>>7952Step back a bit to see where these things came from. Communism referred to political establishments where wealth was held in common by members of some social formation (which is to say, ordered society). This could be a city-state or a congregation of believers. The commune was autonomous in its relations with other communes, and said very little about social engineering people to "make them like it".
Socialism entailed at its core some form of social engineering, and considered the units of social life the de facto economic units, rather than the individual or political units per se. The only political position of socialism is that the government has to allow anything in socialism to happen. The opposite of socialism is not capitalism, but individualism. Socialism primarily referred to changes to the familiar institutions, among them the family and what future arrangements humans might devise. It's a very different strand of thought from communism, and both are very different from the slave and peasant revolts of the past whose aims were altogether unrelated to anything the modern revolutions were. All of these are alien to what communism and socialism became when pernicious influencers claimed them for their self-serving, narrow program. By the 20th century, there was no possibility of socialism succeeding because its principal backers did not want any leveling of wealth or social status, and saw invasion of the private life of the lower orders as their new mission. Socialism envisioned social engineering "from below"—usually with the expectation that there would be lower class members who buy what the middle class socialists want, which was at first not incompatible at all. That was suddenly and deliberately attacked from all angles in the late 19th century, just when humans were starting to speak to each other and ask if this was the only way. Some said no, but all permissible political ideas said there must never be another world. I don't think it was possible for this to have been averted for a variety of reasons, but even now we are continually surprised to learn the rulers of humanity really are that evil, even though we should know better. It doesn't occur to most of us that torture for torture's sake is a great world, but if you're the torturer, to do anything but that is "retarded", and you don't want to be retarded do you? About the only dif
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