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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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) ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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The Wikipedia page for Bourgeoisie is informative, and worth the read.
Strictly speaking, there was no equivalent of middle, upper, or lower classes (in the modern usage of the terms) prior to perhaps the 17th century. The bourgeoisie were the wealthiest segment of commoners under feudal aristocracies, all the way back to the 11th century: tradesmen, ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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....
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While it needn't be this way, per se, political parties and the government are often separate institutions as a matter of having different operational objectives.
The job of the government is to run the state. The job of the party is to recruit, evaluate, groom, and train future officers for the government, as well as make decisions about political agendas.
...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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.").
...
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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 ...
35
As I explained in a previous post, pre-1980s China was socialist/lower-stage communist. Karl Marx believed that one method for true communism is socialism or the lower stage of communism to achieve the final stage of communism. In his work Critique of the Gotha Program, Karl Marx mentions the dictatorship of the proletariat, a form of the state where members ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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I'm going to try to make an argument that a modern Marxist Communist could make.
Firstly, it is perfectly reasonable to argue that Marxist Communism has never been tried. Specifically, Marx considered Communism to be a stateless society "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need".
What has been tried is state socialism, the so-...
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Who's the "we" that refers to China as Communist? As far as I can tell, there are basically two sorts of people that continued to refer to it as Communist after the reforms of Deng Xiaoping:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping
These are
The ignorant. This includes certain US right-wing sorts who haven't abandoned the use of it as a ...
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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 ...
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