Communism in America has lost its meaning and turned into a useless buzzword used to insult people and politicians. 

My gripe specifically is the way people are misusing the word communism. It has become a buzzword, which is an overused word or phrase that is often misused or has lost its meaning entirely. This is a phenomenon that primarily happens on social media. 

Communism, by definition is, “political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production.” What this means is that a fully communist society is equally owned by every individual within that governing state and every individual has a say in every aspect of industry. 

Socialism is a lower form of communism, characterized by “industrial production, or the chief means of generating wealth, is communally owned and managed by a democratically elected government.” Private property still exists in a socialist government, but all industry is owned and managed by a democratically elected government. 

The key differences between communism and socialism is that socialism has a central government, specifically one that is democratically elected, while communism is a societal way of living. Communism is achieved through the upheaval of the working class against the government and the societal elite. 

My specific example of this is Zohran Mamdani, the current mayor of New York City. He is a self-identified democratic socialist. Despite this, people online and even our current president, Donald Trump, call Mamdani a communist. Not only is this false, it is a misuse of the word communism. 

Mamdani is NOT a communist, you are just ignorant to what that means. Mamdani is a democratic socialist. Many people confuse the two because of the shared ideals of communal industry and the mislabeling of socialist governments as communist. If you would like to learn more about democratic socialism in America you can visit the Democratic Socialists of America website. 

I’m not here to argue whether communism is good or bad, I just believe that communism is being misused in the United States. Despite the real fear American citizens faced during the time of McCarthyism and the Cold War, people will still throw this term around to denounce any socialist leaning politician. 

Socialism and communism are not the same thing, I have already established this. Yet, people still falsely label many people as a communist. I think this is because communism has such a negative connotation to it in America. Calling someone a communist is seen as a sort of insult in our society.

I think this is unfounded as no significant politicians are running under the communist party. A lot of capitalists and conservatives will label and socialist leaning people communists because they view this as an insult. 

I’m mainly mentioning politicians in America because nobody really labels other people politically like that in the real world. All, if not most, of this happens in social media. The only people forcefully, politically labeling people in real life have bigger problems than who is a communist. 

The hate and fear of communism in America started with McCarthyism. McCarthyism was a campaign around the 1940s. When we started being scared of communism was when Senator Joseph McCarthy was in power. He started and fueled the nation wide paranoia of communism. These tensions were facilitated by the ramping up of the Cold War and the spread of communism in China. 

Some of the main fuels of this fear was the Cold War anxiety. People were scared of atomic bomb threats and Soviet spies within the country. This allowed for McCarthy’s power to spread. He would claim he had a list of secret communists and say he would reveal them. He used this to scare people into submission as well as get people under his power by threatening them with communist accusations. 

The modern widespread American hate of communism started during the Cold War. The Cold War was a non combat fight between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), a communist state. Our government’s fear directed towards the USSR was pushed to communism because the Soviets were influencing other countries like China and turning them to communism. The fear came from threats of another world war or a nuclear war. 

When the USSR became a communist state is when the Red Scare started. Many people, specifically political leaders, thought that this meant our government would be overthrown. These thoughts also came from history because the French Revolution happened because they were inspired by the American Revolution. What was stopping people from overthrowing the government and creating a communist government?

Despite our societal overreactions, an example being cancel culture, our fear and hate communism is more deep seated than we realize. I think the root of this is actually in America’s founding documents. 

The Declaration of Independence states that “that [all men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, who based this on John Locke’s, an Enlightenment philosopher, idea of the inalienable rights of man being life, liberty, and private property. Many American ideals are based on the writings of the founding documents. Communism was created in the 1840s, but the hate started with the conceived notion that all men have an undeniable right to private property. 

Despite the Enlightenment advocating for natural rights of man, Locke was pro slavery. This directly goes against the “inalienable rights” to live and be free. Despite the seemingly good intentions of Enlightenment philosophers and how good they look on paper, they are hypocritical and should not be the basis of our modern day opinions.  

Communism was created by Karl Marx as a response to the social injustice and inequality during the industrial revolution. Communism was meant to be the “fix” to the inhumane treatment of humans, which I emphasize because learning history the way it is taught in school brings a level of desensitization that is unhealthy, during the Industrial Revolution. 

People need to be more aware of the words they are using and what they mean. Although I use communism as my point of interest, hundreds of words across different cultures and ideologies are being used without caring for their origins.

Be mindful of the words you use and do not say things you don’t understand.