At the risk of beating a dead horse, the PRC and other “communist”’ states aren’t communist in anything but the name.
The real risk here is that some wag will bring up the "No True Communist" joke.
All real world attempts at socialism & communism are such disasters that
apologists won't accept these countries as examples of what they claim to be.
See....I told you that some jerk would bring it up.
The revolution in the U.S.S.R was the only “real” revolution, I think, in that it had any appreciable socialist element in the beginning, but it turned out pretty badly. The rest used the term essentially to gather popular support. The U.S. in turn didn’t care about the use of the term; all that mattered was that “communist” states were allied with the U.S.S.R. and threatened U.S. interests. And conflating the authoritarian regimes of such states with the socialist and labor movements in the U.S. is obviously beneficial to the government.
I don't think I'm conflating anything here, except for socialism
& communism for seeing a common system response, ie, an
oppressive government to prevent free economic association.
The differences between those systems are minor & theoretical.
As for currency — Again, it doesn’t really exist independently of states.
History is rife with privately issued currency, eg, bank
notes, promissory notes, & now cryptocurrencies.
But this is a red herring. States always form, as we observe by looking
across the globe. Sure, there are temporary stateless countries eg,
Somalia, Palestine. But the power vacuum tends to be filled, eg,
pre-Americastan.) So there isn't a question of whether there will or
won't be a state....it's about the kind of structures the state will have,
political, economic, religious, social. All have a method of resource
allocation which uses a monetary system.
States levy taxes, then legislate that taxes must be paid in the currencies they issue, and so those currencies become pervasive. In societies without states, exchanges are typically managed through debt.
And, again, as for contracts — putting aside the question of how they’d be enforced, you couldn’t really have contracts allowing for accumulation of capital; you wouldn’t have much to trade in the first place when you can’t claim possession of a field you can’t personally tend, a house you don’t personally live in, etc.
In the absence of a state, eg, Americastanian territories, contract
enforcement was handled privately, eg, Pinkerton, individually.
But again, all states have mechanism to enforce contractual relationships.
The difference is that under socialism/communism, there are no real
private economic relationships...there is only what the state imposes.
And this requires more governmental power than does capitalism.
This can be observed by comparing various capitalist & socialist regimes.
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