 |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
controversial topic, which may be disputed.
Communism, or the theory of communism, is often used to describe revolutionary philosophies based on the theories espoused by Karl Marx. Often "Communism" is used as a synonym for the Marxist-Leninist system practiced in Soviet Russia under Lenin and his successors, as well as its satellite states. In this case the "C" is capitalized.
Within Marxism, the largest trends were inspired by the writings and actions of Vladimir Lenin and, to a lesser degree, his subordinates, Josef Stalin and Leon Trotsky. Whilst the common denominator is "Marxism", some branches of communism are nonetheless in conflict. Some of these branches are: Stalinism, Maoism, Leninism and Trotskyism. Some other, lesser-known flavours are Council Communism, De Leonism, Juche and Left Communism.
Communism, or communist society, is the name of the social formation, which, according to Marx, would be a classless society in which all property is owned by the community as a whole, and where all people enjoy equal social and economic status.
Communism in its original meaning is a social theory and political movement for the direct and communal control of society towards the common benefits of all members (see also Religious communism).
Marxists believe that just as society has transformed from feudalism to capitalism, it will transform into socialism and eventually communism. However the method by which this transformation occurs distinguishes communists from other socialists – including those that believe in Marxism – in that communists believe that this will be accomplished by revolutionary means.
According to Lenin, the first step of the long-term process of developing a communist society is a revolutionary seizure of political power; in Marxist terms, the domination of the bourgeoisie is to be replaced by the domination of the working class. In Marxist literature this political stage is called the "dictatorship of the proletariat". Lenin argued that the revolution would occur first in less developed nations, and would require a "vanguard of the proletariat" composed of a relatively small, tightly organized Communist party. Marx had predicted, however, that revolution would first occur in the heavily industrialised countries of the West, making no mention of a Communist party.
Communism, or communist system, may also indicate the various forms of the Communist State characterized by state-ownership of all means of production with the professed aim of establishing a communist society.
Many early Western intellectuals have advocated ideas similar to communism. In his 4th century BC work The Republic, the Greek philosopher Plato proposed the communal ownership of property by an intellectual ruling class, to put the welfare of the state above personal desire and moderate the greed of the producing classes.
In 1534 John of Leyden turned the city of Münster into a commune called "New Jerusalem" in expectation of the Second Coming of Christ and introduced polygamy (going partway towards Plato's ideal) before the city was taken by a Catholic army, leading to a massacre. Thomas More's 16th century work Utopia depicted a society organized along communist lines.
The idea fluttered around during The Enlightenment, exerting varying amounts of influence on the philosophes. The greatest influence was on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose thought extensively influenced the French Revolution.
Many 19th century idealists, disgusted by the ongoing oppression and decadence created by the Industrial Revolution, broke away from society to form short-lived communal "utopias". An example was Robert Owen's New Harmony community in Indiana.
The 20th and 21st century kibbutzim continue that tradition with religious inspiration. Hovever some psychologists point out psychological problems of life in tightly knit communities without private property. For example, psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, in a study of life on an Israeli kibbutz, wrote that children brought up in that communal environment experience great difficulty in making emotional commitments thereafter, such as falling in love or forming a lasting friendship. See Kibbutz: psychological aspects for more.
The ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, epitomized by their Communist Manifesto, transformed communism into a revolutionary movement. Marx and Engels claimed communism did not have to occur in isolated communities, but could emerge globally. According to the Manifesto, all history can be explained in terms of class struggles: in each society, a small ruling class owns or controls the means of production; the rest, who constitute the vast majority of people, own and control very little.
During the current stage, capitalism, the dominant bourgeoisie (capitalists who controlled the means of production) exploited and oppressed the proletariat (industrial workers). Karl Marx in his work Das Kapital (see Labour theory of value for more) explains in detail how capitalists buy labour from workers, obtaining then the right to sell the productive result of labour at a profit; this, Marx argued, creates class stratification and an unjust, unsustainable distribution of wealth. Marx thought it was only a matter of time before the working classes of the world, realizing their common goals, would unite to overthrow the capitalists and redistribute the wealth. He felt the establishment of communism would be the inevitable outcome of a historical process.
Atheism, usually based on Dialectical materialism, has been the official stance of most communist countries.
According to Marx, the laws of class struggle would drive capitalism to evolve into socialism and then, eventually, to communism. However, in the early twentieth century, it seemed that capitalist society was as strong as ever, and the revolution that Marx predicted was nowhere yet to be found. As to how this fact should be interpreted lead to a split among Marx's followers.
Some eventually concluded that a socialist society could be created without revolution and could be brought about through the process of reforming existing state institutions. This ideology became known as democratic socialism (not to be confused with social democracy) and formed the basis on which a number of political parties were founded, including the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the British Labour Party.
According to Lenin, however, Marx underestimated the power of capitalist imperialism and therefore a revolutionary seizure of the political power on behalf of the proletariat was needed to overthrow the capitalist system, so as to advance humanity towards Communism.
The actual difference is the revolutionary character of the process. Communists consider revolution as a necessary step, while reformist socialists do not. These two currents of Marxism distinguished their respective methodologies after the second worker's international. During the rest of the 20th century, according to communist critics, reformist socialists did little beyond trying to mitigate the socially harmful effects of capitalism without making any real progress towards a classless society. On the other hand, according to reformists, the dictatorship of the proletariat was nothing else than dictatorship under the control of a communist party and remains in a state of near totalitarian dictatorship, or has transitioned into some form of parlimentary democracy or capitalism.
The world's five Communist states are the People's Republic of China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, and Laos. The experiences of these five states have starkly diverged since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. On one hand, Cuba and North Korea were hit hard by the collapse of Soviet and Eastern bloc economic assistance, trade and military support. On the other hand, the world's three other remaining Communist states (all in East Asia) were far less dependent on Soviet subsidies (and in China's case, not at all, given the Sino-Soviet Split) at the time of the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
Following the lead of China under Deng Xiaoping, Vietnam and Laos have moved away from Soviet-style centralized planning in favour of market socialism. The ruling Communist parties of China, Vietnam, and Laos argue that a planned economy is not synonymous to socialism, thus maintaining their rationale for Communist Party-rule. For the past two decades, China and Vietnam have been sustaining among the highest rates of economic growth in the world.
In the early 21st century, some thinkers have seen the prospect of communism emerging from a different direction. Economic and technological development have always been seen as the primary prerequisite to building communism (e.g. Stalin's industrialization of the Soviet Union). In the final decade of the Soviet Union's existence, however, a number of scholars developed theories describing how communism would develop if it gradually turned nature itself into the means of production.
This vision, not unlike the vision of the modern nanotechnology proponents, is slowly coming to fruition. While the majority of Western economists and politicians follow Francis Fukuyama in the belief that capitalism will endure forever, or simply do not have any theories spanning beyond it, some paint a vision not unlike the one described by Marx. In a particularly well-publicized example, robotics that fits the classic definition of communism perfectly. Thus, though they shy away from the word "communism" itself (because of its negative connotations), some authors today actually describe how communism will be built in the 21st century.
Much confusion (often seemingly deliberate) surrounds the words "communism" and "socialism". Although called communist in the West, the USSR actually described itself as socialist (as the name implies). Parties that describe themselves as communist have a goal of eventually realizing a communist society. Therefore, the adjective communist applies to three things: individuals who are members of Communist parties or who desire a communist society in the future, political parties which have a goal of reaching communism, and a theoretical future society where there is no government, only communism.
Many nations in the 20th century were run by such Communist parties, who identified themselves as true communists, and claimed to govern themselves according to Marxist principles or variations on them. (See Soviet Empire for list). Such states have become known as Communist states in the West. Marxists dispute this usage, reserving the term communism only for the final evolutionary stage of society (see socialism).
According to the 1996 third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, communism is written with a lowercase "c" except when it refers to a political party of that name, a member of that party, or a government led by such a party, in which case it is written as "Communism" with an uppercase "C".
Main article: Communist state: Theory and practice.
According to Marx and his followers, economic development is a major engine in human society. It changes its form solely to allow more efficient production. Marx believed that communism should replace capitalism not because it is more human and better society, but primarily because he considered it economically more efficient. Economically, however, communist states, including some that were very rich before communism (e.g. Czechoslovakia), were unable to follow the rate of development of capitalist states. It is believed that this is the result of the state ownership of capital: capitalism is far more beneficial to individuals, and if there is efficiency in production and motivation to do well among the workers.
However, some communist countries did succeed in reaching comparable, or even higher, technological levels than capitalist ones. For example, the Soviet space program was able to far exceed that of the United States in the early years of the space race. The US was only able to respond adequately by moving the development of space technology from private ownership to state ownership.
Justified, non-hierarchical society and the equal distribution of work and goods is one of the primary goals of communism. Such a society would run in accord with the principle, "To each according to their needs, from each according to their ability." However in all societies which have been described in the west as Communist (where a communist party was the sole party in power), some kind of social hierarchy was established. Such unequal distribution was usually explained with the need for worker motivation. This argument is interesting, as it appears to accept the "fetishism of the commodities" theory, which was criticized by Marx; that is, life seen as collection of the material goods, for their perceived 'notional' value, as in conspicuous consumption, alone and without or with little respect to actual use value.
An arguably even more important goal of communism is called de-alienation. As Marx explains in his work Economico-Philosophical Manuscripts, the division between the work force and capitalists causes alienation between these two groups. The workers are, according to Marx, rented to the capitalist, who is led solely by a search for profit, with little regard for the needs of these labourers. Such an alienated individual is unable to live a completely realized human life.
De-alienation is the freedom of the human creativity from the "superhuman" laws of capital and profit; communism intended not only to search for a human economical equality, but a realization of individual human potential in a better world; the so called "empire of freedom". However, the majority of Marxists agree that little was done toward the realization of this goal, as it had a much lower priority than the other goals of communism. The legitimacy of communism as a political force had by far the highest priority. All actions were evaluated according to their ability to increase the legitimacy of communism (for example, the treatment of athletes in the Soviet Union and East Germany).
Despite propaganda, in the great majority of communist countries, capital still existed, only owned by the state. Anything that could produce a profit – and was not in contradiction with political legitimacy – was acceptable. For example, tobacco was produced and distributed in all communist countries, despite the fact that such production was obviously motivated by the search for profit.
Arguments on the nature of communist societies are unresolved and face reinterpretation with each new political conflict. In recent years, the negative elements of communism are often emphasized and the positive ones downplayed in Western society (particularly in the United States of America); sometimes legitimately and other times unfairly. Reasons for this may root not only from problems in communist concepts per se, but also as a reflection of those very capitalist societies. In many post-communist countries , communism is frequently seen more favourably as "theoretically better", but "problematic in practice". Support for that claim can be found in research conducted through public opinion, and in the fact that many, if not the majority, of successful politicians in post-communist countries are in fact ex-communists (e.g. Vladimir Putin, Franjo Tuđman, Ivica Račan).
For a general discussion of the practical consequences of communist rule, and an exposition of the formal and semi-formal mechanisms of the government and constitutional workings in communist countries, see communist state.
|
||||
| View Live Article | This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License | |
||
