Soviet Communism Is Not Pure Communism

Certain things do or do not logically follow from ideas regardless of how those ideas were lived out or misrepresented across history, and logical truths and ideas themselves are knowable irrespective of what events have actually occurred in the past.  A failure to understand this is why so many people, especially when it comes to politics and economics, think that historical events are what proves or disproves philosophical stances, as if historical events like revolutions and wars can even be proven to begin with, and as if logical necessity and possibility are not all that reveal what follows from something.  Soviet communism is an example.  Does whether or not Soviet leadership killed more people than Nazi Germany have anything to do with whether communism is inherently tied to murder?  Of course not, but since people on the political right (the left is similar in some ways) love to cite historical examples instead of the logical truths that dictate the nature of events, the fact that it does not follow from practicing communism that there is any brutality or killing involved eludes them.  In fact, Soviet communism is in no way pure communism, as it featured a very active ruling class contrary to communal ownership with no economic class.

The very thing that conservatives rightly oppose about Soviet communism, that being Stalin's authoritarianism and all of its affiliated atrocities and other philosophical errors, is actually what makes this political worldview a twisted, inconsistent form of a more basic communism that does not have the same contradiction.  Soviet communism was in no way a true communal sharing of property without a conventional governing class, as Stalin himself and anyone who enforced his whims would have been part of an upper class that in this case treated those below them on the social hierarchy abusively.  How ironic it is that this is what conservatives might be thinking of when they speak of the hypocrisy of Soviet communism, but this very thing would at least necessitate that the Soviet worldview and practice indeed did not revolve around a classless society with shared ownership of various items.  If Soviet communism was not about a truly classless society, then it cannot be pure communism, and thus communism itself or the ideology/system in other variations would not have the same flaws.

It is in some ways only natural for conservatives to misunderstand ideas.  Not only is their epistemological framework irrationalistic by default since conservatism is based around arbitrary tradition, but there is almost no philosophy, true or false, provable or unprovable, that they will not in some way distort.  Since they are actually stupid enough to think evangelicalism is Christianity or that misandry is feminism, it should surprise no one that they think that on a conceptual or functional level, communism is always about a tyrant and their fellow elites exercising egoistic power over starving people.  The early church of the book of Acts was blatantly communist, and yet they might insist that this is not true communism only because there was no mass torture or murder--when in reality it is Soviet communism that is not the purest form of communism.

They do not even stop at confusing one manifestation, and a hypocritical version at that, of communism with the whole of it.  They do not stop at ignoring that how one leader and nation practiced communism does not reflect the nature of core communism any more than workplace cruelty reflects the inherent nature of capitalism: which is not at all.  Rather, enough of them believe or at least claim that every single possible change to American culture is either communism or a step along the path to communism.  What would almost seem like satire of an especially irrational/false variant of conservative philosophy is instead a popular version of it.  Some conservatives would have the country be seized by another Red Scare and wave of McCarthyism if only they had the chance to light the flame.  Much of their obsession with communism just reduces down to the asinine misconception that Soviet communism is pure communism and that this is the only form communism could ever take.

People who think that the truth about capitalism and communism are the most important or foundational philosophical ideas of all are fucking idiots who do not understand the truth about either, just as people who think there is no such thing as non-predatory capitalism or voluntary communism are also fools.  Even if neither is practiced anywhere in the world, it would still be logically possible for capitalism to not involve workplace exploitation and for communism to not involve authoritarian tyranny.  Conservatives love when people, even if for the asinine reason of assumptions or emotionalism, think that capitalism does not have to feature oppression (not that they do not often directly support workplace oppression), but they do not see the hypocrisy inherent in some of their typical attacks on basic communism on the basis of what Soviet pseudo-communism was like.  None of the general economic systems entail cruelty or selfishness by default, communism included, not that conservatives tend to care about philosophical accuracy and logical proof.  They would not be conservative otherwise, nor would they be liberal; they would be rationalists!