A little less than a year ago, I took a Sociological Theory course as part of my major. While I'm well aware of the fact that that in no way, shape, or form makes me an expert on the subject, I managed to gather some information and specifics on ideals that I already held very dear: communism.
I know you may be thinking, "But Rubén! Communism takes away from everything we built as a nation! We're all about freedom and democracy!" But here's the thing: you can't have complete freedom and complete democracy. In a way, the two extremes are on a sort of sliding scale. See, democracy revolves around the idea that everyone is equal in their own right. Freedom stifles that. Freedom gives power to the majority demographic to stifle the voice and the freedom of those that they outnumber. The more freedom you have, the less democracy you have, and the more democracy you have, the more freedom there is. America has found a middle ground to these two ideals and has managed to fill us with the illusion that we have both, when in truth we have neither.
"Where are going with this, Rubén?" you might be asking yourself (I like to think you and I are on a first name basis). What is the best way to ensure that everyone is equal? Limitations. As I mentioned before, if you give everyone the same rights and freedom, the people who make up the majority of the population will work to suppress the freedom that people outside of that major demographic have, therefore there's still a thinly-veiled illusion of freedom for those people, but they are merely shadows of the people who are truly free.
Communism places a strict set of laws where people work towards keeping a community afloat rather than taking everything for ourselves and leaving nothing for those who just weren't lucky enough. It is a community that is established and governed by the people for the people. Sound familiar? That's because it's a quote from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address of 1863 (Whoo! Callbacks!)
You might wish to bring up Communist countries that are notorious for oppressing the people within them such as North Korea, Cuba, the former Soviet Union, the list goes on. I would like to point out that while these countries claim to be communist, they are far from it. They're garbage. More specifically, they're tyrannical socialist countries. True communism exists when everyone is on an equal level of authority with an equal amount of restrictions. Once one person rises to the top and starts ordering others around, that equality is lost, and the entire system is ruined.
What's that? True communism is impossible, you say? Sure, it would be easy to say that we as a human race are incapable of governing without someone keeping a watchful eye on us, but the fact of the matter is that is simply not true. Our early civilizations had no such government and consisted of communities that worked together so that their existence could excel. It's the most basic human nature to depend on not only ourselves, but on the people around us for our survival. As time passed, societies regressed into a more individualistic mindset and lost the discipline needed to follow their own code of conduct without any concern of repercussions. Since then, we've developed a dependence for authority because we've lost the will to govern ourselves.
If you want a more recent example, I'll give you one: Albania. Albania for those of you that are unaware, is a country located on the northwest border of Greece that was occupied by Germany in World War II. After Albania was freed from Nazi tyranny, they turned to communist government. In this state, they managed to complete many unfinished tasks from the preceding monarchy as well as establish a cooperative agricultural system that led to vast economic growth, the elimination of illiteracy along with other educational advances, and astounding progress in medicine. The average annual rate of Albania's national income was 29% higher than the world average. The main reason that Communist Albania fell was due to it's eventual need to interact with other countries. The capitalism and inequality that was found in surrounding countries made its way into Albania in the form of protests against their government, resulting in the dissolution of that era in the nation.
In summary, communism is not this evil, tyrannical concept that our nation has so eloquently made it out to be. Our politicians want us to be scared of communism because they're scared. They're scared of losing the freedom they have to suppress others, and they know that true communism and the equality it brings about snatches that freedom away from them. My question to you is: should they have that freedom in the first place?
