On Communism

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A thousand years from now, students of history will still be talking about the rise and fall of Communism, as an idealized theory of history, way of life and political system - spanning 140 years from the 1840s to the 1980s.  Already, barely a generation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, serious inquiries have begun into the history of Communism.  It was a social phenomenon that profoundly impacted human events, on the level of Alexander the Great’s propagation of Greek culture across the Middle East, or the rise of European feudalism during the Dark Ages.  For our purposes here, I will address three main questions in this order:

1.    What impelled the first Communists to start a mass movement in Germany in the 1840s?  What philosophical assumptions did they make?

2.    What was Communism’s enduring appeal to its many adherents, why did Communist political

    revolutions continue into the last half of the 20^th Century?

3.    What does this 140-year long epoch of Communist ascendency portend for the future, especially for “democratic socialism”?

Section 1 - Examined correctly, Communism can be seen as an immediate manifestation of the Industrial Revolution.  The term itself was coined by Karl Marx and his fellow activists who made up a German workingman’s association in the 1840s.  They lived in an era of violent socialist reaction to the disruptive effects of the worldwide industrial revolution - a classic case of disruptive technology turning the social order upside down.  Karl Marx was brilliant student of philosophy and history, who at an early age perceived a pattern of historical changes in the way people produced goods and services, how that in turn caused another cycle of changes in the way people make their living.  Thus, Communism is based on a peculiar blend of idealism and materialism, expressed as a philosophy of history.

Marx correctly observed that human personalities, beliefs and habits are largely shaped by the type of work they do.  In his analysis and explanation, the important factor was the relationship of the person doing the work, to the ownership of the tools of production, be it a factory or a horse and plow.  He perceived most modern humans as either a) slaves and serfs who are allowed to survive in exchange for their continued toil on the land, or b) toilers who earn a wage and are free to quit and relinquish their access to food, housing, etc.  A few others, the one-percenters, own the factories, megafarms, corporations, etc. and live the life of ease on their fat profits.

In 1848, angry wage workers in France tried to grab power but were beaten back by the established authorities and their military power.  On behalf of a small group of revolutionary socialists, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published their Communist Manifesto (in German) in January of that year.  Many of them were promptly rounded up by the police as subversives and imprisoned.  Up until that time, the socialist movements in Europe were definitely prepared to fight for better pay and working conditions, but their objectives were fairly modest:  collective bargaining, a living wage, democratically elected governments, etc.  However, Marx and his cohorts had a more radical agenda, spelled out in detail in their Manifesto.

“Manifesto of the Communist Party”, first published in German, laid out quite radical principles for how people should relate to each other in a just and productive industrial society, and the steps necessary to make that transition.  The Manifesto was both a proposed agenda for proletarians and a warning to capitalists and their lackeys. Its fixation on justice, fairness and equality mirrors the idealist inclination of Marx’s generation (Young Hegelians).  The following is a summary of their very utopian program:

·       Through revolutionary means, state power will be concentrated in a dictatorship, not of one person, but of the vanguard party representing the class of industrial wage slaves and their agricultural counterparts. In this manner the proletariat becomes the ruling class and gradually wipes away all institutional and cultural vestiges of the previous Bourgeois economic order.

·       Property owned or controlled by Bourgeois interests will be a thing of the past.  Existing Bourgeois land and capital will be expropriated by the state for public use as quickly as practical.  Personal possessions like a toiler’s clothes or an artisan’s tools are excepted. 

·       Farmers will collectively “own” the land they till and industrial workers will own the capital assets of the enterprises they work on.

·       Marriage contracts will be mutual agreements between competent parties concerning property and children, nothing more.  The Bourgeois family, with its pater familias, dutiful wife and obedient children, will vanish, to be replaced by something new and unforseen.  No longer will a woman be confined to domestic duties, while her husband is out and about, chasing other women.  Women will be free to form their own community and cohabit and consort with men as they please. 

·       Universal public education will be continued, but it will be rescued from the influence of the ruling class.  Child labor will be abolished, to be replaced in part by combining some education with industrial production, e.g., apprenticeships.  Parents rights will be subordinate to the state.

·       A heavily progressive income tax will levied, the rich must give back their ill-gotten gains. The right of inheritance will be abolished.

·       Agricultural and industrial production will be combined or coordinated by the state, followed by a gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country and a more “equitable” geographic distribution of the population.

·       Nation states and nationality will eventually be abolished.  Communism is global and all proletarians and peasants are comrades in the struggle to create the just and productive society that inevitably follows capitalism.

·       The objective is to abolish most class distinctions and all class antagonisms.  Once the proletariat sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, the conditions for existence of class antagonisms will likewise be swept away.  There will be no need for a ruling class.  In the meantime, though, don’t expect Bourgeois elements to give up without a fight.  They and their servants are class enemies, to be dealt with severely.

·       All able-bodied people will be obligated to work.  Industrial armies, especially for agriculture, will be established.  No work, no eat.

Section 2 – Why did this movement catch fire, albeit gradually at first?  The extreme social conditions and antagonisms Marx and Engels described were very real to a large proportion of industrial workers in the 19^th Century.  Near starvation wages in exchange for brutal working conditions was the norm.  In many places peasants were displaced from ancestral lands and driven into hellish factory towns to either work or die.  

As you would expect, factory owners often faced competition and in any event were not particularly inclined to treat their wage workers with kindness and respect.  There were exceptions, e.g., Henry Ford a little later, but for the most part it was a case of capitalism run amuck, squeezing every last ounce of profit out of the available land, labor and capital. 

The communists of the last half of the 19^th Century were part and parcel of a larger set of socialist parties organized by industrial workers and their sympathizers.  Marx and Engels took pains to distinguish themselves from the rest, but in fact there were other socialist revolutionaries afoot in Europe, Britain and America.  Strikes by workers against capitalist enterprises became more and more frequent.  The law at the time was not on the side of organized workers and violence against them was frequently applied or at least condoned by state powers.  The most extreme of these socialist parties, including the Communists, were outlawed and for most part operated underground.

Finally, in 1905, a socialist revolution was seriously attempted in Russia, of all places.  At the time, Russia was just beginning its industrialization.  Most working people there were peasants, living on and legally tied, to land they did not own.  Furthermore, the leading organizers of the revolution of 1905 had rather modest Socialist objectives and settled with the Russian monarchy for an elected parliament and some limited land reform.  Nevertheless, Russian Communists were emboldened and gained strength. These revolutionaries, including Lenin and Trotsky, proudly called themselves militant philosophers, determined to change the world for the better by whatever means necessary.

Twelve years later, in midst of a disastrous war against the Central Powers, Russia’s monarchy collapsed and the Communists, being the best organized and most determined of the various Socialist parties, seized power with relatively little blood spilt.  For the first time, Communism as a political and social system, was permanently instituted throughout an entire country.  It’s a testament to the power and attraction of Communism that the principles laid out in the Manifesto were faithfully adhered to, often in spite of the consequences.  Communist attempts at violent revolution were repeated in many other societies around the globe, and was notably successful in China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola and Mozambique.  In every case, the revolutionaries did their best, given local conditions, to adhere to the Marxian program.  None of them were particularly successful at improving living conditions in their countries. None of these efforts spread to heavily industrialized societies, in spite mighty efforts throughout the 20^th Century. 

Section 3 – Even before the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact collapsed in 1991, Communism as a philosophy and social system was thoroughly discredited.  Any serious movement toward revolution for oppressed workers or peasants had long since run its course.  

What then to make of the current popularity of “democratic socialism”?  For one thing, our very definition of the modern political spectrum, as understood in most places, has left and right wings corresponding to a) socialist/communist values and long-term objectives, vs b) the established, and often reactionary, order of powerful asset owners and career politicians.  Read again the bullet points in section 1 above and you will find essential elements of current American “secular progressive” political ideology.  

That doesn’t make social democrats around the world bad people, intent on our destruction.  There are also obvious differences between the two parties, with Socialists more likely to be influenced by their humanist tradition rather than animus toward their class enemies.

Nonetheless, Communism is a thoroughly materialist system based a humanist ideology of fairness and caring for the most vulnerable classes of society.  Unfortunately, Communist and Socialist economic policies inevitably lead to social collapse, as in the Soviet Union, Greece, Venezuela and multiple other Latin American historical examples.  Even more dangerous is the inherent need for coercion in implementing either Communist or Socialist policies, albeit with a velvet glove in the latter case.  Even the Bernie Sanders variety of socialism, requires coercion at almost every level, from confiscatory taxes on successful entrepreneurs to forcing a wage earner to pay taxes to a corrupt union. 

In order to provide an adequate supply of medical services to an entire nation, the central government must, to a large extent, take command of the nation’s health care industry.  For the US, imagine Medicare coverage (parts A and B) for all citizens and legal residents.  The benefits to the poor are hard to morally argue against, so the public rightfully accepts the change, only to find out eventually that everyone, except those who can afford expensive supplemental insurance, get the same mediocre level of service.  No heroic treatment for old people.  Long wait times for non-emergency surgeries, etc.  Consider the single-payer systems in Canada and the UK.  All this is hard to argue against, which is why socialist initiatives will continue to prevail.   If Marx and Engels were alive today, they would have no trouble explaining how the dialectic of historical events and forces is being demonstrated before our very eyes. 

I can’t predict the future, but as the Roman historian Polybius pointed out, states ruled by the demos (as in democratic socialism) slowly rob the national treasury ($20T in US national debt), eventually resulting in collapse and a period of authoritarian one-party rule (oligarchy), followed by one-man rule (tyranny) and eventually triggering another democratic revolution to start the cycle all over again.  Fortunately for people in many parts of the globe, this process is slow, with plenty of time to adjust to creeping socialism.