Communism (unsympathetic)

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The following article attempts to describe communism from a non-sympathetic viewpoint. For an alternate view, see Communism (sympathetic). You may edit and expand on either. Please do not alter an article simply because you disagree with it - improve the opposing article instead.

Communism is a word springing from the idea, common.[1] If the word is not capitalized -- the Incas practiced communism[2] -- the word means economic actions toward communal living. Property is owned by everyone in the community, the means of production isn't individually owned but is communally owned. Such practices include shared ownership of land, cooperative living and working arrangements, and equitable sharing of produced goods.

Whereas in more modern times and as practiced in the U.S.S.R., the word is capitalized -- it was a Communist country. The difference between the ideas communism and Communism, center on government itself. The capitalized Communism is governed by a central government that makes the decisions about what should be produced, where and how it should be produced, and the distribution of products. The lower case communism does not include a central government making decrees, instead it might democratically distribute resources and products. In the one, the government tends to look out for its own survival first, whereas in the second, the community looks out for its own survival.

Communism (capital C) was transmogrified into Marxism-Leninism by Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, and put into practice by Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro and other leaders, Communism is a totalitarian political movement, a social mania, which dominated much of the history of the 20th century. It is estimated by critics of Marxism-Leninism that deaths during the 20th century due to Communist revolutions, induced famines, and failed social and economic experimentation number about 100 million in addition to tens of millions of man-years spent in the concentration camps of the Gulag.

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Communist theory

In theory, communism is 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. As a political movement, Communism, working through the agency of a highly centralized and disciplined political party, the "vanguard of the proletariat", promised to overthrow capitalism through a workers' revolution and redistribute the wealth into the hands of the proletariat, or working class. Their program was based on pseudoscientific economic doctrines based on an eccentric philosophical base, dialectical materialism, derived from but "turning on its head" the dialectics of Hegel.

In practical application, Communism has not worked out well except where the communist country had territory to conquer and expand into, as the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.) did. While in geographically small countries, like Cuba, the ideology has lasted for some while. Communism proposes that if the individual will work for the country, both the individual and the country will succeed. This may be, but in large groups, this is not how people think. People think of their own well being first, then the well being of their family and friends, and then the well being of their country (when their country is large). This is a failure point of communism which doesn't recognize how people think in the daily, work-a-day world. This manifested in the USSR as a large portion of the population, policing the rest of the population. Stated briefly, perhaps 25% of the population was policing the remaininng 75%. The 75% which were productive citizens were supporting their own production and lives, and additionally, supporting those who policed them. These factors led to the USSR failing by becoming bankrupt.

Communist Countries and Governments

Communism is sometimes also used to mean, particularly in capitalist nations, a totalitarian Marxist-Leninist dictatorship run by the Communist Party where central planning is employed as a means of production and distribution. Because totalitarian regimes of this nature have often committed human rights abuses of varying degrees, critics regard this idea of Communism as a dangerous ideology, similar to fascism or nazism.

The following is a list of countries that currently have self-proclaimed socialist republics or Communist states:

The following is a list of countries that have had self-proclaimed socialist republics, or Communist states, but no longer exist or are no longer under such regimes:

Quite a few other countries not listed above (see: Soviet republics) have been more or less constrained to become socialist republics due to international circumstances, while some of the countries listed above probably wouldn't have been so eager to become socialist, had the international circumstances been different.

The crimes of Communism

According to Stéphane Courtois, writing in the introduction to The Black Book of Communism, using a rather liberal definition of crime, approximately 100 million deaths have resulted from the crimes of Communism over its 85 year history. He includes 20 million deaths in the Soviet Union including executions of hostages and prisoners without trial and killing of hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants during the period of 1918 to 1922; the famine of 1922, five million deaths; the extermination and deportation of the Don Cossacks, 1920; killing of 100s of thousands in concentration camps, 1918 to 1930; liquidation of 690,00 during the Great Purge; deportation of 2 million kulaks 1930-1932; deaths of 4 million Ukrainians and 2 million others during the induced famine of 1932-1933; deportation of hundreds of thousands of Poles, Ukrainians, Balts, Moldovans and Bessarabians 1939-1941 and 1944-1945; deportation of the Volga Germans, 1941; deportation of the Crimean Tatars, 1943; deportation of the Chechens, 1944; and deportation of the Ingush, 1944. He also includes 65 million deaths in the People's Republic of China, many in the famine associated with the Great Leap Forward; 1 million in Vietnam; 2 million in Cambodia, one fourth of the population; 1 million in Eastern Europe; 150,000 in Latin America; 1.7 million in Africa; 1.5 million in Afganistan; and 10,000 by Communist parties not in power and the international Communist movement.

Scientific Socialism

Marx, writing in the nineteenth century, viewed his economic and political work as science, a view which continues to be expressed to the present by Marxist-Leninists. Given the general failure of Marxist-Leninist practioners to adequately gather data and analyze it in good faith scientific socialism is generally regarded as a pseudoscience. The possibility exists for genuine scientific study of Marxism, its failures and successes; but except in the dying years of the Soviet Union, for example, in the work of Tatyana Zaslavskaya, is seldom seen.

References

  1. ^ Dictionary.reference.com - communism
  2. ^ Reference.com - communism
  3. ^ Geography & the USSR

See also

References

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