I never really understood why communism got such a bad rap. A little bit of reading later, and I feel that I've gotten a bit of a grasp on the extent of communism and why it has the reputation of a terrible governmental system. Historical communist governments are a bit of a mess, to say the least. Prominent examples range all around the world from Soviet Russia to China to Cuba and more! There's a lot to be said about these interesting countries... The U.S.S.R. is a lot of people's go-to communist country, which is normal, it's one of the best ones. It became the first of many attempts at a Marxist-Communist state and would lead to becoming a Superpower, rivaling the United States.
It all started when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Romanov monarchy and emerged as Russia 2: The Soviet Union. In a nutshell, the leftist revolutionaries overthrew the evil Czar Nicholas II and established a socialist government. After an ugly civil war and the Red Terror, The new socialist Russia made a treaty with states like Ukraine and Belarus, and out came the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics led by Vladimir Lenin. After Lenin died Joseph Stalin took power and ruled with an iron fist, killing millions of people until he died alone in 1953. Whoops! The problem was that communism is slightly evil in concept and Stalin had Gulags.
Another good one is Mao China. Mao Zedong founded the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he was probably a die-hard Marxist all the other ones. After a bit of Civil War, Mao and his comrades went to South China, but the KMT nationalists surrounded them. So, naturally, Mao went to northern China to set up camp. After a bit of war with Japan and a few more years of civil war, The CCP was victorious and set up the People's Republic of China. In 1958, Mao was bored and launched the Great Leap Forward. This was a good idea, but, in a very real sense, a bad idea. The point was to improve production, and what happened was that production was not improved. It was completely destroyed. To put it nicely, famine and deaths of over 50 million people ensued. Needless to say, Mao's position was a little weaker and he decided to quit the Great Leap Forward. To fix this little mistake, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to revive the spirit of China! Take that, capitalists! Then, one and a half million people died, and China wasn't really feeling Mao's vibes anymore. At least he was getting better, only 1.5 million people died this time. Before Mao could get it right on his third try, he died. So that's that. Oh well.
So communism didn't do too well in history. It's alright, everybody makes mistakes, it'll be better the next time right? Probably not. Communism tends to become pretty murderous, pretty quickly. It's a slippery slope, going from equality of outcome to the Great Purge. And it's a lot slippery-er than people think. Or is it slippier. Slipperier? Yes, it's a lot slipperier than people think.
Dumb stuff aside, it's actually a very important issue to talk about; people are starting to think communism is a good idea again. I don't like to devolve an argument to left and right, so I'll just call them Neo-Socialists. Neo-Socialist platforms are on the rise in the United States, and they seem to make compelling arguments, but this shouldn't fool anyone The reason I wanted to talk about historical communist regimes was to put in perspective how they always seem to end. Russia and China aren't isolated cases either. Communist governments always seem to end in roughly the same way. Using history as a means of avoiding another catastrophe is usually refuted by "well if it was me, I would've done it better." Well I disagree, most everyone would do just as bad or worse.
Although I got a little off topic, I rest my case on the basis of historical failures of communism.
