Communism

One of the major concepts related to the Cold War is the difference between capitalism and communism. In communism, no individuals own property or things, but the people as a whole own everything. This is different from capitalism, where people can own property and do business with it. One common criticism of communism is that because all property is owned by the overall population of a country, nobody can get ahead in life through hard work and dedication or any other means. Under capitalism, however, people can became very rich and improve their own life. As this is directly contradictory to the American Dream, this is likely one of the reasons why the United States has always disliked communism.
However, it is unlikely that basic ideological reasons like this were the reason for the divide between communism and capitalism in the cold war. While in theory communism has no government or classes or anything stopping equality, in reality, communist countries like the Soviet Union always ended up with a small ruling class or political party who controlled the country. These people might come into power to start communism in their country, but these people would often want to stay in power, and would be able to use propaganda and other techniques to do so. They would end up being the only political party, and nobody would be allowed to resist them. This was probably the scarier part of communism to the United States and other western countries, and why the United States was so opposed to communism in the cold war.