what is communism? i hear it so much but i dont know what it means and i cant understand the dictionary definition. heck, i could barely understand the dictionary definotion for liberal. i mean, ive ben told in social studies that some countries are trying to move their way out of communism, but no one's ever explained to me exactly what it is, and people calling themselves communists on these forums is really confusing. so much to learn so little attention span!
I would define it as the redistribution (hope I haven't lost you yet) of wealth among peoples.. Such as: Every year, your entire pay check goes to the government so that every citizen gets equal pay and equal benefits. Also, if you have trouble understanding what 'liberal' means, why do you lable yourself as such?
whispering woods put it well..but you seemed to be curious about the history of it as well ..marx's (the guy who pretty came up with it) idea of communism was way different from how some countries (russia and china..) put it to use..what they had pretty much just hid behind the name of communism, but was so distorted it wasnt really at all..if you wanted to learn more about the history of it and stuffs, heres a link to wikipedia..its generally slightly easier for me to understand their explanations ^^;; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
Communism was a kind of warning to (turn of the century) America, Marx & Engles saw the greed and the vast disparity of wealth in the shiny new country, despite America's wonderful credo of All men are equal,... Kind of like a new feudalism,...except the kings and queens were owners of huge companys, oil railways, steel factorys, and since wages were so insignificant back then, The pesants and surfs were the lowly working man woman and children. It really was a kind of declaration of workers human rights in a way,...but Russia and China really dug the violent revolution part, and the killing of intelectuals so much, they kind of forgot about the lowly worker. It's a super keen idea, REALLY!! I like it,... Except the bloody revolution and the killing and the maiming and ,....oy vay!!!! yuk!!!! but, unfortunatly like democracy, or any system really, it has some unfortunate weaknesses, people can be greedy and powerhungry and paranoid. Oh well,.....i've said too much Keep asking questions,... it's groovy! you are cool!!!!
If you really want to learn about strict communism, I'd recommend just reading the Communist Manifesto. It's pretty short and can tell you what exactly Marx and Engels had in mind.
The mistake many people make is thinking communism is a political system, this is false, communism is an economic system. The problems with USSR, China and Cuba is not that they have or had communist economic systems, but rather that they are totalitarian political systems. While there are many examples of successful Democratic Socialist states, to date Democratic Communism has never been tried on a large scale so no one really knows if it would work or not.
communism = works great on paper communism also = as soon as people start fucking with it game over everyone theorhetically owns everything while at the same time owning nothing it'd be like living in the offices of a company that you own shares in and 100 other people live there too, they also own shares, now you all own part of it, but the part that y'all own isn't really defined, so if you destroy part of it it's still a crime, even though 1/100 of everything in there belongs to you 99 other people might not have wanted that thing destroyed, you can't even destroy your own portion because that destroys the totality, so the gov't (all of you and likely a dictator if stalin was involved) decide what to do with everything it's usually not pretty....
there was the one small country that didnt do to bad, i forget which one right now, but it was behind the iron curtain...
i didnt label myself that. that was an accident that i just decided not to change because i didnt feel like it.
i was apart of a communist party... but then dropped out of it... then went into the green party... but i think I might drop out of that... I agree with different things from both parties.
