That Four-Letter Word: Communism
J. Calixto

What you know about communism is not informed within a vacuum. More specifically this vacuum is what we like to call the “free marketplace of ideas”, or whatever new term becomes popular to explain the idea of people as individuals who freely pick and choose the best ideas available to them. Behind the veil of a free marketplace of ideas, reality reveals that people in society are actually indoctrinated with various ideological, political, religious, and overall cultural ideas that conform to the existing status quo of organized human society and the power structures (such as the state, religion, mainstream culture, economy, etc.) that operate within it.
The concept of the marketplace of ideas exists within the context of capitalist society, a society where people are individuals in a market economy who are guaranteed political equality by a constitution or supreme law. Living in a capitalist society requires people to accept capitalism itself as a permanent institution for governing society. The private ownership of the economic means of production (i.e. the ownership of the economy in the hands of a few) must be ideologically justified as central to keeping the system safe from the skepticism that has toppled all previous regimes in history.
Indoctrination is necessary for people to identify with capitalism as inseparable from their very existence as humans. People under capitalism might materially benefit from the system or suffer under it, but for everyone in capitalist society, capitalism is presented as not only the most successful but also the only sustainable economic system to limit the possibility of an alternative that poses a threat to the status quo. Furthermore, the indoctrination of capitalist ideology in combination with living under capitalism produces a reality where people are completely incapable of conceiving any alternative other than capitalism.
This reality must inevitably reject communism, an alternate reality that aims to abolish capitalism and transcend the limitations of mere political equality among people. What communism seeks is to abolish the present state of things, to overcome our indoctrination and transform the status quo — to abolish capitalism, dismantle the state that upholds capitalism, and ultimately destroy class society that has prevented real equality from coming into existence. Communism rejects the capitalist ideologies of the market and the individual, not because it rejects individual freedom but because the concept of individuals under capitalism is always a justification for the capitalist class who lord over society and exclusively wield the power to dictate economic and political reality.
We are the prisoners of our own egotism. The connection between capitalism and individualism creates an ideology that opposes and despises notions of collectivism or solidarity. In capitalist society we are obsessed with the individual ego, an identity that is responsible for the creation of the modern capitalist system. According to capitalist ideology, individuals rather than collectives have been responsible for all major transformations in society. An individual through sheer determination and hard work can get anywhere in life. The resulting capitalist system is therefore governed by people who have worked hard to earn their position and maintained their personal responsibility. Because of this ideal, the individual must be protected against the threat of collectivism; individualism under capitalism becomes freedom from society. As its antithesis, communism would mean the freedom of society. The very existence of communism is anathema to all that capitalism represents.
The indoctrination of this ideology under capitalist society presents a world where it is a challenge of the individual to maintain independence from all others. The handful of capitalists are free to manipulate this ideology for their own ends. For example, not only is it considered harmful to tax the rich, it is actually positive for the capitalist class to keep the wealth for themselves to promote innovation, investment, and maintain the freedom of the individual capitalist from being held responsible for the wellbeing of society. For the rest of society, for the working class, as individuals we are less likely to find solidarity amongst each other as a collective, and more likely to view each other as competitors. It is honorable for workers in today’s society to view themselves as potential billionaires by working harder than ever before for wages that do not actually reward our hard work. Workers come to think of themselves as capitalists despite not owning any capital. The chance that one in a million might make it into the capitalist class is more celebrated than considering the alternative that we would be better off in a society where no one is poor. This ideology only benefits the interests of one social class, the wealth owning capitalist class.
The capitalist uses the market to exploit their wealth and dominate other capitalists, and most importantly they exploit the working class who work for them. The worker under capitalism is in reality not an individual. Nowadays they often work two jobs, dedicating their free time into time spent at work as their wages crumble under the relentless competition of our global market. The free time a worker has is surrendered towards staying afloat in this economy. So are we free if we have no time to be free? Surely without this freedom we cannot fully develop as unique and diverse human beings, and therefore individuality under capitalism means only freedom for the capitalist class. It’s not just an abstract freedom, but a freedom to be one of ten individuals who own the same wealth as half the global population, and our same freedom to “accept” it as a member of the latter. Elon Musk will be free to ride his private spaceship to Mars while you are free to rot on earth when climate collapse engulfs the planet.
If not capitalism, why communism? Why not support other -isms that are more palatable or are less abrasive to our senses? Under capitalism we’ve learned and internalized all of the arguments against communism. It’s said that communism goes against “human nature”, that communism is good in theory but fails in practice, or that communism erases individuality.
We have lived under capitalism for so long that we forget that it is not eternal. We have naturalized capitalism, as if it’s an integral part of the world; like the sunrise at dawn or the inevitable sunset in the evening, we cannot imagine reality without capitalism. “Capitalism is merely human nature”, goes the argument. Every social system becomes so ingrained in society that it appears natural. At one time in history, the feudal hierarchy of lord and serf was natural, the relationship of master and slave was natural. Today the relationship between worker and owner is natural, it is natural for human beings to selfishly compete for survival. This is what communism apparently refuses to acknowledge.
The first step to having a communist consciousness — a mindset that wants to abolish the present state of things — is recognizing that capitalism is not natural or eternal, and that capitalism will disappear from the earth, a final sunset without a sunrise.
If it is not eternal then it can broken, therefore time wreaks havoc on capitalism. The economy under capitalism grows exponentially, infinitely, yet the working class hasn’t reaped any of its benefits, and the earth itself cannot benefit from a system predicated on infinite growth on a finite planet. Communism aims to transform the predatory and competitive atmosphere of capitalism into a society organized around mutual benefit, solidarity, and cooperative labor. Earth belongs in the hands of everyone, and not in the hands of a few. Communism throws the working class into the arena of mass democracy. It shapes the working class on earth, the world majority, into a political force directly responsible in the affairs of politics and economics. When the wretched of the earth become the ruling class, they have no choice but to radically alter reality itself which has been until now dictated by a minority of the population.
Communism is the doctrine for the conditions of the liberation of the working class, for the freedom of the majority. Communism asserts that all people are capable of transforming the world around them. To clarify, communists are not idealists, we don’t believe that our ideas can determine reality. Communists are also not vulgar materialists, who believe that people are merely a reflection of the world external to them. What communism reveals is that people’s consciousness not only reflects reality but are also an active part in transforming it. Capitalism, like all other previous systems are only a part of the whole which has been humanity’s ability to transform the world in its image and continuously reorganize it. Humanity has taken the earth and molded it according to our desires and necessities. Thus, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” becomes the necessary basis of a just society. Yet until now, this ability has been the privilege of the ruling classes, but communism demands the majority in control of making its own history, and to conscientiously transform it in its image.
Communism therefore requires a liberating consciousness. That isn’t to say that this consciousness will set us free, but that it illuminates a path towards a future where people are free from the oppression of class society. We take this realization and use it to change the world.
Capitalist society is not free. People are not free from class relations, from being divided into either the capitalist class or the working class. The ownership of the economic means of production, the system of production and consumption for all is in the hands of individuals who allocate resources not based on need but on profitability. The working class is not free because they have no say over the organization of the economy in society, they cannot vote away private property or to redistribute wealth, thus what political freedoms they do have are conditional to what is permissible in a capitalist democracy. Their only hope is unionize and demand concessions. Communism reveals that this limitation on our existence can be completely done away with, for they only exist in a period in history prior to the radical structuring of the entire strata economic production and its resulting political power in the hands of democratic management.
We argue for the completely new. We do not want a reiteration of capitalism, a reorganizing of an inherently oppressive regime, neither become masters lording over subjects. Communism paves the way for a new moment in history when we have erased class society, destroyed the limits of thinking and consciousness that capitalism has trapped us in, and gives us new opportunities for a future that was unimaginable previously. In the final analysis, capitalism is withering away and dying, but communism is just only beginning to blossom.
“On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.”
-Chairman Mao
