The Student Room Group

Why do people hate Communism so much?

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Original post by MarxistCommunist
Right, so at least as far as I'm concerned Communism is the best economic and political ideology ever invented. No, I do not mean Soviet 'Communism', Chinese 'Communism', Cuban, North Korean, Vietnamese, Yugoslav, etc, etc, 'Communism'. As far as I'm concerned, those are all closer to Fascism than they are to real Communism in the sense that Marx envisioned (except Chinese 'Communism', that is closest to a Bourgeois Dictatorship).

So in case you didn't know exactly what I mean by this, I mean a highly decentralised, united world state where the collective resources of society produced by workers according to their ability all across the globe are pooled and redistributed according to need (ie if you biologically have a fast metabolism, you need more food than someone with slow metabolism, a healthy person doesn't need medication, etc), and then excess commodities and goods are completely equally distributed. The ideas of society shift, because, to directly quote the Communist Manifesto:

"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, mans consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?What else does the history of ideas proeve, than that intellectual production changrs in chartacter in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of it's ruling class."

Towards a mindset where, instead of being driven to great deeds by a motive for profit, they are instead motivated by a desire to help others, which helps themselves, because in a Communist society the condition for the betterment of the self is the betterment of all.

Before anyone argues "oh but then what if I do more work than this person why do I get paid the same", this is even more prevalent in Capitalist society. A doctor is a member of society many times more valuable and more hard working than a footballer, and yet a footballer is paid an order of magnitude more money than a doctor is. Equally, while you might scoff at a lowly sewage worker, or a bin man, claiming they do no real work and are lucky to get the salaries they have, consider for a moment what your street would look like if those menial workers decided to stop working for even a fortnight, and then decide whether or not those workers do an important, difficult job.

So, then, it is clear to me that Communism, as a theory, and presumably in practice (although obviously after letting Capitalism mature, then going through Socialsm, to gradually reform into Communism), is ideological perfection. Why, then, do people hate it so much? People seem to hate it almost as much as Nazism!

How can communism be decentralized?
Original post by Underscore__
You felt my example was a bad one because what I said is impossible but you subsequently agreed that living under communism also wasn't within the capabilities of humans generally speaking. How can my comparison be a bad one on the grounds of impossibility when you agree that communism is also impossible?

Your response comes across as though you don't want to have a debate but want to close with some semblance of being right. My argument has been clear and consistent throughout


I don’t consider this a debate because we agree yet you decided to butt in and attempt to contradict me on a point I never made.

And yes I agree that living under communism also wasn't within the capabilities of humans generally speaking’ but that has nothing to do with your terrible comparison; it’s self explanatory that comparing how long someone can breath underwater to capability of society to live under any sort of extreme regime is just invalid.
Your argument has been misplaced. This is how it went:

OP asks question as to why communism is hated
I answer it objectively (i. e. to try and minimise my own bias on the issue)
You quote me starting with ‘but’ which means you somehow want to argue with me based on an OBJECTIVE answer and thus not knowing where I stand
I express confusion as to why you are discussing this with me and assuming my standing on the issue WHEN I NEVER EXPRESSED IT
Hence I get confused by your insistence on arguing with me about a point which I never expressed in the first place.

We can keep going but I tried to end it because of the above and because of how pointless this is. I don’t even have strong beliefs about communism, unlike you clearly? Also I don’t think anyone can be ‘right’ but you did start this whole debate without knowing where i stand and thus your presumptions were a bit wack ngl
Original post by MarxistCommunist
Right, so at least as far as I'm concerned Communism is the best economic and political ideology ever invented. No, I do not mean Soviet 'Communism', Chinese 'Communism', Cuban, North Korean, Vietnamese, Yugoslav, etc, etc, 'Communism'. As far as I'm concerned, those are all closer to Fascism than they are to real Communism in the sense that Marx envisioned (except Chinese 'Communism', that is closest to a Bourgeois Dictatorship).

So in case you didn't know exactly what I mean by this, I mean a highly decentralised, united world state where the collective resources of society produced by workers according to their ability all across the globe are pooled and redistributed according to need (ie if you biologically have a fast metabolism, you need more food than someone with slow metabolism, a healthy person doesn't need medication, etc), and then excess commodities and goods are completely equally distributed. The ideas of society shift, because, to directly quote the Communist Manifesto:

"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, mans consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?What else does the history of ideas proeve, than that intellectual production changrs in chartacter in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of it's ruling class."

Towards a mindset where, instead of being driven to great deeds by a motive for profit, they are instead motivated by a desire to help others, which helps themselves, because in a Communist society the condition for the betterment of the self is the betterment of all.

Before anyone argues "oh but then what if I do more work than this person why do I get paid the same", this is even more prevalent in Capitalist society. A doctor is a member of society many times more valuable and more hard working than a footballer, and yet a footballer is paid an order of magnitude more money than a doctor is. Equally, while you might scoff at a lowly sewage worker, or a bin man, claiming they do no real work and are lucky to get the salaries they have, consider for a moment what your street would look like if those menial workers decided to stop working for even a fortnight, and then decide whether or not those workers do an important, difficult job.

So, then, it is clear to me that Communism, as a theory, and presumably in practice (although obviously after letting Capitalism mature, then going through Socialsm, to gradually reform into Communism), is ideological perfection. Why, then, do people hate it so much? People seem to hate it almost as much as Nazism!


If you had a society where it was "from each according to their ability to each according to their need" then what would stop people from doing the least amount of work possible and taking as much as they could. Communism is a bad ideology because people don't work hard to benefit other people but they will work very hard to help themselves, which makes perfect sense. Capitalism, as flawed as it can be, actually grows the market through peoples desire to help themselves, which is a much more realistic approach to bettering society. Im sorry but I disagree with your view that communism is a logical continuation of capitalism and that it even is utopian.
Because communism has to engineer society in order for it to work, forcing outcomes on the populace. Also, one should be entitled to the fruits of their labour; not have the State take it and spread it elsewhere. By saying that someone larger with a faster metabolism would need more engineering because such things are not a constant. Humanity doesn't live in an unchanging vacuum and emotion gets in the way. It works in ant colonies and bee hives, but not in human society.
Original post by Lechatn0ir
I don’t consider this a debate because we agree yet you decided to butt in and attempt to contradict me on a point I never made.

And yes I agree that living under communism also wasn't within the capabilities of humans generally speaking’ but that has nothing to do with your terrible comparison; it’s self explanatory that comparing how long someone can breath underwater to capability of society to live under any sort of extreme regime is just invalid.
Your argument has been misplaced. This is how it went:

OP asks question as to why communism is hated
I answer it objectively (i. e. to try and minimise my own bias on the issue)
You quote me starting with ‘but’ which means you somehow want to argue with me based on an OBJECTIVE answer and thus not knowing where I stand
I express confusion as to why you are discussing this with me and assuming my standing on the issue WHEN I NEVER EXPRESSED IT
Hence I get confused by your insistence on arguing with me about a point which I never expressed in the first place.

We can keep going but I tried to end it because of the above and because of how pointless this is. I don’t even have strong beliefs about communism, unlike you clearly? Also I don’t think anyone can be ‘right’ but you did start this whole debate without knowing where i stand and thus your presumptions were a bit wack ngl


Wrong, I didn’t say ‘but’ therefore your whole premise that I was looking for a debate is wrong. I made the comparison and even if you felt that my comparison wasn’t a good one but essentially agreed with my position you could have said so. Instead you say you aren’t you aren’t prepared for someone to try and overturn your beliefs - if you felt we were on the same side why would you suggest I was trying to overturn your beliefs?
Original post by Bazzax83
Because communism has to engineer society in order for it to work, forcing outcomes on the populace. Also, one should be entitled to the fruits of their labour; not have the State take it and spread it elsewhere.


This is a critisism of a certain kind of communism (argubaly the dominant kind of the 20th century). But what if some peasants in 1930s Spain decide they are going to collectivise the land they work on? What if they decide to abolish money and give poeple labour time tokens which they can use to get scarse goods. They decide abundant goods are just avaiable in a collective warehouse free to access by anyone. The state is not involved here and I would say better rewards the fruits of poeple's labour than capitalism does. The richest people in capitalism do not sell even thier labour power do they? They do no labour.
Original post by Underscore__
Wrong, I didn’t say ‘but’ therefore your whole premise that I was looking for a debate is wrong. I made the comparison and even if you felt that my comparison wasn’t a good one but essentially agreed with my position you could have said so. Instead you say you aren’t you aren’t prepared for someone to try and overturn your beliefs - if you felt we were on the same side why would you suggest I was trying to overturn your beliefs?


I misquoted the ‘but’ however my premise was right. You quoted me and your tone suggested you were trying to overturn my beliefs because of how passive aggressive it was. I only realised we were on the same side like 2 posts ago because it was very bizarre to me that someone would quote a post, where I hint that I disagree with the general consensus but don’t even explicitly state a point, and try to contradict it via comparison. I’m glad we agree but surely you should debate ideological beliefs with OP who actually clearly expressed a strong standing on this issue? Also, don’t come at me for being confused when clearly so were you when you quoted my original post and tried to contradict something that wasn’t there.
Just out of curiosity, are you a right wing supporter then? Where do you stand regarding social factors like LGBTQ+ and feminism? Those are issues I could actually debate with you on (;
Original post by ChaoticButterfly
This is a critisism of a certain kind of communism (argubaly the dominant kind of the 20th century). But what if some peasants in 1930s Spain decide they are going to collectivise the land they work on? What if they decide to abolish money and give poeple labour time tokens which they can use to get scarse goods. They decide abundant goods are just avaiable in a collective warehouse free to access by anyone. The state is not involved here and I would say better rewards the fruits of poeple's labour than capitalism does. The richest people in capitalism do not sell even thier labour power do they? They do no labour.


The question then would be about recourse in terms of wider society, contacting and trading with them? Or for example, leaving this hypothetical collective? What becomes of one that has eschewed all financial and external links that then wishes to return?
Original post by Bazzax83
The question then would be about recourse in terms of wider society, contacting and trading with them? Or for example, leaving this hypothetical collective? What becomes of one that has eschewed all financial and external links that then wishes to return?


Peasants who didn't want to join the collective were given thier own little patch. But they could not hire wage labour. Just like how you cannot have slaves now.
Marxist communism is either an inevitable consequence of a post-capitalist future or it isn't, it will happen only when it is an historical necessity. Personally I don't think capitalism is going to last forever, or more accurately humanity is not going to last much longer under capitalism (at least the kind of capitalism that has brought us to the environmental catastrophe we're running headlong into right now). When automation takes off, and that seems pretty close, it will radically transform our economic and social conditions (not least because of the large-scale unemployment and underemployment which will emerge).
It's not so black and white though. Under capitalism any contractual arrangement is subject to the relevant social and economic power of each party - which is rarely equal and often highly unequal. Not the same as slavery perhaps but easily coercive. Poor people need to sell their labour to someone, they can't hold out like rich people can.
Original post by escapade444
How can communism be decentralized?


Localised collectives under federal protection, something like that?
Communism is all fine and dandy in theory, but would never actually work in practice because humans don't function like that. It is in our genes to always aim higher, whether that means obtaining more power, goods, money, influence etc. There are always going to be people that cannot accept being on an equal footing with everyone else.
I suppose I mean that the social and economic circumstances within which labour contracts are made often force one party to agree to terms more favourable (sometimes much more favourable) to the other. There might sometimes be conscious 'coercion' but it's not necessary. Although I don't want to muddy the waters by talking about 'violence' I would just say that it's possible to talk of violence that isn't of the physical kind (depending on how open you are to such a concept).
I have made an error if I've given the impression I think it's all, or only, a matter of equitable distribution of resources. Indeed it's not, technically, about that at all, it's really about equitable benefit from resources the starting point of which is either universal non-ownership or universal collective ownership. Once you have owners and non-owners you create unequal social and economic power and the rest is, as they say, history.
Original post by asdfghjklcupcake
Communism is all fine and dandy in theory, but would never actually work in practice because humans don't function like that. It is in our genes to always aim higher, whether that means obtaining more power, goods, money, influence etc. There are always going to be people that cannot accept being on an equal footing with everyone else.


Except, it's possible to argue that we have a tendency to compete where circumstances encourage it (capitalism pretty much demands it) and we benefit from it. In circumstances where we are encouraged to cooperate and we benefit from cooperation then that can also work. There will always be people who struggle to conform just like there will always be bullies and rapists, doesn't mean we have to accommodate or make allowances for them.
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Because communism requires everyone to be equal and half these people don't even deserve it, also in the long term, this ideology would NEVER work. People in school wouldn't have to work due to the fact that they know they will be treated the same no matter how hard they work. No positions would be filled for any jobs, we are already struggling with computer scientists, imagine how little there would be without the incentive of money. This society is DOOMED to fail. That's why we hate it so much.
communism does not work in the long term

history taught us this

that's why
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. I don't actually accept the assertion that the unequal distribution of the earth and its resources has come about through a matrix of 'freely made choices' way back when (quite the opposite in fact). But it makes no difference to me anyway as I'm one of those people (I know I'm horrible) who thinks property is equal to theft because it amounts to a monopolisation of a unique portion of the earth (or its resources). Labour relations under modern capitalism are in most cases experientially quite different to slavery of previous eras but there's still, in my view, a coercive component (to some extent) for the reasons I've given.
Obviously universal non-ownership would have to be legally protected. There have been 'commons' in the past which operated in this kind of way. I'm more inclined to universal collective ownership though. In your example you seem to be imagining things through a normative capitalist prism. We collectively 'own' the NHS but we don't all have a day to day say in how it functions or how its services are distributed.