The Honey Pot

Why you should read about communism

27 September 2025

Let's first squash a big misconception. If you are reading this, I am 99.99% sure you are not a capitalist. Having £1,000 in your savings account does not make you a capitalist. Owning your own home (outright or with a mortgage) does not make you a capitalist. Living in a capitalist country does not make you a capitalist. You are working class. Even if you are unemployed, you are part of the working class because your livelihood, your very existence, is dependent on you working in order to survive. If the company I work for stopped paying my wages, and I was unable to find other work, I would soon find myself homeless and starving to death. This is what makes me a worker, and it's what makes you a worker too.

So now we've established you're a worker, who's on the other side of this equation? Who is the capitalist? The capitalist makes money not by doing, the way that we must do things to earn money, the capitalist instead profits from the people who do. A factory owner, a land owner (e.g. a landlord), the owner of a software company, these people are capitalists. They accumulate wealth without doing any work themselves. Instead, the capitalist hires workers to provide labour, and in return for their labour the capitalist will give back a little bit of the wealth the workers produced. Since a capitalist makes money not by doing but by taking, there exists an eternal struggle between the worker and the capitalist. Let's explore that:

There are two contradictory truths we must acknowledge in capitalism: It is in the worker's best interest to keep as much wealth as they can, and it is in the capitalist's best interest to take as much wealth as they can. This eternal struggle, by the way, forms part of something called dialectical materialism, a philosophy that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote about, among other people. Rather than dive into the details I just want to provide an overview though.

This struggle is essentially the root of all the problems you face in life. It's why your rent goes up, why food prices go up, why wages stagnate or even drop. It's because a capitalist will always choose their own betterment over yours. Always. There is no alternative. Even if a capitalist with good intentions ran a factory, paying their workers a fair wage, they would inevitably be overtaken by a capitalist who abuses their staff. Why? Because the ruthless capitalist takes more profit, which in turn they use to run the well-intentioned capitalist out of business by flooding the market with cheaper products, by running more adverts, or simply by buying out their business. Capitalism, by design, must oppress the workers. It must.

I would like to share with you a small excerpt from an article called "Why Socialism?" That Albert Einstein wrote in 1949.

"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."

So we have identified a problem, but what about the solution? One such solution is called communism. If you grow up in a capitalist society, communism is a dirty, evil word. This is not by accident. The principles of communism can be summed up extremely simply: the workers who produce goods are the ones who should benefit the most from it. What is so terrible about that? If you are a capitalist, everything. A capitalist cannot imagine a scarier sentence.

Communism intends to let the means of production (that means the tools, the factories, the offices etc) be collectively controlled and run by the workers, and the wealth and the resources produced will be shared equitably among the workers. It is often summed up by the phrase "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs". That is to say, you contribute what you can, and receive what you need.

Let's now discuss some very common misconceptions about communism:

Communists want to take your personal property! They'll take your home!

No, they won't. There is a difference between private property, like a factory, and personal property, like a home. People will still have personal property in communism.

Communism means everyone is paid the same, so why bother working hard?

No, it is not that simple. In the beginning people will be rewarded for their work based on the contribution, so those that work harder or do riskier/more complicated work will still receive more. As communism develops and matures, eventually we'd do away with money altogether, because we will achieve something called post-scarcity and there will be no reason to have money.

Communism is a dictatorship!

No, communism is the total opposite of a dictatorship, arguably it is more democratic than many first-world nations currently are. Decisions are made collectively by all the workers. Right now in the UK, with first past the post, with billionaires controlling all media sources, with parties putting forward only candidates that further the capitalist agenda, how can you say it's democratic? Communism would truly give the workers a voice.

So what next? I don't expect you to grab a pitchfork and charge for revolution, but I hope I have given you enough insight into the possibilities of communism to go and read further. Please do keep an open mind and consider these works as a starting point:

If you read these and you agree with them, there are many online communities that can help you explore further. You could look for a Discord server that discusses and debates Marxism, or join a local or national organisation.

Ultimately, remember this: You are a worker, and you deserve better.

~ Honey