> the author lost me when he implied socialism is synonymous with authoritarianism.
To enforce the socialist cause at the 100+M level, a stricter level of enforcement is required in order to forbade a breakout of inter-party bartering & thus the subversion of the socialist cause.
Such bartering is allowed under capitalism as it is considered arbitrage for at least one of the parties involved, but under mainstream understandings of socialism, such value surplus is disallowed to be kept to the private parties involved as it should be given out to the benefit of the wider population.
Caveat: There are variations of socialism that still allow for private bartering & exchanges, but they're typically disallowed at larger scales as they allow for the subversion of the socialist cause through the accumulation of private means of production, even if the "private" means "my town, not yours"
To enforce the socialist cause at the 100+M level, a stricter level of enforcement is required in order to forbade a breakout of inter-party bartering & thus the subversion of the socialist cause.
Such bartering is allowed under capitalism as it is considered arbitrage for at least one of the parties involved, but under mainstream understandings of socialism, such value surplus is disallowed to be kept to the private parties involved as it should be given out to the benefit of the wider population.
Caveat: There are variations of socialism that still allow for private bartering & exchanges, but they're typically disallowed at larger scales as they allow for the subversion of the socialist cause through the accumulation of private means of production, even if the "private" means "my town, not yours"