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Objections to Communist theory
The central part of Karl Marx's communist theory is historical materialism, which states that human society must necessarily evolve through historical stages due to the contadictions inherent in each stage, with each transition to the next stage (except the last) involving the overthrow of the existing socioeconomic order. The next step after capitalism is socialism, followed ultimately by communism.

Most anti-communists reject the entire concept of historical materialism, or at least do not believe that socialism and communism must follow after capitalism. Some anti-communists question how and why the state is supposed to wither away into a true communist society.

Many critics also see a key error in communist economic theory, which predicts that in countries with free-market economies ("capitalist society"), the rich will inevitably get richer and the poor will get poorer. Anti-communists point to the overall rise in the average standard of living in the industrialized West as proof that contrary to Marx's prediction as, they assert, both the rich and poor have steadily gotten richer. Communists respond to this by pointing out that even so, the rich are getting richer much faster than the poor, causing a growing gap between the wealthy and the impoverished. Particularly during the decades of the '80s and '90s, the US saw increasing gaps between the rich and the poor. Communists also point out that the industrialized West profits immensely from the exploitation of the Third World, that the gap between rich and poor capitalist countries has widened greatly over the past hundred years, and that poor capitalist countries vastly outnumber rich ones.

Anarchist Anti-Communism
The anarchist critique of communism comes from a very different angle. Anarchists agree with communists that capitalism is a tool for oppression, that it is unjust and that it should be destroyed, one way or another. Anarchists, however, go on to say that ALL centralized or coercive power (as opposed to just wealth) is ultimately injurious to the individual. Therefore, the concepts of dictatorship of the proletariat, State ownership of the means of production, and other similar tendencies within Marxist thought are anathema to an anarchist, regardless of whether the State in question is democratic. There are, also, strong anti-anarchist tendencies among Marxists (specifically, those who have risen to power in the 20th century - but arguments had been going on between Marxists and anarchists for almost 50 years prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917).

Anarchists were glad of the 1917 revolution, as an example of workers taking power for themselves. It quickly became evident, however, that the communists and the anarchists had very different ideas regarding the kind of society they wanted to build there. Anarchist Emma Goldman went to Russia enthusiastic about the revolution and left beginning to write her book My Disillusionment in Russia. Anarchist Victor Serge, in response to the pro-leninist sentiment in the global Left, said, "All right, I can see the broken eggs. Now where's this omelette of yours?"

Anarchists often cite the crushing of the Kronstadt Rebellion, in which the Red Army defeated an embryonic anarchist commune, as a specific example of what was wrong with the Bolshevik government. Kronstadt Uprising was an anarcho-punk band in the 1980s, and there is an anarchist football team in San Francisco called Kronstadt.

During the Spanish Civil War, a pro-Soviet Communist Party gained considerable influence due to the neccessity of aid from the Soviet Union. Communists and liberals on the Republican side fought mainly against the fascists, but also put some effort against the anarchist revolution, ostensibly to bolster the anti-Fascist front (the anarchist response was, "The revolution and the war are inseperable"). The most dramatic action against the anarchists was in May of 1937, when Communist-led police forces attempted to take over a CNT-run telephone building in Barcelona. The telephone workers fought back, setting up barricades and surrounding the Communist "Lenin Barracks." Five days of street fighting ensued. After all of this, the anarchists began to hate the Communists, and unity became essentially impossible.

Bitter feelings between anarchists and communists are apparent even today in revolutionary circles. Much infighting and arguing occurs as it did in the 19th century between Marx and Bakunin. However, in these times, anarchists and communists may join in protest (at least superficially) on certain issues, such as the recent Iraq War.

Promise and Practice
Anti-communists also object to the actual practices of communist governments in contrast to the stated promises of communism. Many argue that while communism may be an excellent-sounding idea in theory, in practice it is thoroughly incompatible with their view of basic human nature. The view of human nature usually expounded by anti-communists is that while an egalitarian society could be looked at as ideal, it is virtually impossible to achieve. They state that it is human nature to be motivated by personal incentive, and point out that while several Communist leaders have claimed to be working for the common good, many or all of them have been corrupt and totalitarian. Communists retaliate that "human nature" essentially doesn't exist, since human beings are extremely adaptable and have shown themselves to be able to live in a wide variety of social organizations, some similar to communism, throughout history. Communists further argue that greed and selfishness are not a major stumbling block to communism, since a communist society would benefit all and satisfy everyone's self-interest.

Communist parties (sometimes combined with left socialist parties as workers' parties) which have come to power have tended to be rigidly intolerant of political opposition. Most communist countries have shown no signs of advancing from Marx's "socialist" stage of economy to an ideal "communist" stage. Rather, communist governments have been accused of creating a new ruling class (called by Russians the nomenklatura) with privileges parallel to those in the overthrown "capitalist" societies.

The economies of all Communist countries without exception have not surpassed those of Western nations. Communist supporters may point to the fact that those countries were far behind the West to begin with, and they may argue that Communist governments have in fact reduced this pre-existing gap. Also, they often point to cases such as Cuba, whose economic performance is actually better than that of similar neighboring countries (Cuba is ahead of most of its Latin American neighbors, but far behind the United States.) During the 1990s, however, Cuba suffered a debilitating economic crisis following the loss of her major trading partners (most notably the Soviet Union), and was forced to allow mass foreign tourism as a means to recover. In other cases, such as the separated nations, West Germany and East Germany and North Korea and South Korea, the capitalist portion has advanced far ahead of its Communist counterpart. However, particularly in the case of East Germany, communists claim that they received the "raw end of the deal," since all the traditional industrial and commercial centers lay in the capitalist part of the country.

The hallmark of some Communist economic policies, collective farming, has sometimes been called economically inefficient and often disastrous, especially in the cases of the former Soviet Union, China, and North Korea.

In general, anti-communist economic criticism centers on the belief that Communists ignore the realities of economic life and production in favor of their ideas about how things ought to be done. Anti-communists believe that this leads to economic disruption and poverty and generally see the examples of former Communist nations as supporting the veracity of their views.

Another criticism of Communism is the history of internal repression in Communist-led countries. Joseph Stalin's Soviet regime presided over millions of civilian deaths in purges and famine, as later Soviet governments admitted. In China, Mao Zedong's regime is accused of more extensive bloodshed, compounded by the disruption of economic life through ill-judged revolutionary experiments (see Cultural Revolution). Vietnam and North Korea have also made use of reeducation camps.