Myths and facts regarding Communism

Article by Lathou When a movement based on an idea as revolutionary as communism starts to gain momentum within a sea of capitalism, you would be foolish to expect those committed to the capitalist paradigm to refrain from dismissing such a movement. In a society where capitalism dominates our everyday lives, our every interaction with one another, you can expect the information that is exchanged to have a capitalist bias. The adage that a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on rings very true in this situation. Those to have incentive to maintain the status quo will circulate falsehoods if need be, and in this case, these people are those who have the greatest power over information in society.

Myth 1: Communism is a totalitarian regime, where the state owns and controls everything and you have no say.
There are multiple reasons this myth is widely believed. Firstly, people living in capitalist have a particular conception of democracy. It is commonly believed that voting for representatives from a narrow selection of political parties is enough to constitute democratic control over the economy. This is clearly false to anyone who understands that money is power. There have been attempts to limit the influence of money on politics, but this is a pipe dream. As long as you have individuals controlling mass wealth, they are the ones who control the politics of a nation. They have the ability to threaten to offshore their capital and hold the whole nation at ransom. Until the private ownership of capital is abolished, democracy cannot exist. We will only have a dictatorship of the rich. Secondly, people believe that countries like China and Cuba are already communist. They are not. They are bureaucratically deformed workers states. In these countries, control over the means of production has been taken away from the capitalists, but the central state apparatus is not in the hands of the working class. Until the workers have full control over the economy, communism will never be achieved. Workers must at be at the helm of the entire transition between capitalism and communism, and not trust in a caste of elite revolutionaries to take full control. Marxists understand that the state is only a tool of oppression used by one class to dominate another. The working class must smash the capitalist state, and replace it with their own state to dominate the bourgeoisie. Once the bourgeois class in eliminated, the state will no longer serve a purpose and will disappear.

Myth 2: Under communism, everyone receives the same wage, no matter if they are a street sweeper or a brain surgeon.

This fallacy can be dismissed by both looking at the history of Marxist regimes, and by reading Marxist theory. Under the leadership of the Bolshevik party, workers in the USSR were paid according to their technical ability. This same arrangement can be seen in Cuba and China. But the USSR, China and Cuba were never communist. The goal of communism is to abolish the wage system altogether. Once the entire productive output of society is geared towards necessity instead of profit, articles of consumption will no longer require to be bought and sold. The full productive capacity of society is severely limited under the profit motive, which requires commodities to be produced only to be sold, and sold for profit. Instead of simply pushing the prices of commodities down, abundance puts workers out of work, and slows production to a grinding halt. The advance of technology should make us be able to produce enough for society, and allow us to have more free time for unalienated labour, that is, labour that is intellectually and emotionally fulfilling, instead of just fulfilling profit requirements.

Myth 3: Communism will never work because humans are inherently greedy and selfish.
This argument is presented with no other evidence other than the fact capitalism exists. Capitalism was the result of technological improvements that made production under the social relations of feudalism inefficient, and therefore society had to change to accommodate. At no point in history did humans declare, we are greedy, therefore we must create society to reflect our greediness. Humans are neither passive players nor the master architects of society. Human nature is something that reflects our social existence, and in turn shapes society, which in turn again shapes our nature. It is an ongoing dialogue between our consciousness and the material reality in which we exist.

Myth 4: Communism does not create incentive to work.

This myth is closely linked to the myth that everyone is forced to receive equal payment for their labour. The goal of communism is not to cap incentive to work, but to give everyone equal opportunity to excel. Capitalism provides workers nothing more than the incentive to create more wealth for their employers than their fellow workers. This allegorical ladder that workers told they must climb because it can lead them to the loft of the capitalist class is an intentionally narrow and rickety one, and it creates nothing but conflict amongst the working class as they fight to ascend to no avail. Communism does not intend to remove this ladder, but to install many ladders, so all workers may embrace the luxurious loft above.