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Term Paper on Communism
Term Paper Contents:
- Term Paper on the Introduction to Communism
- Term Paper on the Origins of Communism
- Term Paper on the History of Communism
- Term Paper on the Growth of Modern Communism Early Years
- Term Paper on the Various Forms of Communism
- Term Paper on the Criticisms of Communism
Term Paper # 1. Introduction to Communism:
Communism is fundamentally, a system of social organization in which property (especially real property and the means of production) is held in common. Thus, the ejido system of the indigenous people of Mexico and the property and work system of the Inca were both communist, although the former was a matter of more or less independent communities cultivating their own lands in common and the latter a type of community organization within a highly organized empire.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
In modern usage, the term communism is applied to the movement that aims to overthrow the capitalist order by revolutionary means and to establish a classless society in which all goods will be socially owned.
The theories of the movement come from Karl Marx, as modified by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the successful communist revolution in Russia. Communism, in this sense, is to be distinguished from socialism, which (as the term is commonly understood) seeks similar ends but by evolution rather than revolution.
Term Paper # 2. Origins of Communism:
i. Early Forms and Theories:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Communism as a theory of government and social reform may be said, in a limited sense, to have begun with the ancient Greek idea of the Golden Age, a concept of a world of communal bliss and harmony without the institution of private property. Plato, in his Republic, outlined a society with communal holding of property; his concept of a hierarchical social system including slavery has by some been called ‘aristocratic communism.’
The Neoplatonists revived the idea of common property, which was also strong in some religious groups such as the Jewish Essenes and certain early Christian communities. These opponents of private property held that property holding was evil and irreligious and that god had created the world for the use of all humanity.
The first of these ideas was particularly strong among Manichaean and gnostic heretics, such as the cathari, but these concepts were also found in some orthodox Christian groups (e.g., the Franciscans).
The manorial system of the middle ages included common cultivation of the fields and communal use of the village commons, which might be vigorously defended against the lord. It was partly to uphold these common rights, threatened by early agrarian capitalism, that the participants in the Peasants’ Revolt (1381) in England and the insurgents of the Peasants’ War in 16th century Germany advocated common ownership of land and of the means of production.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
In the 16th and 17th century such intellectual works as Sir Thomas More’s Utopia proposed forms of communal property ownership in reaction to what the authors felt was the selfishness and depredation of growing economic individualism. In addition, some religious groups of the early modern period advocated forms of communism, just as had certain of the early Christians.
The Anabaptists under Thomas Munzer were the real upholders of communism in the Peasants’ War, and they were savagely punished for their beliefs. This same mixture of religious enthusiasm and economic reform was shown in 17th- century England by the tiny sect of the Diggers, who actually sought to put their theories into practice on common land.
ii. First Responses to Capitalism:
Capitalism, reinforced by the Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century, brought about the conditions that gave rise to modern communism, wages, hours, and factory conditions for the new industrial class were appalling, and protest grew. Although the French revolution ended without satisfying radical demands for economic egalitarianism, the voice of Francis Babeuf was strongly raised against economic inequality and the power of private property.
For his class consciousness and his will to revolution he has been considered the first modern communist. Although he was guillotined, his movement (Babouvism) lived on, and the organization of his secret revolutionary society on the ‘cell’ system was to be developed later as a means of militant revolution.
In the early 19th century, ardent opponents of industrial society created a wide variety of protest theories. Already what is generally known as Utopian communism had been well launched by the comte de Saint Simon.
In this era a number of advocates gathered followers, founded small cults, and attempted to launch communistic settlements, particularly in the United States. Most notable among such men were Robert Owen, Etienne Cabet and Charles Fourier. Pierre Joseph Proudhon although he did not adopt the principle of common ownership, exercised great influence by his attacks on the evils of private property.
A host of critics and idealistic revolutionists arose in Germany, but more important was the survival or revival of Babouvism in secret French and Italian revolutionary societies, intent on overthrowing the established governments and on setting up a new, property less society. It was among them that the terms communism and socialism were first used.
They were used vaguely and more or less interchangeably, although there was a tendency to use the term socialist to denote those who merely stressed a strong state as the owner of all means of production, and the term communist for those who stressed the abolition of all private property (except immediate personal goods).
Among the chief leaders of such revolutionary groups were the Frenchmen Louis Blanc and (far more radical) Louis Auguste Blanqui, both of whom played important roles in the February Revolution of 1848.
iii. The Communist Manifesto:
The year 1848 was also marked by the appearance of The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, the primary exposition of the socioeconomic doctrine that came to be known as Marxism. It postulated the inevitability of a communist society, which would result when economic forces (the determinants of history) caused the class war; in this struggle the exploited industrial proletariat would overthrow the capitalists and establish the new classless order of social ownership.
Marxian theories and programs soon came to dominate left-wing thought. Although the German group (founded in 1847) for which the communist, manifesto was written was called the communist league, the, Marxist movement went forward under the name of socialism; its 19th century history is treated in the article under that heading and under socialist parties, in European history.
Term Paper # 3. History of Communism:
In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movements of 19th century Europe and the critics of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution.
Foremost among these critics were the German philosopher Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), and their ground-breaking ‘Communist Manifesto’ of 1848, the defining document of the movement, offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term.
The usage of the terms ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ shifted after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the avowedly Marxist Bolshevik Party in Russia changed their name to the communist Party and installed a single party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies under Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924).
Lenin created the Third International (or Communist International or Comintern) in 1919 and set the 21 conditions (including democratic centralism) for any European socialist parties willing to join. In the wake of the Russian Civil War, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union) was created in 1922.
Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) lasted until 1928, when Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) became party leader under the banner of ‘socialism in one country’ and proceeded down the road of isolationism and Totalitarianism with the first of many Five Year Plans.
Marxist critics of the soviet union, most notably Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), referred to the Soviet system as a ‘degenerated’ or ‘deformed’ workers’ state, arguing that it fell far short of Marx’s communist ideal, and claiming that the working class was politically dispossessed.
After World War II, the Warsaw Pact saw Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania join the Soviet Union in an economic and military alliance under strict soviet control.
However, relations were never easy, and the Soviet Union was forced into military interventions to quell popular uprisings in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968), and Albania withdrew from the Pact (although not from Communism) in 1968 due to ideological differences.
In 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Mao Zedong (1893-1976) established the People’s Republic of China, which would later follow its own ideological path of communist development (Maoism), communist states such as soviet union and China succeeded in becoming industrial and technological powers, challenging the capitalist powers in the arms race, the space race and military conflicts, although both suffered significant setbacks and attracted much criticism.
Although never formally unified as a single political entity, by the 1970s almost one-third of the world’s population lived in communist states, including the People’s Republic of China, the soviet union and the Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe, as well Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, and Mozambique.
However, the Warsaw Pact countries had all abandoned communist rule by 1990, and in 1991 the Soviet Union itself dissolved, leaving China, Cuba and some isolated states in Asia and Africa as the remaining bastions of communism, in most cases substantially watered down and adapted from its initial ideology.
Term Paper # 4. Growth of Modern Communism Early Years:
The modern form of Communism (written with a capital C) began to develop with the split (1903) within the Russian social democratic labor party into factions of Bolshvism and Menshevism. The more radical wing, the Bolsheviks, was led by Lenin and advocated immediate and violent revolution to bring about the downfall of capitalism and the establishment of an international socialist state.
The triumph of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of 1917 gave them the leadership in socialist action. They constituted the communist party in 1918.
Meanwhile World War I had shaken the socialist movement as a whole by splitting those who cooperated with the governments in waging the war from those who maintained a stand for revolution against all capitalist governments. Chief among the stalwart revolutionists were the communist party in Russia and the Spartacus party (later the communist party) in Germany.
The establishment of a working socialist state in Russia tended to give that country leadership, and Leninism grew stronger, communist revolts immediately after the war failed in Germany, and the briefly successful communist state under Bela Kun in Hungary was also repressed with great bloodshed.
i. Under the Comintern:
The revolutionary socialists now broke completely with the moderate majority of the movement, withdrew from the Second International, and formed (1919) the Third International or Comintern, in 1919. Henceforth, the term communism was applied to the ideology of the parties founded under the aegis of the Comintern.
Their program called for the uniting of all the workers of the world for the coming world revolution, which would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat and state socialism. Ultimately there would develop a harmonious classless society, and the state would wither away.
The Communist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base; they were made up only of the elite, those approved by the higher members of the party as being reliable, active, and subject completely too party rule. Communist parties were formed in countries throughout the world and were particularly active in trying to win control of labor unions and in fomenting labor unrest.
Despite the existence of the Comintern, however, the communist party in the USSR adopted, under Joseph Stalin, the theory of ‘socialism in one country,’ which asserted the possibility of building a true communist system in one country alone.
This departure from Marxist internationalism was challenged by Leon Trotsky, whose theory of ‘permanent revolution’ stressed the necessity of world revolution. After Trotsky was expelled (1929) from the Soviet Union, he founded a Fourth, or Trotskyist, International to rival the Comintern.
Stalin’s program of building the soviet union as the model and base of communism in the world had the effect of tying communist and soviet policy even more closely together, an effect intensified by the produced by the party purges of the 1930s. It became clearly evident in that decade that in practice communism, contrary to the hopes of theorists and intellectuals, had created in the USSR a giant totalitarian state that dominated every aspect of life and denied the ideal of individual liberty.
Except for the Mongolian People’s Republic, no other communist state was created before World War II. The Chinese communist party was founded in 1921 and began a long struggle for power with the Kuomintang. However, it received little aid from the USSR, and it was not to achieve its goal until 1949.
In the late 1920s and early 30s the communist parties followed a policy of total hostility to the socialists, and in Germany this was one factor that facilitated the rise of the Nazis. In 1935, however, the Comintern dictated a change in policy, and the communists began to work with other leftist and liberal parties for liberal legislation and government, as in the popular front government in France.
ii. Cold War Years:
In World War II the USSR became an ally of the western capitalist nations after Germany attacked it in 1941. As part of its cooperation with the allies, the USSR brought about (1943) the dissolution of the Comintern. Hopes for continued cooperation, intrinsic in the formation of the United Nations, were dashed, however, by a widening rift between the soviet bloc and the Western democracies, especially the United States, after the war.
Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new nations into the zone of Soviet influence and strength in Eastern Europe. Governments strictly modeled on the Soviet Communist plan were installed in the ‘satellite’ states—Albania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and East Germany.
A communist government was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito’s independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced the Comintern, and Titoism was labeled deviationist.
By 1950 the Chinese communists held all of China except Taiwan, thus controlling the most populous nation in the world. A communist administration was also installed in North Korea, and fighting between the people’s Republic of Korea (communist) and the southern Republic of Korea exploded in the Korean War (1950-53), fought between communist and United Nations troops.
Other areas where, rising communist strength provoked dissension and in some cases actual fighting includes Malaya, Laos, many nations of the Middle East and Africa, and, especially, Vietnam, where the United States intervened to aid the South Vietnamese regime against communist guerrillas and North Vietnam. In many of these poor countries, communists attempted, with varying degrees of success, to unite with nationalist and socialist forces against Western imperialism.
After the death of Stalin in 1953 some relaxation of soviet communist strictures seemed to occur, and at the 20th party congress (1956) Premier Nikita Khruschchev denounced the methods of Stalin and called for a return to the principles of Lenin, thus presaging some change in communist methods, although none in fundamental ideology.
A resurgence of nationalist feeling within the Soviet bloc—as was vividly demonstrated by the bloodily suppressed Hungarian uprising of 1956— ultimately had to be acknowledged by the USSR. However, while the USSR began to allow some limited freedom of action to the countries of Eastern Europe, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 demonstrated its determination to prevent serious challenges to its domination.
Ideological differences between China and the USSR became increasingly apparent in the 1960s and 70s, with China portraying itself as a leader of the underdeveloped world against the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, both the USSR and China sought better relations with the United States in the 1970s.
Term Paper # 5. Various Forms of Communism:
Communism is an economic and social theory that advocates the abolition of private ownership of land or capital. Karl Marx is the name associated with communism, but he was not the first person to articulate a theory of communism, and Marx himself refers to communist practices in primitive times.
There have been many different types of communism proposed by intellectuals and politicians throughout history:
i. Leninism:
It builds upon and elaborates the ideas of Marxism, and served as the philosophical basis for the ideology of soviet communism after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the establishment of the Soviet Union.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924) argued in his pamphlet ‘What is to be Done?’ of 1902 that the proletariat can only achieve a successful revolutionary consciousness through the efforts of a ‘vanguard party’ composed of full-time professional revolutionaries and through a form of disciplined organization known as ‘democratic centralism’ (whereby decisions are made with internal democracy but then all party members must externally support and actively promote that decision).
It holds that capitalism can only be overthrown by revolutionary means, and any attempts to reform capitalism from within are doomed to fail.
The goal of a Leninist party is to orchestrate the overthrow of the existing government by force and seize power on behalf of the proletariat, and then implement a- dictatorship of the proletariat, a kind of direct democracy in which workers hold political power through local councils known as soviets.
ii. Marxism-Leninism:
It is the communist ideological stream that emerged as the mainstream tendency amongst communist parties in the 1920’s as it was adopted as the ideological foundation of the communist International during the era of Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), with whom it is mainly associated. The term ‘Marxism-Leninism’ is most often used by those who believe that Lenin’s legacy was successfully carried forward by Stalin; although it is debatable to what extent it actually follows the principles of either Marx or Lenin.
iii. Anarcho-Communism:
Feels that the proletariat must liberate itself from capitalist oppression and smash the state. Further, anarcho-communists believe that a workers state should not be established, as anarchists define the state only as rule by a minority. Hence, according to anarchists, it would be impossible for a majority class to control a state.
Anarcho-communists also feel that the abolition of money is very important and should take place as soon as possible. They do not believe in a separate ‘transition stage’ but instead see the revolution as a long process that will result in communism.
iv. Stalinism:
Claims to follow Marx and Lenin but virtually ignores everything written by them that emphasizes democracy and class rule. Follows the theory of Socialism in One Country, which claims that socialism can exist in one nation, before it becomes international.
Stalinists believe in an extremely long transition period of ‘socialism’ where the ‘workers state’, which is controlled by bureaucrats acting in the name of the workers, suppresses all ‘counterrevolution’ and helps the nation’s economy. Stalinism also advocates the suppression of supposedly ‘counter revolutionary’ speech and ideas. Essentially, Stalinism supports totalitarian rule by a vanguard.
v. Luxemburgism:
It is a specific revolutionary theory within Communism, based on the writings of Rosa Luxemburg (1870-1919). Her politics diverged from those of Lenin and Trotsky mainly in her disagreement with their concept of ‘democratic centralism’, which she saw as insufficiently democratic.
Luxemburgism resembles Anarchism in its avoidance of an authoritarian society by relying on the people themselves as opposed to their leaders. However, it also sees the importance of a revolutionary party and the centrality of the working class in the revolutionary struggle.
It resembles Trotskyism in its opposition to the Totalitarianism of Stalin and to the reformist politics of modern social democracy, but differs in arguing that Lenin and Trotsky also made undemocratic errors.
vi. Left Communism:
It is a range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which claims to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism and its successors. Left communists supported the Russian Revolution, but did not accept the subsequent methods of the Bolsheviks.
The Russian, Dutch-German and the Italian traditions of left communism all share an opposition to nationalism, all kinds of national liberation movements, frontism (uniting with anyone against a common enemy) and parliamentary systems.
vii. Primitive Communism:
Marx proposed the theory that the earliest stage of economic production was actually an early form of communism. This was an ancient hunter-gatherer society in which property was owned by the community. Because there were no land-owning or capital-owning classes, labor owned the entire product of labor.
viii. Council Communism:
It is a radical left movement, originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s, and continuing today as a theoretical and activist position within both left-wing Marxism and Libertarian Socialism.
It sees workers’ councils, arising in factories and municipalities, as the natural form of working class organization and governmental power. It opposes the idea of a ‘revolutionary party’ on the grounds that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship.
ix. Euro Communism:
It was a trend in the 1970’s and 1980’s within various Western European communist parties to develop a theory and practice of social transformation that was more relevant in a Western European democracy and less aligned to the party line of the communist party of the Soviet Union.
x. Religious Communism:
It is a form of communism centred on religious principles, whether they may be Christian, Taoist, Jain, Hindu or Buddhist.
It usually refers to a number of egalitarian and Utopian religious societies practicing the voluntary dissolution of private property, so that society’s benefits are distributed according to a person’s needs, and every person performs labour according to their abilities.
Christian communism, for example, takes the view that the teachings of Jesus Christ compel Christians to support communism as the ideal social system.
xi. Trotskyism:
Trotskyists follow the contributions of Trotsky and Lenin in addition to Marxism. Leon Trotsky represented the faction of the communist party of the Soviet Union that was defeated by Joseph Stalin. In contrast to Stalin’s policy of socialism in One Country, Trotsky emphasized the international scope of communism; the practice must eventually spread throughout the whole world.
Trotskyists are more willing than Left communists or Anarcho-Communists to participate in capitalist society and subvert it from within rather than through a violent civil war. For example, they will participate in workers’ unions and vote in bourgeois elections.
xii. Maoism (or ‘Mao Zedong Thought’):
It is a variant of Communism derived from the teachings of the Chinese leader Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-tung) (1893-1976), and practiced in the People’s Republic of China after the Chinese Revolution of 1949.
Maoism developed from the Marxism-Leninism of Stalin, but introduced new ideas such as Social- Imperialism (Mao accused the soviet union of dominating and exploiting the smaller countries in its sphere to the point of organising their economies around Soviet, not domestic, needs), the Mass Line (a method of leadership that seeks to learn from the masses and immerse the political leadership in the concerns and conditions of the masses-‘from the masses, to the masses’), people’s war and new democracy.
The ‘Great Leap Forward’ of 1958, an attempt to industrialize and improve China’s economy proved to be disastrous and millions died from the resulting famine. The Cultural Revolution, begun in 1966 under the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ in an attempt to rid the country of any remaining ‘liberal bourgeois’ elements, resulted in further social, political and economic chaos, eventually bringing the entire country to the brink of civil war.
Since Mao’s death in 1976, his original ideology has been radically altered, marginalized and reformed in China and has become known as ‘socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ (which is actually closer to Keynesian Capitalism than Communism). Maoist parties exist in Peru, Nepal, India and the Philippines.
xiii. Stalinism:
It is a more pejorative term for Joseph Stalin’s vision of Communism (which Stalin himself described as Marxism-Leninism). Proponents of the term argue that it includes an extensive use of propaganda to establish a personality cult around an absolute dictator, as well as extensive use of a secret police to maintain social submission and silence political dissent, all of which are trappings of Totalitariansim.
Term Paper # 6. Criticisms of Communism:
Criticisms of communism can be divided in two broad categories- those concerned with communist or Marxist principles and theory, and those concerned with the practical aspects of 20th Century communist states.
i. The Promise of a Glorious, yet Imaginary, Future:
Some have argued that, like Fascism, Nationalism and many religions, communism offers a vision of an unachievable perfect future, and keeps its subjects in thrall to it by devaluing the past and the present. It claims to represent a universal truth which explains everything and can cure every ill and any apparent deviations or under-performance are explained away by casuistry and emotional appeals.
ii. An Incomplete Ideology:
Marx and Engels never dedicated much work to show how exactly a communist economy would function in practice, leaving Socialism a ‘negative ideology’ (having removed the market price system, but with nothing to take its place).
iii. The Assumption that Human Nature is Completely Determined by the Environment:
Some Communists, including Trotsky, believed that all the social, political and intellectual life processes in general are completely determined by the environment.