As many have pointed out, but few have mentally digested, any regime that outlaws contrary viewpoints is essentially religion.  In religion, they outlaw science and other religions.  In communism, they outlaw any science or philosophy that contradicts communism, to the point of jailing or killing people who insist on disagreeing.

Atheism, as many have pointed out, but few have mentally digested, is not a philosophy.  It is a lack of belief in god.  Period.  An atheist may be a capitalist, a communist, a socialist, or anything else he chooses.  His choice may be judged against its socioeconomic results, but it may not be judged against his atheism, for the two are completely unrelated.

In so far as those people were 'atheists', they certainly were not 'good' atheists, by any stretch. as far as we are concerned.

I often wonder how much Stalin learned about techniques of controlling people's thoughts and beliefs from his training to be a priest in a Orthodox seminary....

I'll give you that socialism is a political philosophy, but communism IS a religion. Just replace the proletatiat with Jesus Christ  and "True Communism" with the Kingdom of Heaven, and the the End of History with the End Times, and you've gone from communism to Christianity.

Thank you.

I am so sick of theists trying to paint atheists as all wanting to be dictators. Theocracies like Saudi Arabia are dictatorships. Iran is a dictatorship by one party and so is North Korea.

These all have one thing in common, worship of the state which is obedience to authority. What does God want his creations to do? Obey him.

In western civil societies laws are made, not from absolute rule, but by consensus. When we want to challenge a law or change a law, we do so through discourse and debate and we elect people to do that for us by the voter's consent. If we feel like our elected politicians are not doing a good job of that, we can throw them out of office via election.

The God character is not democratic. He is an authoritarian dictator and you do what he says or else.

None of the atheists I know would want to live in a dictatorship and certainly we would not want to worship a dictator.

Agreed.  Under Communism, the state was the higher power that everyone must serve, implicitly obey and sacrifice their individuality to. 

This was the method, abhorrent as it was, used to obtain complete control of the minds of its followers and stamp out freethought.  Under that system the dominant worldview being sold must be followed to the exclusion of all others. 

Both Religion and Communism seek to achieve the same objective, often using the same methods.  While there are quotes by both Stalin and Mao critical of religion, I don't think religion was ever really viewed as hostile because it was "irrational" or necessarily harmful, but because it was a competitor.

The religious leader and the Communist one were not so much enemies as they were competitors wielding different weapons but inflicting the same damage and destroying the quality of human life in the process. 

Actually it has religious dogmas, like stated replace god with the state (or goverment) replace heaven with social utopia (Russia, China and North Korea have used this Idea of a perfect social utopia), then change the obedience to god to obedience to the government NO QUESTIONS ASKED (happens at least in those three countries as well as in Cuba) and in religion if one questions the religious authorities they are branded as heretic, and in a mild form just kicked out of the church or excommunicated, at the worst killed. So yes Communism and religion have much in common, far more than democratic or republican states in which freedom of thought, expression and the ability to question the government is allowed.

What I mean't that it was a dogma, to the point of religiousness, that the head of state or the government themselves replace god, and that strict adherence to the views of Communism is required and that one cannot question the authority of the state, such like those in religious dogmas. Heaven is replaced with utopia. Any dogma that does not allow free thinking and allow the ability to question those in power is dangerous and leads to massive abuse of power. As done by various churches around the world of all religious beliefs, as well as those in facists and communists states.

Just for reference, are we talking about the US democrats and republican?

Marxism is a philosophy whose goal is to relieve the suffering of mankind by eliminating the economic disparities between those who own the means of production and those who do the work. Socialism, the common ownership of corporations solely by the people who work there, is niversally recognized as the first transition from exploitative capitalism. During this phase of societal and economic evolution, there will be a need for more or less traditional governments and their services (security, medical, transportation infrastructure, education, etc). Marx felt that socialism would replace capitalism worldwide much sooner than it actually has.

Communism is a utopian society of the far future where technology and industry produce so much material wealth with so little labor required by people that the need for government as we know it will disappear. No one has ever had a communist society, and although many Marxist political parties call themselves "Communist," it is an ideal rather than a practical goal.

Marxism is thoroughly based on dialectical materialism, which Marx adapted from Hegel and Feuerbach in the 1840's. While it is true that many socialists are Christian ( the Irish Socialist Party starts its annual convention with a Mass), Marxism and theism are really mutually exclusive. Marxism has no use for supernatural explanations for the causality of the natural universe, the events of individuals' lives, or the events of history.

Marx was a Lutheran who became an atheist before he became a Marxist. Stalin was a Russian Orthodox seminarian before he became an atheist and a "Communist." Hitler lived and died a Catholic, and if you look closely, so were Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini, and Augusto Pinochet. Fascism, comrades, openly and vigorously supports a Christian society.

Contemporary Marxists have never considered the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of North Korea, or the People's Republic of China as Communist, or even really as socialist. They are, according to the evaluation of Leon Trotsky, nations that practice "state capitalism" because the government, not the workers, centrally manage all production and appropriate the surplus value of the workers for state revenues.

Marxism is not a religion, it is the self-directed societal evolution of the human species.

WWMD

The same is true of capitalism, for instance. Most political or economic concepts have a dogmatic side to them.

What has been tried so far is socialist communism, not anarchic communism. Just to be perfectly clear, I don't believe anarchic communism ("real" communism) would work any better, but it would lack a central "state" concept, which seems to be tied to discussions of the "religious" aspects of communism.

Also, I don't believe democratic communism would work, either. But I don't think we've found an ideal government, or an ideal economic model.

Anyway, dogmatism != religion, just like religion != dogmatism. There's a correlation 'twixt the two, but I suspect many of us are just as dogmatic about certain beliefs. (Me included.)