This is a great point. I was trying to figure out the different economic systems and labels and none of it really made any sense, it just seemed like people were making shit up as they went along. Then accidentally I bumped into the following: * You can never ever get rid of concept of trade. Exchane of goods is a property of the universe the same way that gravity is a property of the mass of an object. Human interaction is by definition exchange of goods and services, there is no way around this. * You can never ever get rid of the concept of private property. Similarly, private property is a property of the universe the way gravity is a property of the mass of an object. If you hold a thing, you own a thing. If human interaction is defined by the universal property of exchange then exchange is defined by the universal property of having a thing. The moment I realized that all of the economic system labels and descriptions just fell apart and I could start to reason about why they exist and WHY communists don't believe in private property. I mean, you are right, they don't believe in it. But they cannot do anything about either concept they way they cannot do anything about gravity. They can only impose their rules by force on a group of people. This doesn't get rid of trade or private property, all that it does is impose a huge wealth transfer system in place that only a small group of priviledged people at the top get to collect. And then you realize, none of this has anything to do with helping other people, this is just a small group of criminals manipulating other people so they can get rich. After that, it started to become easy to reason about economic systems and why people want them. When people talk about policies and economic systems now, it's literally like watching a criminal licking their lips in anticipation of their next meal.