Why is Communism idolized

Aldarion

Neoreactionary Monarchist
So I tried to find out, and this was the result:

Basically, it is a combination of naivety, desperation and hopelessness. But somehow I am not happy with that conclusion - I feel it is oversimplified, and I want a better conclusion than "people are morons".

So what do you think?
 

AnimalNoodles

Well-known member
So I tried to find out, and this was the result:

Basically, it is a combination of naivety, desperation and hopelessness. But somehow I am not happy with that conclusion - I feel it is oversimplified, and I want a better conclusion than "people are morons".

So what do you think?

One reason is because marxist theory is vast, complex and challenging. Thus it attracts intellectuals who study and promote it.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
So I tried to find out, and this was the result:

Basically, it is a combination of naivety, desperation and hopelessness. But somehow I am not happy with that conclusion - I feel it is oversimplified, and I want a better conclusion than "people are morons".

So what do you think?
Because they aren't morons, they are suckers.
Communism in terms of not political system, but an ideology attempting to get supporters, lives or dies on utopianism and idealism, and convincing supporters to believe in that.
Remember the delusional "what will you do once we build communism" question in commie circles and the ridiculous answers?
The core promise of communism was always an utopia. Collectivist heaven on Earth and in current iterations, even beyond. Attempts to build communism with all their ridiculous requirements and history of failure can stand only on the promise of utopia at the end. Except the utopia is not meant to be in afterlife, but in sufficiently perfected communist society that they promise to aim for. Communism is a non-theistic religion in denial. It's also the reason why it's so aggressive against other religions - it's not irrational, it's not for shits and giggles, it's just suppressing competition whenever it can, by any means it can, like many other religions in history did.
Just like many cults manage to get people to volunteer to give up all freedom and property for the promise of utopia in afterlife, ascension to other dimension, enlightenment or whatever, communism does the same through the promise of an utopia of ultimate society of peace, happiness and material plenty.
 

S'task

Renegade Philosopher
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
The allure of communism depends on who you're look at. Remember, people are complex individuals and while there is some likeness between groups when it comes to communism there's not a single group that is drawn to it, but rather multiple, and each is drawn to it for their own reasons.

Broadly speaking I think there's four main groups attracted to communism. The Academics, the Youthful Idealists, the Downtrodden, and the Politician. Each of these people have different reasons and motives for their draw to communism and you cannot entirely grant to one group what motivates the others.

Starting with the least evil: the Politicians. I know that sounds silly, but you'll see how it's not in a bit. Politicians who embrace communism or communist sourced ideas, in the western world at least, are primarily motivated by the pursuit of power. They are rarely True Believers, and rather use the rhetoric and promises of communism to gain votes. This is generally the behavior of all politicians depending on who they see as their primary voter base, and thus is expected behavior from them. If their perceived voting base was different, they'd sing a different tune.

The next least evil is arguably the Youthful Idealists, or put another way the "Useful Idiots". These folks are those who honestly believe the promise of utopia that communism promises. They believe in the perfectibility of man and that if everyone just worked together without greed or money the world would be a happier place. The issue with these folks is that they are, well, in many respects idiots while thinking themselves smarter than others, not realizing they're programmed.

Next we get to the Downtrodden. Why do I list these folks as somehow more evil than the Youthful Idealists? Because here is where we introduce new motivations into the mix, much more toxic and pernicious motives. While many of the Downtrodden have had hard lives, those that tend to embrace communism do so not due to wanting an ideal world, but rather because it destroys the status quo and destroys those whom have hurt them or have more than them. Thus their support for communism comes not from an idealistic place, but rather a place of revenge and envy.

Which bring us to the Academics. They by far are those least motivated by benevolent motives and most motivated by malevolent ones. You see academics know that much of communist theory leads to bad ends in practice, but for them that's not a bug that's a feature. They want to see non-academics, especially politicians and businessfolk, brought low. There is an envy in academia regarding those with money and power, they think they know how to better run things than politicians and businessfolk, and communism especially appeals to them because of its academic complexity and origins as well as it's need for a vanguard that needs to educate those less wise. It appeals to their egos, their pride, and their envy, making it an addictive and toxic stew in a way that no other political ideology manages to be.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I've noted before on these boards that communism actually works... just only on very small groups. A nuclear or even extended family can run themselves on communist lines and do quite well. Relatively few families have the mom and dad keeping their wealth perfectly separate and paying each other rather than just sharing both money and responsibilities, and the amount of work and production is small enough that a full on command micro-economy works. A village can do it with great difficulty but it's possible. At the scale of a nation the economy becomes too complex to be commanded anymore and the probability of freeloaders mooching off the system approaches 1. However to a person who's main experience with economics is micro-economic family spending, extrapolating a whole nation from how dad does the accounting and plans the family budget each week appears to make sense.

Communism also has the same advantage as Libertarianism, despite being complex in theory it can be summed up as "Push slider bar all the way to the max." This simplicity attracts people who mistake it for elegance, and people with poor education on economics who don't really understand more complex theories and why you actually need to put twelve different slider bars at various breakpoints nearer the middle, and then continually move them around to keep up with how the markets are changing.

Which leads to the last point that there are roughly two kinds of people in the ideology, the genuine believers who are being deceived due to lack of knowledge of economics, and the 'communist' leaders with five mansions who are assuring those believers that they're totally fighting for equity and a fair distribution of goods and services.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
I've noted before on these boards that communism actually works... just only on very small groups. A nuclear or even extended family can run themselves on communist lines and do quite well.
That's not communism, that's just collectivism - not something communism has a monopoly on, just one of social systems including it.
Relatively few families have the mom and dad keeping their wealth perfectly separate and paying each other rather than just sharing both money and responsibilities, and the amount of work and production is small enough that a full on command micro-economy works.
Except it's voluntary - if you were to be forcibly married to the local junkie or crazy person that wouldn't be working well at all, yet communism wants to "collectivize" you with all the junkies and crazy people in the country, and the more strictly internationalist communists, even the whole world. Also home economy is not national economy...
A village can do it with great difficulty but it's possible. At the scale of a nation the economy becomes too complex to be commanded anymore and the probability of freeloaders mooching off the system approaches 1. However to a person who's main experience with economics is micro-economic family spending, extrapolating a whole nation from how dad does the accounting and plans the family budget each week appears to make sense.
At village level you essentially get pre-civilization, tribal economy, societies that by themselves can get to early iron age, if lucky, and either stay there, or evolve into something more capitalistic. And that's obviously with many of such societies, especially the more successful ones, not looking kindly upon freeloaders.
Communism also has the same advantage as Libertarianism, despite being complex in theory it can be summed up as "Push slider bar all the way to the max." This simplicity attracts people who mistake it for elegance, and people with poor education on economics who don't really understand more complex theories and why you actually need to put twelve different slider bars at various breakpoints nearer the middle, and then continually move them around to keep up with how the markets are changing.
But it's fake simplicity. Libertarianism openly says "let the chips fall where they may and let's have the absolute minimum of government necessary". Or in case of ancaps, none at all.
Meanwhile the communism builders, on the other hand, specifically want to micromanage absolutely everything, and have a giant bureaucracy to do it - now that's some complexity.
Which leads to the last point that there are roughly two kinds of people in the ideology, the genuine believers who are being deceived due to lack of knowledge of economics, and the 'communist' leaders with five mansions who are assuring those believers that they're totally fighting for equity and a fair distribution of goods and services.
And then there is the pragmatic underclass, who do suspect it's a scam, but they can slip onto the side of scammers rather than the scammed due to the promise of "equity" policies favoring them, potentially making them a convenient tool for the leaders.
 

Batrix2070

RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
So what do you think?
In my opinion, the reason why Communism continues to be so idealized is simple.
Because it appeals to the worst human trait, namely pride, and sets it up as an ideal to which everyone should aspire.
Why hubris? Because Communism, as indeed in all Marxism, is not about learning about the world, but about changing it. And by change it should be understood, not to use the existing rules and forces in reality so that they begin to help man, but literally to change the very rules and forces according to the author's vision of how it should be, how reality should be, because the current one is, according to the principles of Marxism, pernamentally flawed in its very form.
That is, simplifying the argument, communism derived from Marxism refers to the human desire to dominate the world in every element of it, the conceit that man can be equal to God and even surpass him in creating the world.
Communists believe that they can literally rewrite reality the way they want and force it to work the way they want a better world to look.

In my opinion, Marxism and by extension communism, which betrays many of the characteristics of religion, is nothing less than the most serious Christian heresy in the entire history of Christianity, because communists de facto do not so much disbelieve in God as they refuse to recognize him as someone higher than man and that man in the place of God would do everything better and the world would be a better place.

This is why it is so catchy and many somewhat support Marxism in its various forms, for even if they don't believe that a communist paradise can be built, communism gives them the opportunity to at least try to possess omnipotence without any limits.

This is why there is constant talk about the crimes of Nazism and the mistakes of communism, because these people believe that the idea that man can 100% control reality is right and must be pursued. And why it must be pursued is already different motives, but their true and common goal for all of them is total control of reality.
If the Communists got their hands on a machine capable of rewriting reality they would use it without hesitation to make reality the way they want it.
 

Agent23

Ни шагу назад!
Because to quote a Bulgarian proverb "what is mine is mine, what is other people's is common property".

A large number of commie fanboys are either silver spoon trust-fund babues, like the posh hypster chick with the prius that couldn't afford ramen and was going to eat the rich.
Or they are just second and thirdraters who are angry that there is somebody better than them, they can't advance on their own merits and need communism, or social justice, or feminism, or "reverse" racism, to get ahead, a lot of them are basically grifters, too.

There are also misguided do-gooder puritans that think that they can usher in an utopia.

I will say there's some amount of arrogance to the Academic communists. A belief that it was just not done right, but that they can do it. You just need to do it 'right'.

Real capitalism hasn't been tried, either. :D
 

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
Christianity offers heaven after death - salvation of your soul.
Communism offers heaven on earth - fulfillment of your material needs.

Most people are more inclined towards materialism, rather than spiritualism, at least in the short term. In a nutshell, communism is a messianic movement with many trappings of religion, offering quick, rather than eventual, gratification. It meshes well with the current materialistic society.
 

Agent23

Ни шагу назад!
Christianity offers heaven after death - salvation of your soul.
Communism offers heaven on earth - fulfillment of your material needs.

Most people are more inclined towards materialism, rather than spiritualism, at least in the short term. In a nutshell, communism is a messianic movement with many trappings of religion, offering quick, rather than eventual, gratification. It meshes well with the current materialistic society.
As Dostoevsky said, Communism is Catholicism without the God.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
Envy


When you boil it down its simple communists are driven by envy, by a toxic hate of any one who has more then they do.

Everything else is just overcomplicating it, I've met these people, I've known these people they are not motivated by making the world a better place. Their motivated by envy.

Don't belive me?

Does a movements based on Love and compassion don't murder a 100 million people ones based on envy however can easily do so and do so gleefully. Never belive communists when they say its something else.

Communists lie, and they lie most often about their motivations, never trust them because Communists, socialists, ect do not have friends they have tools they have not discarded yet.
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
Parents don't want to actually parent and keep sending their kids to public school where they becomes radicalized by socialist professors. Schools tell children that "communism is just another political system and it works! It's just that the people in charge of China and the USSR were bad". Public education in America downplays the atrocities committed under communism and instead use the Third Reich as the boogeyman of the 20th century. Teachers love to tell you about the gas chambers but they never tell you about the famines that killed a hundred times more people. And then when someone who actually lived under the horrors of communism stands up to correct the record, the hivemind tries to shut them up because they're not telling the hivemind what they've been indoctrinated to believe is right. "Communism works! It's just that your rulers were bad people!"

Another reason is globalization. We have single child/ small nuclear families where the kid is kicked out of the house and the moves across the country to find work. Everyone has become a shiftless, rootless wanderer ruled by the state, with no home or community or roots to speak of. With no family or community to rely on, people turn to state institutions to remedy their lives, and thus become focused on perfecting the state.

Communists also tend to believe that they can erect an utopia, a perfect society in this fallen world.
 
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Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
I don't even believe them when they claim anything along the lines of "true communism has never been tried" or "it was just that the people running the USSR and the CCP are bad." Why? Simple. If they actually felt that way there would be none of the iconography being used by them or any of the other idolization that they are doing.
 

Simonbob

Well-known member
"We can make everything fair!"

It's the ultimate version of "If you give me enough power, I can fix all your problems!"


It really does appeal to all sorts of folk who hurt. If everything is made fair, they shouldn't hurt, they think. But..... First, people are inherantly not equal, no matter what you do. And, the reason why they hurt isn't something you can fix without understanding why they hurt.

If your childhood sucked, money/power won't fix the problem.
 

Navarro

Well-known member
I will say there's some amount of arrogance to the Academic communists. A belief that it was just not done right, but that they can do it. You just need to do it 'right'.

Fascism similarly crashed and burned, but still doesn't get the same degree of glorification from academia. IMO it's simply because communism was never confronted and defeated in the same way fascism was. No allied soldiers charged in to liberate the gulags, and neither did communist regimes take substantial power over democratic western societies. Without those experiences and visceral gut-level reactions, we simply lack appropriate anti-communist immune defences like we have anti-fascist ones.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
For a good long while, we kind of did, though. We saw the Soviets and Chinese as evil. We saw what the Khmer Rouge did. All the "intellectuals" will say is, "that wasn't real communism," all while they still use the symbols and celebrate it. :cautious: If you ask me, we just got soft and lost our ability to stand up to those types.
 

Abhorsen

Local Degenerate
Moderator
Staff Member
Comrade
Osaul
For a good long while, we kind of did, though. We saw the Soviets and Chinese as evil. We saw what the Khmer Rouge did. All the "intellectuals" will say is, "that wasn't real communism," all while they still use the symbols and celebrate it. :cautious: If you ask me, we just got soft and lost our ability to stand up to those types.
Only kind of, and only some people. There was always a solid core of apologia for them. The holocaust and the American troops rescuing people and bringing back such stories made everyone at every level of society have knowledge of Nazi evil. There was none of that for communism.
 

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