What is communism? Why is it a "bad" thing?

Question

Actual Definition of Communism-
The political theory or system in which all property and wealth is owned in a classless society by all the members of a community.

I have heard many people scream and rant about "those damn commies", and others say that it was a good idea but not executed properly.

Please do not submit any rantings as it will be completely overlooked, but rather an honest answer to what it is and WHY it "didn't work out" or its "such a bad thing"?

Answer 1

Speaking of Cuba since someone mentioned it, the cause for its economic suffering is the embargo Washington imposed back in the 60's and pushed by the same Cubans oligarchs and their descendents who were stripped off their wealth after the Cuban revolution. But communism has made Cuba a super power in Health Care, unlike all countries in latin america there isnt one minor working on the streets and not attending school, the social revolution brought free healhcare for all, very cheap medicines, free and mandatory education for all, I think the only ones who should fear communism and socialism are those such as the Rockefellers or Hiltons, etc...for the avergage middle class worker it should be a good thing...try go put your kids in medicine school to see if you can, it is only for the rich, it is free in Cuba...

Answer 2

You'd have to look into Marx for more info on what Communism is. People in America think it's bad for this reason.

America = Capitalist

Capitalist is the opposite of Communist

Communist is therefore the opposite of America.

I'm socialist though, so I am over in that direction. I get a lot of crap for my beliefs but I'm not changing.

It didn't work out because of the dictator. The idea of communism is to overthrow a government, and have a dictator put in until the true communist government (a near-utopian idea) is placed. The problem is that the dictator never wants to leave afterwards and creates a dictatorship with socialist tendancies.

Answer 3

socialist society would be better. They have completition but also have opportunities.
Under the current capitalist society, many people don't have any opprotunity.
In China, all people have opportunity to get higher education eventhough the education is not the best for all field of study.All undergraduate progrms in China are better than those find in Community College and even some of the Senior Colleges in the United States.
All people can get higher education by watching the public Television.
The public liberies contain all kinds of text books up to advanced level. That is not the case in New York City.
Homal sexual activities are prohibited. It should be a symble of good moral chareter.
The political system in China today is capable to handle a huge population.
Everythings are improving.

Answer 4

Communism is the a government system where there is not social classes, everybody is equal, and the government has the control over every system of life: e.g. politics, religion, culture, industry, etc........

Karl Marx is the creator of the Communism. He said that the governments should be based on the middle class people, the workers, peasants, students, but not rich people.

This is system that works only for the Third-word countries. In these nations, there is not economic equalities among their citizens, in fact, 7% of the population, the wealthiest people, owned 90% of the nation's wealth and the rest is divided between the rest of the population.

Communism does not work in the First-world countries. For example, in USA, 20% of the population owned 80% the national wealth. The rich people control the social life and apply laws that protect their wealth, laws to destroy the middle class, so they only have rich and poor classes.

Communism has both positive and negative effects, but the idea is to protect the poor people, give equality, and destroy the economical disadvantages.

In the present, the political people do not practice the real communism, the one that benefit the workers and destroy the imperialism.

Answer 5

Ok communism in its purist form isnt actually that bad of an idea. Would fix alot of problems. Spread the wealth around. But the problem is the people with the money would never go for it. And it would be hard to keep it a pure form cause of stupid people always wanting more power and more money. People are selfish they think only of themselves not the greater good.

Answer 6

Communism does not work for several reasons.

1) To do that kind of property and wealth sharing on a large scale requires a highly bureaucratic government to handle it. That means that someone has to be in charge. If someone is in charge, right there, everyone is not equal.

2) In practice, the people who rose to the top of that bureaucracy were greedy, bloodthirsty dictators who kept all the best stuff for themselves and the people who kept them in power. See the Communist Party in the USSR: do you suppose the party leaders every actually lived on the same economic scale as the peasants?

3) The theory does not reward hard work and production. If you get the same lifestyle no matter if you work hard or hardly work, why work?

4) The entire system has to be based on a level of trust between the government and the governed. On anything beyond a community level, that's hard to get and maintain.

Answer 7

communism takes away human incentive first of all. Human rights are granted by the state and not God given. And God and communism don't mix. Second of all to set up the model, one would have to give to the state all your provisions. Then the problem is: Who decides how to mete them out. There always has to be ruling class. Like it or not. and communism would be the worst situation because it would require a dictator. See how Stalin and Mao put this experiment onto the masses. Actually it was a form of popultion control they thought they "exicuted properly". Look at North Korea and Cuba. Non vibrant countries. These people under communism there have absolutely no freedom. That is proven by the numbers who want to leave an example was the Berlin wall which corralled people who did not want be under communism. Coomunism takes away human dignity by putting the state over the individual. That in itself would be reason to reject it. Scholars in favor of communism will try to sell it on equality and related subjective reasons. It seems to me they are exercising a right that would be given by the state but anyone writing contrary would be censored or punished because of an opposing view.
Think of the deffiniton above on objective terms. 1st : One person living in isolation could live under his own communist state. Start by adding a second person.. If in agrrement, they could be comrades. Keep adding people to the model and you will see problems will start to manifest: Who gets the food, who prepares it. Who cleans up? If those were the only tasks under communism, it probably could be managed by a commune 50 to 100. But...it's not that way. Capitalism and free will answers most of the problems. In obvious ways. The USSR with its vast fertile lands could not feed its own people. The state mandated quotas instead of incentives (I suppose starvation or death by firing squad could be considered incentives). Compare that to the US. We feed ourselves and export the excess.
Its nice to be fair to everbody as the definition implies. But how do you be fair to all ? You can't. I can't go into my neighbors garage and take his lawnmower because I don't have one due to a shortage. But that's what the deffintion implies, the state will dole out limited resources and you will have no say because it is a classless society-but someone has to be deciding and that gives him power and thus a breakdown in the model, because of the power would be unequal to yours. In capitalism you have a recourse. You go out and buy one from money or credit. The manufacturer anticipates and makes more lawnmowers based on a market rather than an artificial quota.
Communism is all about doleing out artificially controlled quantities of goods from a central authority to control a society. Choosing between communism and Capitalism, the former is a far worse choice to live under.

Answer 8

The concept works great on paper or in isolated tribes deep in the heart of the Amazon or on a South Pacific Island where there is no contact with the outside world. But as has been proven since 1917, once people own things and have lived in a class society you cannot take that away from them.

Compensating people equally, regardless of the job done, rewards sloth and kills incentive to perform and ingenuity.

Answer 9

Why it didn't work: Because it ignores human nature. It had the unrealistic belief that it could remake man into an altruistic being only concerned for the greater society, and not himself, but that's not realistic. In practice, people got paid the same whether they were productive or unproductive, so as a result people chose to be unproductive, and store shelves were empty. A system needs to create incentives for people to be productive, and an altruistic incentive wasn't good enough.

Answer 10

Communism is a bad thing for two reasons:
1. It depends on people to systematically be fair and share equally which is not something you can do on any mass scale.
2. People tend to believe in their right to do and be and have what you wish as long as you are willing to work for it, and communism teaches equality, which we don't really believe in, because it means that no matter how hard you work everyone else will always have as much as you, which is inherently oppressive. Think about it. Bill Gates earned his money fair and square, but in a communist counrty, he wouldn't and couldn't be what he is.

Now maybe communsim would be better for taking care of everyone, but the way I see it, it isn't compatible with human nature. But don't get me wrong. No government model is perfect.