Why is Communism viewed as evil?

[kour]

Many people view Communism as evil, and Fascism and Communism are often used interchangeably when describing an evil politician or government. For Fascism, the reason is because in Fascism, there is a system based on hatred for the weak and love for the strong. But what about for Communism?

The explanation many people give is that Communism discourages work by guaranteeing people a comfortable life, so there is never any prosperity. If this were true, that would justify a person saying Communism is ineffective, but I don't see how that makes Communism evil.

[Sheepy]

Because Corporations love to talk and they know what they want.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control over the means of mental production, hence it rules also as producers of ideas, and regulates the production and distribution of the ideas of their age." - Karl Marx

Translation: ruling class ideology is dominant, and of course the ruling class wants the working class to see communism as evil and communists as the enemy.

[RedAnarchist]

Communism is often seen as "godless", which is very effective in some countries at making the revolutionary left look "evil", so that is certainly an aspect that the ruling classes like to exploit. It is also often seen as "totalitarian", with plenty of gulags, secret police and so on, a real life 1984. This is because of the connection most people will make between communism and places like the USSR, North Korea, etc.

[Nox]

2 reasons.

- American Propaganda
- Historical cases of 'communism' that didn't turn out so well (China, USSR)

People have no idea what Communism is and have based their opinions on those 2 things.

[Rafiq]

Evil does not exist. Hence the accusation is baseless.

[RedAnarchist]

Evil does not exist. Hence the accusation is baseless.

Whilst I agree, and certainly believe that the world is far too grey, far too subjective, many people alive do not, especially the more religious. They believe in a black and white world, one where good and evil can be measured, and often do not see a middle ground.

[roy]

From its beginnings, communism has been against those who wield power (corporations, religious organisations, governments etc.)

Then came the USSR, PR China and their satellites. Western governments and oligarchs saw the rise of socialism (or what was called socialism) ultimately as a threat to their way of life and financial assets.

Anti-communist propaganda has been disseminated around the world since and is made all the worse because it is grossly inaccurate, makes great generalisations and uses the USSR, PR China, DPRK etc. as models to demonstrate what communism is.

A teacher of mine once equated communism with the absence of freedom and warned against the evils of the Communist Republic of Russia (obviously, there has never been any such thing, and this was in 2010). For some reason, she thought all republics were communist, too. :confused: :lol:

[Kornilios Sunshine]

Because they think communism is what they see on TV,riots.And they also think it is vagrancy.These lies have been made up after the succesful October Revolution and because anticommunists were afraid of communism,they gave people a wrong assumption of what it really is.

[xub3rn00dlex]

We kill millions of people and eat babies. Or so i've heard. :laugh:

[Tim Cornelis]

Because they think communism is what they see on TV,riots.And they also think it is vagrancy.These lies have been made up after the succesful October Revolution and because anticommunists were afraid of communism,they gave people a wrong assumption of what it really is.

No. People view communism as evil because they equate it with the totalitarianism of former Soviet Union and puppet regimes.

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

Same reason people hate canadianne, mexicane and African people. All first impressions shit. Not that I do. I had a conversation with some people who show decent interest

[DarkPast]

A combination of ignorance (seriously, most people define communism as "full state control of the economy") and mass media-induced hysteria.

[socialistjustin]

The Cold War. At least in America that's why its viewed as evil.

[CommunityBeliever]

Communism is conveyed as "evil" by the Western media to hide the considerable revolutionary successes of the USSR, the PRC, the DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, etc. If the truth about these successes was widely available, then everyone would try to emulate it.

[RadioRaheem84]

Historical cases of 'communism' that didn't turn out so well (China, USSR)



Why is it always the case that these nations were abject failures?

They had their faults, yes, but in total could one say that they were total failures?

I mean in both the USSR and China there were constant famines before the Reds and before Mao, the new nations had one (albeit major ones) and never had one ever again. Neighboring India had continued to have them well into the 60s and 70s.

These nations were once backward feudal hell holes with grinding poverty until they were industrialized enough to the point where beureacrats turned capitalists now are cannibalizing the public sector.

If we were to judge the West on the same basis then capitalism/liberal democracy is a total abysmal failure.

They kept going back and forth from democracy to monarchy and then back and then to fascism and then back to liberal democracy. Some went from Communism and back to the third world.

These nations used slaves to build their initial infrastructure, engaged in the most brutal acts of imperialism, encouraged institutional racism, child labor, keep people chained to their wage labor, etc.

Why do idiotic capitalists insist that capitalism's history began in 1945 and it brought us the prosperity we knew as the Golden Age?

They don't realize that the only reason we had a modicum of prosperity is because workers fought capitalism in it's unregulated form and won concessions which gave us (mostly white natives) a middle class.

Prosperity came not as a result of the system but out of advanced class struggle.

The "sucess" of capitalism was due to the labor struggles against it.

Those "evil empires" served as a reminder to the ruling class of what could happen to them if concessions were not met. They were also a deterent against Western aggression in the Third world.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

A mixture of the following:

bourgeois propaganda. And this is not to say that people are 'stupid' and that they can just be hoodwinked into believing good is bad and black is white and so on, but you cannot under-estimate the power of propaganda, if it permeates every level of society - current affairs, culture, academia, economic affairs and obviously the political sphere - for decade after decade.

Propaganda has the ability to change the adage 'if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck', into something along the lines of 'it looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, but it's actually an alligator due to xyz bullshit reason and repeat x 100'.

There is also the issue that regimes that have self-labelled themselves as Socialist or Communist but have actually been genuine dictatorships of the party, of the central committee or whatever ruling clique, have done the more genuine ones amongst the movement no good. It's very uncomfortable for me, personally, to be lumped in the same political philosophy as the likes of Molotov and Mielke.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Why is it always the case that these nations were abject failures?

They had their faults, yes, but in total could one say that they were total failures?

I mean in both the USSR and China there were constant famines before the Reds and before Mao, the new nations had one (albeit major ones) and never had one ever again. Neighboring India had continued to have them well into the 60s and 70s.

These nations were once backward feudal hell holes with grinding poverty until they were industrialized enough to the point where beureacrats turned capitalists now are cannibalizing the public sector.

If we were to judge the West on the same basis then capitalism/liberal democracy is a total abysmal failure.

They kept going back and forth from democracy to monarchy and then back and then to fascism and then back to liberal democracy. Some went from Communism and back to the third world.

These nations used slaves to build their initial infrastructure, engaged in the most brutal acts of imperialism, encouraged institutional racism, child labor, keep people chained to their wage labor, etc.

Why do idiotic capitalists insist that capitalism's history began in 1945 and it brought us the prosperity we knew as the Golden Age?

They don't realize that the only reason we had a modicum of prosperity is because workers fought capitalism in it's unregulated form and won concessions which gave us (mostly white natives) a middle class.

Prosperity came not as a result of the system but out of advanced class struggle.

The "sucess" of capitalism was due to the labor struggles against it.

Those "evil empires" served as a reminder to the ruling class of what could happen to them if concessions were not met. They were also a deterent against Western aggression in the Third world.

The salient point is thus: you cannot entice the working class into political consciousness (i.e. pro-Socialist views) by using as an example a system under which many, many people were executed as a direct result of the policies implemented under that system.

[RadioRaheem84]

There is also the issue that regimes that have self-labelled themselves as Socialist or Communist but have actually been genuine dictatorships of the party, of the central committee or whatever ruling clique, have done the more genuine ones amongst the movement no good. It's very uncomfortable for me, personally, to be lumped in the same political philosophy as the likes of Molotov and Mielke.


Well why should we be lumped in there with them?

Are Bush and Co. lumped into the likes of Suharto and Pinochet?

It would be ludicrous to lump Pat Buchanan with Somoza or the Shah of Iran, yet these were leaders of capitalist nations, were they not?

Their nations safeguarded the interests of capital.

The reason for the authoritarianism of the socialists states was because they were in a constant state of war, never knowing one day of peace since their inception, surrounded in a sea of capitalist nations doing everything within their power to dismantle their alternative example.

They turned inward, grew corrupt, focused on autarky, and managed to smear the name of socialism for generations. Now when someone thinks of socialism they really think of fascism, when it's fascism the capitalists support to promote liberal democratic capitalism at home.

[RadioRaheem84]

The salient point is thus: you cannot entice the working class into political consciousness (i.e. pro-Socialist views) by using as an example a system under which many, many people were executed as a direct result of the policies implemented under that system.

The point is to explain to the historical realities of their development, not praise them.

Those nations did not become authoritarian out of a vaccum or because of socialist principles, but as a direct result of the aggression they endured since their inception.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't think you can really argue that the Great Purge, for example, existed for any other reason than the entrenchment of dictatorship and possibly the well-noted paranoia of Stalin.

Well, I mean, you can argue it, but you'll look foolish. Sure, there was some imperialist encirclement, but that doesn't excuse the worst 'excesses' of what happened.

[RadioRaheem84]

I don't think you can really argue that the Great Purge, for example, existed for any other reason than the entrenchment of dictatorship and possibly the well-noted paranoia of Stalin.

Well, I mean, you can argue it, but you'll look foolish. Sure, there was some imperialist encirclement, but that doesn't excuse the worst 'excesses' of what happened.

That's not really looking at it from a perspective of historical development, comrade.

I don't think the Great Purge came about just because of dictatorship. It came about because of real material circumstances, whether we agree with them (the purveyors) or not, and I don't, it came from the realities the nation faced when dealing with their development.

I consider the paranoia of the beuracrats, including Stalin and the inconsistencies with autarky as part of their historical development.

And why did you think this was somehow excusing their regimes?

The point is to learn why and how these regimes went wrong. It's pinpointing and addressing the problems. I think this is more helpful than just denouncing the regimes as reactionary authoritarianism for the hell of it, like liberals do.

[Bardo]

Because Stalin killed 200 million people and Mao killed 2649 billion people. Duh.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

That's not really looking at it from a perspective of historical development, comrade.

I don't think the Great Purge came about just because of dictatorship. It came about because of real material circumstances, whether we agree with them (the purveyors) or not, and I don't, it came from the realities the nation faced when dealing with their development.

I consider the paranoia of the beuracrats, including Stalin and the inconsistencies with autarky as part of their historical development.

And why did you think this was somehow excusing their regimes?

The point is to learn why and how these regimes went wrong. It's pinpointing and addressing the problems. I think this is more helpful than just denouncing the regimes as reactionary authoritarianism for the hell of it, like liberals do.

I don't disagree with much of what you say, but someone (can't remember who) earlier in the thread noted how people like to view things in black and white, divide things into good and evil, probably as a result of the dumbing down-style propaganda that we are fed all day, every day.

Because of that, I don't think the best opening line to take to the working class should be anything along the lines of 'communism isn't evil, look at the excellent industrial development achieved by the USSR and the social fund in the GDR'. It's too nuanced and will always get shouted down by idiotic bourgeois propaganda. Rather - and as we see all the time on here -, such arguments are best left between those who have already reached some modicum of political consciousness, otherwise it will, unfortunately, end in tendency war/flamebaiting/propaganda ad nauseum.

[RadioRaheem84]

Well that much is obvious, I agree.

Talking like we do on national tv will make us look like we're from Mars.

[Revolution starts with U]

Because you touch yourself at night :cursing: