A-Infos (en) Australia, Ancomfed: Picket Line - What is communism? (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Communism is our goal, the endpoint of the process that destroys 
capitalism. It means abolishing class divisions, wage labour, and the 
state. Communism is about transforming the entire structure of social 
life, dismantling the capitalist system in its totality. ---- Capitalism 
isn't just an economic system. It's a system of social control that 
reaches into every part of life. It controls time, labour, and survival 
through markets, wages, and coercion. Under capitalism, people must sell 
their ability to work in order to live. Under communism, we will 
restructure life around solidarity, self-determination, and collective 
access to what we need to live and thrive.

Under capitalism, things are produced as commodities to be sold for 
profit. A capitalist does not make a chair because people need to sit, 
but because it can be sold to make money. Today, everything is 
commodified-our food, our homes, even our social lives.

Communism abolishes the production of commodities for profit and 
replaces it with production for human need. Decisions about what and how 
to produce will no longer be driven by the pursuit of individual wealth, 
but made collectively by all workers in the interests of everyone's 
well- being.

Communism also abolishes the compulsion to work that is built into 
capitalism. Under capitalism, we have no choice but to sell our labour 
to the bosses, or else face starvation, homelessness and poverty. In 
communism, production is planned for human need, not profit, so work 
becomes a free choice- a contribution to the social whole rather than a 
condition for survival.

This is not a utopian fantasy. It reflects a basic truth: we already do 
the work that keeps society functioning. We build and maintain 
everything- yet we don't control any of it. Capitalism depends on our 
labour but excludes us from power. Under communism, we take back that 
control and decide ourselves what work gets done. No more luxury 
apartments while others sleep outside. No more wasted labour producing 
junk while real needs go unmet. Instead we engage in necessary work, 
shared and planned together.

Communism isn't a childish dream where everyone becomes kind, generous, 
and wise. It doesn't depend on some ideal human nature. It will involve 
average human beings doing average human things: getting tired, making 
mistakes, being selfish. That's fine. Communism does not require morally 
perfect humans. The point is to build systems that don't rely on 
domination, coercion, or profit to keep running.

People are shaped by the systems they live in. Capitalism trains us to 
compete, hoard, and treat each other as threats or obstacles. It 
isolates us, then sells connection back to us as a product. It rewards 
dickhead behaviour. But people are also capable of care, solidarity, and 
courage. At the moment, capitalism distorts or suppresses these 
capacities. Communism builds on them instead. It starts from what 
already exists: the fact that we cooperate every day, at work and in 
life, but under conditions we do not control. The contradiction is that 
while production is collective, ownership is private. Communism resolves 
that contradiction.

Communism has not been tried and failed. What's failed is trying to 
build socialism through top-down party-states while keeping capitalist 
structures intact. The idea that communism equals authoritarianism is 
Cold War propaganda. Communism is when the state no longer exists, not 
when it does more things.

Struggle reshapes those who fight.

Communism is not a better-managed version of capitalism. It's a 
completely different world. Not one where factories have new owners, but 
one where the concept of ownership itself is no longer the basis of 
power. A world where life is organised to meet needs, not to create 
wealth for a few. A world where people are not reduced to tools for 
extracting profit. We've seen glimpses of this world in revolutionary 
Spain where millions of workers and peasants took control of the 
factories and the land, abolished money and decided their future 
together. Our task is to bring this vision to completion.

This vision is necessary because capitalism is not sustainable. It moves 
from crisis to crisis, extracting everything it can from people and the 
planet. The ruling class has no plan for what's coming. There is no 
benevolent version of this system waiting in the wings. No reform will 
make it humane. Communism is necessary.

Communism won't happen spontaneously or inevitably. We have to build it. 
Capitalism will not disappear peacefully. The capitalists will fight to 
survive. Communism requires revolution: planned, organised, and fought 
for. The working class is not just a victim of capitalism, it is also 
the force that can bring it to an end. There is no perfect roadmap, if 
communism is the horizon the path is only made by walking. We will build 
the future through our struggle, by learning, adapting, and organising 
in real conditions.

This struggle is not only a means of resistance-it is the ground where 
the working class transforms itself, and where a different kind of human 
being begins to take shape. It is where the working class becomes 
something more than a workforce under exploitation. Struggle reshapes 
those who fight.

That's why building class power matters now, not just to prepare for 
revolution, but because revolution is made through struggle itself. It 
is how the class becomes revolutionary. Fighting back is the way we 
become conscious of our own power. In the course of struggle, the 
working class becomes something more than what capitalism allows: it 
becomes the agent of its own liberation.

https://ancomfed.org/2025/09/what-is-communism/
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