For Marx ([1867] 1962, 12, 49) the commodity furnished the ‘cell-form’, the ‘elementary’ building block of the capitalist mode of production, as he stated in the opening chapter of Capital. The economic dimension being his focus, market relations, of which the commodity is the basic expression, played the decisive role, allowing for an initial analysis of the whole mode of production. It was based on ‘voluntary exchange’ (see below) and stood out in the articulation of capitalism. In authoritarian collectivism, it is the political dimension on which we must focus our attention. ‘Command’ can be found in any sort of social formation and in any dimension thereof (in the factory, in the family and so forth). In the case of authoritarian collectivism, it was political command that was key. Bureaucratic commands were ultimately subordinated to it, as they are subordinated to economic production and ultimately to market coordination within capitalist economic systems, as Marx ([1867] 1962, 350) himself showed in Capital with respect to capitalist firms. What characterizes command, and in particular political command?

Command is a mechanism of coordination of interactions. These interactions may be fleeting or they may endure, finding moorings in stable, regular relationships and rules/norms attached to them, also stabilizing otherwise tendentially free-floating imaginary, symbolic elements. This implies to a variable extent top-down connections between agents, which must usually find some sort of legitimation or justification. Command underpins hierarchy as a principle of organization, asymmetrical positioning within interactions, one in which agent A can command another agent, B, to do something, whether B is inclined and wants to do this or not (Domingues 2017/2018, ch. 7, 2019a, ch. 1). That is, B must obey A's order. But so as to make sure and actually even define command as such – beyond more vague influence, suggestion and suchlike – it is necessary that A can actually force B to comply with, that is, to obey, A's demand. This is possible only if A can bring a sanction to bear on B’s behaviour, if B is not willing to comply. This sanction, within market-oriented relations, can be an economic sanction – for instance, in a capitalist firm the worker may be fired, lose his or her wages or incur other indirect means of payment.