It's always weird to me that people associate Dictatorial Command Economies with Communism. On one hand they like to label themselves as communist but on the other hand y'all really gotta learn to read between the lines. It's like saying socialism has failed buecase the Nazi's had socialism in their name.
This is just the No True Scotsman argument. Every communist nation has always insisted that the dictatorship is a necessary transitional state so that true communism could be achieved, and been run by parties espousing the need to achieve that communism. Those dictatorships have never truly moved towards that.
Either communism is impossible or communism is dictatorship. You can pick either one, but there's not another option.
While the bolshevists coopted the unions and turned them into agents of the Party, corrupting them from representative bodies into people spying on the working class for disloyalty
Buddy, I'm an Anarchist, I don't praise the Bolshevists. I have my critiques of them too but I'm not gonna sit here and say the Nazis were Socialists because they have "socialist" in their name. "Baby oil" doesn't actually have babies in it.
I couldn't disagree more. How about we stop trying to run dictatorships all together? No one says we need to flip a light switch and suddenly make the world communist. But there are plenty of communist ideals we can try on under democratic systems. Really easy ones that come to mind are forcing companies to give all employees ownership and/or profit sharing. The world isn't black and white and history isn't an example of every possible path forward
3 examoles i could give for socialism two of them where crushed by the Soviet Union. Revolutionary Spain and the free territory of Ukraine. One which works since 10 years (while trying not to get crushed by Turkey and IS) and there are some more such free territories which therefore also democratized thier economics.
Also fuck tankies btw