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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 the [[Communist party]] article. For issues regarding Communist Party-run states, see [[Communist state]].''
 
:''This article is about '''communism''' as a form of society and as a political movement. For issues regarding Communist organizations, see the [[Communist party]] article. For issues regarding Communist Party-run states, see [[Communist state]].''

Revision as of 01:33, 16 June 2007


This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. For issues regarding Communist organizations, see the Communist party article. For issues regarding Communist Party-run states, see Communist state.
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Communism refers to a theoretical system of social organization and a political movement based on common ownership of the means of production and of property as opposed to private ownership. The idea of communism in the sense which is closer to communalism existed in diverse cultural traditions since antiquity, and most pre-late modern communist ideas such as Monasticism were based upon religious or ethical ideals that aimed to cultivate the spirituality or morality of the members of the community. Communism in general does not necessarily entail materialistic atheism; likewise materialistic atheism does not entail communism. However, in the nineteenth century, the concept of communism had a definite formulation by Karl Marx, based upon radical atheistic materialism, which denied the existence and the reality of spiritual or mystical elements and any deity. Marx explicitly distinguished his communism from previous “utopian” religious or ethical or philanthropic communism or communalism.

A major force in world politics since the early 20th century, modern communism is generally associated with these theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as expressed in The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, among other writings. According to Marx's theory of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, the capitalist profit-based system of private ownership is rife with internal contradictions. In his idea, capitalism has a problem of alienation, a kind of secular notion of "Fallenness" based on Hobbes's theory of the state of nature. These supposed internal contradictions within capitalism, Marx held, would be exacerbated over time, leading to a revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, after which capitalism would be replaced by a communist society in which the means of production are communally owned. This process would pass through a transitional period marked by the preparatory stage of socialism (see Leninism). As a political movement, communism seeks to overthrow capitalism through a workers' revolution and establish a classless society. Marxist theory did not, in fact, find its fulfillment and expression in any actual communist revolution. It was precisely in the developing countries, not the advanced industrial nations, that the so-called "communist" revolutions occurred. The theory of Marxism was adapted by revolutionaries, such as Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, into new theories of imperialism that would explain how a communist revolution could take place in a non-capitalist country. The word is now mainly understood to refer to life under conditions of Communist party rule, which currently includes only a few states, such as North Korea and Cuba.

Overview

Communism is the position or the belief that society should be formed by communal ownership of property as opposed to private ownership. The concept of property can include land, natural resources, production goods, and the means of production. The social and economic equality of human beings and the idea of sharing resources are the underlying principles for this theory of social formation. Communism in the sense of communalism existed from antiquity and in diverse cultural traditions in the world. Most pre-late modern communist ideas such as Monasticism were based upon religious or ethical ideals, which aimed to cultivate spirituality or morals of members of community.

The concept of communism had definite formulation with the rise of Francoise Emile Babeuf (1760-97), Etienne Cabet (1788-1856), and Karl Marx in particular. Marx defined the concept of communism and built it within his radical atheisitic materialist framework. Marx attempted to establish a social theory of communism based upon radical atheistic materialism, which denied the existence and reality of any spiritual or religious or mythical elements and any form of deity. Since then, the meaning of communism has been greatly shaped by the theories and ideas of Marx.

The Marxist theory of communism was an integral part of his whole system of thought which consisted of economics, view of history, theory of emancipation, analyses of power and authority, and materialism. Marx diagnosed faults in the economic system to be the cause of social evils, and characterized human history as a process of class struggles between those who owned the means of production and those who did not own these means, and presented communism as a classless society where “people work according to ability and gain according to their needs.” Marx presented the communist economic system as a remedy to end all social evils that ever existed in human history. However, contrary to his vision, all communist or social states failed in their economy. They often became totalitarian police states with unimaginable levels of repression. As Stalin embarked on a career of massive human destruction Marxist communist theory revealed itself as neither anticipating these horrors, nor in possession of sufficient philosophical resources to prevent or even temper these extreme, tragic consequences.

Historical development

In the late 19th century, Marxist theories motivated socialist parties across Europe, although, responding to pressures from within the labor movement itself, European socialists largely tried to gain concessions for workers. As a consequence their policies resulted in the "reforming" of capitalism, rather than its overthrow. (According to Marx's "iron law of competition, this should not have been possible, but history proved otherwise.) The exception was the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party. One branch of this party, commonly known as the Bolsheviks (from the Russian word for "majority," although ironically, the Bolsheviks were the minority faction, while the Mensheviks, from the Russian word for "minority," were the majority faction), headed by Vladimir Lenin, succeeded in taking control of the country after toppling the Provisional Government in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1918, this party changed its name to the Communist Party; thus 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 never became a popular ideology in the United States, before or after the establishment of the Communist Party USA in 1919. In Western Europe, communist parties were more successful. 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 vitually disappeared in Europe, but around a quarter of the world's population still lives under Communist Party rule, primarily in the People's Republic of China. Although the Chinese Communist Party continues to have control over the political life of its country, it has repudiated much of Marxist theory, instituting capitalist economic reforms.

Roots of Communism

The notion of communism has roots in Western thought, going all the way back to ancient Greece and a myth about the "golden age" of humanity, when society lived in full harmony, before private ownership of property developed. Communism was inspired by other ideals of communal living, such as can be found in Plato's The Republic and other ancient political theorists, the Essenes, a Judean desert sect, 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. To one extent or another all practiced some form of communal living and common ownership (see "Christian communism").

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. [1]

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 precursors to the communists.

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 argued that this development widened the gulf between rich and poor.

Marxism

Main article: Marxism
File:Kmarx.jpg
Marxism is based on the works of the nineteenth century philosopher, Karl Marx.

Like other socialists, Marx and Engels saw capitalism as based on the exploitation of workers. But whereas earlier socialists often favored longer-term social reform, Marx and Engels theory required a revolutionary movement of workers to overthrow the bourgeoisie. According to his "iron law of competition," capitalism was destined to centralize more and more wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, ironically creating a smaller and smaller group of masters that could then be overcome by the revolutionary proletariat. Since Marx believed that the state had no independent role, but was merely an extension of the ruling class, he predicted that no systematic reform of capitalism would be possible. Only a revolution could displace these powerful capitalists.

Karl Marx argued that primitive communism is the original state of mankind. Like the ancient Greek myth of the "golden age", Marx postulates an original, classless state, but this state was not ideal, since it was not developed. The end of this "golden age" paralleled the Christian myth of the "fortunate fall," the development of private ownership of property and a society based on class, which could only be resolved through a dialectical development. Through feudalism and capitalism, humankind would develop its economic potential, but with an unjust system of distribution. Due to this inherent contradiction of capitalism, Marx postulated in his theory of dialectical materialism a revolutionary break with the past, which would lead humanity back through socialism into a return to the ideal state of communism, but at a higher level of development than primitive communism.

According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main characteristic of human life in class society is alienation. The primary form of alienation is the worker from the product of his work. From that primary alienation, the alienation of between workers and between man and the environment are derived. Communism is the state of overcoming alienation by allowing the workers to reintegrate the product of their labor. This 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. According to Marx, 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 have the need or desire to exploit others. Whereas for Hegel, the unfolding of this ethical life in history is mainly driven by the dialectical relations of ideas, for Marx, communism emerged from a dialectical materialism, a series of progressive changes 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, such as the popular slogan from The Communist Manifesto, "from each according to his abilities, to each 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.[2]

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 Marxists (communists) and anarchists. The anarchists are against, and wish to abolish, every state organization. Among them, anarchist-communists believe 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 in this society.

The growth of modern Communism

Under the Comintern

Main article: Marxism-Leninism
Vladimir Lenin in 1920

In Russia, Lenin's Bolsheviks undertook the modern world's first effort to build socialism on a large scale following the October Revolution of 1917. This raised significant theoretical and practical debates about communism among Marxists themselves. Marx's theory had predicted that revolutions would occur where capitalist development was the most advanced and where a large working class was already in place. Russia, however, was the poorest country in Europe with an enormous, illiterate peasantry and little industry. Under these circumstances, it was necessary for the communists, according to their ideological mission, to create a working class itself.

For this reason, the socialist Mensheviks opposed the Bolshevik revolution on the grounds that the socialist revolution could not take place before capitalism had been established. In seizing power, the Bolsheviks found themselves without a program beyond their pragmatic and politically successful slogans "peace, bread, and land," which had tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War and the peasants' demand for land reform.

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. The revolutionary Bolsheviks broke completely with the moderate socialist movement, withdrew from the Second International, and formed the Third International, or Comintern, in 1919. Henceforth, the term "Communism" was applied to the ideology of the parties founded under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their program, renamed Marxism-Leninism after Lenin's theoretical alterations to Marxism, called for uniting the workers of the world for revolution, which would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat and the development of a socialist economy. Ultimately, their program asserted that a harmonious classless society would develop, and the state would wither away. 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 theory of democratic centralism, Communist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with a network of active cells comprising the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as reliable and completely subject to party discipline.

During the Russian Civil War (1918-20), the new regime nationalized all productive property. When mutiny and peasant unrest resulted, Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP, 1923). 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 came to be described as 'Communist states' with 'state socialist' economic bases. This usage indicated that they proclaimed to have realized part of the socialist program by abolishing private control of the means of production and establishing state control over the economy.

Trotskyism

Main article: Trotskyism
File:Trockiy2.jpg
Leon Trotsky

After Lenin's death, there was a struggle for power. Trotsky and his supporters organized into the "Left Opposition," and their platform became known as Trotskyism. Their platform was Marxist internationalism promoted by Leon Trotsky, whose theory of "permanent revolution" stressed the necessity of world revolution.

But when Stalin succeeded in gaining full control of the Soviet regime, their attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile 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 Trotskyism remained popular in the West among certain more radical elements, the ideology was never accepted in Communist circles in the Soviet bloc, even after Stalin's death; nor has Trotsky's interpretation of communism been successful in leading a political revolution that would overthrow a state. However, Trotskyist ideas have occasionally found an echo among political movements in countries experiencing social upheavals (such is the case of Alan Woods' Trotskyist Committee for a Marxist International, which has had contact with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela). Most Trotskyist parties today are active in politically stable, developed countries (such as Great Britain, France, Spain and Germany).

Stalinism

Main article: Stalinism
File:Stalin 02.jpg
Joseph Stalin.

Stalin attempted to build 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, promulgated that vision throughout the world.

Stalin's "contribution" to Marxism-Leninism was his theory of socialism in one country, which claimed that due to the "aggravation of class struggle under socialism," it was possible, even necessary, to build socialism in a single country. This "theoretical" innovation was largely based on the practical need to develop Soviet industry to compete with the Western industrial powers. Thus, Stalin undertook a dramatic and unprecedented social transformation of Russian society.

After Nazi Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and invaded the Soviet Union, they were drawn into WWII. In the aftermath of the war, having absorbed more than 20 million casualties, the Soviet Union established a sphere of influence over Eastern Europe, installing communist regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania, as well as the Baltic states.

The hallmark of Stalinism, despite it industrial development and geo-strategic victories, was characterized by Stalin's own personal aggrandizement in the cult of personality and his paranoia, which led to the rise of the secret police with sweeping powers and the Great Purges. Under Stalin the Soviet Union became a thoroughly 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 and undertook a de-Stalinization program. Later, growth declined, and rent-seeking and corruption by state officials increased, undermining the legitimacy of the Soviet system.

Cold War years

Communism and certainly the sphere of Soviet influence had been vastly strengthened by the inclusion of many new nations in Eastern Europe into what became the Warsaw Pact. In addition to the creation of Soviet client states in Eastern Europe, other indigenous Marxist revolutions also came to power in the years after WWI. Most important among these new revolutions was the one that brought Mao Zedong to power in China. By 1950 the Chinese Communists held all of China except Taiwan, thus controlling the most populous nation in the world.

In Europe, a Communist government was created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia. However, 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."

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 Western imperialism in these poor countries.

Maoism

Main article: Maoism
File:Mao1946.jpg
Mao in 1946 at Yan'an

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.

Unlike most other political ideologies, including other socialist and Marxist ones, Maoism contains an integral military doctrine and explicitly connects its political ideology with military strategy. In Maoist famous dictum, "political power comes from the barrel of the gun." He argued that the peasantry can be mobilized to undertake a "people's war" of armed struggle involving guerrilla warfare.

Maoism emphasized revolutionary mass mobilization, village-level industries independent of the outside world (see the example of the Great Leap Forward, which encouraged every Chinese person to melt down industrial pots and pans to smelt their own iron from scratch). Deliberate organizing of mass military and economic power was deemed necessary to defend the revolutionary area from outside threat, while centralization kept corruption under supervision.

A key concept that distinguishes Maoism from other left-wing ideologies is the belief that the class struggle continues throughout the entire socialist period (as a result of the fundamental antagonistic contradiction between capitalism and communism). Even when the proletariat has seized state power through a socialist revolution, the potential remains for a bourgeoisie to restore capitalism. Indeed, Mao famously stated that "the bourgeoisie [in a socialist country] is right inside the Communist Party itself", implying that corrupt Party officials would subvert socialism if not prevented. This was the main reason for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, in which Mao exhorted the public to "Bombard the [Party] headquarters!" and wrest control of the government from bureaucrats (such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiao Ping), perceived to be returning the country to capitalism.

Mao's doctrine is best summarized in the Little Red Book of Mao Zedong, which was distributed to everyone in China as the basis of revolutionary education. This book consists of quotations from the earliest days of the revolution to the mid-1960s, just before the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism today

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became chairman of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. He attempted to address the stagnation that had set in during the Brezhnev era and in the Andropov and Chernenko interregnum, through a program of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), designed to relaxed central control and introduced some market innovation. In foreign policy, Gorbachev refused to continue to enforce the borders of its communist satellites in Eastern Europe. When Hungary stopping policing its borders, allowing refugees from all across Eastern Europe to stream into the West, the iron curtain collapsed. The Berlin Wall was torn down and street demonstrations brought down communist regimes in East Germany and Romania, while other states underwent more peaceful transitions. All had abandoned Communist rule by 1990. Then, in 1991, hard-liners within the CPSU attempted to roll back some of Gorbachev's reforms through a coup d'etat. When the coup failed, the Soviet Union collapsed, and was dissolved on the last day of 1991.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Communist parties still held power in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. However, China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; and China, Laos, Vietnam, and, to a lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. In North Korea, power passed from father to son (Kim Il-Sung to Kim Jong-Il in the first and only example of a "Communist dynasty." Communist parties, or their political heirs, remain politically important in many European countries and throughout the Third World, particularly in India. Today, Marxist revolutionaries are active in the countries of India, Nepal, and Colombia, among others, but exist only on the extreme fringes of society.

Criticism of communism

Main article: Criticisms of communism.

Criticism of communism has come from many different camps, from communists and anti-communists alike. 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.

Anticommunists applied the concept of "totalitarianism" to these societies, also criticizing their inefficient and unwieldy state bureaucracy and central planning regime and their repressive police state organs.

A diverse array of writers and political activists have published anticommunist work, such as Soviet bloc dissidents Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Havel; economists Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman; and historians and social scientists Hannah Arendt, Robert Conquest, Richard Pipes and R. J. Rummel, among others. 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 the ideology of communism itself.

See also

Schools of communism

Organizations and people

  • Communist Party
  • List of Communist parties
  • List of Communists

Further reading

Fernando Claudin, The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform (1975)

External links

Online resources for original communist literature

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