Communism
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Communism is a branch of the socialist movement which includes Anarchists, and was both popularized and made into a doctrine largely by Karl Marx, with help from Friedrich Engels, into a book called the Communist Manifesto, in the middle period of the 19th century.
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Introduction
Its doctrine is based on the idea there are two real social classes: proletariat, and bourgeoisie; workers and employers. The doctrine further states that in order for the dictatorship of the proletariat to arise, revolution is a necessity, in which the bourgeoisie are violently overthrown (he never does say what happens to the bourgeoisie, but considering they were killed or subjugated following Communist revolutions, we can assume they are supposed to be killed or put into labor camps, gulags, and re-education camps) and replaced with a single State which will control all communications, all forms of transportation, and mandate who will be given rights or not, including the right to emigrate, the right to worship, the right to dissent, among others.
Unbelievable to people who have not read the Manifesto in detail is Marx's promise to abolish the family unit:
| “ | Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists. [1] | ” |
Additionally, even more terrifying is Marx's intention to take children away from their parents and raise them in State-owned schools:
| “ | Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty... But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social... The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour. [2] | ” |
The main proposals of the Communists who follow the Manifesto (the majority do) are the previous promises of Marx, along with abolition of private property (just what this means is never explained; it never explained if "private property" means factories, businesses, wealth, as some Communists believe, or if it means anything more complex and larger than basically your toothbrush), State ownership of production and agriculture, the establishment of forced labor "armies" (in Marx's own words), heavy progressive income tax to penalize hard workers and more fortunate members of society, redistribution of income, abolition of the right of inheritance, and among other things, State ownership of the banking system.
Controversies
Marx did attend university in Bonn and in Berlin, but was never schooled in economics or sociology, and was never an economist, a sociologist, or historian, despite his claims of understanding history, economics, and sociology. Marx's solution to thousands of years of social development and injustice, income disparity, and poverty was to give all power to the State.
Ignoring the Middle Class
What could be said is Marx's first error is his marginalization and complete ignoring of the entire middle-class who neither labor as much as the proletariat or own production as do the bourgeoisie.
Encouragement of Atheism
Marx, though a Jew, promised the abolition of the right to freely worship, which subsequently led to Communist governments becoming officially atheist, and encouraging persecution of people of faith, which led to the deaths of at least 100 million people throughout the Communist world.
Failure of Communist Economics
Very few countries today claim or implement communist economic policies, largely because of their failures. Communist economics is basically made up of State ownership of land and capital, redistribution of income, and command/planned economics in which all factories are given quotas to meet as devised by the Communist Party bureaucracy.
State ownership of land and capital
While nations like America do in fact have government-owned lands, and protected parks, a communist nation owns all land; there is no such thing as private land. Without private land ownership rights, citizens were unable to start their own businesses because of two reasons: the land the business would be built upon is State-owned, and because the business would be State-owned entirely. All income made by any business is the property of the State: you would receive, as a worker, a meager wage, while business managers would receive slightly higher wages, but the rest would be expropriated by the State completely. There would be no incentive to work harder because your wages would stay the same even if you worked harder. In conclusion, a communist nation has no such concept as freedom of enterprise. Since the State owns all capital and all land, and since workers in practice aren't paid as much as their business managers, a term for this is state capitalism.
Redistribution of income
One of the most well-known concepts of Communist theory is the redistribution of all income, summed up in the sentence;
| “ | from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. | ” |
The problem with redistribution of income is that as purchasing power of the majority of society vastly increases as a result of higher incomes, supply vastly decreases, leading to economic shortfall, mass shortages of basic consumer goods including food, and eventual economic collapse.
An alternative to redistribution of income is the abolition of currency-based economics via small communes which would produce their own food and their own goods and services; this however necessitates forcing all citizens into the communes, which is what the Khmer Rouge did.
Command and Planned Market Economics
Simply a failure by looking at the economic collapse of the Soviet Union, and the shortcomings of North Korea and every Communist nation that has not become more capitalist like China, command economics entails goods and services being planned and quotas made for all sectors of the economy by a Communist Party bureaucracy. The obvious problem to this solution to economics is a bureaucracy cannot prioritize goods and services as well as a free market can, and that innovation and hard work is not rewarded by a command economy bureaucracy.
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