What is COMMUNISM?

Question

What is COMMUNISM?

Answer 1

Please visit :
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0813068.html
You can get all the details you need about this Utopian dream, which has not survived the tests of time - and is now slowly limping towards oblivion !

Answer 2

Communism is a form of government caused by a disprportion of income in a previous government, ie, the Tsars of Russia, the Qing Dynasty in China etc...
These previous governments hoarded wealth to the point where only a few people had anything and kept the rest of the population indebted to landlords. People in these countries were basically in a cast system with nothing to loose.
Eventually, the poor out numbered the rich by too much. Also, the rich in these situations had lost any interest in what was going on with the commoners and didn't believe there was any chance of a real uprising. This mirrors all nations in the end, Rome being especially fitting.
Many dicatorial leaders during the rise of Communism used the idiology to explain away why they were robbing thier neighbours. It worked quiet well as it made the poorest people happy by everyone getting a bit more of those prized luxury items after plundering the Tsars and killing all the lanlords.
Communism was a sales pitch that was well accepted by people who had nothing to start with. It was the same as you have now with poor Americans generally being democrats and the rich leaning toward rebulicanism. It was thought to be a means to gain wealth and proserity for all as democracy advocates also go on about.
Unfortuneately, the theory just didn't work because it goes against human nature to share everything. Then again that's todays view of Communist intention. The original intention was just to take back from the rich which for all intents and purposes worked. It was only after a while that the governments needed to polish the idea with propogandic ideas like "A Socialist Paridise" etc...
Anyway, whatever, that's all

Answer 3

Actually, Cuba and China are not examples of communism. As much as the U.S. governement would love you to believe, these countries are far from communist governements. As the definition implies or states, real communism is an economic and political system in which the community owns the means of production and control.
In the above countries, the means of production are owned by the state, yes, but not the people. This is a concentration of power in the few which is more commonly known as an oligarchy. China and Cuba are more socialist oligarchies that try to pass themselves off as communist. However, there has never truly existed a modern state that can be considered to be communist.
For all of you who believe that communist means no freedom of speech and no rights, this is far from the truth. As Cuba and China are not communist, then one cannot truly say that communism means no rights or freedoms.

Hopefully this enlightens you slightly today.

Answer 4

Although there have been some very lengthy answers here its quite obvious that no one has a complete picture of what communism is.

Communism is more than an economic system in which the workers own the means of production. It is also a view of history and the nature of man. Most importantly it is a conceptual framework for political organization that is profoundly different from the liberal democracy that prevails in the Western world.

Its economic notions which it shares, in a general way, with other forms of socialism, have been tried in several variations and have invariably failed. Government at any level has proved incapable of directing an economy and Adam Smith's "dead hand of the marketplace" has clearly triumphed except in the minds of very foolish children and university professors (those who can, we should remember, do, those who cannot...teach.)

But the failure of the communist economic model of a command economy is almost trivial compared to the failure of Communism in all its other concepts.

Marx's dialectic, his explanation for history, has been largely discarded and can be seen as a complete intellectual failure. It did not explain. even when written, anything except, it was thought, the French Revolution. Modern historians have stripped it of even this tiny shred of validity. "Class struggle" as the motivating force behind societal change seems almost laughably quaint.

The Communist notion that human nature can be altered (popular also with fans of Star Trek) to create what the Russians called "the new socialist man" have also floundered. Decades of even the most repressive, heavy handed, dawn to dusk propaganda failed to quell the spirit of independence and individual dignity which communism seeks to extirpate.

But it is in its political concepts that communism has proved more than merely failed but unalterably evil. Communists concepts of "democratic centralism", the "leading role of the workers party", and the subservience of the administrative branches of government to the political needs of the Party have provided mankind with more slaughter, repression, cruelty, and mass death than anyone save, perhaps, Hitler and his Nazis.

Communism is a failed system. It has repeatedly been shown as inadequate in every guise. Absurd claims that all its failed attempts are not "real communism" are put forth by people who are either very ignorant or deliberately lying.

Answer 5

As a Marxist (communist) I say it is when the workers control the means of production and distribute it based on workers' need. Marx's definition of private property actually is property that makes profit: your toothbrush or your house is not private property because it doesn't make you any money. Say you have an extra house that you rent out, that is private property because you are making money. That is a common misconception. The democrats in the government are not communists because they are working within the system for social change. True communists believe that there has to be a revolution that gets rid of the current system that exploits most everybody for any real change to occur and to allow for a system of communism. So people working within the system usually aren't communists. Also I believe there has been no real communist country, they have only been communist in name. Cuba isn't a communist country, niether china or vietnam or korea or russia though russia was the closest until stalin took power. They don't look out for the interests of the working class.

Answer 6

An economic theory which stresses that the control of the means of producing economic goods in a society should reside in the hands of those who invest their labor for production. In its ideal form, social classes cease to exist, there is no coercive governmental structures, and everyone lives in abundance without supervision from a ruling class. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels popularized this theory in their 1848 Communist Manifesto.
www.ilstu.edu/class/hist127/terms.html

Can be understood in two main ways. In the West is usually means the political application of the ideas of Karl Marx (ie Marxism). Political communism is put into effect through political parties. In the 19th century the usualy term such such parties was "Social Democratic" parties. Since the 1920s the name "Communist" has usually, but not always, been used by such parties. ...
academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/virtual/glossary.htm

An economic or political system based on the sharing of all work and property by the whole community.
www.bl.uk/services/learning/curriculum/voices/refglos.html

An economic system in which capital is owned by private government. Contrasts with capitalism.
www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/c.html

a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production with the professed aim of establishing a stateless society
www.imuna.org/c2c/app_a.html

Answer 7

communism is a social system that was founded by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels. it is basically a system where everything is equal. everyone works and has the same stuff. it sounds good on paper but doesnt work in reality. most of the countries who were communist have gotten away from this system for this reason.

Answer 8

I thought I had seen some waffle in my time but the answers here take !st prize, especially "inforbacons" reply. Capitalism! a "natural" state, ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! Dialectic Materialism, Marxist ideology, dictatorship of the proletariat. Have any of you actually read "Das Kapital". A work that can at best be described as turgid waffle interspersed with the occasional flash of inspiration. Do you know what you are saying? Where do Lenin and Trotsky come into your thinking? Where does Mao Tse Tung fit? CASTRO? What about Marx's collaborator, Engels, the capitalist apologist?

Answer 9

Capitalism is a law of nature, like gravity. It cannot be disobeyed, if you do you will crash, according (still) to the law. Most political systems impose a two-tier system of capitalism for the rich and communism for the poor, as it is in China. The poor are kept poor by propaganda that tells them capitalism is bad, so they vote for laws to "contain" and "control" it. This makes it impossible for the poor to access capital, so the rich have no competition for capital and consumers.

Answer 10

communism is one of ideology on how world should be organized, how humanity should be, one perspective to create a better world etc ... just like other ideologies.
common mistakes is people tends to think communicsm as atheist.
communism has opposites thinking than modern capitalism.
it emphasized wealth for greater all. and yes it empashized on government to have control to resources and not personal but again it must for the sake for all people.
the history said that communism is emphasized for equality of all people, but then when one has become the leader (like president) he easily conquered with his own greed for power and so it lose its essence meaning.
but modern capitalism also contributed to present global-inequalities, environment destruction.

Answer 11

communism
noun
1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
2 capitalized a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the U.S.S.R. b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably d : communist systems collectively