people to directly fulfill the needs of the people, instead of for the sake of exchange on the market for maximum profit.

I am a socialist because capitalism is destroying society and the planet both. All the alienation and degeneration of true culture that Holla Forums likes to bitch about is a result of the capitalist atomization and commodification of all aspects of society. Also, if capitalism is not stopped, the climate will literally collapse and take human society with it.

The split between anarchists and Marxists revolves around whether or not the state should be abolished immediately. After the revolution, Marxists advocate seizing control of the state apparatus and using its power to destroy the bourgeoisie, arguing that statelessness cannot exist until classlessness has been achieved, as states exist to exert the dominance of one class over another. Anarchists argue that the state is an inherently repressive force and that seizing control of it will just result in a new red ruling class that will start to oppress the rest of the workers just like the old ruling class did. Therefore, they advocate the immediate abolition of the state and the reorganization of society into a network of communes from the very start.

An ideology that advocates for a stateless, classless society, with the production of goods handled by local workers councils.
Just be clear, I am not a proponent of this ideology.

I consider myself a Stratocrat.
I created it, rather then subscribe to capitalism because it is an ideology that operates upon the best interests of the majority.
Capitalism simply has to allegiance to the state, nor the people that make up the state and as such is an inherently dangerous, destructive, unethical and ultimately in a terminal decline.

Does the military 'work'?
Would a military with an expanded scope (governance) 'work'?

I personally would answer yes to both questions and as such firmly believe that my ideology would indeed work.

Silly rubbish.

You say that like its a bad thing.
If our evolutionary ancestors were not inherently highly collectivist, 'humans' we would be nothing more then specialised, solitary hunters ala sharks; Likely still only found upon the African savannah.

It is collectivism that literally allowed for our species to exist.
It is collectivism that built human civilisation.
And it is only through absolute collectivism (totalitarianism), that our civilisation has a hope of further advancement.

I like stepping outside my echochamber.

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(OP)
An ideology that advocates for a stateless, classless society, with the production of goods handled by local workers councils.
Just be clear, I am not a proponent of this ideology.

I consider myself a Stratocrat.
I created it, rather then subscribe to capitalism because it is an ideology that would operate in the best interest of the majority.
Capitalism has no allegiance to the state, nor the people that make up the state and as such is an inherently dangerous, destructive, unethical system that has ultimately found itself in a terminal state of decline.

Does the military 'work'?
Would a military with an expanded scope (governance) 'work'?
I personally would answer yes to both questions and as such firmly believe that my ideology would indeed work.

Silly rubbish.

You say that like its a bad thing.
If our evolutionary ancestors were not inherently highly collectivist, 'humans' would be nothing more then specialised, solitary hunters ala sharks; Not the masters of our planet that we are today.

It is collectivism that literally allowed for our species to exist.
It is collectivism that built human civilisation.
And it is only through absolute collectivism (totalitarianism), that our civilisation has a hope of further advancement.

So from what I understand, communism is micromanaged societies with no real head but yes a goods distribution system.

It basically boils down to that, right?

As said before, it's a classless, stateless, moneyless society. Every """Communist country""" so far isn't one by definition, hence not real communism. That said, I believe achieving it is impossible and advocate for stopping at it's transitional phase, Socialism.

Democratic Socialism with aspects of Cybernetics taken from Towards a New Socialism. I believe a more democratic society, with the organization and computing power to do so, would distribute resources in a way that is far more efficient than markets.

I think so. Project Cybersyn, despite never being complete, came close to what I want to do, with only 1970's computers. Towards a New Socialism is written with 90's tech in mind. Today, we could do much, much better in terms of economic planning.

Communism is already supposed to be an anarchistic society, the anarcho part just means that they don't believe in the transition between Capitalism to Communism and just want to get straight to the point after the revolution. The collectivism comes from the idea that there are no hierarchies, and the people would be able to voluntarily work towards common goals, as it's far more efficient to spread the work between many people than to become jacks of all trades.

There are literally thousands of books about what communism is and is not. Why don't you fucking read one.

My boy Howard

In what sense?

Why do you want something to be "boiled down" to a single sentence.

Either individually or by communities like
municipalities or cities or whatever.

To understand the concept better.

You can't understand a concept as broad as communism in a single sentence or meme you illiterate faggot.

You can boil down anything to understand it better really.

Or at least get part of the point across.

If I'm wrong in my definition then feel free to correct me.

More like the whole of society, with planning starting at municipal level and going up to the confederal level. At least, that's how communalists propose to implement it. Remember though that things are being produced FOR USE not to be traded or exchanged.

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So basically you live in fairy land where everyone has orgasms at all times and no struggles? Good luck with that lel

We have no illusions that this is the way things are currently, but then again we're not conservatives so we don't struggle as much to differentiate between is and ought.

Just read the Communist Manifesto, man. It's not even long.

Communism is the collective ownership of the means of prdouction, production for use, the abolition of money and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
How would anarcho-communism work if its collectivist? What a stupid question, the first "anarchisms" ever to be created were highly collectivist, like anarcho-collectivism.
Why did I pick my ideology over capitalism? Because capitalism is retarded the whole economic structure is completely irrational.
If my ideology could work? Well if reactionaries wouldnt fucking exist, probably yes.

Terrible idea

…Wage Labour and Capital then?

Better idea

Communism is the end goal of marxist socialism. Marx described it as being characterized by statlessness, claslessness, and moneylessness. He further described it with the famous maxim "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Marx didn't go into any detail about how specifically society would be organized within the aformentioned criteria, since despite his reputation, he wasn't big on making predictions.

Market socialism, because I began to question the whats and whys of property , as well as what it means to "earn" something, all the while I appreciate the ability of markets to distribute resources in an effective, spontaneous way that planning has so far proven unable to.

I should note that I do have some sympathy for anarcho-syndicalism and technocracy.

It's a branch of marxism that believes that a communist society, as previously defined, can be transitioned to immediatly after capitalism, as opposed to the orthodox marxist view that you have to gradually work your way towards the vague ideal of communism through socialism (an even broader vaguer term than communism) as an intermediary between capitalism and communism. They're proposals for how their communism would be organized typically revolve around networks of localized communes operating in a gift economy and defending themselves with a militia.

Collectivism is one of those buzzwords that people use to describe anyone that views humans as being able to fit within rigid defined groups. People use it as a prejorative to their views of rugged individualism that often entail a denial of the fact that humans are wired to percieve and label groups out of large numbers of individuals. such people also frequently ignore the fact that all the great works of civilization from our technology to our infrastructure was and is developed through groups of people coordinating with eachother.
Besides, adherence to socialism of every school and tendency can be justified on the basis of rational self interest, Stirner inspired many leftist thinkers for a reason.

Marx himself was individualistic and one his major concerns with capitalism was the effect the system had on how we organized and lived our everyday lives, and the negative psychological effects of the system.

Anarchism is completely compatible with collectivism because the organization of society along the individualist-collectivist false dichtomy isn't the point of anarchism. Anarchism is based on the opposition to class based, hierarchical society, and the view that the state both caused and maintains the organization of society along the lines of class hierarchy. Different types of anatchist will place dofferent emphasis on collectove organization or individual action.

You, I like your answer.

Give me sources.

Books, movies, youtube channels, anything goes. please.

absolutely politically illiterate

we have a pinned thread with essential books in pdf

also my face when ancap is like a default economical theory for uneducated edgy kids

I want your opinions and views directly tho.

I know but I like the political views of the guy.

I want whatever he is consuming, whatever he is watching.

Looking at his flag you should probably start with "What is Property" by Pierre Joseph Proudhon.

Also kinda related.

Do you guys know of any good leftie think tanks?

yeah I know that 99% of them are shills and this and that but I want to know of the least shit one

No, read a fucking book, we hardly ever do simplistic polpills here

here you have fundamental works listed in a single pic

You shouldn't: almost everything is wrong.

There are none. "Think tanks" are for the rich.

I will, but I'm more interested of the perspective/views of the people themselves.

I'm seeing some tho.

which one is the most competent?

Those are some sound arguments right there. Care to elaborate? If not, your statement is useless.

That's what you'll find in any book.

Well, this is complex, we have lots of different schools of communism here

Yup, later today, if I have the time.

Looking forward to it.

This is the probably the best book for starters, i wish it was more popular than the manifesto which isn't really that important

Do I get a copy in french or english or what lang

Well I don't know French, so English for me. If you now French that's probably better though.

know French*

I've read too much to list everything I've read here, but I can list some of the major things I've read. I'll list them by subject.

-The Ego and its own & Stirner's critics by Max Stirner(Stirner isn't specifically socialist, but his views on property are definitely not compatible with capitalism)
-The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

Honestly there's so much by and about Marx you're better off asking someone with more expertise on Marxism than me which writings by and about him and his works you should read. I can't even remember where I began with it.

-The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin
-Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin

-What is Property? by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
-The Philosphy of Poverty by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
-It's pretty difficult to cite specific works for market socialism since it predates both Marx and the Anarchists and it's similar to mutualism, minus mutualism's suport for abolishing the state. To cite an individual (though not a founding one and not the most important figure in this school of socialism) John Stuart Mill was a market socialist by the end of his life.

This list is simple, most would say too small and/or imcomplete, and it certainly doesn't even begin to cover the all of the other different schools and offshoots within far-left politics, but I think it offers some good places to start (except for Marx, of course, sorry). I'll get shit for saying this, but, wikipedia has generally accurate (if simplified and incomplete) information on the ideologies I've listed and more, just don't treat eveything it says as authtoritative compared to experts and primary sources.

The word has different meanings in different contexts. For instance, communism the state of affairs or communist society is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Now, observe this does not mean "use a large state to forbid money" because this is incompatible with the "stateless" premise, and it's outright impossible to forbid money in the first place - even with no formal currency, and even in primitive gift economies, there's some sort of implied transactional obligation that basically reconstitutes money (albeit with an interesting, zero-sum "debt" system in contrast to modern public policy.) "Stateless, classless, moneyless society" must always mean that they have become obsolete in that the conditions which give rise to these things have been themselves addressed. To understand that point further you need to go more into historical materialism and the intellectual foundations of Marxism.
Communism the ideology is a collection of related currents which more or less seek to eventually establish such a society, but this type of society is considered more a hypothetical endpoint of history which emerges from resolving the contradictions of the capitalist more pf production. It is not a concrete set of policies one can necessarily implement on top of a contradictory society/mode of production to reach such an endgoal, but rather carries with it a body of different attempts to systematically understand the course of history and the structure of society as rigorous sciences
People (anti-communists, mostly) sometimes use communism to mean "a society which has a government run by self-professed communists," and this is perfectly fine, so long as they then don't equivocate this meaning with the other two with some linguistic juggling. (Words can "mean" whatever you want, so long as you don't use such a definition to equivocate and fallaciously reject/create an argument, and so on)

"Success/failure" conditions *for an ideology* are pretty ill-defined. One could just as well claim that liberal democracy "failed" when the initial struggles didn't immediately pan out quite as the liberal revolutionaries had hoped - Cromwell/Napoleon as dictators, for instance.
I believe that "socialism in one country," the model of Stalin and co, fails to resolve the contradictions of international capitalism by design, and instead limits itself to perpetually embedding a proletarian institution in a capitalist world while still subject to its contradictions. Historical materialism would tell you that, whether strictly "necessary" for the regime or not, the extent of Stalinist and post-Stalinist repression was made possible by the extent of the government's need to guard against outside subversion and retain its leadership structure (for better or worse) just as the bourgeois state engages in imperialism in order to advance and defend its local bourgeoisie's interests against the bourgeoisie of other nations also capable of this, whether this ultimately helps or huts the proles (adventurist foreign policy in the middle east sparking a migration crisis is the clearest modern example - the FSA is largely funded by western states sponsoring "regime change" against Assad)
Marx himself said revolution would have to take hold across the western world to avoid a backslide, using the same historical methodology we do now. I don't see any "failure" of his ideas in those who carved a different path and from the start either rejected capitalism's global nature or refused to address it. By that same token, my ideas mostly align with those who look at capitalism as an international process to be dismantled as a whole, rather than an atomized collection of "capitalisms" to be progressively taken over one by one, neglecting the foreign bourgeois influence we've seen play an instrumental role across the 3rd world workers' movements of the 20th century..

Let's start with what is not wrong:
This is indeed how Marx described the future communist society, aka communism for short.
But "communism" also has another definition, much more important. To use Marx's words:
>Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

So this is wrong:
At best it's a bad formulation, at worst it denotes a complete misunderstanding about what Marxism is.
Marxism is not about setting an "end goal" to which "reality [will] have to adjust itself", but about analysing "the premises now in existence" in order to predict the result of the real movement: the stateless, classless, moneyless society.

[1/?]

>classless society […] workers control the means of production

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Workers are not a class per se.

Classless stands within the context of there no longer being economic classes, including a class defined merely by its propensity to work. Marx talked about proletarian self-negation for a reason, as his roughest sketch of communism was that of "the free association of individuals".

Individuals who will all happen to be workers.

"no"
the UK Fabian society is full-on neoliberal these days.

I know its unrelated but apparently the writter spoiled all of half life 3 because valve didnt give a shit or something.

no half life 3 folks.

The most important aspect of communism is the elimination of private property- that's not to say that anyone wants to take your car or your toothbrush or whatever- rather, its about property that allows someone to obtain wealth purely by owning it rather than actually doing any sort of work with it.
Under capitalism, the people who don't possess property they can use to work are left with no option but to work for those who do- and in exchange, they receive a wage which is generally less than the value they generate for the owner, while the owner keeps the difference without any actual work on their part. This is ultimately unsustainable- the owners will always try to maximize their profits by minimizing the cost of labor, such as through automation, outsourcing, increasing competition in the job market through immigration, etc. Lower wages for the working class means they have less purchasing power, which in turn means less profits for the businesses- its a race to the bottom. Its going to get especially bad in the next few decades due to increasing levels of automation which will eventually leave many people with no work and thus no way to sustain themselves, and the ruling class has demonstrated countless times that they are perfectly willing to just leave people to die.
Under communism, on the other hand, workplaces are controlled by the workers themselves, which means they wont get screwed just so some trust fund kiddie can get an extra thousand bucks every few weeks. Lets say some new device or technique is created that doubles productivity- under capitalism, the owner can simply fire half of the workers and even lower their wages due to the increased competition for the remaining jobs, while under communism the workers could just work half as much.

While capitalists would consider it to be theft for the workers to take control of the means of production, those of us on the left do not consider the ownership of property to be some fundamental right- I could declare myself ruler of the world, but it wouldn't mean shit unless everyone else acknowledged my claim or I was able to enforce it through brute force, the latter option essentially being slavery. When the system is clearly working against the interests of the majority of the population for the benefit of the few, they have no reason to acknowledge the ruling class's claims to property on their own, instead being coerced into doing so by threat of force from the state. Its perfectly reasonable for the workers to want to change the system to one that works in their self-interest.

IMAGINE MY SHOCK

(cont.)

This is how he described the upper stage of communism.

The questioning doesn't seem to have gotten very far, since not only can't you have markets without property, but the corresponding form of property is precisely the bourgeois one.

So "effective and spontaneous" that every agent in the market constantly tries to… anticipate the evolutions of said market and plan its production accordingly.
As always in capitalism (because production for trade is capitalism, whatever fancy name you give to it), the obvious, necessary development of productive forces (here: agents sharing their information and planning together) goes against the very social form of the production.

What is it supposed to be a reference to? The USSR? Because with more than 50% of people working in kolkhozes, that is: in cooperatives selling their products on a market, this was probably as close from "mutualism" Dreamland as one can get.

[2/?]

OP, the problem with the question


is that, in a way, we have been discouraged from answering this beyond the vaguest terms by the Marxist tradition.

Before Marx, there were plenty of people who would give you a detailed description of what their idea of a communist or socialist society is. They would describe the production, the credit system, the political management, the division of labor, the social function of money, the allocation of resources, the family, the education, everything.

After a while, particularly once several failed "experiments" with isolated communities made it clear that you can't scratch society and recreate everything according to new principles at will, a more historical approach, advocated by the Marxists, has become the dominant one.

This approach doesn't really concern itself with coming up with the specific arrangements and institutions of the communist society, but understanding how the arrangements and institutions of each society come into being in the first place. See, it's something we accept, without much reflection, that the way we live is part manifestation of innate human traits, part the result of a long process of reason and reflection. Marx added a different component to this, by suggesting that the way we organize our production and distribution plays a huge, huge role in shaping our society at large, and that by gaining understanding of the historical developments in this key productive factor, you understand how societies change and evolve through different stages.

To give you an example, if you could ask an early advocate of capitalism what a society ran on these principles would look like, he probably wouldn't be able to tell you shit about our complex financial structure, our political system, our cultural traditions and practices, our economic science, our trade patterns, our education system. But he understood capitalism at its basics: he understood trade, private ownership of productive units, he understood wage labour, and he understood accumulation. Its when this latter combinations grows to dominate more and more aspects of our social life, and the classes that correspond to it (the property owner and the wage labourer) become the dominant classes in society, that all these things we know about "Capitalism" this proto-capitalist doesn't start being figured out, because usually society adapts itself to the way we organize our working life, not the opposite. You have this "base" of capitalist production, or feudal production, or slave production, or primitive communal production, and the structure that surrounds it is shaped by it more than it shapes it.

With this fundamental understanding of how society changes, Marx told people not to bother trying to figure out a fictional society where the new egalitarian values would dominate, he called those socialists "utopian" (not, as we tend to imagine, in a dismissive tone - he deeply respected many of them) and told us, instead, to focus on production. In particular, the production within our reach, that of the working place, suggesting that it can, given certain conditions, be adjusted according to new principles and function as a vehicle to a new society.

Now, so if we can't describe Communism, can we describe what this new production, that would function as the driving force towards communism, look like? Yes and no. In a way, all different types of relations of production have more-or-less coexisted. You now have slave and semi-feudal relations operating at the margins of capitalist society, just like you have nationalized, public property and co-ops in a small scale. All of these, including the capitalist mode of production, have existed in one way or another for hundreds of years, including the communist one (besides the obvious example of primitive communism, Marx and Engels were often be a lot more liberal with the term than we are now, refering to russian peasant communes of their own time, for example, as "communist production"). But the point of the Marxist understanding of history is not that one of them is inherently superior or inferior to the other, and thus destined to win by being better or more ethical, but that a convergence of historical factors can make one more suitable to become the dominant one. These factors include things such as: our degree of technological innovation, our accumulated scientific knowledge, our industrial capacity, our management techniques, and so on. We call these a society's productive forces, and a society's dominant relation of production (e.g. the communist or capitalist property) is the one that best suits and organizes our current productive forces. Marx realised that capitalism, the force of supply and demand, the division of labor and the principle of accumulation were all great drivers of progress, of technological advancement, of industrial development. But he also believed these mechanics will eventually outlive their purpose. Once this happens, and it's more of a gradual than instant process, the tools capitalism has created are still there, but now serving a different social dynamic. Eventually, the class that benefited from the previous dynamic starts trying to roll the clock back to sustain its power. A period of conflict arises, and if their obstacle to the new dynamic is overcome, we enter a new, post-capitalist stage. Marx would call this the lower stage of Communism, where much of Capitalism would probably still be in place but gradually replaced by a new system under the auspices of a new class. Since Lenin, it has become common practice to call this lower, initial stage "Socialism"

But why this happens? Why can't Capitalism just go on forever?

There's no point in making all this more convoluted by adding Marxist economics, but Marx's study on the subject of capitalist economy lead him to believe that the market relations would eventually be more efficiently replaced by a rational planning system. Productive units like the factory and the office ("private property") would no longer be in the hands of a few individuals, but insteadmanaged and shared by those who work in it. These new relations of production would gradually take over more and more sects of the economy, as capitalism creates the tools of its own demise and as the class that profits from it loses political power. After a long period of maturing and developing those, just like capitalism had to mature from the early merchants to Wall Street, a society whose understanding of exchange, of public administration, and of property is radically different than ours will emerge. This hypothetical, future society is what we call Communism, and this new way of understanding and organizing social life is what we consider to be moneyless, classless, stateless. It's by no means and abolition of those by decree, but a gradual process through which we make them superflous in the face of new mechanisms.

Hope this isn't a boring tl;dr shit to you, but I just want to give you a context to why our replies to the questions "what is Communism", "what do you want","what would the new system look like" and so on are always so short, vague and disappointing. It's because we don't presume to know it, but we presume to know the seeds to it.