Communism is an economic structure, not a political one
[link deprecated: http://navywxman.journalspace.com/?cmd=displaycomments&dcid=44&entryid=44] Navywxman is a leftist. [link deprecated: http://odysseus.journalspace.com/?cmd=displaycomments&dcid=211&entryid=211] Odysseus is a right-wing dude. They’ve been having an argument on Navywxman’s space about Communism and fascist states. Navywxman claims that there has never been a true communist state, that they were all run by right-wing governments. Odysseus is disputing that Russia wasn’t a communist country.
Both of them are a wrong, but Navywxman is a quite a bit more wrong than Odysseus.
Communism is an economic structure, not a political one. It’s an unworkable economic structure, but it’s not a form of government.
Therefore you couldn’t have a communist state, because such a thing can’t exist. You can have a communist economy in a totalitarian state, or a communist economy in a democratic state, or a communist economy in a monarchy. Except that communism doesn’t work, so none of those is actually possible. But navywxman can have fun trying, as long as it doesn’t involve me.
The opposite of communism isn’t democracy. It’s capitalism. it goes like this:
Economic: communism vs. capitalism
Political: democracy vs. authoritarianism/totalitarianism/dictatorship
The Russian states were indeed communist economies. But they were also right-wing totalitarian governments. So all the communist tyrannies failed for two reasons: Communism is dumb, and tyrannies are wrong.