Talk:Communism

MIkael I love You!!!

There are some words sould be fixed, they are not simple!

Headline text

I agree, but we would need a lot more information, and considering that this is the simple english wikipedia, that would take a lot of very careful work, and probably quite a few years. --Qmwne235 21:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that maybe these different versions of Communism should have their own pages, like on the Big Wikipedia.

Mihoshi 21:46, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

NPOV

I'm concerned that the following paragraph might not be NPOV

"The goal of communism is for the people to own everything in the country, and for everyone to work to help everyone else. Many people like this idea, but of course, many people don't want to work to help everyone else. They would rather work to help themselves. And some people don't want to work, they want other people to work for them."

While it's probably true, the little snipes, particularly in the last sentence, may not be appropriate, I feel.

"The Soviet Union was the first country to make their goal the creation of a Communism. But the country never became Communist in the way that Marx described, it was an attempt at a Socialist Transformation of Society which ultimately failed. This can be confusing, because many people called the Soviet Union a Communist country, even though many socialists and communists don't want the kind of "socialism" that existed in the Soviet Union - which they call Stalinism"

This paragraph is confusing, and seems to be biased.

"In 1924 Lenin died, and after a power struggle Josef Stalin became the leader of the Soviet Union in the 1930's he proclaimed that the USSR was a Socialist Country and his warped model, which completely contradicted both Marx and Lenin's idea that a Socialist Revolution had to be worldwide in order to create a Communist Society, and that 'Socialism in one Country' was not possible, became known as Communism."

This is a single sentence! Also the phrases "warped model" and "completely contradicted" are again, quite biased.

I think it is clear what the author's position is and that is not the goal of Wikipedia.

--67.136.146.114 10:37, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the concerns of the editors on this page and I've added a NPOV tag. This is but one of numerous articles some person or persons wrote on here "selling" Communism. I don't know what some folks' idea of NPOV is, but its definitely not supposed to be the job of Simple English Wikipedia to "sell" Communism, and other such dead horses. This will have to be entirely rewritten in order to be made sensible. Blockinblox 19:07, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I fixed it up quite a bit. Some things may still need to be fixed, but I feel I've made it better than it was. Capitán Obvio 09:42, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Grammer Needs So Much Work It Isn't Funny

Too Simple. 'Nough said. 202.7.216.11 09:54, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah I'm going to have to agree, this text is highly biased, it does not produce a point of view which is fair, True the Soviet Union was never truly Marxist but this does not mean it was not Communist, Communism and Marxism are two different things, and should not be thought to be the same. I personally believe the Soviet Union was a prosperous communist country, but this is just my opinion, and obviously I would not put that in text because that would be a one sided point of view and would also seem biased against opposite views, thus this article is not neutral.

The distinction we should be making is between Communism and communism. Lowercase c communism refers to what Marx and Engels envisioned. It is not biased to describe a theory as the author intended. We should not emphasize the EXECUTION of this theory over the original theory. I recommend having a section of this article devoted to each. The first paragraph should simply describe Marx's original vision of communism. Then we can examine the historical executions of his theory and the results.

-jR

Umm, forgetting something?

What about anarchism and other anti-authoritarian branches? Communism is not a form of government really, it's a philosophy. Then again, shades of meaning are difficult on simple-english wikipedia. Any idea how to fix this? The Ungovernable Force 05:15, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm changing it back to "government". It fully meets the definition of the word, it still "governs" in five countries in the world today - North Korea, Cuba, etc... Denying it is a government, and claiming it is a "society", sounds too much like rhetoric... and rhetoric is NOT what simple English wikipedia is for. Blockinblox 13:48, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Anarchism is a philosophy which often advocates communism. Communism is much broader than this article makes it seem. Anyways, society includes government, so why make the article too specific, especially when some people would not consider communism a form of government but a society. It's more than a government, and depending on your definition of government it may not even be that inherently (since many anarchists are also communists). The Ungovernable Force 18:39, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

If there are secondary definitions of "Communism", it would certainly be fair to include them in a dedicated section, but I'm not sure the intro needs to be rewrittem since "Communist government" is the primary definition, and it is in fact a word used to describe the governments, that are governing today, in N. Korea, etc... Blockinblox 20:13, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

That is only one type of communism, communism is a broad group of philosophies which advocate collective societies, not necessarilly collectivized governments. Using the term society should cover any form of communism. The Ungovernable Force 21:24, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

While it is hard for me to imagine how communism would be implemented by something other than a government (at least as the world exists today), both a UK[1] and a US[2] dictionary seem to agree that communism itself isn't inherently linked to government. EN also has the 'societal theory' discussion of communism at en:communism with the more implementation-oriented material at en:communist state and en:communist party. Freshstart 23:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I possess an English textbook from a former Communist country that actually states that the masses of the world must learn English instead of Russian, in order to better combat Capitalism on their own turf. Changing language around through every trick in the book has always been one of the hallmarks of these control freaks, and this should be proof that they are still a threat to everyone else's way of thinking. Remember that Mao had vast numbers of Chinese put to death for the crime of being "set in their ways". He decreed that everyone in China MUST wave his little red book in the air, the book is nothing but insults and accusations and hate speech against Americans. Can you imagine America saying everyone has to wave a particular book in the air, or die??? I bet with all the ton of whitewash you guys are trying to dump on Communism here to make it look perfect and ideal, you aren't going to mention those little facts. Blockinblox 00:45, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Please assume good faith and do not make personal attacks. I, like Freshstart, am not a communist, at least not the type you are refering to. I'm an anarchist and the Soviet Union murdered and jailed thousands of anarchists for not following the party line (and although I don't know much about the Chinese government, they probably did too). I have absolutely no love for dictators--Lennin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Bush--they are the same to me (well, maybe Bush isn't as bad, yet). And anyway, all I'm saying is that communism is a form of society instead of a govenment--how do you get all that other stuff out of that? And actually, I think now that it should be changed to "an idea for society" since communism is a philosophy as well as a type of society. The Ungovernable Force 04:39, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I didn't mean to attack you or Freshstart, unless your name happens to be Mao... But if the article refuses to mention these negative aspects of Communist governments for some reason, you can see why it might look one sided or white washed... Sure mention all the "society" stuff - but if we leave out all the "government" part, we are only giving one half of the story! Blockinblox 14:05, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Seems like much of the problem here is that the so-called/self-described "communist countries" have never reached the original/actual vision of 'communism'. In general, it seems like power-hungry individuals and/or groups have operated under the guise of "communism" (mostly because of its populist appeal), to actually create various dictatorship/totalitarian/authoritarian regimes.

Maybe the para starting "During the 20th century..." should be expanded a bit to something like "During the 20th century, all attempts at creating a communist country resulted in a dictatorship or authoritarian regime. None of them had the class-less society envisioned by communistic ideals, and many had periods of violent oppression of some or most of its citizens." (obviously needs to be simplified) and leave the rest of the details at communist state, since most of the negative things that happened in those countries were due to implementation problems and rejection of much of actual communistic details, not to the goals of literal communism. Freshstart 00:58, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Your analysis of "communist" countries is right on. I also agree with Blockinblox's comment below this that says that Marx's ideas may have been flawed from the begining towards authoritarianism (I personally believe that any attempt to create a Marxist society will probably turn out badly like the USSR, China, N. Korea, Cambodia, Cuba and many other places demonstrate). The idea of the vanguard (which I believe was actually introduced by Lenin is doomed to create tyranny as far as I am concerned. The Ungovernable Force 03:41, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

A lot of people think the problem started with the things Marx wrote being seriously flawed, long before anyone tried to enforce them... Blockinblox 01:56, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I personally don't give a rat's patootie about communism--my socio-political beliefs are more along the lines of the US Prez's FDR, Teddy R, and Jimmy Carter. Anyways, according to EN, communism has been a societal concept separate from governments for thousands of years: en:Christian communism, en:religious communism, en:Diggers (True Levellers). Freshstart 02:03, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

What about Cuba?

The entry fails to mention one of the staunchest communists state in existence: Cuba

Disputes header

I think it should be called Variations, or something like that.

217.123.43.130 (talk) 09:50, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

i love cuba

Bias, factual inaccuracy, unnecessary redundancy, awful grammar

"People who used to own the land, factories, and other parts of the economy that are used to create new things (what socialists and communists call the "means of production") would have to share these things with all the people."

The means of production are the means of production pure and simple, socialists and communists doesn't come into it. This term is purely economic and assigning communist/socialist ownership of it is to stigmatize the term in the same manner the McCarthy govenment attempted (and most would agree succeeded) to demonize all language that could be used to discuss and understand the world economy in "unamerican" ways. It is thus both guilty of bias and inaccuracy.

The "proper" wikipedia has this to say...

"By comparison, the term means of production applies to these means independent of their ownership and their compensation, and regardless of whether the mode of producing is capitalist, feudal, slave, communal or otherwise."

In addition this sentence says nothing that the preceding sentence doesn't already say better.

I think it is perfectly clear that this line is surplus to requirements and so I will remove it. If you disagree then by all means put it back but I expect to see a good justification here.

Over and above this I think it is a terrible idea to try and simplify complex political topics in this way. These things are deeply subtle and contentious subjects even on the "big" wikipedia where there is more space and linguistic scope for addressing nuanced topics. IMHO the simple wikipedia should stick purely to factual matter and leave out politics and philosophy altogether. It is simply impossible to treat topics like these fairly in such a constricted and contrived format. 74.72.199.84 (talk) 07:34, 23 February 2009 (UTC)