Joseph Beasley
Professor Begert
English 102
March 13th,
2015
Communism
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels are famous
German philosophers who introduced the ideas, or beginning ideas of communism.
The system they wanted did not believe in the right of private property, it
believed in community property. They believed such a system would, unlike a
free capitalist system, be fair. This idea was supported by the belief that
there are the Proletarians, a working class that can only live off their own
labor, and the bourgeoisie class, who are the big capitalists who only allow
the proletarians to live from small wages in trade for laborious work. Many
nations embraced these ideas of communism, such as China, North Korea and the
Soviet Union; however the Soviet Union, now Russia, failed with communism,
China has turned away from maintaining many of their communist practices, and
North Korea is very poor. Being attributed to communist authorities are around
a hundred million deaths. It is said that communism has led to famine and a
significant lack of freedom. This project will look at communism with the
assumption that it is an inferior economic system, and then examine the reasons
why, in communism’s pure form, it fails to work and leads to such horrors.
History is often represented as a record that
allows us to know what to repeat, and what not to. It is said if we forget
history we are bound to repeat our mistakes, and the mistake of communism is
not only one to never forget, but communism is also a product of forgetting
history. Communism is responsible for many deaths, for stealing of private
property, and for terrible economies; but the fact that communism existed in the
first place was because right and wrong had been deleted in the minds of those
regimes. One of the first actions towards communism was a disregard for
religion, something which offers a moral standard. In addition, communists
denied existing truths, believing that everything is changing throughout time,
including right and wrong. It is because of these actions that the stealing of
private property and the murder of millions was considered acceptable. Such
actions as these, which are truly evil, no matter what any government says,
will never be right.
Communism’s beginning starts with its
philosophy. One of the core beliefs is a view of history as a struggle. A
continuous struggle, but as soon as the industrial revolution took place, the
worst struggle came about, at least in the eyes of its philosophers. This
struggle, explained in Engels’ “The Principles of Communism,” was the struggle
between the Proletarians and the Bourgeoisie. In this view, the proletarians
were workers who could only gain wealth from labor, and could not gain wealth
from property. The bourgeoisie could gain wealth from property, and the
proletarians were their slaves. In fact, in the view of Engels, this slavery
was worse than the slavery that was in America’s South. The proletarians were
trapped, and they believed that they could never escape. Because of this, Marx
and Engels went on to propose that private property should be abolished, and
instead community property be instituted. This system, they believed would
liberate the proletariat. This system has since been instituted in many
nations, and has often failed, or been modified.
Communism is a terrible
economic system that has led to much death, poverty, and terror. The cause of
such problems, and why communism was even allowed to be introduced are the
same; the communist philosophy ignores certain truths that are concrete. The
fact that communism is flawed can immediately be seen through the fact that it
leads to death and poverty; but it can also be seen by looking directly at the
fundamental beliefs of communism. These fundamentals led to the constant
violation of the right of life, the revoking of the right of property, and
overarching, the idea that there is no constant truth through the belief that
all is changing throughout time. For the affirmation of this fact, a more
detailed explanation is necessary.
Communism began with its
philosophers, the two famous ones of which are Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. In the opening words of their
“Communist Manifesto,” they stated, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor
and oppressed [.]” Marx and Engels viewed history as a constant struggle, and
they believed that there was always someone on top and someone on bottom. But
in their eyes, the worst manifestation came in the form of the proletarians and
the bourgeoisie (Engels). In Engels’ “The Principles of Communism,” he lays out
why. He explains how the industrial revolution
was the beginning of the proletariat, and that the proletariat is only able to
create wealth from labor, and cannot create wealth from capitol like the
bourgeoisie. He said this happened when steam engines and spinning machines
were invented. In his eyes, workers always had a skill that they could use for
their benefit. An example could have been a blacksmith who was skilled at
forming tools. But when the industrial revolution happened, Engels then says
the workers lost that advantage. Factories with steam engines and spinning
machines made the skill of the worker outdated. Instead of a blacksmith,
machines would form tools better and cheaper. According to Engels, this brought
the worker to a lower level. Instead of preforming unique skills, “the activity of the individual worker
[was reduced] to simple, endlessly repeated mechanical motions” (Engels). The outcome was two very separate classes: The big
capitalists who owned all means of production, and were able to make wealth
from property, and then the laborers, who had to go work for the big
capitalists and were obligated to deal with the big capitalist to attain
substance (Engels). This brings forth the two classes, the bourgeoisie, who
owned the means to gain substance, and the proletarians, who could only gain
substance by dealing with the bourgeoisie.
Because this ideology sees the
proletariat as a slave of the bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels set out on a goal to
liberate the proletariat. In the eyes of Engels, the ownership of the means of
production only by the bourgeoisie created the slavery of the proletariat. To
solve this problem he wrote,
[Society] will have to take
the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually
competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these
branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the
common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all
members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and
replace it with association. (Engels)
With this system, the
idea was that no one would be a slave to the bourgeoisie, because
everyone now commonly owned the means of production. He then further stated,
that since private ownership of the means of production implied that there is
an individual right to property, the private property can no longer exist
(Engels). In the end, Marx thought that since everyone contributed to the
wealth, it should be commonly owned (Marx and Engels).
The enforcement
of this system is the next step in its creation, and that requires
totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is “the
political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority”
(“Totalitarianism”). The reason that totalitarianism is a necessary tool in
communism is that communism as based around an ideology. As Ihor Kamenetsky,
who was a professor of political science at Central Michigan University,
stated, “In…Communist…ideology the basis of the ideal society was reduced to a
single predominant factor….theoretically, on the solidarity of the classless
society of the toilers on a global scale” (118). In the communist system, all
need to believe according to the ideology, that is why totalitarianism is so
important. In this system, the state tells the citizens what to believe, and
“the line between ideology and philosophy is blurred” (Kamenetsky 120). Rather
than ordinary citizens having a free way of thinking, they must stay with the
totalitarian ideology which “is broad enough in scope to take stands on such
issues as what is the meaning of life and how to distinguish good from evil and
right from wrong” (Kamenetsky 120-1). This is how it works in communist
nations. The state doesn’t uphold the truth of what is right and wrong, they
determine it. In the case of communism, and most direct, the state determines
that taking away private property and making it community property is right.
But after the totalitarian authority determines what they think is right and
wrong, they must preserve it.
Totalitarian governments try to
limit everything that could threaten them including, information. The act of
preventing information and knowledge is called censorship. An example of
censorship can be seen with the Soviet Union. As Valeria D. Stelmakh, a reading research specialist and
project director of the Lenin State Library of Russia, wrote talking about the
Soviet Union when it was about to fail, “[The] regimes attempts to
forestall the impending collapse and to stabilize the situation included
strengthening censorship and other repressive measures. At this time, the
society had been living under an almost complete blockade of information,
combined with a sophisticated system of misinformation and total censorship”
(143-4). Since communism is so unique and contradicts so much of what is
believed or desired, communist governments are required to hide anything that
might contradict the communist ideology. As Fatos Lubonja, a man who himself
suffered for the sake of communist censorship, said regarding the Soviet Union
again, “Ideology was surmised to encompass the whole of philosophy, history,
and economics, along with literature and the arts. It had the right to
determine the other social or natural sciences, whose results never ran counter
to its conclusions (244).” Not only did the communist totalitarian regimes
censor those things such as philosophy, history, and science, they also heavily
attacked religion. As Engels stated, “communism is the stage of historical
development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about
their disappearance.” Ihor Kamenetsky further explains how totalitarianism and
religion can’t mix when he states, “the totalitarian system develops a secular faith
claiming absolute loyalty for creation of an ‘earthly paradise’ and [also]
because a totalitarian system, true to its all-embracing nature, can ultimately
tolerate not organization with a creed that falls outside its own framework”
(123). Kamenetsky later gives the example of Christianity, which believes there
is an intrinsic value on the individual soul of every human, no matter what
class, which he thinks makes all people brothers (123). Not only does this put
a value on human life, it also views all as equal in a respect that would be
more important than the goal of communal ownership, therefore making the
communist goal secondary. Because of these reasons, that knowledge and ideas
often would conflict with the communist goal, they would censor. But an
important thing to acknowledge is how.
In order to prevent the existence of
dangerous information, communist regimes would have to ignore the idea of
privacy, an action which is part of totalitarianism. When someone goes against
the ideology, they must be changed or eliminated. An example of this can be
seen in the arrest of several opposing leaders by the Soviet Party. Nicolas
Werth, a researcher at the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Present, noted,
First and foremost among the ‘doubtful
element’ to be arrested were the leaders of opposition parties who were still
at liberty. On 15 August 1918 Lenin and Dzerzhinsky jointly signed an order for
the arrest of …the principal leaders of the Menshevik Party, whose press had
long been silenced and whose representatives had been hounded out by the
soviets. (Courtois et al 73)
Not
only was the action of arresting possible threats used, but some threats were
just killed. During a movement known as the Great Purge, many were executed, however, according to Werth, there
was a “notably…sharp increase in the numbers of victims who had some form of
higher education (over 70 percent in 1936-1939), confirming that the terror at
the end of the decade was aimed particularly at the educated elite, whether
they were Party members or not” (Courtois 191-2). As pointed out earlier,
philosophy, science, and history weren’t allowed to work by themselves, but
were only allowed to show information according to the ideology of communism.
Therefore, those of high education, who would likely know, or could come to know
facts or ideas contrary to communism, would be a threat. According to communist
totalitarianism, the act of removing such threats for the maintenance of the
communist ideology would be essential. Another issue came about when citizens
started to become too knowledgeable about actions done by the state. Stephen
Courtois, the director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique in Paris, stated that “When
the tyrants could no longer hide the truth-the firing squads, the concentration
camps, the man-made famine- they did their best to justify these atrocities by
glossing them over….As if by magic, the concentration-camp system was turned
into a ‘reeducation system,’ and the tyrants became ‘educators’ who transformed
the people of the old society into ‘new people’” (Courtois et al 19). In other
words, if an individual heard of actions they didn’t agree with, such as firing
squads, he could be sent to a concentration camp to be reeducated back to the
ways of communism. From these examples, of how communist governments can hold
back information through dealing with people, at least three ways can be seen.
One is to arrest them, another is to kill them, and the last is to send them to
a concentration camp to be reeducated.
The
outcomes of communism are quite negative and evil. One of the problems is
poverty. Individually, people in communist countries are generally quite poor,
just simply in the sense that they are not allowed to own property. This is the
most obvious form of poverty that comes with communism. But a nation as a whole
can become quite poor as well. Carlos Franqui, a former member of the communist
party in Cuba, said regarding communism’s effects on the Soviet Union, “[T]he
Soviet Union has reached parity with the United States in nuclear weapons and
the dominion over outer space, but it lacks bread, beef, milk, and wheat”
(175). In a more specific example in the Soviet Union, policies based on
Marxist ideas were passed under Khrushchev’s
leadership. Those policies failed, and led to the import of grain rather than
their own production (Zelenin
44, 66-7). In an overall statement regarding
communist poverty, Carlos Franqui stated, “[The] scientific society becomes
incapable of renewal, unable to produce and create. Thus, it threatens the
material base necessary to maintain the enormous cost of an expansive
empire…Communism has advanced outward, but is paralyzing from within” (175).
Also in the realm of poverty is the man-made famine. According to Werth, in
1932-3, peasants in the agricultural areas of the Soviet Union were required to
allow much of their harvest to go to the state, because of course, the food
wasn’t really the property of the farmer, but it was property of the community.
Peasants found this act by the state threatening and they attempted to hold
back some of their food for themselves. As time would pass, the state would
collect higher volumes (Courtois et al 160-1). Because of the incompliance of
the peasants, the state went and took all food and grain, even the grain meant
for sowing new crops. Because of this, many peasants tried to go to the cities,
but the state forced them to stay. This resulted in many deaths and there were
even reports of cannibalism (Courtois et al 164-5). This poverty created by the
communist regime in the Soviet Union shows how bad the problem can be, but it
also leads to the next point concerning outcomes of communism, that being
death.
Already seen, death has been quite common in the Soviet
Union. Overall, according to Courtois, the Soviet Union under communism has
killed an estimated twenty million people (Courtois et al 4). When taking into
account the communist regimes of the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, North Korea,
Cambodia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, Afghanistan, and the
international communist movement and communist parties not in power, the
estimated total deaths reaches around 100 million (Courtois et al 4). Many of
the deaths came in forms such as
[F]iring squads, hanging,
drowning, battering, and, in certain cases, gassing, poisoning, or ‘car
accidents...man-made famine, the withholding of food, or both; deportation,
through which death can occur in transit (either through physical exhaustion or
through confinement in an enclosed space), at one’s place of residence, or
through forced labor (exhaustion, illness, hunger, cold). (Courtois et al 4)
Communist regimes don’t regard life as valuable. As seen earlier, if
someone refuses to comply with the communist ideology, communist regimes don’t
mind removing them from existence.
In addition to noting
that poverty and death are outcomes of communism, some other general freedoms
were lost as well. One is individualism. In communist nations, as already
mentioned, people do not have the freedom to be self-reliant or independent,
but rather they have to conform to the communist ideology. That is what is
required in a totalitarian communist regime. Under that, people do not have the
freedom of religion, the freedom
of speech, and the freedom to pursue what knowledge, philosophy, and arts they
wish.
Now that it’s seen that
communism results in many problems, it is important to see why. In order to do
this, an examination of the philosophy will give a definite picture, but not only
an examination of Marxist philosophy, but also the Western philosophy it
contradicts. Marx and Engels took a jump when they wrote their communist
principles, and the biggest jump was the denial of truth, that being constant
truths. A clear example of this can be seen when Engels states, “Private
property has not always existed… [Towards] the end of the Middle Ages, there
arose a new mode of production…which had outgrown the old property relations,
[creating] a new property form, private property”. Engels states that every
change in the social order and also every revolution within property relations
brought about changes incompatible with old property relations. Basically, at
times private property was appropriate for that social order and at other times
not. The first strange idea shown through this statement is that private
property didn’t always exist, and that it apparently first appeared at the end
of the Middle Ages. This is untrue. The Polish-American academic and historian
Richard Pipes noted, “Contemporary anthropologists are virtually at one that
there is no society so crude as to be a stranger to private property. Hunters
and gatherers, the most primitive of all human groups, typically [held] in
common the land from which they [drew] their sustenance….they also
[acknowledged] as private property that which their members [acquired] through
personal effort” (Pipes 45). Also, and more specifically, in the book of
Exodus, a book kept by the Jews for thousands of years, it states, “If a man
gives his neighbor money or goods to keep for
him, and it is stolen from the man’s house, if the thief is caught, he
shall pay double. If the thief is not caught, then the owner of the house shall
appear before the judges, to
determine whether he laid his hand on his neighbor’s property” (New American Standard Bible, Ex. 22.7-8).
Exodus also states, “You shall not steal” (New
American Standard Bible, Ex. 20.15). Obviously the right of private
property has existed far longer than Engels says it has. This dilemma can
further be explained from the words of the Hungarian-American Philosopher and
scholar Tibor Machan when he talks about the importance of the individual. He
states,
The
Marxists…claim that in the 16th century the individual was invented, not
merely discovered or his existence politically affirmed, for the sake of
sustaining economic productivity…. It's a myth.... According to Marxists, there
was a period of human history where the belief in the importance of the
individual had an objective historical function, not because it's true, but
because it contributes to certain crucial elements of capitalism. (Machan)
Marxists believe in a right of property, they just believe in the right
of community property. If they believed in the importance of the individual,
they would need to believe in the individual’s right to property. Because of
this, by acting as though the importance of the individual was just invented as
a need of the time, they tried to show that the rights of the individual, including
the right of private property, are not important. Engels lied. The individual
right of property has existed for a very long time. But though it has existed
for a very long time, it is important to know why private is so important, and
why it is true.
From a philosophical standpoint, the
right of property is justified as a natural right. A natural right is a right
that can be observed from nature. John Locke was a famous philosopher who
examined natural rights and natural law. Natural law and natural rights have
been a significant influence on western culture and are the basis for much of
the freedoms and rights people enjoy. Locke said, “The state of Nature has a
law of Nature to govern it, which…teaches all mankind who will but consult it,
that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life,
health, liberty or possessions” (Skousen). Locke’s philosophy, along with the
philosophy of many other similar philosophers and thinkers of natural law,
relies on the belief that there is truth, and that it can be determined by observing
nature. Locke takes an angle looking at every human as independent and with
certain equal rights, which include life, liberty, and property. Locke,
speaking of the right of property, stated, “[Every] man has the ‘property’ in
his own ‘person.’ This, nobody has any right to but himself. The ‘labour’ of
his body and the ‘work’ of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever,
then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he
hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and
thereby makes it his property” (Skousen). Through this, Locke demonstrates
first that when someone takes something out of its natural state, it becomes
their property. Locke later shows this through an example of a man collecting
acorns out of the woods for his nourishment. Locke states, “if the first
gathering made them not [the man’s property], nothing else could (Skousen).”
The second point made is that property is part of the person. By this, Locke means
that when someone invests their own labor and work into something, they invest
part of themselves into it; therefore it is part of them. This means if a
person were to find and clear an acre of weed infested land, plow it, plant
wheat, and then gather it when it is grown, that wheat would naturally be
theirs because it is the fruit of their own work. If this right wasn’t
respected, that person could possibly starve to death, as happened in the
earlier example with the peasants in the Soviet Union. This shows the right of
property protects the right of life, which means that the right of property has
great importance.
Communism directly violates the true
principles of nature, justifying itself by acting like the principles were just
invented, but in fact, the principles were there all along. Because communists
refused to acknowledge the right of property, this inevitably led to the
violation of other natural rights, such as life and liberty. Because of this,
the true failure of communism is exposed. John Locke said, “The best way to
reach the truth is to examine things as they really are, and not to steer by
fancies what we have worked up for ourselves or have been taught by others to
imagine” (Locke 43). Engels and Marx may have imagined a system where people
would not be subjugated and enslaved, as they thought the system was at the
moment. But their system, when instituted, did not result in freedom, it
resulted in tyranny. It was just a fancy. In communism’s goal to liberate the
proletariat, many lost their liberties and freedoms that they naturally
deserved. Furthermore, many, an estimated 100 million people, lost their lives
for the pursuit of the communist goal.
In conclusion, communism is an
economic system built on falsehood. It attempts to remove a right that, though
communists deny it, is inherent in nature, and essential for the life and
liberty of the individual. Through the communist schemes, it has resulted in an
immense number of deaths and a significant lack of freedom. Its existence
provides an example of what happens when history is ignored, and communism also
provides an historical example of what to not repeat.
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