> Capitalism stops them. The state has expectations of everyone. They will have to deal with things from outside that will force them into some level of capitalistic thinking which will ultimately eat the project from within.

This is not a difference between capitalism and communism, and so not a valid complaint. You will pay taxes in a communist system. You will have to deal with all sorts of external influences in a communist system.

> The fact that the death of these experiments comes with a sale is illustrative of the point above

No it isn't. These were voluntary sales (especially since most were abandoned, not sold. There was no profit in leaving, except in some cases). It is illustrative of the simple fact that given the choice, all but a rare exception chooses against communism.

Or to put it another way: people REALLY don't want communism, and after trying it, that becomes worse. In many cases abandoning these communes required a large-ish group of people taking the decision together. In other words: they organized themselves to destroy their little patch of communism. Which illustrates the next point:

> > without constant terror, socialism cannot exist.

> Is that so? It sounds like red scare propaganda honestly, and I don't think you could reasonably make an argument for this without conceding that the same is true of capitalism.

You just made an argument in favor of this. Your argument is that people cannot be allowed to have access to the external world, or they will abandon communism. That must be prevented, in your argument.

HOW will you prevent it? State terror.

> This is not a difference between capitalism and communism, and so not a valid complaint

I don't understand. You're saying that also in communism, capitalism comes in from outside and stops you practicing communism?

The USA did bomb and/or coup most communist countries until they were not communist, so you may have a point but it wasn't clear if this is what you meant.

> Your argument is that people cannot be allowed to have access to the external world, or they will abandon communism. That must be prevented, in your argument.

Don't strawman people.

> > This is not a difference between capitalism and communism, and so not a valid complaint

> I don't understand. You're saying that also in communism, capitalism

We were talking about external influences. Period. Mentioned was taxes (ie. effort you have to put in to keep a state structure operational), and other external influences. By which I mean from acquiring food to dealing with the weather, and indeed, occasionally dealing with the fact that there are people outside working under other systems. But I bet for most communists it's, ironically, the communist state. That's the biggest external influence they have to deal with. This will include "capitalist expectations" ie. an amount of work you have to perform, without any reward, because that's what the state needs. That's what the state needs to exist, and of course to make the Kremlin look like it looks.

> Don't strawman people.

Then by all means do tell: how will you prevent people either individually or in groups from banding against the communist system? After all, almost by definition, that's in their individual interest because ... communist system. You agreed that it's necessary to stop this but neglected to say HOW you'd do it. In history the "white terror" is one example of how far people will go to band together to destroy communism ...

Every historical communist state (after a short while) chose state terror: indiscriminate, industrial-level violence against individuals. Given that they didn't immediately chose this gives at least an indication that they tried other methods, which badly failed. Even Israel initially did that (well, the Arabs, not yet called Palestinians, did most of it for them), but then switched to give people a choice, which lead to near-total abandonment of communism (even though they kept much of the state institutions communism built).