I don't like spending this much time arguing against campism but they just keep talking at me.
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
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How does a nonauthoritarian communist society handle a billionaire who buys up income-generating property and pays people to run it for the billionaire’s main benefit?
Let’s also assume he pays people to be security guards for this operation.
If there are billionaires it's not a communist society is it now?
How does one become communist without forcing the billionaire to give up their wealth? Is it not through the use of authority?
You are conflating force and authority
Certainly the forced removal of their wealth must look like authoritarianism to the billionaire, no?
That's debatable, I don't call FAFO authority, but I guess I could see how someone could argue that being limited in doing whatever the fuck one wants is authoritarianism.
In any case, the entire premise of the initial question is flawed and this argument makes little sense
The point is that authoritarian is a vague term that depends on who is holding authority and who is having authority exerted on them.
Oh this is an easy one! Tenants just wouldn't pay rent, so there'd be no value to extract. This would be completely legal and socially acceptable (expected, even). A piece of paper saying "I own this" is just make-believe without a judicial system and police force that will enforce it.
Thanks, you are the first person out of many to provide a real answer and not just get angry at the question!
I was thinking more along the lines of a factory or a farm, but ok let’s go with a rental home.
Let’s say the billionaire’s security guards stop allowing the nonpaying tenant to access the property. Does the nonauthoritarian communist government go arrest the security guards?
This is such a weird question.
How does this billionaire exist in this hypothetical communist society? And how do you expect them to buy up a business?
It's these weird pointless thought exercises people keep throwing at me that drive me to make these posts.
If you really want to know what my desired society looks like, it's this solarpunk game my friends and I play: Fully Automated! Solarpunk RPG World Guide
Go read that, find all the stuff you don't like in it, then write Substack article about it and don't send me a link.
Billionaires do exist, currently, already, in our non hypothetical world.
I wrongly assumed the proponent of nonauthoritarian communism had some idea how to bring about their ideal society from our current world.
Did you already get through the whole thing?
If you're impatient, the relevant section is on page 65.
I have a general rule where if someone is not able to summarize their thoughts in one or two paragraphs, I am not going to waste time reading their 134 page document or 2 hour video they throw at me.
Honestly, that's a great rule.
To answer your question, i don't presume to have the singular correct strategy, but I personally believe the most sensible route out of capitalism is to build parallel structures at multiple levels: neighborhood mutual aid, community farms, county land banks, national single payer healthcare, etc.
I think that this will build an organizing structure and a vision for change, and by supporting more and more people we create conditions that free them from the coercive power of capitalism, which makes more radical actions like a general strike easier to sustain.
As more and more people withdraw from participating in capitalism, the tools of coercion will become increasingly direct, violent, and punitive, and revolution will take the form of a comiserately forceful refusal to submit.
Property’s not for sale dumbass, it’s a communist society. Property is owned collectively by all the people and the state’s job (yes you need the organization of a state) is to distribute that profit among the people. Any power is acquired via being elected (which is the “doesn’t have to be authoritarian” part so many temporarily embarrassed millionaires ignore) and punishment for self dealing from a position of power is treated as treason
In short: care is taken that an owning class cannot ever develop.
Wait so "if election, not authoritarian?"
If a socialist/communist society were working, there wouldn't be any billionaires. In fact, if Capitalism were working, there wouldn't be billionaires. There's literally only two systems that have ever been capable of tolerating that kind of inequality. The mercantile system of feudal states, and the neo-mercantile system of Fascism. The very existence of billionaires is proof of dysfunction in every other economic paradigm.