Why Communism does not Work

James Wiltshire, Writer
June 21, 2012
Filed under Opinions, Writers' Corner

Throughout history we have seen the idea of communism in nations evolve from a small beginning to a world-altering superpower. And while it is easy to see why communism doesn’t work on a large scale (take a look at Russia, Cuba, China, etc. you get the picture), communism itself is an idea as foolproof as making your password ‘abc123’. Not to say that it’s an idiot’s idea, it’s just you would need to be an idiot to use it. Even in small scale, communism does not work.

So to start off, let’s have a brief history lesson. What is communism? Communism is the political idea made famous by Karl Marx that we can live in a society where the people are the government; a society where everyone is equal and everyone is granted the same amount of wealth. No upper class, no middle class, no lower class, only the working class to make the nation great and powerful. Pure equality. What’s wrong with this?

In large scale we’ve seen this novel idea become corrupted. Equal wealth would mean very little wealth. Working to make the nation great would mean working 20 hours a day. The working class would starve and live in poverty, and need a force greater than itself to keep everyone in line and focussed. Deviation from communism would mean death. You see, we as human beings are lost without a power to tell us what to do. The only reason you would say otherwise is if you are the one giving the orders and having people work under them.  You could argue against that by saying that our individual sovereignty has yielded amazing structures, theories and creations, but everything we know is based off the knowledge of someone else. Whether you realize (or like) it or not, you are the product of somebody else’s ideas and reality; there is no escaping that. And that is why ensured equality cannot and does not exist; many of us need to be told what to do.

So now in small scale. We’ve all been to parties. Most of us have, anyway. If we haven’t, we’ve all belonged to a group of some sort (school is a group, too). We all have friends and family and this and that.

So what does this have to do with communism?

In our group of friends, we would consider ourselves equal. We are all workers in one way or another, and with our friends we can escape that. And yet at parties we as friends throw for each other, there is always that one person who is shunted off to the side. Even when a group of like-minded friends get together, a class system emerges. There is always the life of the party, the coordinator, the outcast, etc. And there is no escaping it. Equality cannot exist because we as humans do not allow it to exist; our minds and emotions do not allow it to exist. And because we cannot force our mindsets and program humans to get rid of those emotions, true equality will never exist.

People are not robots. We cannot manufacture a perfect human being that is free of judgement and sentient thought. We can try, but it won’t happen. People have tried and they’ve created monsters. And thus communism, the idea that a society of equal-classed workers can rule themselves, cannot exist. It is a novel idea, though.