Why do people think negatively at the word "Communism"?

Because of Russia, the American Government tied the word communism to Russia during the cold war. During that time we feared the Russians because of nuclear weapons

Thanx guys lots of help

That happens because of the way communism was applied as a political regime, and not because of the initial ideology. The ideology sounded kind of utopic when it was conceived, it was about people being economically equal, it was a regime favorizing the working class. It said, let there be none too rich and none too poor, everybody should work for the country. I live in a post-communist country. The way communism worked in Romania is far from utopic, but that because of the president [Ceausescu-he was executed in 1989, that’s when communism was abolished from Romania]. People were not allowed to leave the country, electricity and gas were limited [a few hours a day only], and the food was not enough [people used to sit in queue for hours for meat or other aliments which were sold in a small limited stock, so not everybody would get to buy]. But those things happened because Ceausescu had some debts to pay off to some other countries, so almost everything that was being produced inside the country was being exported.

So, people think negatively at what the communism was not what it should have been. Now, i’m not sure democracy and capitalism the way it is nowadays, i’m not sure it is better than communism. But anyway, that was not the question.

Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism are economic ideologies. There are no pure forms of any of these ideologies. Cold War propaganda talked about communism vis a vis democracy. The propaganda was so effective that to this day many people equate capitalism with democracy and communism with totalitarianism. When Ronald Reagan released an album “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine” he claimed if we adopted programs like Medicare and Medicaid that through it government would invade every area of freedom and we would spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free. As I said there are no pure implementations of either economic ideology and anyone would be crazy to want to live under either one. Every working system has elements of both competition and cooperation.

I prefer Keynesianism, is the junction of equality (communism) + freedom (capitalism).

Communism is like alcohol! Its not a bad thing as doctors has been using it for years to cure diseases but it MUST be used with caution. If someone was the almighty problem solver and everyone was equal to every last person on earth, then i would not mind him being a communistic leader. However, everyone is not the same and caution has to be taken in this instance so that the leader does not take advantage of the minority or even the majority. This is why we have democracy. However democracy has its flaws when the majority is wrong. Example: Christopher Columbus. So the problem is not communism but more the communist leader.

MY FRIEND WROTE A SWEEEEEEEET TERM PAPER ON COMMUNISM. GREAT POINTS IN THERE, HE’S SO PROUD OF IT. IT’S AWESOME, MAKES SO MUCH SENSE.