Socialism and communism is about big government?

[murdoch]

I never understand when watching TV how communism is discussed. These people seem to know nothing about it. I guess in two parts they are confused - the communist movement and socialist states like the USSR.

The government is not really important in the communist movement. In fact, in the 19th century, Marx and the communists were together with Bakunin and the anarchists in the International Working Men's Association. One of their main disagreements was over the government - Marx wanted communists to take over the government when workers seized power from the capitalists, Bakunin wanted the government dissolved immediately. Marx said the government would need to exist as long as necessary, but eventually could be dissolved.

Also, it is said the government owned and controlled everything in the USSR. The government did not. For example, kolkhozes (collective farms) were owned by the people who worked on them. There were also individual family farms. There were also production cooperatives. Many people owned their own homes.

In fact, the thing that really broke the USSR up was that the government and managers of the production facilities that were state-run became more and more distant from one another. Even these de jure state-run factories were de facto being run by the local foreman and workers, and after the USSR collapsed would be owned by them.

People can be happy or unhappy about things in the USSR, or the communist movement, but their feelings should be based on reality, not cartoonish ideas. I remember Reagan told the BBC once that the word freedom couldn't be translated into Russian because there was no Russian word for freedom (not sure why he didn't consider Свобода acceptable). These thoughts come to me after watching maybe too much Glenn Beck.

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. See below, please:

When I tried to post your parenthesised comment, I got a strange message about long titles and spacings!

'(not sure why he didn't consider Свобода acceptable).'

Love your understatement. People aren't supposed to know Russian, though. I'm sure Reagan would have been fluent in it.