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[Thread Title] Communism: Definition and Overview
Definition
Political terms can often be vague, and that is doubly so when terms mean different things based on geography. In order to participate in the Communist only sub forum, the poster must self-identify as a member of that group. The following definition is given for clarification:
"Communism is an ideology and movement aimed at establishing a socio-economic order characterised by the common ownership of the means of production in which the assets of the community are held indivisibly rather than in the names of individual members or groups of members. Communism includes a variety of schools of thought that build on concepts of common ownership often entailing the absence of social classes, money and the state. These can vary depending on their approach to economic and political organisation and attitudes to religion and include Marxism, Anarchist Communism and Religious Communism. Due to shared historical origins, theoretical writings and practical applications, Communism often has considerable overlap with Socialism."
Overview
The Public perception of Communism is closely associated with the models of Communist Party rule ideologically descended from Lenin's understanding of Communism in the Russian Revolution of 1917. However, Communism is an extremely diverse ideology that includes a great number of viewpoints which can both support and oppose the Lenin's model.
i) The Role of Religion: Idealist and Materialist Theories of Communism
Idealism and Materialism represent different philosophies regarding the source of knowledge. Idealism argues that knowledge originates from the mind, the spirit, God or the realisation of ideas existing in nature. Materialism argues that knowledge is derived from matter as the objective reality which is received by us through sensation. These differences can produce sharply opposing understandings of Communism, primarily between Religious and Anti-Religious philosophies with many shades and gradations in between.
Religious Communism is often directly associated with specific religious traditions which assert support for Communist systems based on reflecting the will of god, laws of nature or arising from the soul or nature of man. Due to the ferocity and militancy of Communist Anti-Religious practices in the 20th century, many have sought to distance themselves from the term "Communism", but ideas that God or nature sanction common ownership can be found in virtually all major religions including the Abrahamic Religions. Marx and Engels also argued that there existed a form of "primitive communism" in hunter-gatherer societies which often is reflected in many Pagan and Indigenous religious traditions. Religious Communism therefore has a long history arguably dating back to the dawn of civilisation itself.
Anti-Religious or Materialistic Communism is comparatively more recent and has its origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, most recognisably in Marxism as a philosophy of Historical Materialism. The relationship between Materialism, Atheism and Communism is controversial but Historical Materialism represents a theoretical understanding of history which portrays religious beliefs (and idealism more generally) as a "false consciousness" of nature and society in contrast to Materialism.
The conflict over the nature of knowledge can produce vastly different and opposing conceptions of Communist society. As an understanding of ideology, the debates over class consciousness often exceed the narrow boundaries of Politics and Economics, and spill over into discussions regarding History, Philosophy, Culture, Religion and Science as intellectual products of the ruling class and whether they therefore serve as ideological weapons to justify class rule. These debates themselves represent attempts to systemise Communist thought and were part of everyday life in the Communist Bloc with the politicisation of virtually all social and intellectual activities based on whether they served or hindered the spread of Communism.
ii) The Politics of Change: Mechanical and Dialectical Conceptions of Communism
Dialectics and Mechanics represent very different understandings of the nature of change, particularly in social change. Mechanics essentially treats social change as originating from forces outside the material world, such god, the soul or nature of man, the human capacity for reason, as well as the ideas and will of great reformers. Dialectics treats social change as originating from within society based on internal conflict or contradictions, such as the struggle between social Classes.
The Synthesis between Materialism and Dialectics in Dialectical Materialism represents the Marxist Philosophy of Nature as part of a Scientific or Philosophical Worldview in its Orthodox and Leninist interpretations. "Western Marxism" often does not accept Dialectical Materialism but only Historical Materialism as the theory of social change based on class struggle and the determination of politics and ideology by economics.
The nature of this conflict is over how societies change and whether Communism is a product of an eternal set of principles or from a process of historical change with the evolutionary and revolutionary transformation of society. This has significant impact on views regarding the strategy to achieve Communism, as well as how Communist society is organised. For example, if freedom and equality are thought to be eternal principles found in nature that may be assumed to intrinsic features of Communist society, whereas if freedom and equality are products of social evolution, they may exist only in part during a transition period in which classes, class conflicts and the state "wither away".
iii) Communism: A Very Brief History
Most of the major conflicts within Communist Ideology are comparatively recent originating from the 19th and 20th centuries. Both as a legacy of the fact Communism, Socialism and Anarchism share common historical roots as well as the internal struggles of the Communist movements and the effect of Cold War Propaganda, there is considerable confusion and disagreement about the definition of the respective terms. It is useful to have some awareness of the history to understand how they came into their current usage.
The Secular conception of "Socialism" developed in the French Revolution in 1789, and through the late 18th and 19th centuries, the terms Communism, Socialism and Anarchism were often used interchangeably to refer to radical far-left movements. In 1847 the Communist League was established, and in 1848 Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto. In the wake of the 1848 Revolutions across Europe the Communist league was formally disbanded in 1852. The "International Working Men's Association" or First International was established in 1864 to unite a vast array of far-left movements, such as radical socialists, trade unionist, Communists and Anarchists. At its peak, it claimed 8 million members though police sources estimate it a 5 million.
Following the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, the First International split between the followers of Marx and the followers of Bakunin: Representing Anarchist Communism, Bakunin supported the immediate abolition of the state in the wake of a Revolution, whereas Marx did not. Marx instead asserted that there must be a period of transition in which the state would "wither away" with classes and class antagonisms. Whilst the fact that their ideological descendants of Marx and Bakunin shared goals of Social Revolution and could therefore co-operate from time to time, this marked the historical split between Anarchist and Marxist branches of Communism.
Following Marx's death a Second International was formed in 1889. The Second International saw the rapid growth of Social Democratic Parties throughout Europe and the Americas, and led to a much greater systemisation and exploration of Marxist Thought. Around the turn of the 20th century discussions began and intensified over how far Capitalism could be reformed and how urgently and quickly it could be overthrown. The Second International collapsed however following the First World War in which Social Democratic Parties sided with their respective countries and split between those groups who supported and opposed the war. This was extremely messy process. The Russian Revolution of 1917, led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, marked the end of the Second International as Marxists split between those who supported the revolution (Communist) and those who opposed it (Socialists). In 1919, the Third International was founded and the rupture spread as radical socialist parties around the world adopted the model developed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia, which became the Soviet Union in 1922.
Subsequent history records further controversies and splits within the Communist movement. Many of those who early supported the democratic rule of the workers councils (Soviets) and factory committees came to oppose the Communist One-Party system as "Left Communists" in the early 1920's. The internal struggle over the future of the Russian Revolution led to further major splits, with the followers of Leon Trotsky being expelled from the Communist International in the late 1920's for their opposition to Stalin and his understanding of Communism in what became "Marxism-Leninism". Trotsky and his followers later founded the Fourth International in 1938 to spread Trotskyism around the world. As Communism spread outside of the Soviet Union, many parties further split along national lines. One of the most significant in terms of its size was the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1960s and early 1970's as China's and the Soviet Union's understanding of Communism diverged over interpreting Stalin's legacy and the future of the world Communism movement, leading to the formation of Maoism as an ideology opposed to what was regarded as the "revisionism" of the Marxist-Leninism in the USSR.
Subsequent developments in the 1980s and 1990s led to the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR, whilst Communist Party rule continues to survive in China, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba and (though debatably) North Korea. As a result of the struggle between the USSR and the USA in the Cold War, there is considerable ignorance and misrepresentation of Anarchism, Communism and Socialism as movements and ideologies. Anarchism gained its association with moustache twirling and bomb throwing villains as a result of terrorism and violence during the 1880's and 1890s as Anarchists launched a wave of assassinations against heads of state. This is not a reflection of all Anarchists, many of whom were pacifists. Communism and Socialism have gained currency as scare words in the United States because of characterising virtually all forms of state intervention as a threat to private property and individual liberty. This approach is fundamentally flawed both because it conflates those who support and oppose the US government as "un-American" activities as well as by assuming that Socialism is contrary to "natural law" and that even when its adherents advocate Libertarian and Democratic forms of Communist society, they are "inevitably" doomed to fail.
As this short summary of Communist theory and history reveals, there is considerable diversity and conflict within the Communist movement, as well as overlap with Socialism and Anarchism. A "one size fits all" characterisation is therefore not necessarily the most useful or effective understanding of Communist theory and history or conducive to discussion within the Communist Only Sub Forum. What unites Communists is the belief in common ownership as a means to build a better world.
