Communism

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This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. For issues regarding Communist organizations, see communist party. For issues regarding communist party-run states, see Communist state.

Communism refers to a conjectured future classless, stateless social organization based upon common ownership of the means of production, and to a variety of political movements which claim the establishment of such a social organization as their ultimate goal. Early forms of human social organization have been described as "primitive communism." However, communism as a political goal generally denotes a conjectured future form of social organization which has never been implemented. There is a considerable variety of views among self-identified communists. However, schools of communism associated with Karl Marx (Marxism) and of Vladimir Lenin (Leninism) have the distinction of having been a major force in world politics since the early 20th century. Class struggle plays a central role in the theory of Marxism. The establishment of communism is in this theory viewed as the culmination of the class struggle between the capitalist class (the owners of capital) and the working class. Marx held that society could not be transformed from the capitalist mode of production to the communist mode of production all at once, but required a transitional period which Marx described as the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. The communist society Marx envisioned emerging from capitalism has never been implemented, it remains theoretical. However, the term "Communism", especially when the word is capitalized, is often used to refer to the political and economic regimes under communist parties.

In the late 19th century, Marxist theories motivated socialist parties across Europe, although their policies later developed along the lines of "reforming" capitalism, rather than overthrowing it. The exception was the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party. One branch of this party, commonly known as the Bolsheviks and headed by Vladimir Lenin, succeeded in taking control of the country after the toppling of the Provisional Government in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1918, this party changed its name to the Communist Party; thus establishing the contemporary distinction between communism and socialism.

After the success of the October Revolution in Russia, many socialist parties in other countries became communist parties, owing allegiance of varying degrees to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (see Communist International). After World War II, regimes calling themselves communist took power in Eastern Europe. In 1949, the Communists in China, led by Mao Zedong, came to power and established the People's Republic of China. Among the other countries in the Third World that adopted a Communist form of government at some point were Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Angola, and Mozambique. By the early 1980s, almost one-third of the world's population lived under Communist states.

Communism carries a strong social stigma in the United States, due to a history of anti-communism in America. Since the early 1970s, the term "Eurocommunism" was used to refer to the policies of communist parties in western Europe, which sought to break with the tradition of uncritical and unconditional support of the Soviet Union. Such parties were politically active and electorally significant in France and Italy. With the collapse of the Communist governments in eastern Europe from the late 1980s and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Communism's influence has decreased dramatically in Europe, but around a quarter of the world's population still lives under Communist rule.

Early Communism

The notion of communism has a long history in Western thought, long predating Marx and Engels. Already in ancient Greece the idea of communism was connected to a myth about the "golden age" of humanity, when society lived in full harmony, before private property developed. Some have argued that Plato's The Republic and works by other ancient political theorists advocated communism in the form of communal living, and that various early Christian sects (and in particular the early Church, as recorded in Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2 vv 44-45; also ch 4 v32) and indigenous tribes in the pre-Columbian Americas practiced communism in the form of communal living and common ownership (see "Christian communism"). Other attempts to establish communistic societies were made by the Essenes and by the Judean desert sect.

In the 16th century, English writer St. Thomas More, in his treatise Utopia, portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose leaders administered it through the application of reason. In the 17th century, communist thought arguably surfaced again in England. Eduard Bernstein, in his 1895 Cromwell and Communism argued that several groupings in the English Civil War, especially the Diggers (or "True Levellers") espoused clear communistic, agrarian ideals, and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.

Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Enlightenment era of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau. "Utopian socialist" writers such as Robert Owen are also sometimes regarded as communists.

Karl Marx saw primitive communism as the original state of mankind from which it arose, through classical society, and then feudalism, to its current state of capitalism. He then proposed that the next step in social evolution would be a return to communism, but at a higher level than when mankind had originally practiced primitive communism.

In its contemporary form, communism grew out of the workers' movement of 19th century Europe. At that time, as the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics saw that capitalist economics had brought about an unskilled working proletariat, urban factory workers who toiled under harsh conditions, and for widening the gulf between rich and poor.

Marxism

Main article: Marxism

Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to capitalism and the exploitation of workers. But whereas earlier socialists often favored longer-term social reform, Marx and Engels believed that popular revolution was all but inevitable, and the only path to socialism.

According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main characteristic of human life in class society is alienation; and communism is desirable because it entails the full realization of human freedom. Marx here follows G.W.F. Hegel in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of constraints but as action having moral content. Not only does communism allow people to do what they want but it puts humans in such conditions and such relations with one another that they would not wish to have need for exploitation. Whereas for Hegel, the unfolding of this ethical life in history is mainly driven by the realm of ideas, for Marx, communism emerged from material, especially the development of the means of production.

Marxism holds that a process of class conflict and revolutionary struggle will result in victory for the proletariat and the establishment of a communist society in which private ownership is abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence belong to the community. Marx himself wrote little about life under communism, giving only the most general indication as to what constituted a communist society. It is clear that it entails abundance in which there is little limit to the projects that humans may undertake. In the popular slogan that was adopted by the communist movement, communism was a world in which 'each gave according to his abilities, and received according to his needs.' The German Ideology (1845) was one of Marx's few writings to elaborate on the communist future:

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a positive scientific theory of how society was moving in a law-governed way toward communism, and, with some tension, a political theory that explained why revolutionary activity was required to bring it about.

In the last half of the nineteenth century the terms "socialism" and "communism" were often used interchangeably. However, Marx and Engels came to see socialism as an intermediate stage of society in which most productive property was owned in common, but with some class differences remaining. They reserved the term communism for a final stage of society in which class differences had disappeared, people lived in harmony, and government was no longer needed.

These later aspects, particularly as developed by Lenin, provided the underpinning for the mobilizing features of 20th century Communist parties. Later writers modified Marx's vision by allotting a central place to the state in the development of such societies, by arguing for a prolonged transition period of socialism prior to the attainment of full communism.

Some of Marx's contemporaries, such as the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, espoused similar ideas, but differed in their views of how to reach to a harmonic society with no classes. To this day there has been a split in the workers movement between Marxist communists and anarchists. The anarchists are against, and wish to abolish, every state organisation. Among them, anarchist-communists such as Peter Kropotkin believed in an immediate transition to one society with no classes, while anarcho-syndicalists believe that labor unions, as opposed to Communist parties, are the organizations that can help usher this society.

The growth of modern Communism

Soviet Marxism

Main article: Marxism-Leninism

In Russia, the 1917 October Revolution was the first time any party with an avowedly Marxist orientation, in this case the Bolshevik Party, obtained state power. The assumption of state power by the Bolsheviks generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx believed that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development. Russia, however, was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Nevertheless, some socialists believed that a Russian revolution could be the precursor of workers' revolutions in the west.

The socialist Mensheviks opposed Lenin's communist Bolsheviks' plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks successful rise to power was based upon the slogans "peace, bread, and land" and "All power to the Soviets", slogans which tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, the peasants' demand for land reform, and popular support for the Soviets.

The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after 1917, when the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a single-party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies under Leninism. The revolutionary Bolsheviks broke completely with the non-revolutionary social democratic movement, withdrew from the Second International, and formed the Third International, or Comintern, in 1919. Henceforth, the term "Communism" was applied to the objective of the parties founded under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their program called for the uniting of workers of the world for revolution, which would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the development of a socialist economy. Ultimately, their program held, there would develop a harmonious classless society, with the withering away of the state. In the early 1920s, the Soviet Communists formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union, from the former Russian Empire.

Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Communist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline.

In 1918-1920, in the middle of the Russian Civil War, the new regime nationalized all productive property. When mutiny and peasant unrest resulted, Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP). However, Joseph Stalin's personal fight for leadership spelled the end of the NEP, and he used his control over personnel to abandon the program.

The Soviet Union and other countries ruled by Communist Parties are often described as 'Communist states' with 'state socialist' economic bases. This usage indicates that they proclaim that they have realized part of the socialist program by abolishing private control of the means of production and establishing state control over the economy; however, they do not declare themselves truly communist, as they have not established communal ownership.

Stalinism

Main article: Stalinism

The Stalinist version of socialism, with some important modifications, shaped the Soviet Union and influenced Communist Parties worldwide. It was heralded as a possibility of building communism via a massive program of industrialization and collectivization. The rapid development of industry, and above all the victory of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, maintained that vision throughout the world, even around a decade following Stalin's death, when the party adopted a program in which it promised the establishment of communism within thirty years.

However, under Stalin's leadership, evidence emerged that dented faith in the possibility of achieving communism within the framework of the Soviet model. Stalin had created in the Soviet Union a repressive state that dominated every aspect of life. After Stalin's death, the Soviet Union's new leader, Nikita Khrushchev admitted the enormity of the repression that took place under Stalin. Later, growth declined, and rent-seeking and corruption by state officials increased, which dented the legitimacy of the Soviet system.

Despite the activity of the Comintern, the Soviet Communist Party adopted the Stalinist theory of "socialism in one country" and claimed that, due to the "aggravation of class struggle under socialism," it was possible, even necessary, to build socialism in one country alone. This departure from Marxist internationalism was challenged by Leon Trotsky, whose theory of "permanent revolution" stressed the necessity of world revolution.

Trotskyism

Main article: Trotskyism

Trotsky and his supporters organized into the "Left Opposition," and their platform became known as Trotskyism. But Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining full control of the Soviet regime, and their attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. After Trotsky's exile, world communism fractured in two distinct branches: Stalinism and Trotskyism. Trotsky later founded the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern, in 1938.

Though some follow Trotskyism today, Trotsky's theories were never reaccepted in worldwide mainstream communist circles, either within or outside of the Soviet bloc, even after Stalin's death. Trotsky's interpretation of communism, unlike its direct competitors Stalinism and Maoism, has also never been successful in leading a mass political revolution or social movement that would overthrow a capitalist state apparatus. However, Trotskyist ideas have occasionally found an echo among political movements in countries experiencing social upheavals, such as the case of Alan Woods' Trotskyist Committee for a Marxist International, which has had contact with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Many Trotskyist parties are active in politically stable, developed countries such as Great Britain, France, Spain and Germany.

It is noteworthy, however, that Trotskyist groups that collaborate with pro-capitalist parties and governments have not escaped criticism as "opportunists" from other Trotskyists, which are loathe to do the same.

Cold War years

As the Soviet Union won important allies by victory in the Second World War in Eastern Europe, communism as a movement spread to a number of new countries, and gave rise to a few different branches of its own, such as Maoism.

Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new nations into the sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Eastern Europe. Governments modeled on Soviet Communism took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A Communist government was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced the Comintern, and Titoism, a new branch in the world communist movement, was labeled "deviationist." Albania also became an independent Communist nation after World War II.

By 1950 the Chinese Communists held all of China except Taiwan, thus controlling the most populous nation in the world. Other areas where rising Communist strength provoked dissension and in some cases actual fighting include Laos, many nations of the Middle East and Africa, and, especially, Vietnam (see Vietnam War). With varying degrees of success, Communists attempted to unite with nationalist and socialist forces against what they saw as Western imperialism in these poor countries.

Maoism

Main article: Maoism

After the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Union's new leader, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced Stalin's crimes and his cult of personality. He called for a return to the principles of Lenin, thus presaging some change in Communist methods. However, Khrushchev's reforms heightened ideological differences between China and the Soviet Union, which became increasingly apparent in the 1960s and 1970s. As the Sino-Soviet Split in the international Communist movement turned toward open hostility, Maoist China portrayed itself as a leader of the underdeveloped world against the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, with Maoism gaining recognition worldwide as a new branch of Marxism.

Communism after the collapse of the Soviet Union

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union and relaxed central control, in accordance with reform policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Soviet Union did not intervene as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary all abandoned Communist rule by 1990. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself dissolved.

By the beginning of the 21st century, states under control by Communist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova is a member of the Communist Party of Moldova, but the country is not run under single-party rule. Communist parties, or their descendent parties, remain politically important in many European countries and throughout the Third World, particularly in India.

The People's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; and the People's Republic of China, Laos, Vietnam, and, to a lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. The People's Republic of China runs Special Economic Zones dedicated to market-oriented enterprise, free from central government control. Several other communist states have also attempted to implement market-based reforms, including Vietnam. Officially, the leadership of the People's Republic of China refers to its policies as "market socialism."

Theories within Marxism as to why communism in Eastern Europe was not achieved after socialist revolutions pointed to such elements as the pressure of external capitalist states, the relative backwardness of the societies in which the revolutions occurred, and the emergence of a bureaucratic stratum or class that arrested or diverted the transition press in its own interests. Marxist critics of the Soviet Union referred to the Soviet system, along with other Communist states, as "state capitalism," arguing that Soviet system fell far short of Marx's communist ideal. They argued that the state and party bureaucratic elite acted as a surrogate capitalist class in the heavily centralized and repressive political apparatus.

Non-Marxists, in contrast, have often applied the term to any society ruled by a Communist Party and to any party aspiring to create a society similar to such existing nation-states. In the social sciences, societies ruled by Communist Parties are distinct for their single party control and their socialist economic bases. While anticommunists applied the concept of "totalitarianism" to these societies, many social scientists identified possibilities for independent political activity within them, and stressed their continued evolution up to the point of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Today, Marxist revolutionaries are active in India, Nepal, and Colombia.

Criticism of communism

Main article: Criticisms of communism.

A diverse array of writers and political activists have published criticism of communism, such as Soviet bloc dissidents Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Havel; economists Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman; and historians and social scientists Hannah Arendt, Robert Conquest, Daniel Pipes, and R. J. Rummel are among such critics. Some writers such as Conquest go beyond attributing large-scale human rights abuses to Communist regimes, presenting events occurring in these countries, particularly under Stalin, as an argument against Marxism itself. Hayek, among others, argues that private property and a market economy are integral to keeping civil and political freedoms intact, citing the trend that violations of civil and political rights, elimination of opposition, and human rights violations tend to accomodate the abolition of both private property and market economies.

There have also been more direct criticisms of Marxism, such as criticisms of the labor theory of value or Marx's predictions. Nevertheless, Communist parties outside of the Warsaw Pact, such as the Communist parties in Western Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa, differed greatly, therefore no single criticism fits all.

Comparing "Communism" to "communism"

According to the 1996 third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, communism and derived words are written with the lowercase "c" except when they refer to a political party of that name, a member of that party, or a government led by such a party, in which case the word "Communist" is written with the uppercase "C".

References

Eduard Bernstein, (1895). Kommunistische und demokratisch-sozialistische Strömungen während der englischen Revolution, J.H.W. Dietz, Stuttgart. ISBN 081246303. Sources available at
Karl Marx, (1845). The German Ideology, Marx-Engels Institute, Moscow. ISBN 1573922587. Sources available at
H. Gordon Skilling, (April 1966). "Interest Groups and Communist Politics." World Politics, Volume 18, Number 3, 435-451.
Arch Getty, (1985). Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered: 1933-1938, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521335701

External links

Online resources for original Marxist literature

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