Comments and Replies to QUORA: ‘Do you think atheism or communism is the most evil ideology of all time?’

The Small Brain posted a comment under my answer to ‘Do you think atheism or communism is the most evil ideology of all time?’.  I thought it worth replying to. Here is Small Brain’s comment, followed by my reply:

Communism isn’t collectivist, although it often is. I am a Communist, and I agree with your perception of society, just look up Ego-Communism, that simple. Communists don’t believe society to be some ‘God’. Also, Communism can’t descend into tyranny, Socialism can, and often does. Those nations you mentioned were State Socialist, North Korea even claims it’s not trying to become Communist, not since 1992. For example, I’m a Anarcho-Communist, meaning I support the abolition of the government, state, wage labor, and private property, that can’t descend into tyranny, because there is no tyrannical force to use tyranny as a weapon against the masses. When you say those nations are ‘Communist’, they are really Socialist, and not Communist. Communism abolishes all forms of a government, it is the embodiment of individual freedom at its greatest extent.

I posted this reply to Small Brain:

Anarchy is logically unworkable—Anarcho-Communist, Anarcho-Capitalist, whatever—and there is plenty of historical evidence to back this up. The closest humanity has come to anarchy was the pre-state tribal hunter-gatherer existence, and it was racked with such unspeakable levels of violence as to shock modern people into utter disbelief. Other examples of life without a state are the American frontier (the “Wild West” before government) and today’s organized criminal underworld, both of which were/are exceptionally violent anarchies. (See Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined)

But pretending your Anarcho-Communist utopia is possible, let’s put your claims to the test. If, as you say, you favor abolishing wage labor and private property, while also advocating “individual freedom at its greatest extent,” then you’d be advocating voluntary communism like what has existed in the U.S. (See Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States; Harmony, Oneida, the Shakers, and Others, and John Humphrey Noyes, History of American Socialisms)*. 

If you mean what you say, people who don’t share your communist ideals would be free to go about their lives unmolested and uncoerced. An entrepreneur would be free to start a business and hire workers for wages to help him achieve his business mission, people would be free to work for wages, and both would be free to privately keep whatever property they earn through their work and voluntary trade. If you are sincere, you and other like-minded people would establish your communist associations by voluntary consent, renounce wages and personal property by mutual agreement among yourselves, and leave others who prefer a “capitalist” lifestyle free to pursue their values, including wage labor and private property—just as America’s Communistic Societies lived in peaceful coexistence and harmony with their surrounding capitalistic neighbors. Any other approach but voluntary consent to establishing communism is tyrannical and must necessarily lead to Soviet Russia, Red China, Cuba, North Korea, et al.

Of course, your group’s freedom to live out their communist ideals would still require a constitutionally limited government to protect your right to do so, just as America’s communist/socialist societies depended on the U.S. government and constitution to peacefully live out their creed. Freedom without individual rights, and a government of objective laws to secure them, means the freedom to do as you please without regard for others, including to rape, rob, murder. “Individual freedom at its greatest extent” is no freedom at all. For more, see my essay Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society.

* [Like it or not, communism is subsumed under the broader concept socialism. Historically, many communists have used the two terms interchangeably, with good reason.]

Related Reading:

Moral Rights and Political Freedom by Tara Smith

QUORA *: ‘Why do people find communism so terrifying as an idea?’

Nazism, Communism, Atheism, and the Enlightenment

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

Does Freedom Equal "The Wild West"?

On the Barber/Binswanger Debate: ‘Freedom: For Whom and from What?’