Why do are so few countries Communist?

[ToldYouSo]

I don't understand why any country wouldn't want to be. Please explain?

[Blake's Baby]

Many of us don't believe any countries are communist or ever have been. Communist society is classless, communal, stateless and worldwide.

'Countries' are ruled by classes - specifically, the bourgeoisie (the class that controls and benefits from production). Why would the class that benefits from the system at present want it to change?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I don't understand why any country wouldn't want to be. Please explain?

Modern nation-states developed out of capitalism and so they are organized and ruled on the basis of maintaining those sorts of arrangements. So that is why the government and influencial (rich) people wouldn't want it - it would undermine their whole way of doing things in general, and their own eliete power and position specifically. It would be kind of like asking why Absolute Monarchs don't choose to favor Parlementary Republics; why slave plantation owners don't choose to favor wage-labor systems.

The working class and more generally the non-ruling class populations, however are a more complicated matter. I'd say in general workers don't favor small-c communism currently because they don't have much confidence that it could be achieved. There's a gap between popular working class aspirations to be out of debt, have more control over their own lives, and live in a better world and the perception of what is actually possible. The capitalists have been less sucessful in convincing people that capitalism is fantastic in practice than they've been in convincing people in recent decades that "there is no alternative" as Margret Thatcher put it. For it's part, some of the so-called Communist countries also did their part in making it seem that a world without any bosses or exploitation is unrealizable.

[Nevsky]

A lot of people are so fooled by the bourgeois propaganda that they fear communism as if it was the devil himself. Since its first days, the worker's movement was discredited by propaganda of all sorts. Many old/religious people still believe that communism is satan's agenda, that Stalin ate babies, Mao had a harem with underaged girls and so on. The younger, smarter generations are indoctrinated by more sophisticated propaganda. For example, the totalitarianism-theory, i.e. Stalin and Mao (and communism in general were as bad or even worse than Hitler and fascism. Paranoid libertarian right wingers believe that national socialism is leftist because national socialism and so on.

To sum up, one could say that liberal-capitalism has established a very powerful position in terms of culture and ideology. Thus, many people have wrong ideas of communism who would otherwise be sympathetic to it.

[ToldYouSo]

Is there any way to change there minds? The Working class should be able to see for themselves that the only people capitalism helps are, as you said, the ruling-class.

[adipocere]

I don't understand why any country wouldn't want to be. Please explain?

I suggest that you read Killing Hope by William Blum.

[canto-faire]

Speaking as a former Republican and Right-Libertarian, there are a lot of reasons, even beyond the ubiquitous misunderstanding of Communism as red-flagged Fascism.

On the issue of morality, most people tend to lump private and personal property together as one concept; thus, any call to "abolish private property" sounds like the Red Guard is going to break into their homes and eat their porridge, because, you know, no property maaaaan. Which sounds horribly immoral and just plain wrong to nearly everyone.

Practically, even I hesitate to call myself a "Communist" - I really don't see "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" working in a pre-scarcity society, and a post-scarcity society seems unlikely at the very least. I'm all for worker control, but in the absence of any theoretical models explaining how Communism will work, I'd rather not advocate for something I don't understand. I imagine a lot of countries agree.


Is there any way to change there minds? The Working class should be able to see for themselves that the only people capitalism helps are, as you said, the ruling-class.

The world and it's economic system, are far, far too complex for most people to be able to just "see for themselves" how it works - dedicated researchers might be able to work out these systems on their own, but there's a reason Kapital is so goddamn big.
Even then, understanding how the current system works does not automatically imply Communism.

I'm not arguing for a vanguard party or anything, I'm just saying it's asking a little much of the working class to see for themselves the true nature of a global, multi-trillion dollar capitalist hegemony, and automatically decide Communism is the way to go.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Is there any way to change there minds? The Working class should be able to see for themselves that the only people capitalism helps are, as you said, the ruling-class.
Hard work. Engaging with workers in the workplace and outside, exposing the flaws and contradictions of capitalism, challenging the bourgeois hegemony on all levels, establishing productive community ties in ways that capitalist parties never could considering their complete detachment from working life. The first hurdle you'll come across is overcoming bourgeois propaganda.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

A lot of people are so fooled by the bourgeois propaganda that they fear communism as if it was the devil himself. Since its first days, the worker's movement was discredited by propaganda of all sorts. Many old/religious people still believe that communism is satan's agenda, that Stalin ate babies, Mao had a harem with underaged girls and so on. The younger, smarter generations are indoctrinated by more sophisticated propaganda. For example, the totalitarianism-theory, i.e. Stalin and Mao (and communism in general were as bad or even worse than Hitler and fascism. Paranoid libertarian right wingers believe that national socialism is leftist because national socialism and so on.

To sum up, one could say that liberal-capitalism has established a very powerful position in terms of culture and ideology. Thus, many people have wrong ideas of communism who would otherwise be sympathetic to it.

Yes, precisely. And that is why we Communists must seek to build our own social infrastructure through newspapers, workers' coops and class-strugglist unions to finance and build a social movement for socialism.

[LeonJWilliams]

I would say there are several reasons though most of them can be traced back to capitalist propaganda.

It makes people think that the system is the only choice and if there is ever a problem, all the system needs is a tweak here and a tweak there.
If people see their living standards getting better they don't normally question it, in times of crisis sales of Marx's work dramatically increase.
It tells people that the problems are blacks, hispanics, gays, 'foreigners' etc
Communism is labelled as an evil dictatorship where everyone is forced to do things they don't want with paranoid crazies spying on their every move.

The list goes on!

It is our job to fight that propaganda, to highlight all the systems failings and inequalities and show the alternative.

[one10]

Bourgeoisie propaganda and long lasting effects of McCarthyism (specifically in America) make the average person believe that communism is evil.


'Countries' are ruled by classes -
specifically, the bourgeoisie (the class that controls and benefits from production). Why would the class that benefits from the system at present want it to change?

Toldyouso, that's exactly why most countries aren't "communist". The ruling class would never turn the means of production over to the oppressed. This is why Marx theorized that a violent proletarian revolution is the first step in dismantling capitalism.

[Comrade #138672]

It is because most revolutions are suppressed and most countries which attempt to develop Socialism (or "Socialism") have been crushed or at least sabotaged by the bourgeoisie. It is no wonder that Socialism has never been able to flourish, because the bourgeoisie has always desperately tried to stop it, with unfortunately quite some success. Still, the battle is far from over. Don't forget that Socialism isn't just a system to be "tried", it is something to be fought for. You can't expect your enemy to give up without putting up a fight.