QHow is communism better than capitalism? When has communism ever worked? Why will it work when implemented?
ACommunism is “better than capitalism” as a scientific matter of historical development. Capitalism, as Marx comprehensively demonstrated, is a system governed by the drive for profit rather than human need. It produces unimaginable wealth while condemning billions to poverty, insecurity, genocide, and war. It turns all human labor into a commodity, alienates us from our community and our labor, and periodically plunges all of society into worldwide crises that destroy life and productive forces both on a mass scale.
Communism as a historical stage, by contrast, replaces the wage system of socialized production for private profit with a new form of production and distribution for use, which is organized and carried out democratically by the associated producers, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. It ends exploitation at the root. It transforms work from a burden forced by necessity of survival into a sphere of human development and creativity.
Communism will “work” because it will unleash the full potential of human cooperative labor, redirect the immense productive forces of modern industry and technology toward human needs, and toward healing humanity’s relationship with Mother Earth and each other. The working class, organized as the stewards of society, is the only force capable of carrying this out, and it is a class being forged every day in the flames of capitalist exploitation worldwide. This is the logical conclusion of the very forces that capitalism itself has unleashed.
The question of “when has communism ever worked” has to be answered in the correct lighting and without apologetics. The historical stage of communism, known as “the higher phase of communism,” has not yet been achieved as a world system. What has existed, and what we must learn from, are the socialist states which have largely been governed by Communist Parties.
These projects were and are, of course, imperfect, shaped by constant imperialist siege, internal contradictions, and the immeasurable difficulty of building a new world out of the old. But to claim “it doesn’t work” would require ignoring the advances which have been, and continue to be, delivered to hundreds of millions across the globe.
The Soviet Union, in the span of a single generation, transformed a semi-feudal underdeveloped “backwater” devastated by world war and foreign interventions into an industrial power capable of smashing the Nazi war machine, sending the first human being into space, and essentially eliminating illiteracy and mass hunger.
Burkina Faso, in only four years before the assassination of Thomas Sankara by Western-backed forces, vaccinated millions of children, banned forced labor, elevated women to positions of economic and state leadership, and made the nation almost entirely food self-sufficient, all while rejecting foreign aid and colonial debts.
Cuba, under a brutal blockade to this day, has built a healthcare system that trains doctors for the entire world and a biomedical sector that produces its own vaccines. China has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and is now leading multiple spheres of global development, notably green energy.
Vietnam has rebuilt from decades of genocidal war into a rapidly industrializing nation with literacy rates exceeding 97% and a socialist-oriented market economy which has made it, along with China, one of the world’s most sovereign economies. Laos, often ignored in Western press owned by the same bourgeoisie who left it one of the most heavily ordinance contaminated countries in human history, has reduced poverty from over 46% in 1993 to under 20%, achieved nationwide electrification, and built new roads, clinics, and housing reaching its most rural communities.
Communism as a historical stage, by contrast, replaces the wage system of socialized production for private profit with a new form of production and distribution for use, which is organized and carried out democratically by the associated producers, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. It ends exploitation at the root. It transforms work from a burden forced by necessity of survival into a sphere of human development and creativity.
Communism will “work” because it will unleash the full potential of human cooperative labor, redirect the immense productive forces of modern industry and technology toward human needs, and toward healing humanity’s relationship with Mother Earth and each other. The working class, organized as the stewards of society, is the only force capable of carrying this out, and it is a class being forged every day in the flames of capitalist exploitation worldwide. This is the logical conclusion of the very forces that capitalism itself has unleashed.
The question of “when has communism ever worked” has to be answered in the correct lighting and without apologetics. The historical stage of communism, known as “the higher phase of communism,” has not yet been achieved as a world system. What has existed, and what we must learn from, are the socialist states which have largely been governed by Communist Parties.
These projects were and are, of course, imperfect, shaped by constant imperialist siege, internal contradictions, and the immeasurable difficulty of building a new world out of the old. But to claim “it doesn’t work” would require ignoring the advances which have been, and continue to be, delivered to hundreds of millions across the globe.
The Soviet Union, in the span of a single generation, transformed a semi-feudal underdeveloped “backwater” devastated by world war and foreign interventions into an industrial power capable of smashing the Nazi war machine, sending the first human being into space, and essentially eliminating illiteracy and mass hunger.
Burkina Faso, in only four years before the assassination of Thomas Sankara by Western-backed forces, vaccinated millions of children, banned forced labor, elevated women to positions of economic and state leadership, and made the nation almost entirely food self-sufficient, all while rejecting foreign aid and colonial debts.
Cuba, under a brutal blockade to this day, has built a healthcare system that trains doctors for the entire world and a biomedical sector that produces its own vaccines. China has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and is now leading multiple spheres of global development, notably green energy.
Vietnam has rebuilt from decades of genocidal war into a rapidly industrializing nation with literacy rates exceeding 97% and a socialist-oriented market economy which has made it, along with China, one of the world’s most sovereign economies. Laos, often ignored in Western press owned by the same bourgeoisie who left it one of the most heavily ordinance contaminated countries in human history, has reduced poverty from over 46% in 1993 to under 20%, achieved nationwide electrification, and built new roads, clinics, and housing reaching its most rural communities.
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The Communist Party USA is a revolutionary working-class political party founded in 1919 in Chicago, IL.
The Communist Party stands for the interests of the American working class and the American people. It stands for our interests in both the present and the future. Solidarity with workers of other countries is also part of our work. We work in coalition with the labor movement, the peace movement, the student movement, organizations fighting for equality and social justice, the environmental movement, immigrants rights groups and the health care for all campaign.
But to win a better life for working families, we believe that we must go further. We believe that the American people can replace capitalism with a system that puts people before profit — socialism.
We are rooted in our country's revolutionary history and its struggles for democracy. We call for "Bill of Rights" socialism, guaranteeing full individual freedoms.
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