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The answers so far are not answering the question. People are saying why they believe communism is morally wrong, not why Americans believe it is evil.
The American Cultural Context
The simple answer is that America has always been deeply suspicious of foreign ideas, especially those which conflict with values considered quintessentially American (WASP)....
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Fundamental to communist ideology is the common ownership of the means of production and abolishment of social classes and social hierarchy. In practice, that means no (or very few) private property rights, and forced redistribution of wealth from those who are most able to produce to those who are less able or unwilling to do so.
Private property and the ...
176
TL;DR: because communism did, in fact, kill people. Between 23 million (low estimate) and 100 million (high estimate) of them killed by regimes that collectively self-branded themselves as led by "communist" parties.
The question contains two premises, both 100% false:
That the only reason Communism is seen as evil is "because propaganda" and "because the ...
94
Nazis are a specific group of people who have committed atrocities in Europe. It is directly linked with the idea of Racial Superiority and Antisemitism.
We can agree that Nazism is morally bad. One who subscribes to being a Nazi is suggesting that the holocaust was justified.
Communism is a political and economical theory. It describes a supposedly ...
92
The reason Venezuela's economy collapsed was its over-reliance on oil exports. In the last half of the 20th century, the Venezuelan economy focused on growing its oil industry, while relying on imports for most other products. This worked quite well while the oil prices were exceptionally high.
It stopped working in 2014 when the global oil price plummeted ...
87
Wait up a minute. Who says Cuba didn't fail spectacularly?
Miami (and Florida in general) have a huge Cuban population. Generally, because Cubans did anything they could to leave that country during the 90's - even to the extent of risking their lives trying to boat/raft/etc their way up north.
Here is the story of a person who grew up in Cuba after the ...
70
Why is communism considered as evil (like fascism and nazism) in western countries?
Simple answer is them vs us. This was previously nationality, but cold-war era saw this them vs us line drawn more on economic lines as alliances spanned multiple nations. Them vs us is a 100% with or 100% against perception (no middle ground between two polar opposites) ...
64
It depends what you mean by communism. If you mean what the Soviet-bloc states ended up like then, yes, all historical examples of this communism were pretty authoritarian.
If you want indulge the [far] leftist theoreticians, then no country actually achieved communism. Even the former Soviet bloc countries only declared themselves socialist and on the path ...
64
When Marx used the term 'class', he wasn't referring to hierarchical organizational structures. He was referring to more-or-less permanent and impermeable social distinctions. For the sake of the argument, assume it is well accepted that a company of any reasonable size must have (at minimum) a chief executive making global decisions, an assortment of ...
61
Communism has committed atrocities far greater than the Holocaust.
Holodomor: up to 12 million dead
Khmer Rouge: up to 3 million dead
The Great Leap Forward: up to 55 million dead
Tanzania Experiment: no deaths, only near famine
Death, famine, and genocide are usually considered evil.
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I'm not sure there's anything more than expert opinion as an answer:
Levada sociologist Karina Pipiya told BBC Russian: "There is growing nostalgia for the Soviet period and Stalin as a leader. Stalin is seen as the main figure who defeated fascism, who gets the honours for victory in the Great Patriotic War. And that war victory is a symbol of national ...
51
Why is communism considered as evil (like fascism and nazism) in the
United States?
Short Answer
The background necessary to accurately answer your question is complex in both history and culture, but perhaps one short introduction could be:
Due to a series of actions done and promoted by various agents in the USA starting roughly after 1917, following ...
46
I think it is like asking why drinking too much vodka was so widely accepted in the SU, if nothing in "Das Kapital" promoted it.
First, you are right that there is nothing in the Communist ideology against homosexuality. But, at the time being, there was nothing in the Communist ideology in support of sexual rights/freedoms1, neither; these ideas were ...
44
First, I wanted to make clear that "authoritarianism" does not mean "enforces rules with some form of force" - if we were to use that definition, then every single system of government is authoritarian (such as when police arrest people for murder). To be authoritarian, it must go beyond simple enforcement of rules with some form of force....
43
Both of your bullet points are correct, and both are wrong.
Yes, communism was actually successfully applied. The caveats are that it was only successful under the following limitations:
in an extremely small scale (either geographically - think a single village - e.g. Kibbutzes in Israel are, for all intents and purposes, an example of Communism in action;...
43
Why has the mainstream narrative continued to regard McCarthyism as "making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence"?
Because there is no evidence that McCarthy was finding actual communist infiltrators by anything more than accident. Note that many of the people at whom he was looking were not in the government, so Venona's ...
41
A searchable PDF suggests it's been freely translated:
Apologies for using an image, but the side-by-side didn't paste sensibly. You can see that the currency is different but has been converted; the English uses dollars, the German original uses "sh", presumably for "schilling". Elsewhere in the text he uses pounds Sterling (abbreviated as "Pfd.St.").
...
37
It depends on your definition of communism - AND religion.
Marx, as another answerer noted, officially denounced religion. This was for three distinct reasons:
Organized religion (church) for hundreds of years was either a political power, or co-opted by another power (monarchs) to help pacify the oppressed lower classes.
The official version of what was ...
35
Firstly, much work perceived as necessary is a result of social choice. Shit shovelling, as a quintessential example has been widely replaced by sewering or compost-toileting or mechanised sewage removal. Many "necessary" roles may in fact not be.
Secondly, work isn't "necessarily" unpleasant. In the Australian context, sanimen who carried the can in ...
30
We can see that classical communism didn't perceive the aristocracy to be a threat or enemy, at least not as much as the bourgeoisie.
The communist manifesto describes the aristocracy in 1848 as "ruined" by the bourgeoisie already:
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions ...
30
What is the reason for this idea that communism is evil or like Nazism and fascism and aims to kill people?
Because the leaders of Communist nations (chiefly Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot) happily slaughtered millions of their own people in the name of revolution, or instituted policies that led to famine and mass death. Per Wikipedia, fully a quarter of ...
27
Probably because his reign brought them into the position of 'world power'. The USSR may have fell apart, but that happened well after Stalin was no longer on charge. The USSR was a force to be reckoned with, but now, Russia has fallen off to the sidelines. They probably want their country to be the powerhouse it used to be. I'm not an expert, and this is ...
25
Venezuela made a headlong rush into state ownership of businesses, at the direction of Chavez and Maduro. Consequently, the businesses saw their experienced executives replaced by friends of Chavez and Maduro, with more of an eye on loyalty than competence.
As a direct result of this displacement of experienced people, not only was Venezuela hurt badly by ...
24
First of all, for clarity, China never claimed to be communist.
I have reviewed the full text of Chinese Constitution (both the China's Constitution of 1982 with Amendments through 2004, as well as 2017 changes published by Xinhua).
It does not mention China being a Communist country anywhere. As a matter of fact, the only time the word "communis(m|t)" ...
24
Definitions
Although Marx is generally regarded as the father and inventor of communism, it should be noted that the idea of "abolition of private property" and "common ownership of the means of production" are not strictly limited to Marx's framework. Thus, we should distinguish between "communism", which is a general political framework, and "Marxism", ...
24
You are coming at this from the wrong angle. Ask yourself: why do the French approve of Napoleon?
They actually have extremely similar histories: A revolution happens, overthrowing the ancient monarchy -> in the course of it, some hick from a far-away mountain region of the empire, not of the native stock (Corsican/Georgian), seizes the reins of the ...
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Officially no; in some systems possibly yes; and in practice yes.
By currency in the term of legal tender, a fully-communist system should not have currency for the reasons that you point out. That is how the system is designed. Private property is completely abolished.
In some systems that are/were considered communist (depends who answers), the Soviet ...
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