• Willy@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    socialism and communism can be any form of government you want because they are economic styles

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      Not really. You can’t compartmentalize government from the economy, both are so thoroughly inter-twined that they cannot be truly distinct. There’s wiggle room, to be sure, but the state is fundamentally attached to the question of the class structure of a society. Systems aren’t recipes picked out in a book, but physical things that evolve and change over time, radically shifting societal structures not due to decisions made by individuals, but economic compulsion.

      That’s why the study of economics was often called “Political Economy.”

      • Willy@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        which form of government isn’t compatible with which form of economy? I guess a communist anarchy would be pretty hard, but not impossible. totalitarian free-market capitalism, not as hard. I’m not saying some don’t work better together.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          3 days ago

          You’re again looking at government systems as personal choices, and not as intrinsically tied to the economy. Just because you can imagine a form of society doesn’t mean it’s actually feasible in the real world, this is called utopianism, ie crafting a utopia in your head like someone picking out their outfit for the day, rather than through economic analysis.

          Further, most anarchists would consider themselves communists, though the focus on horizontalism makes it a very different form of communism from Marxist communism, which is fully centralized. Moreover, “totalitarian” isn’t a form of government, really, just a descriptor for levels of freedom of an individual in a subjective, negative manner.