The “political” aspect of communism stems directly from the desire to radically alter the economic system. It is not tied, however, to the particular political order.
Coming from the same very Wikipedia article you cite on communism:
Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers’ self-management, and an authoritarian socialist, vanguardist, or party-driven approach to establish a socialist state, which is expected to wither away.
So, communism, just as capitalism and socialism, can be combined with all sorts of governance types. It can be authoritarian (and so can be capitalism - look at fascism to see an example), and it can be democratic (early Soviets) or even libertarian (anarcho-communism). You can build a totalitarian communist hellhole, and a totalitarian capitalist one; same in reverse.
Now, an argument can actually be made that capitalism is inherently undemocratic. As your ability to exercise rights is heavily tied to your wealth (think of regular worker suing a billionaire, or all the lobbying, or corruption scandals involving the wealthiest and the way they slip out of them like nothing ever happened), people can be and commonly are silenced. Moreover, if you have money, nothing stops you from financing the media to translate your message. This way, important political messages are drowned in favor of what the rich want to translate, and certain (rather corrupt) voices are heavily amplified over others.
By extension, liberalism, even in the most ideal of its forms, is deeply flawed when it comes to a true democracy.
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 1 week ago
While this is true, they’re talking about Stalin & the political system mentioned before
not any political system. None of the other types of communist governments have existed to scale for a meaningful duration & none have fulfilled their fantastical/mythical promise. They either fail within a few years or persist through authoritarian repression while purporting to strive for a fantasy they may never achieve.
Not a political system. Nothing you wrote about it necessarily happens (depends on government), and the rich have been successfully sued & convicted of crimes before.
Isn’t some deluded speculation. It’s a moral & political philosophy of immediately realizable demands to restrict government authority[^liberal-demands]. Are you arguing against the restriction of government authority & against liberty? That’s a strong argument to reject your political system as illegitimate.
Unlike the fantasy of a communist society, the demands of liberalism have been achieved before in North America & Europe. It’s why you’re allowed to write everything you have.
Because liberalism is not democracy, liberal democracy is, and as mentioned:
True democracy was already defined
and demands less.
Only to communists: socialists regard it as the goal.
Economic systems aren’t political systems, so they don’t have rights, though they may depend on rights (from a political system). :::spoiler Moreover, those benefits amount to less than purported in communist states. With all their rhetoric on substantive equality, & the time, state ownership, & central planning to achieve it, we’d expect at least the main outcome of economic equality. Yet, measures of economic inequality don’t support that: China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba rate medium on economic inequality. (Only, North Korea with an average height notably shorter than South Korea due to food shortages has low economic inequality.) To the contrary, the “flawed” liberal democracies in Europe, Canada, East Asia, Australia do better with low economic inequality.
Despite an ideology opposing the exploitation of workers, Soviet forced labor camps did exactly that & would work the malnourished to death.
The formal guarantees for nutrition from those benefits meant little when at least 5 million died during the Soviet famine of 1932 the Soviets created.
In contrast, during the Great Depression in the United States, mortality fell & there were few reported cases from starvation.
Without profit motive in those “benefits”, we might have expected a better environmental record in the Soviet Union. To the contrary
Their planners considered pollution control
and
Stemming from those so-called benefits, the Soviet constitution of 1977 made a number of promises it couldn’t realize.
Shortages increasingly lead people to the second economy with its blat (favors) network. Eventually, the last Soviet leaders, conceding failure by their own standards (economic, social, & cultural rights) & western standards (civil & political rights), dismantled the system from within: Western governments had exceeded their communist state by all standards.