I am heavily opposed to Communism and socialism in principle because they even in applied representation of their theories and systems enable one or more people (depends upon how you structure it) to dictate what defines the needs of other people. Now I've had it argued before with me that "to each according to their needs" can be determined by each person themselves. I personally am very familiar with the difference between a need and a want though often this is not the case with my opponents in such debates.
Even so it does not support voluntarism. It is authoritarian in nature and I can give you examples now to illustrate this.
So you decide to create your communist state which you indicate is voluntary.
I state I am not giving my creations to the common pool. I am creating my art, and my decorations, my clothing, and growing my own food for my family and I. We will do it ourselves and for our needs. We will keep our creations because we want them. We might be willing to trade some of our creations for some creation by someone else, but the problem comes from this.
There is no private property might come up in the discussion in Communist state. So my food and creations are considered public. If it is deemed we did not need what we thought we needed and the state takes it that is normal in a communist system. It is also involuntarily forcing me to give up the results of my labor, my time, my efforts. That is not voluntary. Communism is NOT compatible with voluntarism unless you PRESUME (out of great imaginative fantasy I'd like to add) that everyone agrees with you all the time and will believe everyone only needs the same things that you think they do. If they are all a bunch of clones without differing interests, desires, and wants it might work. I will state that Communism has had some success in SMALL groups, but it fails miserably as it scales upward. It has been tested many times. It can also survive for awhile in slightly larger settings if there is a leader sufficiently capable of keeping it going. I only know of one time history that this was supposedly the case. That was Pythagoras.
Now as to socialism. Along comes some people that decide everyone needs a certain coat for the winter. Maybe I don't want that coat as my family and I have already made sufficient arrangements. It doesn't matter they still come by and demand that my family pay our portion into the fund to produce these coats even though we won't use them. This is involuntary. IT is force. It is at the root of socialism. It has failed in all tests that I am aware of. It survives for brief moments and then implodes on its spiraling doom of cost and cronyism. After all the coat manufacturer has guaranteed business and can even get paid for coats that some people don't want.
So yeah. If you can prove to me that those systems can truly be voluntary in nature I'd like to know how as I haven't seen a way.
Furthermore, I contend that the appeal to authority that is built into Marxism and Karl Marx is based upon fallacies about the causation.
I contend that the woes that Karl Marx kept pinning on Capitalism were NOT caused by Capitalism, but instead were caused by government.
You see out of these three isms, communism, socialism, and capitalism only one of them has a form that can exist without government. The other two require and even are expressions of government. The one that can exist without government is capitalism. That is generally what is known as "laissez faire" or Free Market Capitalism. In the past just saying Capitalism was sufficient, but thanks to Marx and the hamster wheel cycle that has gone on since then there are a lot of different definitions and any anti-Capitalist person uses the go to definition in their mind that REQUIRES government. You see there is a form of capitalism that benefits from government smoothing the way for some, blocking others, and scratching their buddies backs. This is actually known as Crony Capitalism and it can't exist without the government. Those monopolies people always complain about when talking about the evils of Capitalism. I believe you'll be hard pressed to find a monopoly in a capitalist nation that does not exist due to government intervention. It's even sad people bring monopolies up since monopoly type situations are even more common in socialist programs, and communist settings. Socialism could be giving certain insurance companies guaranteed rights as the only health provider in an area. That guarantee is provided by the government. That is called a monopoly.
The actual causation of the woes that Karl Marx was pointing out was NOT capitalism. It was government. His failure to see this and acknowledge this is partially why it does the same things to all expressions of Communism and Socialism. Any system can look good at its inception, yet when it is linked to the government the inevitable cronyism corrupts them all.
This would tell me that the actual problem is that some humans gain this notion that they have the RIGHT to force compliance upon other humans. In other words, they believe they have the right to make other humans take involuntary actions or suffer consequences. In some settings this would be called slavery.
Now because of how we've been raised, how our cultures operate, etc we are under the notion that SOMEONE needs to be able to call these shots or we will all simply kill each other. The funny thing is that this is stated as a HYPOTHETICAL because in reality it hasn't been proven. Why not? Because, we don't try the other things we just state the hypothetical and take it as true. We even give it more veracity if we perceive the person that stated the hypothetical as an authority figure.
Which is why I make such a big deal about critical thinking. People give in to appeal to authority fallacies, appeal to emotion fallacies, appeal to popularity fallacies (aka democracy), appeal to tradition fallacies (aka that's how it's always been done before), and appeal to the stone fallacies (aka that is "absurd" without proving it is absurd) on an every day basis. These fallacies are used to manipulate us and control us with great precision. We also use them against each other without consciously being aware that we just used a fallacy.
Appeal to Emotion
They don't teach it.
For then you might question when someone passes their hypothetical as fact and expects you to eat it up and agree just because it was THEM that said it.
For then you might question whether correlation actually equals causation.
For you see we have quite a few correlation type events where I believe the correlation actually was not the causation. It just happened to be the first or most useful to a narrative that was noticed and it was pushed as the causation without considering other correlations.
Correlation Does Not Equal Causation
In the case of Communism/Marxism I contend the correlation of capitalism was NOT the causation. The causation lies in the correlation that they all involved government and being able to force others and by extension facilitating a crony like situation which can occur with or without capitalism.
In the case of Black Lives Matter I contend the correlation of RACE/Skin Color is not the causation for what they were seeing with regard to law enforcement that started this. I think with careful consideration that it is far more likely to be a culture issue not a BLACK issue and that the wrong causation has been targeted and hijacked for political agendas.
Now I don't expect you to view me as an authority and believe me. That would be me trying to bully you with an appeal to authority. I have no authority over anyone else but myself. I can however share my thoughts, opinions, and reasons. What you do with them, how you respond to them, etc. That's totally on you. I don't expect your mind to be a clone of mine. That'd be pretty messed up.
This was not an incredibly well structured post. It was simply a stream of consciousness rant about something I felt like ranting about. Steem on!