In Landstreichers article Why I Am Not A Communist, he begins by introducing the topic of the essay by contrasting the term Libertarian to that of Communist. The notion that modern Anarchists don't refer to themselves as Libertarians like their forerunners is quite laughable, especially in the modern age of the internet where many anarchist communities use libertarian in the way it was used for well over a century, the way it's still used in many parts of the world.1 The term communism, then can and is used in the same light as these Anarchists use libertarian, as they and non-Anarchists Communists use Communist.
He carries on by attempting to critique the ultra-left notion that you and I don't really act, but are simply the puppets of invisible, bodiless actors like society, social relationships, movements, various collective forces.2 He continues that the end conclusion of this and what they don't want you to know is that it comes back to individuals and acting themselves. This idea however disregards that individuals are not in complete control of their life, a person cannot dictate every part of their life and aren't atomized beings. People are influenced by all sorts of social relations, both political and economic, that determine the present being of a person.
Landstreicher then moves onto the topic of if Communism requires a state. He says: Communism requires this all-permeating permanence, because it needs an establishment, a state. In the Gospel of Marx, we read: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.' [...] Who is to determine the abilities and the needs of each? Only by reducing individuals to what is most abstract about them [...] can their be a ‘universal' determination of needs and abilities, because then these needs and abilities are also mere abstractions.3 The concept that our current conception of needs will be the same under communism is quite infantile, as marx says in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: The abolition of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities [...]. Need or enjoyment have consequently lost its egotistical nature, and nature has lost its mere utility by use becoming human use.4 Here we can see that the conceptualization of needs as egoistic, under a communist society, simply won't be the case. Marx carries on: In the same way, the senses and enjoyment of other men have become my own appropriation. Besides these direct organs, therefore, social organs develop in the form of society; thus, for instance, activity in direct association with others, etc., has become an organ for expressing my own life, and a mode of appropriating human life.5
His conclusion of the article is the most laughable part of his so-called critique. He states that: The good news: Communism is already here. Capitalism is simply market communism: ‘From each [worker] according to her ability, to each [capitalist] according to her need.'. Here shows Wolfi's inability to grasp communism, the concept that communism is here due to workers working to their ability, of which they aren't, hence the need for unemployment, and that the capitalist are fulfilling their needs, despite that there is continued alienation between themselves (the capitalist) and the proletariat. To add to this are the workers not to fulfil their needs, whether egoistic or not, and are the bourgeoisie not to labour to their ability! Landstreicher also conflates the existence of community with communism. The capitalist conception of community leads to an alienation between man, as Marx says in Capital: Since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer's labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange. In other words, the labour of the individual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society, only by means of the relations which the act of exchange establishes directly between the products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers. To the latter, therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things. It is only by being exchanged that the products of labour acquire, as values, one uniform social status, distinct from their varied forms of existence as objects of utility.6 The capitalist community is then composed of competing individuals over the ability to work in order to survive, to provide their families both food and non-essentials.
To conclude this critique I end with this, Workers of the World, Unite!