Communism is not the abolition of private property.

Premise 1: “Common” ownership logically requires the absence of a specific claimant.

Premise 2: In every real communist system, the state apparatus (controlled by the political class) is the specific, exclusive claimant of all means of production, land, labor, and even people’s time and movement.

Premise 3: Therefore, nothing is actually held in common — everything is held properly by the new ruling class.

∴ Real-existing communism is the opposite of common ownership.

It is the most total, most absolute form of proper (private) ownership ever achieved — just monopolized by a single corporate entity called “the State” (whose shareholders are the Party elite).

Historical Proof in One Sentence Each

USSR: You could not leave the country, change jobs, or own a printing press without Politburo permission → most totalitarian private property regime in history.

China today: Every square meter of land is ultimately owned by the state (99-year leases), every company above a certain size has a Party cell that can veto decisions → state = single landlord.

Cuba: Try starting a business or traveling abroad without regime approval → you are state property.

The Final Linguistic Coup de Grâce

Communists stole the beautiful, ancient word “common” (as in commons, community, communion) and perverted it into meaning:“Owned exclusively by us, the new lords, who act in your name but will shoot you if you touch it.”

So by the original and honest meaning of the word “common,” no communist society has ever had common ownership of anything.Everything was properly claimed — by the most jealous owner mankind has ever produced: the totalitarian Party-State.

Communism is not the abolition of private property.

It is the nationalization of private property into the hands of a new, unaccountable aristocracy — and the greatest bait-and-switch in political language ever executed.