What is Communism?

Communism is an "ideology", which means a system of ideas for how the political and economic system in a country should look like. A political system is how a government is set up and how it runs. An economic system is how business works and how money and wealth are spread out in a particular place, such as a country.

What defines communism, is that there is no private property. That means all resources are equally available to everyone and nobody owns anything, especially no single person or small group of people could own a company. The government controls all industry and resources (mines, mills, and factories) and provides every citizen with what they need. The goal is to not have different social classes, so there would be no rich and no poor. All people would be equal.

Historically, Communism has been the form of government in China, North Korea, Vietnam, as well as the USSR (Union of Socialist Soviet Republics or Soviet Union) and the countries it controlled e.g. Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czech Republic or East Germany. The USSR is now split up into Russia and many of its neighboring countries after Communism failed there. One reason for communism's failure was that despite the aim of having everyone being equal, there was still one small group in power, running the government. If a person disagreed with the government, there was not much that could be done. People were trapped under the government's control.

Also, the ideal in Communism is that everyone works as hard as everyone else and gets paid the same amount, but in reality, some people just don't work as hard as others. How would you feel if someone did less work than you but got the same reward?

In order to be effective, Communism requires a delicate balance and equal participation among all people. It might sound easy enough, but it can actually be very difficult. That's why it has failed in many countries that have tried it.