What are the pros and cons of communism/socialism?
I’ll start with the much more numerous “cons” and end with a few pros. I believe I have some special insight into this, because I now live in the Czech Republic, a formerly Communist country. 1) Communism made you fear to even speak to your neighbor. The only way to keep Communism alive is to make the citizens afraid to ever organize and protest. Hence, the government rewards snitches. If you mention something in passing to your neighbor that is against Communism, you very well might get arrested. This is one reason Czechs loved to go to their small summer cottages. They didn’t have to worry that someone could hear their conversations (thin walls in the city, you know), and they could be with people they trusted. Hence, Communism made you mistrust everyone. You became paranoid, just to survive. Even today, older Czechs don’t speak to their neighbors. Old habits die hard. 2) “The inherent vice of capitalism is the uneven division of blessings, while the inherent virtue of socialism is t
