> But communism isn't defined by that [central planning]
> Communism is ultimately about building a totalitarian system
I really don't want to be advocate of communism, but it seems to me you're cherry-picking the defining characteristics of communism to suit you. After all:
> Indeed Marx laid out almost nothing of how actual communist states were meant to operate
So why demand it must be totalitarian? Also
> Communism is ultimately about building a totalitarian system in which the ruling classes must be loyal devotees of Marxist social theory
Communist party in Poland at least certainly wasn't that. They were the first to become devote capitalists in 1989.
Marx didn't specify many details about how a communist society was meant to be run, but he did specify quite clearly how it was meant to be created. See the numbered list at the bottom of the Communist Manifesto:
4. Confiscation of property of all rebels and emigrants
5. Centralisation of all credit in the hands of the state
6. Centralisation of all communication and transport in the hands of the state
9. Forced mass population transfers out of cities into the countryside
How can anyone implement such drastic policies? Marx was under no illusions about this and spelled it out quite clearly, which is why the fact he's not perceived as being as evil as Hitler is an unfortunate stain on our society:
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads ...
So he literally stated in his manifesto that creating a communist state would require despotism, or in more modern language, totalitarianism. That was just one of many calls Marx made for violent revolution rather than democratic means.
Given this starting point it's not a huge surprise the Soviets tried to implement a fully planned economy. Marx didn't specify that as an end state per se, but he specified very similar things as a means to get to communism. China still has a largely planned economy despite successfully whitewashing itself as "capitalist", hence all the stories about staggering piles of non-performing debt, zombie banks kept alive by government fiat (centralise all credit in the hands of the state), and massive overproduction of things like steel.
As for Poland in the late 80s, yes, by the end of the 20th century a lot of committed communists had realised how foolish they had been. But did they really understand the true root cause of the problems? Or did they mistakenly conclude the root cause was central planning? Sometimes when I look at the behaviour of the eastern European states I have to wonder.
> So he literally stated in his manifesto that creating a communist state would require despotism, or in more modern language, totalitarianism
Your whole argument hangs on equating despotism with totalitarianism. But it's not the same, these 2 characteristics are orthogonal.
For example European absolute monarchies were despotic but not totalitarian (mostly because there was no technology to exert absolute control over the society).
> That was just one of many calls Marx made for violent revolution rather than democratic means.
Again, violent revolution doesn't mean the state is totalitarian. Many democracies started with violent revolutions, many totalitarian states started with democratic elections.
> Marx didn't specify that as an end state per se
Thank you, that's my point. You're defining what is characteristic and accidental in communism arbitrarily.
I don't really recognise a significant difference between a (real) monarchy and a totalitarian dictatorship, to be honest. Words change over time - North Korea isn't normally described as a monarchy but it has hereditary leaders with total power. China doesn't have hereditary leaders but the way power is passed between leaders is still pretty incestuous. The USSR selected rulers through various court intrigues and assassinations, much like many monarchies did.
You seem to draw a distinction based on how much power the ruler had: "absolute" control or less than that. But all despotic rulers exercise as much power as they possibly can. Modern tech arguably makes it easier to exercise more and more power (probably ... I haven't really thought about it). But if Henry VIII had the ability to censor information by flicking some switches he'd have certainly done it.
My point about violent revolution was that if you build an organisation capable of doing all the things Marx said was necessary, you've built a totalitarian state. Yes, in theory a violent revolution which centralises all power in the hands of the revolutionaries could work out great and turn itself into a democracy, but in practice this never actually happens. Instead the state sticks around and stays despotic, it doesn't go "right! job done!" and dissolve itself like Marx imagined it would.
Given Marx's preconditions for creating communism, eternal totalitarian rule is the only plausible outcome. People don't just give up total power once they killed people to obtain it.
> I don't really recognise a significant difference between a (real) monarchy and a totalitarian dictatorship
It's not my distinction, it's the definition of totalitarianism (as opposed to other authoritarian forms of power).
> Totalitarian regimes are different from other authoritarian regimes. The latter denotes a state in which the single power holder – an individual "dictator", a committee or a junta or an otherwise small group of political elite – monopolizes political power. "[The] authoritarian state [...] is only concerned with political power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty". Authoritarianism "does not attempt to change the world and human nature". In contrast, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of citizens. [1]
Absolute monarch doesn't care what peasants think, what ethnicity or race they are, and in general it leads to much less cleansings and pogroms than totalitarianism.
> Yes, in theory a violent revolution which centralises all power in the hands of the revolutionaries could work out great and turn itself into a democracy, but in practice this never actually happens.
why all power? Where did you get that all from? Again, I hate to play the devil's advocate, but I find myself pushed to do it - Marx wanted to change the ownership of means of production. It's not all the power, and it's not unprecedented. Most revolutions change the top dogs. In very few cases in history that change led to totalitarian state.
Romania had a violent revolution. France had a violent revolution. USA had a violent revolution. Poland had violent revolutions every 20 years for over a century (BTW several of the Polish uprisings wanted to free the serfs and give them the land). All of them are now democracies :)
Synonyms for totalitarianism: despotism, authoritarianism. In common language they're the same thing.
Perhaps an English-speaking political scientist would be unhappy at those thesaurus entries and claim the differences are critical, I don't know, honestly, don't really care. If you wish to draw a distinction, and argue that it's really important that Marx was merely authoritarian and not totalitarian (or whatever), that's fine by me. I concede the point through apathy. Does Polish draw the same distinctions as English, I wonder?
Anyway. It's a distraction. The point is, communism always ends in being a dictatorship like the USSR or China, it must through its very foundational assumptions, and whatever you call the resulting system that will always yield very heavy state control of industry, information, etc. You can't have a Marxist system without it.
As for top dogs: that's one of the primary logic errors in Marxist philosophy. He divided the world into exactly two camps and then pitted them against each other: labour and owners, workers and capitalists, proles and bourgeoisie. But this world existed only in his mind. Even in the 1800s there were many people who didn't fit that neat classification, including himself. Marx spent his entire life producing words and ideas; his "means of production" was a pen and paper. He was able to do this because he was supported by a factory owning friend. So was Marx a top dog or oppressed prole? What would it mean to seize his own means of production? Have a government official steal his pens? Marx failed to notice that his own existence didn't fit his own theories, because he was an idiot whose thinking had no value due to his staggering lack of real world experience. Indeed in Das Kapital he was forced to engage in various kinds of fraud to make his own arguments work, for instance, by citing decades old English factory inspector reports as evidence of contemporary problems without observing that those same reports led to changes in the law and improvements in factory conditions. If he had remarked on that, it would have undermined his thesis that capitalism couldn't self-improve and needed violent revolution to improve worker conditions.
A good introduction to just how isolated from reality he was can be found in the book "Intellectuals" by Paul Johnson. The relevant chapter has been reproduced at this link (ignore the weird picture and lack of attribution, the words are the same):
That sounds like a recipe for entertaining case law!
"I plead not guilty your honor, for whilst it's true that we wish to overthrow Polish democracy and install a supreme leader for life, we would call him King! Long live the king!"
Advocating/preparing/performing a coup is punished no matter what system you want to change into. But propagating totalitarian systems is illegal even if you don't want to do it with a coup.
Also we don't do case law here (if I understand what "case law" means).
On related note we've got hilarious court case where neonazis from ONR were explaining to the court they weren't doing "heil hitler" salute to propagate nazism, but to celebrate Roman traditions. SS signs were for reenactment and swastikas as everybody knows are Hindu symbols of good luck.
> Communism is ultimately about building a totalitarian system
I really don't want to be advocate of communism, but it seems to me you're cherry-picking the defining characteristics of communism to suit you. After all:
> Indeed Marx laid out almost nothing of how actual communist states were meant to operate
So why demand it must be totalitarian? Also
> Communism is ultimately about building a totalitarian system in which the ruling classes must be loyal devotees of Marxist social theory
Communist party in Poland at least certainly wasn't that. They were the first to become devote capitalists in 1989.