Communism is NOT a Utopia

The myth that gives a lifeline to the zombie of Marxism

“We may not accomplish communism today, tomorrow, or in a century. But we shall walk towards communism today, tomorrow and forever”.

I can’t remember the revolutionary who uttered these words; I can remember though I had them on a poster in my student room as a young radical. They captured what communism was for me: the dream; the perfection; the end-point we might never reach, but which is the ideal.

In other words: the utopia.

Preposterously, though, it’s not only young idealistic Marxists who see communism as a utopia, even after its colossal failures and the piles of corpses it left behind. Even some of its fiercest critics portray communism as ‘good in theory (because it dreams of a selfless utopia of egalitarian altruism), but not working in practice’¹.

Yet, such a claim isn’t a criticism of communism: it’s a celebration of it!
It gives a lifeline to a zombie that otherwise would be dead and buried.
It gives unlimited moral credit to an otherwise intellectual bankrupt like Marxism.

What is wrong with the ‘utopia fallacy’, i.e. the idea that communism is ‘good in theory, but doesn’t work in practice’? For starters, it misses the point of what theory and practice mean. Theory is a capture and an explanation of what exists out there in reality.
Nothing can be good in theory, if it fails in practice. It’s like saying ‘fuelling my car with Gatorade is good in theory, but doesn’t work in practice’.
No; fuelling your car with Gatorade is wrong in theory, and therefore impractical.

Most importantly though, this ‘criticism’ actually gives a moral ‘thumbs up’ to communism; a moral sanction it does not deserve. It implies that communism is too good for us—that we humans are fallen beings, and thus it’s not the proper system for us².

Prominent conservative thinker Patrick Deneen literally claimed that communism might be good for heaven, but not for this earth. But think of what this really means: that we aren’t good enough for communism. That communism is too noble a system for us.

But if communism is such a noble ideal, then we should yearn for it, time and again, irrespective of failures, and irrespective of the misery it brought to millions. An ideal is worth ‘trying again, failing again, falling better’, as Samuel Beckett put it. If a particular diet or routine is a healthy ideal I am trying to reach, it’s worth maintaining my pursuit even if I keep failing to stick to it.

Here is the core point: communism hasn’t failed its ideals; it actually fulfilled them. Marxism worked in practice, if one understands what it’s really after.

What are the ideals of communism? Marx captured them in his immortal ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’. That means that the ideal is to sacrifice—for the individual self to be subjugated to the group/society/collective/working class. Under this prism, the good is the denial of the self.

Proud collectivism, denial of self-interest, and egalitarianism are key tenets of the communist utopia. Are all these ‘good in theory’?

Dominant philosophy/religion tells us: yes. Which is why so many conservatives are utterly incapable of attacking the moral base of communism; ergo the ‘good in theory’ trope.

But Stalin’s collectivization, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and Democratic Kampuchea have shown us what these ideals produce in real life. These were indeed societies doing away with self-interest (most evidently, by attacking private property).

In communism, you really lived for others.

But if sacrifice and subjugation to others are the good, then you don’t need freedom.
Then you do need a Stalin or a Mao to establish who shall sacrifice to whom, and how. Then the utopia did come down to earth, in the gulags and the killing fields.
If ‘altruistic’ self-sacrifice is the pinnacle of morality, then communism is the ideal.
If negation of the self is the ultimate good, then Pol Pot was the ultimate idealist.

Anyone wanting to fight communism, will eventually have to stand up to its morality. I know it’s a very hard pill to swallow; what is even harder, though, would be having to live under a society where such ideals come to life.

Communism is actually a dystopia, and we should be brave enough to proclaim it as such. It is horrendous in theory, and this is why it is disastrous in practice.

In practice, it succeeded in achieving what are the only possible outcomes of its theory: levelling down; destroying; subjugating; making the life of each person a constant sacrifice to everyone and anything, until there is nothing left of the individual.

With communism, in practice you got exactly what the theory promised you.

So it’s time to stop giving communism a moral leg to stand on.
Communism has counted on good people like you to save face and get the sanction of being an ‘idealistic utopia’ that is ‘good in theory’.

Do not fall for it.
Do not flatter it by calling it a utopia.
Don’t undermine humans by deeming us not good enough for communism.

Remove its moral pseudo-high ground, and see communism end where it belongs: down the sewage pipes of history.

1. For an example of this, read Jordan Peterson’s Introduction to the 50th Anniversary edition of The Gulag Archipelago, where he on the one hand attacks the ‘communism is good in theory’ view, but then he himself leans more and more towards it. See also here and here for some manifestation of the ‘it’s too utopian’ thesis.

2. Ayn Rand made this insightful observation more than half a century ago, in her essay Conservatism: An Obituary