Personally, I have switched from being extremely anti-communist to a self-proclaimed communist, but now I don't know what I am. I used to be extremely against communism was due to all of the past and present "communist" countries. I believe that freedom of speech is essential to all human beings, and so the heavy censorship was (and still is) a huge problem for me. I was also against their use of the death penalty, as I believe that execution doesn't justify any crime (capital punishment is one thing that I really wish the U.S. didn't have, but that's off topic). I also hated how there was a lot of poverty while the higher ups lived luxurious lives.

However, there are things that I like about communism. The fact that they managed to dramastically increase literacy rates, increase gender equality, as well as provide free health care and education. I also like the idea of a classless society (which was only partially accomplished). I believe that the more equal society is, the better.

The reason why I am unsure now is that I really don't know what communism is anymore. There are so many variants (Marxism, Leninism, Luxemburgism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc.) that I can't tell what is really communism and what isn't. All I know is that I promote a governemt with freedom of speech and as much equality as possible. I also support direct democracy (the people vote directly on laws) and a world with no countries, just a unified world.

A lot (and I ight even say most) of the hate communism gets is from people looking at dictatorships and calling it communism.

I think it's pretty great. Capitalism isnt much better, honestly.

It fails though because people naturally just dont wanna share. It's why it broke down the first time and why people have to be "forced" into doing it now, and why it's unrealistic to expect it to work in the future unless something is persuading people to do it (whether it is force, the greater good, robot overlords, whatever.)

Everyone talks about how "awful" Cuba is blah blah commies, but they have some of the highest doctor to people populations in the world, an amazing literacy rate, very lowe absolute poverty, and thier school grades arent bad either. I know this from a Cuban who was interviewed for my Sociology class.

On paper it's great. It makes some very optimistic appraisals of human nature which have turned out to be seldom--if ever--true.

The real problem is that at least here in the states we have corporations effectively buying politicians to undermine antitrust laws and subvert existing regulation. If it were otherwise, why would Monsanto want to simultaneously patent it's GMO corn and then not label it as a GMO when bringing it to market?

Imagine that for half the Fortune 500 companies and you see the problem. This isn't a problem with capitalism. It's a problem with our government not regulating ITSELF sufficiently, among other things.

Rich people are not, in and of themselves, a problem. They're an asset; usually they are rich for a reason, and communism seldom takes advantage of that. Bad tax code + rich people who own companies + Politicians running expensive campaigns = a very big problem, however, and it's not an easy one to fix.

You might want to track down Inequality for All on Netflix. I don't agree with everything Reich says (especially towards the last third) but he's got an articulate opinion. The best thing I can say about anyone is that they have an articulate opinion I disagree with,

Communism forces people to aid the poor - Equality at the expense of freedom.

Capitalism punishes those who choose to aid the poor - Freedom at the expense of equality.



Considering that most people use their freedom to look after themselves and spend their money on products such as the latest Apple devices, communism does not seem that bad.

Bolshevism and Maoism are the Communist programs that the western world knows. Both were founded on the idea that revolutionary tyranny was needed in order to smash the old order and grind it into the dust before building anew, the idea that an individual human life is, ultimately, worthless in the face of what is to be done: determined atheism and materialism converged on the idea that the ends did justify the means, and so many horrors were thus unleashed. This need to stamp out the old order also attracted and encouraged paranoia of the highest order, which led to folks like Stalin and Mao wiping out groups of people who probably never would have been a threat.

Bolshevism and Maoism were prescribed for societies that other Socialists felt were not ready for Communism. The idea on order in the old school was that Capitalism would mature and progress to a certain point where society would become completely polarized between the owners and those who could sell only their labor, at which point it would collapse under its own revolutionary weight and be reorganized. It was not meant for peasant societies like Tsarist Russia or Nationalist China, where small ownership (at least once outright serfdom had been abolished) was still a huge factor, and society was still mostly agricultural and not industrial. In the view of many Communists, Lenin and later Mao, and many others like Castro, all jumped the gun in the big picture.

Socialism, meanwhile, has been taking root in western society since the French first Republic and the Owenists of Britain (who, interestingly, had the support of the Tories, who at the time were backed by small holder petty-nobility, who distrusted the rising commoner merchant class which was supplanting them and which powered the Whig party), where the general idea has been to make society better for the working man by degrees rather than by Revolution.

In the long run, i'd say Communism will come in some form that we cannot yet delineate, due to the fact that "labor" is going to become insanely cheap and abundant due to the proliferation of robots/machines, and this will essentially force society into making a choice between a utopia where the fruits of this abundant labor are freely shared, or a fierce dystopia where a handful of wealthy retreat into gated communities with their machine-provided bounties while the rest of us grapple in some Mad Max-esque wasteland, due to the fact that we have nothing to provide "the market".

Not that i'm saying this change will come all at once, and if the slow progression of socialist programs is any indication, the "choice" i outlined will not be something society makes all at once: we will slowly proceed to that utopia of redistribution one step at a time, as marginal labor costs drop like a stone over the next century and so the number of needed workers will decrease.

LOL

Capitalism far from punishes those who choose to aid the poor. Given that economics is not a zero-sum game, giving more money to the poor helps society as a whole: looking back at my own city of Pittsburgh, a poor man taking advantage of one of Carnegie's Free Libraries could educate himself and become, say, an accountant, suddenly he's making more money, to buy more consumer goods, for which you need more factories for which you need more Carnegie Steel to build those factories.

Pumping money into the bottom (and not just in investment in the poor in the sense of education and infrastructure. Just giving the poor free money does this too) helps revitalize the entire system when there is slack in the employment market. It's a delicate balance, though. Such antipoverty programs DO become inflationary, but only when there is full or near full employment (but by then, you won't have so many people who need them anyway).

The reason why communism doesn't work is because communism only works on small populations. America, the United States of America, is too grand with opposing ideas and to be honest, we're greedy. Take communism to small villages with people willing to cut their pay and enhance their workrate. Maybe.

The Communism that Marx created will never be achieved...EVER! There will always be power behind.

But to answer your question specifically...as a Venezuelan, I hate Communism with a burning passion. Any person who has lived in a communist country will most likely tell you the same.