I asked my dad and he said "The Law of Consecration is from God, and Communism is from the Devil", and he seemed kind of pissed so I didn't ask for a better explanation.
In Communism, goods are owned by everyone and distributed back to the people according to their need. Supposedly. The result: the same gray apartment for everyone except the higher ups.
In the Law of Consecration, the LDS church receives your promise to give them everything whenever they ask for it. This is why you cannot refuse a calling. You already promised all your time to them in the temple. The result: your request for anything back is viewed with suspicion because you have already been using your money, time and talents all this time when you promised it to them. Geesh! Now you want help with medical bills???? Really????
I thought about this as a TBM. Although, a strange thing is that the church holds extreme right-wing, conservative, etc. views, whilst communism is strongly left-wing. You'd expect the church to emulate fascism rather than communism based on how it is today.
Communism was originally a religious idea, and it goes back quit a ways, with about the same miserable failure rate. What made communism unique was that they were going to try the same economic plan, but with all the church stuff removed. Still didn't work. That is not to that all of Marx's ideas were equally bad, but the final product that he dreamed of is probably never going to exist.
When I was in yw's one of the leaders had to give the lesson on the law of consecration. She was a sweet, hippy sort of woman. All the leaders at the time were all best friends, downeast wearing, lots of big costume jewlery types. Needless to say she didn't fit in very well.
So about the middle of her lesson she starts comparing LoC to communism. They didn't even let her finish her thoughts before they were jumping down her throat & correcting her in front of the girls. She kept trying to explain herself but they weren't trying to hear it. The rest of the lesson went downhill after that. The poor girls were so uncomfortable.
She called me that night in tears trying to explain. She kept saying, "they just wouldn't le t me finish!"
Who runs it. In the Law of Consecration the Big 15 are the board members who would run everything, with Boyd K. deciding what reading material and videos you can enjoy. In communism, Vladimr Putin would run it.
I remember reading things by Ezra Benson and Hans Verlan Andersen saying that the difference in the give and take. Communism is based upon what the government"takes." The law of consecration is supposedly based upon what people "give." Funny that I used to think that was true. Now I can't see a difference. They are both about control.
"Thank you big brother for the increase in the chocolate ration" - Winston