Many people ask why anybody would still be a communist after what happened in soviet russia. What happened in soviet russia was simply a lying dictator trying to get more power.

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The rich control the rest

The goal of communism is to abolish all unjustified hierarchy, Stalin did the opposite.
Why was Stalinism called communism? For a variety of reasons really. If you were to tell the poor they are in an economic system where they are not oppressed, they may believe it, but if you tell them a dictatorship was actually communist, you can gain control over them. In the minds of most in the USSR, communism was the opposite of oppression. The easiest to oppress are those who think they are not oppressed. In America today, the poor think they all have a chance of becoming rich and work towards that.

The Ideals of Communism Are Simple

The main ideals of communism are:

1. No private property
2. No profits off the labor of another
3. All people are equal

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What does no private property mean? Many people do not know the difference between private property and personal property, as it is not often taught in school.

Private property is property that one person owns and another person labors on. For example, a large company owns a store; the company supplies everything and usually has an ultra-authoritarian control on what happens. It takes a profit off of what the workers do because it is able to supply the materials needed. It functions much like a government in this case. Communists wish to get rid of this private property. In Soviet Russia, this property just changed ownership to a company called the state.

Personal property is different. Personal property is something you use and labor on yourself. Your car, TV and your toothbrush are all examples of this. If this is taken away from the proletariat (the working class), the resulting system is not communism. It goes against the ideals of communism in every way. Communism is about giving the people as much freedom as possible, while sticking to the idea that being able to take freedom from another decreases freedom.

What would you have in place of private property? Well if nobody owns the means of production it could be controlled in multiple ways, first come first serve day to day, a labor union, and any other way that you can think of. A good one is to have an AI (programmed with basic human values) dictate who would be able to produce the most on what, and advise that person to do that. If humans do not agree with it, revise it. Another device could be used to calculate the amount of work done and allocate resources based on that. Those who work more get more. Since it is without a state, it can be done in conjunction with any other system, including those with a market. The ideal is to allow the people to labor without an entity they have no direct control over owning or controlling it. The only requirement is that people are considered equal and are able to use the results based on need and the amount of work they had done. Since it is anarchist the laborer will likely decide the need, for example, a doctor will likely choose a patient who is dying over one who has a mild cough.

When the means of production are socialized, nobody owns it. This could mean different things, public ownership, employee ownership, cooperative ownership, "equal ownership" or common ownership. Public ownership is usually done through a governing body that claims to act in the interest of the people. If this is completely mutual and all agree to it, it is just authority. However, if this is not the case we must move on to others. Employee ownership is control by those who work on it. This can be done in many ways, the capitalist form is simply giving the workers stocks of a company they work for. The centrist way this is carried out is a business forms where one can become a member by being hired/ buying into it. Each person gets one vote and the workplace is a form of democracy. This is a more centrist ideology and generally not regarded as leftist. Cooperative ownership is the one left of center. The ideals are free association and democracy. A group of people voluntarily control the workplace and any can join at any time. It is almost always a direct democracy where even the new people get a say in what goes on. The resources are allocated based on the amount of work done by each person. Equal ownership is simply every person gets a share to do with what he wants. This does not need much explaining, a large amount of people and a small amount of resources would cause this to collapse. The last is common ownership, the ideal of communism. Common ownership is different from collective ownership. Common ownership is where the means of production are completely "open to access". In other words no person can control the means of production and any person may labor on it keeping what he produces. This can cause disputes, the answers to those will be decided by those fighting and the society. (An old reliable form is first come first serve.) Capitalism and Soviet Russia both have a private ownership of the means of production. Soviet Russia and most capitalist societies can claim Public ownership.

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No profits off the labor of others

Without private property profits are near impossible to get the labor of others. Private property is abolished to achieve this end but it is important to speak about specifically, especially in relation to Soviet Russia and capitalism.

It was already established that Soviet Russia did not have collective ownership. What does that mean for the worker? In Soviet Russia the state controls and allocates resources. Not based on need or entirely on work, but based on its own agenda. They claimed to have nationalized the means of production. You can not nationalize a means of production. A nation can not own things, it is far too abstract. Ownership comes from an individual or group of individuals. The individual in charge for most of the time was Stalin. Stalin was the dictator, or in other words, owner of the state and means of production with it. This is yet again, the opposite of communism.

In communism no profits are gained. This can be done in multiple ways. One is it is allocated based on need and waits for society to reach the point of post-scarcity (where humans need not work nearly at all and machines do all work, fatel for capitalism, the hope of communism), another is allocate it based on work done. Work done (for all production jobs) will easily be calculated by the average done in your field compared to what you have done.

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Next, Equality in social and economic aspects and will be going deeper into what actually happened in Russia at the time

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More Reading

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-there-is-no-communism-in-russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_ownership