Communism

I

Introduction

Communism, term in political science denoting either a society where all property is held in common or a political movement whose final aim is the establishment of such a society.

II

Primitive Communism

Primitive communism designates a largely self-sufficient village economy where the basic tools of production, animals, land, etc., are the property of the community as a whole. The idea that individual private property is an impediment to a just society has led many writers to imagine a state of affairs without private ownership. Thus in the Republic by Plato the ruling class of guardian-philosophers live in a state of communism so that they may dedicate themselves to the pursuit of justice. Other classes are not so restricted. Communal ownership also characterizes the utopian societies imagined by Thomas More (1516, Utopia) and Tommaso Campanella (Civitas Solis, 1623; The City of the Sun). Similar depictions became common among socialist thinkers in the 18th and 19th centuries, for instance Charles Fourier and William Morris.

III

Marx and Engels

In its modern form the term communism became associated with the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They jointly drafted the Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (1848, Communist Manifesto) on behalf of a little-known German organization, the Communist League, hence the title of the Manifesto. Later this became one of the most popular texts in the rapidly developing socialist movement. Until the Russian Revolution (1917), no major working-class party or organization called itself communist. Nevertheless all socialist and social democratic parties envisaged that the society which would come into existence once capitalism had run its full course would be characterized by the abolition of private ownership of the main means of production, distribution, and exchange, in other words, a communist society.

Marx never offered a blueprint of how this would come about or how it would be organized. He and Engels were contemptuous of such endeavour: they saw their “scientific socialism” as superior to “utopian socialism”. The chief purpose of Marx's theoretical works was to unveil “the laws of motion of capitalist society”. However, it is possible to capture in his works an occasional glimpse of what communism would entail. In the first place a communist society would be one of extreme abundance of material goods. Human beings would find themselves emancipated from the harsh constraints of struggling for necessities. There would be no division of labour: “Society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner...without ever becoming a hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic” (Marx, Die Deutsche Ideologie, 1845-1846; The German Ideology). Where these conditions prevail, there are no social classes. Since, for Marx, the State regulates the division of labour and the appropriation of wealth in the interest of the ruling class, it follows that under communism there is no state. In later writings the terminology changes and the utopian fervour is less evident. Thus, in his Kritik des Gotha Programm (1875, Critique of the Gotha Programme), Marx distinguished a lower stage of communism from a higher and, presumably, final phase. In its formative stage, communism, as it emerges from capitalist society, has abolished private property but there is still a division of labour and people are paid according to the principle “to each according to the work performed”. In the higher phase—which is similar to the earlier vision expressed in Die Deutsche Ideologie—the organizing principle is “to each according to their needs”. Thereafter Marx wrote little about communism. However in the third and unfinished volume of Das Kapital, not published in his lifetime, he returned to the idea of “associated producers” bringing nature under their collective control as a stage towards “the true realm of freedom” where production and work are ends in themselves (Chapter 48).

IV

Socialists and Communism

The socialist parties which adopted Marx's ideas held communism to be the final goal but assumed that capitalism would have to expand to its utmost limits before collapsing into a final crisis from which a post-capitalist society would emerge. In the 19th century the anarchists, the socialists' main rivals among working-class activists (especially in Southern Europe), held the view that communism and the abolition of the state could be achieved spontaneously and immediately through an uprising of the oppressed masses (Mikhail Bakunin) or through the gradual development of mutual aid societies (Pytor Kropotkin). By the end of the 19th century anarchism had ceased to be of much significance in the labour movement except in Spain, where it survived until the end of the Spanish Civil War, and in some parts of Latin America. Thus until 1917 socialists were the main champions of a communist society, though this was a long-term vision, kept in the background, while workers were recruited to the cause mainly because socialist activists concentrated their efforts on practical “bread and butter” issues: on building up trade unions and pursuing clearly defined political goals such as universal suffrage, welfare reforms, and the eight-hour day.