Misconceptions About Communism, Pt. III

Misconceptions Number 9:

"Communism destroys liberty."

This myth has been harbored in the rhetoric of anti-communism for sometime; however, it bears no significant truth in the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin or the application of socialism. In fact, what is needed here is a redefinition of 'freedom.' Freedom can mean many things, and its application in political rhetoric is dependent upon the foundation of economic base. In capitalist-bourgeois society - where the market-based system of private ownership of the means of production provides the base for liberal society - economic freedom is heralded as the unique distinguishing characteristic from past feudal, monarchical societies. Through the development of bourgeois society, man has been attributed with economic freedom of private property. However, there is no denying that this has proven useful in developing a modern capitalist society. The legitimacy of any given right to private property is only vested in the political legitimacy of the given system/state in power. Thus, it has no objective reality outside the political/cultural/social superstructure.

In socialism, a new type of freedom is devised. Namely, the freedom from exploitation and the wage-labor system. Freedom, in its varying forms, finds new meaning under socialism that places it beyond the narrow scope of the economic freedoms of the bourgeoisie to own things. Instead, freedom is transformed into the right of every working man and woman to contribute his labor to the overall good of his social being while at the same time receiving the true value of his labor. The fruit of his labor (if you will) is neither siphoned off nor reversed into a wage for which he loses his invaluable efforts towards productivity. Rather, he is given (in return) the necessary goods for his survival and his labor is thus transformed into a more human process of production based on need, rather than exchange.

Misconception Number 10:

"Communism Does Not Work"