I Was Taught Communism Is No Different Than Chattel Slavery

Let me state up front that I was taught, "Communism makes people slaves of an oppressive government." I was taught that people in Communist nations are treated as property of the state. Yes, really no different than the type of slavery that Americans fought a Civil War to abolish. 

While slavery is a broad term for forced labor, "chattel slavery" is where people are treated as absolute property (chattel). They are bought, sold, inherited, have no rights, and their children are also enslaved. Chattel slavery is dehumanization. This was the type of slavery that Americans fought the Civil War at the cost of more than 600,000 killed to end.

Chattel Slavery denies enslaved people any legal rights, identity, freedom, or liberty. It is a life lived in fear, totally controlled, cared for by Masters, with absolutely no say over their future. In a Communist state, the people are treated as legal property (chattel) of the government that has total control over their labor, body, and life. The people have absolutely no incentive to do a good job because there is no such thing as "prosperity" in Communism. Folks need to realize that Communist Central Planning produces economies that lead to food scarcity, poverty, and lack of innovation, despite all of the false promises and bluster of a utopian society. Such a society does not make for happy people. Slaves are not happy folks. They never have been. 

It is said that individuals in a Communist society "contribute according to their ability and receive according to their need." But the fact is that they only get what their master, the Communist government, wants them to have. That's why starvation was a real problem in the former Soviet Union. 

Communists have a system in which the state directs labor and owns property, limiting personal freedom and leading to forms of forced labor. The government, the state, controls production and directs labor, exactly like the Slave Masters in the South prior to 1865 directed a slave's labor in return for basic necessities. Communist masters make sure individuals have no real choice but to work for the state, making them, in effect, enslaved by the system. This is slavery since the alternative could mean hunger or imprisonment.

This is why I was taught that the Socialist and Communist concept of collectivism is a form of slavery.  It goes against the individual rights and freedoms we have as Americans. It runs completely counter to our core American principles of American individualism and free-market capitalism. 

We all need to understand that our system of free-market capitalism is what enables Americans, private individuals and businesses, to own what we produce, it's what enables us to compete in a market based on supply and demand. It enables us to set prices, produce, and distribute with minimal or no government interference. 

Our system of free-market capitalism promotes competition, innovation, and individual economic freedom. Our system emphasizes individual ownership of private property, thereby motivating us to generate profit through market forces. 

Individual Americans and private companies own property and resources rather than being subject to government control. Prices, wages, and production levels are set by market competition, not by the government. With the government's role limited to regulatory safety measures rather than production, it is restricted to protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and maintaining order. By doing this, American consumers dictate what is produced through their purchasing decisions. This is what pushes American businesses to compete for customers, driving efficiency and innovation. Free markets naturally generate economic growth and wealth with minimal government intervention.

As for using limited resources, such as how many people we need to hire, how much money we have to keep things running, and how we are going to pay for or buy new equipment to achieve our goals? That's not the government's problem. As a free people, we have the responsibility to work out those issues and more.

And yes, anyone in business will tell you it's all about maximizing output, minimizing waste, and satisfying customer needs. It's all about making sure you have the right resources, do the right things at the right time for the best results, all while preventing underuse or overuse. It's about strategic planning to boost productivity, keep costs down, meet objectives, and grow your business. 

American businesses practicing free-market capitalism have benefited our society through economic growth, job creation, and incentives to create, which have led to product development, innovation, competition, and the promotion of individual freedom. Through a legal framework, we have a system that operates on the principles of private ownership and voluntary transactions with minimal government intervention. 

The free market is a powerful engine for economic growth, creating wealth and raising the general standard of living. Small businesses alone have accounted for the majority of new jobs added to the U.S. economy in recent decades. Competition incentivizes businesses to constantly innovate, develop better products, and find more efficient ways to produce goods and services. This leads to technological advancements and a continuous cycle of progress. 

And yes, good old-fashioned competition among businesses results in a wide variety of goods and services and helps keep prices low. Consumers, by "voting with our dollars," determine which products succeed and which fail, which products make the market responsive to their demands and which ones don't.  

Businesses, particularly small local ones, contribute to the local tax base, enhance community identity, and engage in civic activities, all of which benefit the quality of life in an area. Our free-market capitalist system allows individuals to make their own economic choices, such as choosing a career path, starting a business, or deciding what to purchase. This freedom of choice fosters a sense of initiative, self-reliance, and personal fulfillment. This all gives Americans personal autonomy. 

This is a direct contrast with the failed practices of Socialism and Communism. Socialists and Communists are always pushing the lie that their "vision" of a "workers' paradise" benefits people when we've seen example after example in places like the former Soviet Union, in Cuba, China, and Venezuela of how Socialism and Communism have their leaders living lavishly. In contrast, their people are either starving or eating out of garbage cans -- all because their masters are making it that way. 

Price signals in a free-market capitalist economy help efficiently allocate resources to their most productive uses based on supply and demand. That's not the way it is with Communist Central Planning, where the government dictates and micromanages the lives of its subjects.  

That's the core difference between the core of American principles of American individualism and free-market capitalism versus Socialism and Communist-collectivism: Communist-collectivism puts the priority on a group's good over individual rights. This inevitably leads to coercion and a loss of personal freedom.

Communists and Socialists oppose American free-market capitalism because Capitalism gives individuals the freedom to be independent of government control. Capitalism affords individuals the ability to be their own person, free from government control. And yes, Communism is all about control.

Control of its subjects is key to Communist leaders staying in power. Communism puts the government in charge, and you, the individual, had better do as you're told. The government, the state, is the master. That's what I was taught, and that's what I've seen. Communism is slavery. You, the individual, are a slave to the government.   

History has shown the world that when Marxist-Leninist practices are put into place, as with the former Soviet Union under Stalin or China under Mao, citizens become subjects forced into specific jobs by the state. They work with zero incentive, zero motivation, no drive, just an unenthusiastic worker who is threatened to work or be treated as a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment or death in gulags and labor camps. 

This is why Communism is slavery. Under Socialism and Communism, the individual becomes a "slave to the collective," with no freedom to choose their occupation or the ability to leave the system without facing severe consequences.

As for an individual owning property?  Central to the application of Communism and Socialism is the abolition of private property. The idea is simple: under Communism, the government is your master, and they own everything, including you and your future. 

By depriving people, their subjects, of owning property, Communist governments remove an individual's independent means of survival and self-expression, making them entirely dependent on the collective or the state that manages it. This dependence is viewed as a form of control that undermines personal autonomy.

Communist-style collectivism is authoritarian and forces the individual to bow. To enforce the collective will, individual dissent is suppressed. And yes, that's why Communist China has forced labor camps, and "reeducation camps," where political prisoners, intellectuals, and "counter-revolutionaries" are silenced, imprisoned, or killed. 

As once described to me, Communism is a system of government where one entity, the government, is in the role of the master, and controls its subjects, who are placed in the role of slaves because their lives are controlled by the government. Threats and coercion enforce the dependency of the slave on the will of the master. That's how slavery works.

The suppression of dissent, restrictions on movement, like building walls to keep people in, instead of building walls to keep invaders out, and severe punishments for non-compliance, resemble the lack of freedom in slavery. Communist countries are compared to systems of slavery because the state directs labor, takes the results, and provides basic necessities in return, with citizens often not permitted to leave. Yes, this includes the use of "working booklets" in the Soviet Union, in which employers recorded and retained an individual's employment history, making it difficult or impossible to find work after being dismissed. 

The former Soviet Union tried to make Communism work from the start of Communist rule in 1917 to its collapse in 1991. The Soviet Union functioned as a Communist state for approximately 74 years. And yes, they couldn't make Communism work. In fact, the Communists had convinced their people that the state would take care of them to such an extent that the government threatened their people with going to prison if they didn't work. In fact, because their people had no incentive to work or hold a job,  the government put their people in prison for being unemployed.  

In practice, Communist countries have the government as the sole employer. It dictates where and how people work, and Communist governments remove any sort of voluntary choice. That's a key difference from American capitalism, where citizens have the "Individual Freedom" to choose their employers, quit a job they don't like, start their own business, and do so without worrying about or needing the government's approval. 

If you think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. A master directing a slave's labor and the state directing workers' labor in a Communist system, with the state providing basic needs in return, is no different than anything that took place in the South's slave practices before 1865, when the Civil War ended. 

Communism has always been what it still is today: An ideology of fear and suspicion, of authoritarian total control, micro-managing lives, a life living under a constant threat of government persecution, an ideology that suppresses any sort of personal freedom to remain in power. That's why Communism is fundamentally opposed to individual liberty. That's why Communism is slavery. Communists think they own their people.

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What's amazing to me is how Democrats believe they can make Socialism and Communism work in America because of wealthy Americans who they can tax to fund their dream. They refuse to see that even an oil-rich nation like Venezuela didn't have enough money to make that failed Socialist economy work. 

Venezuela is just one more example of failed Socialism and a horribly corrupt Communist state. But Democrats here refuse to recognize that, and that Venezuela's liberation from Socialism has Venezuelans dancing in the streets. 

Democrats refuse to understand that Venezuelans feel liberated after living through Socialism's mass starvation and government oppression. They are dancing in the streets, waving American flags, because they have been a country enslaved that is now free. Now they have been liberated. And sadly, none of that is enough to convince Democrats that Socialism and Communism are slavery. 

Tom Correa