There's a popularized misconception, especially among counter cultures like punk rock and other underground subcultures and political movements, that communism (or anarcho-communism) is cool, hip and revolutionary.
The pivotal moment for communism and its rise in popularity (even to this day) really began in the early 20th century Russian revolution that pitted revolutionaries against the Tsarist Autocracy.
I wont go into lengthy details about the Romanov Dynasty and its history, but the absolute power surrounding the autocracy, in the 300 years preceding the Russian Revolution, was heavily criticized; not just by liberal reformists but by Republicans, Libertarians, Democratic centralists, and other anti-serfdom advocates as well.
In short, autocracy is bad.
The fact that Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks essentially took down the 800lb gorilla, so to speak, of the provisional Russian government, lends to this seemingly perpetual, romanticized idea that the communists were heroic freedom fighters, and in essence they were...
However, this doesn't make communism cool by any stretch of the imagination.
In the epic Autocracy V. Communism, you're basically trading one form of totalitarianism for another. As pointed out by writers like Orwell, cooperated communism or anarcho-communism, tends to turn into state communism or state socialism (it has to in order to function on a large scale), and state communism is arguably the ultimate form of totalitarianism.
So what's happening in America today is a sort of re-creation of autocracy vs communism, only this time "capitalism" is viewed as the 800lb gorilla that needs to be toppled by the so called "cool", revolutionary left-wing movements.
There's an increasing rise in popularity of ideas like democratic socialism, especially among younger generations.
This is problematic. It's problematic that around 60% of individuals aged 18-24 find socialism favorable over capitalism (and even Lenin admitted socialism is the bridgework towards communism.)
So ultimately their view is we have the "cool" leftists against the evil capitalists; the freedom fighters against the proponents of "wage slavery."
This couldn't be more inaccurate.
Communism is the opposite of freedom.
A free market; the ability to exchange goods, have private business and liberated enterprise is absolutely essential to having a free peoples. The freer the markets, the freer the people.
Today, the real freedom fighters are those in the liberty movement; the libertarians and the advocates of the free market.
We share a common enemy; the big banks and corrupt multi-national corporations that rely on heavily contrived government endorsement--sometimes referred to as "corporate communism." It is not communism, however, that is going to be taking the reigns to thwart the power of the government and its big corporate sponsors.
It's the free market entrepreneurs who are on the front lines against cronyism. It's the innovators, the independent businesses, the people who want economic competition rather than toiling in the gulag. It's the people who want more business, more trade, more freedom--not the communists who want to destroy what essentially makes us human.
With communism you will have no freedom; you will only have despots and dictators who control every aspect of your life.
Communism is NOT cool! Pass it on ;)
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