Question: How does a communist government ACTUALLY work?
I know that in a communist government, everything is owned by the government and if i’m correct everyone gets an equal amount of money?
Sounds pretty fair at first, but how does this actually work? How do people get jobs? How does everything legitimately work inside a communist country?
Early answers:
Answer by George S
No, it can’t with the vast majority of today’s cultures. It had been tried in Asian and Balkan nations but never worked because virtually all of them are very family oriented. They drain the system for their families and it ultimately collapses. The leaders, with keys to all the warehouses, are worst of all.
Only a rare few community not family oriented cultures with very stoic and austere traditions of dedication to their society have made it work for extended periods. Some of the strict Calvinist Protestant sects who were most of the first British and European settlers in the lower half of North America made it work.
Some Quakers and Anabaptist Mennonites formed communist communities, some lasting for centuries. Others, like the Puritan Anglicans in Plymouth Colony almost starved out the first year when they tried it; but many in that colony were not dedicated Calvinists but just tag-alongs looking for a new life. They fared better the next year with family plots to farm.
Israeli Kibbutzim managed well but the younger ones, like in what Calvinist and Anabaptist communist communities, if any, do still exist and the softer socialistic ones that do remain, are losing interest in the austerity necessary for more communal living. They want the fancy things they must sacrifice for supporting people not able to pull a heavy load.
Answer by Jeff D
It’s something of a myth that communism promises equal distribution of wealth. As Marx popularized, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’. What that means is that you get what you need (with the state arbitrating what you need). If you’re a factory worker, you get a small apartment and a vodka ration. If you’re a party chairman, you get a dacha in the country and a private car. The difference is that under capitalism, the dacha and private car would be owned by the greedy industrialist whereas under communism, the state owns it (and just lets the party chairman use it because, let’s face it, it’s a really demanding job). The capitalist worker resents the wealth and privilege of the industrialist whereas the communist worker is rightfully proud of the private car and dacha that he (collectively) owns (although he never actually gets to use them).
Answer by lare
Communism uses a Command Economy for control. The State makes all decisions concerning what is made and how it is distributed. Money is essentially worthless because without the permission of the government, you can’t buy anything. During Glasnost, American companies that worked in Russia had to convert its Rubles into Vodka in order to export profits back to America.
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Anthony says
Usually, communist governments are either abandoned or completely destroy their people’s standard of living.
The 5 main nations that have implemented communism are the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba.
Of these, the Soviet Union(now Russia), China, Vietnam, and Cuba have been slowly abandoning communism and freeing their economies.
In North Korea, communism still has a strong foothold but this has led to mass starvation, heavy oppression, and widespread poverty.
When the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba were heavily communist, the same pattern was visible. Under Stalin’s reign over 60 million people died in the Red Terror, under Mao’s reign in China over 70 million people were murdered by the government and under Castro in Cuba huge numbers of people fled Cuba and immigrated to the US to escape the regime.
On a more basic level, communism is obviously worse then capitalism. Let’s say that there are 2 nations: one capitalist and one communist and everyone in both nations can be measured in terms of wealth on a scale from one to 10. In the communist nation, everyone might be, let’s say, a 4. In the capitalist nation, the poorest people are a one. Just looking at this, communism seems better but that’s not the whole story. As the years go on, capitalism begins to lift up the poorest much faster than communism because of the incentive to excel that communism crushed. As a result, the poorest people in a capitalist nation will go from a one to a 2, then a 3, then 4, etc.
While the communist nation is stuck at a 4, the poorest people in a capitalist nation will reach and surpass the 4. So, in the long run, the poor benefit from capitalism more than communism.
Gamer says
Actually, communism ideally removes government because government is supposedly not necessary to make sure people are sharing all property.
To achieve this, you need total socialism first. The government takes control of all manufacturing to create a surplus of goods for the general public to use. When enough resources are generated, then the government is dissolved and the people may consume the resources until exhausted, in which the cycle repeats.