Evaluating Communism
Taking a Critical Look at Marx's Twisted Ideology
David Hodges
November 2005
Every year, the Spartacus League, a group of rebellious socialists, comes to UNC to pass out literature in the Pit. This year, walking by their table of Leninist propaganda, I began to wonder if the group was well received on campus. Everyone knows that UNC is a liberal place, but could communism really be supported today, after history has proved it to be a misguided ideology leading only to totalitarianism and death? I aimed to discover the answer.
So, I sat down to write an article on communism. The first goal of the article would be to highlight what communism is, giving it a fair characterization as a philosophy of economics, and then to point out all the obvious, inherent flaws. And the second would be to gauge how our campus feels about communism.
I found the former to be pretty easy, while the latter was more difficult.
There were no professors willing to comment favorably on behalf of communism. It was seen as being too grounded in idealism, and with too much emphasis on this crazy notion of establishing Utopia.
I was not that surprised by tight-lipped professors. After all, I was representing a conservative magazine and that alone should have clued any of them in to the fact that I was not there to write an appraisal of communist thought. What was more surprising than the lack of overt support for communism, however, was the lack of support I found for capitalism. While some professors admitted that there were flaws in communist thought, they did not praise capitalism. In fact, Socialism had several supporters.
What was perhaps most shocking was student reaction to questions about communism. There were a number of students who did not actually know what communism was, refused to comment, or worst of all, when asked if I could quote something they said, fervently declined—either too embarrassed or too unsure of their own beliefs. Of those who did know something about communism, there were a few coherent Che Guevara supporters and some thoughtful criticisms of Mao and Stalin. Many of the Che Guevara supporters are happy to sport t-shirts and pin up posters with Che’s image on them, brushing aside the killings he carried out and the hellish Cuba he helped to produce. Similarly, it was interesting to talk with students who saw Stalinism as a perversion of communist ideology rather than the inevitable consequence of it.
So, for those students who are confused about communism, I will define it, in all its confusion and evil.
First off, communism presupposes a couple of things about humanity and capitalism:
1) Humanity’s consciousness arises from actions—more specifically, actions in the form of humanity’s ability to produce its own means of subsistence through farming and manufacturing.
2) This consciousness, because it arises simply from such actions, is malleable. Private property and even competition itself are constructs of the human mind able to be deconstructed and replaced with new models we have designed.
3) Material abundance is necessary. Basically, there has to be enough to go around for everyone.
Based on these premises, communism paints a distorted picture of capitalism. According to communist thought, capitalism alienates man from his labor because workers no longer feel a part of what they are doing. Workers make so little money that they can not even afford the goods they produce. If you assume, as Marx does, that consciousness arises from producing your own means of subsistence and that this consciousness separates man from animal, then this alienation from what you produce is also the alienation from your own humanness. Perhaps worst of all, if labor is alienated, it has to belong to someone. That “someone” is the owners of the means of production, basically, a ruling class of other men.
In theory, the productive forces of machinery and money develop to a point where they cause nothing but mischief, and are actually no longer productive forces, but rather, destructive ones. Related to this is a class that bears all of society’s burdens without sharing in any of its advantages. This class constitutes the majority, and from it arises a new consciousness that recognizes the fundamental necessity of revolution. This, of course, is the communist consciousness.
The Communist Manifesto outlines how this revolution calls for a fairly specific set of conditions in most advanced countries:
1) Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes (this, of course, would result in a real estate crash of unspeakable proportions).
2) A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3) Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4) Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5) Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6) Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7) Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8) Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9) The combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10) Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.
Communism makes the mistaken assumption that mankind is inherently good. Capitalism assumes on the other hand that mankind is self-interested. Furthermore, capitalism corrals this “greed” and makes it work for the common good in the form of competition.
I understand that communism is an economic system and democracy a governing system. Thus, the two are not fundamentally opposed by mere mechanics. However, according to Marx, “despotic inroads” are allowable to bring about communist revolution. What, may I ask, obligates a despot to abrogate power back to the people once a communism has been established? The answer—nothing.
The two are quite fundamentally opposed by ideology. Communism involves a consolidation of power into the hands of a centralized State. That kind of centralization lends itself to abuse and corruption. In fact, decentralization is a key tenant of democracy. It is why our branches are specialized, thrice split, and vertically integrated into a hierarchy of local, state and national government. Communism can not account for such things, and the authoritarianism that typically results from its implementation (i.e. the USSR and China) demonstrates its utter failure in terms of practicality.
It is certainly a nice thought to think that if there is enough for everyone to go around that we could all just share and live “communally.” But such a system lacks the ability to place a value on anything—labor, goods, land. Such a valueless system results in chaos. And in their quest for Utopia, communists will always try to turn this chaos into order by resorting to totalitarianism.
Americans and UNC students must remember this as they hear people calling for many of the changes listed in The Communist Manifesto. For throughout history, ideologues who have tried to create Utopia, have found themselves amidst hell instead.