Communism – Conservapedia
From Conservapedia
Communism is a left-wing materialistic and often violently atheistic ideology created to justify the overthrow of Capitalism, replacing free market economics and democracy with a "dictatorship of the proletariat". Under Communism, the political system replaces the private ownership of the means of production with "collective ownership" of the economy, this is to be accomplished through direct "democratic" control by the workers.[1] Twentieth century Communism was based on Karl Marx's manifesto which proposed to establishment of a "classless society." However, all Communist societies have had a class structure, notably the USSR, which was dominated by a self appointed Nomenklatura.
In the belief that "people cannot change", governments under the banner of Communism have caused the death of somewhere between 40 million to 260 million human lives.[2][3][4][5][6][7] Dr. R. J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, is the scholar who first coined the term democide (death by government). Dr. R. J. Rummel's mid estimate regarding the loss of life due to communism is that it caused the death of approximately 148,286,000 people between 1917 and 1987.[8]
President Ronald Reagan in an address before the British House of Commons said,
Today, communism continues to rule over at least one-fifth of the world's people.[10]
Communism is based upon Marxism, a philosophy which uses materialism to explain all physical and social phenomena. The theory of evolution influenced the thinking of the Communists, including Marx, Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.[11] Marx wrote, "Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history." Marx offered to dedicate the second German edition of his polemic "Das Kapital" to Charles Darwin, but Darwin declined the "honour." [12][13]
Economically, communism advocates a socialist economy in which the government owns the means of production. In countries where communism has been imposed, the government has taken ownership of farms, factories, stores and so on in the name of the people; see "dictatorship of the proletariat". This drives all market-based economic activity underground and leads to inefficiencies and shortages. In both the Soviet Union and Red China, the number of people who starved to death when the government confiscated their farm products (animals and grain) is estimated in the tens of millions.
Even more important, one party controls every organization from the local labor union to the the army to the national government. The party is not elected. Its top officials (the "Politburo") select replacements when there is a vacancy. usually a dictator (like Stalin, Mao or Castro) controls the Politburo, but sometimes power is shared among five or six people. No dissent is allowed--all news media are controlled, and the Internet is heavily censored.
Elites do not disappear. Members of the ruling party (see Nomenklatura) have special stores in which ordinary people are barred, stores which are allegedly immune to the shortages which the lower class must endure.
Various communist doctrines have evolved or been adapted to the time and place they have been implemented. Marxism, developed by Karl Marx, and its modifications under Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong, advocates the overthrow of the existing order by a revolution of the proletariat, the social group which does not control the means of production. The goal of Marxism is supposedly to create a classless society which would result in no longer the need for any government (Communism).
See the article here:
Communism - Conservapedia