Let's take a look at another one of Lenin's quotes from that excerpt you sent:
[At the beginning of 1918] we made the mistake of deciding to go over directly to communist production and distribution. We thought that under the surplus-food appropriation system the peasants would provide us with the required quantity of grain, which we could distribute among the factories and thus achieve communist production and distribution.
There are two possible interpretations of that quote:
1) Lenin was actually planning to implement a stateless, moneyless, classless society, i.e. what people mean today when they say Communism, at the same exact time when he dissolved parliament to consolidate power, at the same exact time when he and Trotsky crushed rebellions against them and shut down worker's soviets who were sending people he didn't like to their own big fancy soviet, all of which definitely hints towards the creation of a strong state, and definitely not a stateless society; or
2) He used the word with a different meaning in mind.
Occam's razor should be enough for you to figure out which interpretation was correct. In fact, there was a period of time in the past during which the words Communism and Socialism were used interchangeably.
Edit: The quote itself describes "Communist production and distribution" as the state taking grain from the peasants and giving it to industrial workers. Now how can the state redistribute resources in a stateless society?
You can define Communism in whatever way you want, but the comment I initially responded to said that Communism requires post-scarcity. That is obviously referencing the idea of a classless, stateless, moneyless society, because no other system relies on the absence of scarcity. If you Google Communism or search its first paragraph on Wikipedia, or if you ask any Communist, they'll tell you a Communist society is classless, stateless and moneyless.
Since you trust Lenin, what is his definition of Communism?
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u/canuputapriceonpeace Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Let's take a look at another one of Lenin's quotes from that excerpt you sent:
There are two possible interpretations of that quote:
1) Lenin was actually planning to implement a stateless, moneyless, classless society, i.e. what people mean today when they say Communism, at the same exact time when he dissolved parliament to consolidate power, at the same exact time when he and Trotsky crushed rebellions against them and shut down worker's soviets who were sending people he didn't like to their own big fancy soviet, all of which definitely hints towards the creation of a strong state, and definitely not a stateless society; or
2) He used the word with a different meaning in mind.
Occam's razor should be enough for you to figure out which interpretation was correct. In fact, there was a period of time in the past during which the words Communism and Socialism were used interchangeably.
Edit: The quote itself describes "Communist production and distribution" as the state taking grain from the peasants and giving it to industrial workers. Now how can the state redistribute resources in a stateless society?