CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, PATNA

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Project
on
communism

Submitted To: DR. S.P. SINGH

Submitted By: Aeiswarya Jha
Roll No. 307, Semester II, 1st Year.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The present project on the topic ―communism‖ has been able to get its final shape with the
support and help of people from various quarters. My sincere thanks go to all the members
without whom the study could not have come to its present state. I am proud to acknowledge
gratitude to the individuals during my study and without whom the study may not be
completed. I have taken this opportunity to thank those who genuinely helped me In the
completion of this project many people helped us directly and indirectly. First of all we
would like to thank my university i.e. CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY,
PATNA, who gave us the idea and encouragement to venture into this project.

I am grateful to our faculty of POLITICAL SCIENCE who gave us the opportunity to make
a project on ―communism”.

Any sort of addition, alteration and criticism regarding our work is most welcome.

I have made every effort to acknowledge credits, but I apologies in advance for any omission
that may have inadvertently taken place.
Last but not least I would like to thank Almighty whose blessing helped me to complete the
project.
 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

AIMS & OBJECTIVES:

The aim of the project is to present a detailed study Of “COMMUNISM” through decisions
and suggestions and different writings, articles & reports.

SOURCES OF DATA:

The following secondary sources of data have been used in the project-

1. Articles

2. Books

3. Websites

METHOD OF WRITING:

The method of writing followed in the course of this research paper is primarily analytical.

MODE OF CITATION:

The researcher has followed a uniform mode of citation throughout the course of this research
paper.
 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

AIMS & OBJECTIVES:

The aim of the project is to present a detailed study Of KINDS OF DAMAGES

through decisions and suggestions and different writings, articles & reports.

SOURCES OF DATA:

The following secondary sources of data have been used in the project-

1. Articles

2. Books

3. Websites

METHOD OF WRITING:

The method of writing followed in the course of this research paper is primarily
analytical.

MODE OF CITATION:

The researcher has followed a uniform mode of citation throughout the course
of this research paper.
 INDEX

1. INTRODUCTION

2. THE THEORY OF COMMUNISM

 MARXISM

 MARXISM-LENINISM

 STALINISM

3. THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF COMMUNISM

4. THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM OF COMMUNISM

5. EVOLUTION OF COMMUNISM

 EARLY COMUNISM

 GROWTH OF MODERN COMMUNISM

 COLD WAR YEARS

 AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF SOVIET UNION

6. CRITICISM

7. CONCLUSION
 INTRODUCTION

Communism is a social structure in which classes are abolished and property is commonly
controlled, as well as a political philosophy and social movement that advocates and aims to
create such a society.1

Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in society, which would be
achieved through a proletarian revolution and only possible after a transitional stage develops
the productive forces, leading to a superabundance of goods and services.2

"Pure communism" in the Marxian sense refers to a classless, stateless and oppression-free
society where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are
made democratically, allowing every member of society to participate in the decision-making
process in both the political and economic spheres of life. In modern usage, communism is
often used to refer to the policies of the various communist states, which were authoritarian
governments that had economies and ownership of all the means of production. Most
communist governments based their ideology on Marxism-Leninism.

As a political ideology, communism is usually considered to be a branch of socialism, a

broad group of economic and political philosophies that draw on various political and
intellectual movements with origins in the work of theorists of the Industrial Revolution and
the French Revolution. Communism attempts to offer an alternative to the problems with
the capitalist market economy and the legacy of imperialism and nationalism.

Marx states that the only way to solve these problems is for the working class (proletariat),
who according to Marx are the main producers of wealth in society and are exploited by the
Capitalist-class (bourgeoisie), to replace the bourgeoisie as the ruling class in order to
establish a free society, without class or racial divisions. The dominant forms of communism,
such as Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism and Trotskyism are based on Marxism, as well as other
forms of communism (such asLuxemburgism and Council communism), but non-Marxist
versions of communism (such as Christian communism and Anarchist communism) also
exist.

1
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/communism.aspx
2
Schaff, Kory (2001). Philosophy and the problems of work: a reader. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.
pp. 224. ISBN 0-7425-0795-5
In the schema of historical materialism, communism is the idea of a free society with no
division or alienation, where mankind is free from oppression and scarcity. A communist
society would have no governments, countries, or class divisions. In Marxist theory,
the dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate system between capitalism and
communism, when the government is in the process of changing the means of ownership
from privatism, to collective ownership. In political science, the term "communism" is
sometimes used to refer to communist states, a form of government in which the
state operates under a one-party system and declares allegiance to Marxism-Leninism or a
derivative thereof.
 THE THEORY OF COMMUNISM

 MARXISM

Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to capitalism and the systems which
they perceived to be responsible for the exploitation of workers. But whereas earlier socialists
often favoured longer-term social reform, Marx and Engels believed that popular revolution
was all but inevitable, and the only path to socialism and communism.

According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main characteristic of human life
in class society is alienation; and communism is desirable because it entails the full
realization of human freedom.3 Marx here follows Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in
conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of restraints but as action with
content. According to Marx, Communism's outlook on freedom was based on an agent,
obstacle, and goal. The agent is the common/working people; the obstacles are class
divisions, economic inequalities, unequal life-chances, and false consciousness; and the goal
is the fulfillment of human needs including satisfying work, and fair share of the product.

They believed that communism allowed people to do what they want, but also put humans in
such conditions and such relations with one another that they would not wish to exploit, or
have any need to. Whereas for Hegel the unfolding of this ethical life in history is mainly
driven by the realm of ideas, for Marx, communism emerged from material forces,
particularly the development of the means of production.4

Marxism holds that a process of class conflict and revolutionary struggle will result in victory
for the proletariat and the establishment of a communist society in which private ownership is
abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence belong to the community.
Marx himself wrote little about life under communism, giving only the most general
indication as to what constituted a communist society. It is clear that it entails abundance in
which there is little limit to the projects that humans may undertake. In the popular slogan
that was adopted by the communist movement, communism was a world in which each gave

3
Stephen Whitefield. "Communism." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair
McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003
4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism#cite_ref-mclean_6-1
according to their abilities, and received according to their needs. The German
Ideology (1845) was one of Marx's few writings to elaborate on the communist future:

"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can
become accomplished in any branch he wishes, 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, criticise after dinner, just as I have a
mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."5

Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a theory of how society was moving in a law-
governed way toward communism, and, with some tension, a political theory that explained
why revolutionary activity was required to bring it about.

In the late 19th century, the terms "socialism" and "communism" were often used
interchangeably. However, Marx and Engels argued that communism would not emerge from
capitalism in a fully developed, but would pass through a "first phase" in which most
productive property was owned in common, but with some class differences remaining. The
"first phase" would eventually evolve into a "higher phase" in which class differences were
eliminated, and a state was no longer needed. Lenin frequently used the term "socialism" to
refer to Marx and Engels' supposed "first phase" of communism and used the term
"communism" interchangeably with Marx and Engels' "higher phase" of communism.6

These later aspects, particularly as developed by Vladimir Lenin, provided the underpinning
for the mobilizing features of 20th century Communist parties.

 MARXISM-LENINSIM

Marxism-Leninism is a version of socialism adopted by the Soviet Union and most

Communist Parties across the world today. It shaped the Soviet Union and influenced
Communist Parties worldwide. It was heralded as a possibility of building communism via a
massive program of industrialization and collectivization. Despite the fall of the Soviet Union

5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism#cite_ref-mclean_6-1
6
See Chapter 5 of Vladimir Lenin's The State and Revolution" (1917)
and Eastern Bloc countries, many communist Parties of the world today still lay claim to
uphold the Marxist-Leninist banner. Marxism-Leninism expands on Marxists thoughts by
bringing the theories to what Lenin and other Communists considered, the age of capitalist
imperialism, and a renewed focus on party building, the development of a socialist state, and
democratic centralism as an organizational principle.

Lenin adapted Marx’s urban revolution to Russia’s agricultural conditions, sparking the
―revolutionary nationalism of the poor‖.7 The pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902),
proposed that the (urban)proletariat can successfully achieve revolutionary consciousness
only under the leadership of a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries — who can
achieve aims only with internal democratic centralism in the party; tactical and ideological
policy decisions are agreed via democracy, and every member must support and promote the
agreed party policy.

To wit, capitalism can be overthrown only with revolution — because attempts

to reform capitalism from within (Fabianism) and from without (democratic socialism) will
fail because of its inherent contradictions. The purpose of a Leninist revolutionary vanguard
party is the forceful deposition of the incumbent government; assume power (as agent of the
proletariat) and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat government. Moreover, as the
government, the vanguard party must educate the proletariat — to dispel the societal false
consciousness of religion and nationalism that are culturally instilled by the bourgeoisie in
facilitating exploitation. The dictatorship of the proletariat is governed with a de-
centralized direct democracy practised via soviets (councils) where the workers exercise
political power (cf. soviet democracy); the fifth chapter of State & Revolution, describes it:

―. . . the dictatorship of the proletariat — i.e. the organisation of the vanguard of the
oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors. . . . An immense
expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor,
democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich: . . . and suppression by force, i.e.
exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people — this is the
change which democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.‖8

7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism#cite_ref-11
8
Hill, Christopher Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1971) Penguin Books:Londonp. 86.
The Bolshevik government was hostile to nationalism, especially to Russian nationalism, the
―Great Russian chauvinism‖, as an obstacle to establishing the proletarian dictatorship.9 The
revolutionary elements of Leninism — the disciplined vanguard party, a dictatorship of the
proletariat, and class war.

 LENINSIM

"Stalinism" refers to the political system of the Soviet Union, and the countries within the
Soviet sphere of influence, during the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The term usually defines
the style of a government rather than an ideology. The ideology was "Marxism-
Leninism theory", reflecting that Stalin himself was not a theoretician, in contrast
to Marx and Lenin, and prided himself on maintaining the legacy of Lenin as a founding
father for the Soviet Union and the future Socialist world. Stalinism is an interpretation of
their ideas, and a certain political regime claiming to apply those ideas in ways fitting the
changing needs of society, as with the transition from "socialism at a snail's pace" in the mid-
twenties to the rapid industrialization of the Five-Year Plans.

The main contributions of Stalin to communist theory were:

 The groundwork for the Soviet policy concerning nationalities, laid in Stalin's 1913
work Marxism and the National Question,10 praised by Lenin.
 Socialism in One Country,
 The theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of
socialism, a theoretical base supporting the repression of political opponents as necessary.

9
Harding, Neil (ed.) The State in Socialist Society, second edition (1984) St. Antony's College: Oxford, p. 189.
10
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm
 EVOLUTION OF COMMUNISM

 EARLY COMMUNISM

Karl Heinrich Marx saw primitive communism as the original, hunter-gatherer state of
humankind from which it arose. For Marx, only after humanity was capable of
producing surplus, did private property develop.

In the history of Western thought, certain elements of the idea of a society based on common
ownership of property can be traced back to ancient times . Examples include
the Spartacusslave revolt in Rome.11 The fifth century Mazdak movement in what is
now Iran has been described as "communistic" for challenging the enormous privileges of the
noble classes and the clergy, criticizing the institution of private property and for striving for
an egalitarian society.12

At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the
inspiration of Scripture. In the medieval Christian church, for example,
some monastic communities andreligious orders shared their land and other property
(see religious communism and Christian communism). These groups often believed that
concern with private property was a distraction from religious service to God and neighbor.

Communist thought has also been traced back to the work of 16th century English
writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia (1516), More portrayed a society based
on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of
reason. In the 17th century, communist thought arguably surfaced again in England. In 17th
century England, a Puritan religious groupknown as the Diggers advocated the abolition of
private ownership of land. Eduard Bernstein, in his 1895 Cromwell and Communism13 argued
that several groupings in the English Civil War, especially the Diggers espoused clear
communistic, agrarian ideals, and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude to these groups was at best
ambivalent and often hostile.

11
http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/spartacus.html
12
The Cambridge History of Iran Volume 3, The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Period, edited by Ehsan
Yarshater, Parts 1 and 2, p1019, Cambridge University Press (1983)
13
Eduard Bernstein: Cromwell and Communism (1895)
Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th
century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France. Later, following the
upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine.14 François
Noël Babeuf, in particular, espoused the goals of common ownership of land and total
economic and political equality among citizens.

Various social reformers in the early 19th century founded communities based on common
ownership. But unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the religious
emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis. Notable among them were Robert Owen,
who founded New Harmony in Indiana (1825), and Charles Fourier, whose followers
organized other settlements in the United States such as Brook Farm (1841–47). Later in the
19th century, Karl Marx described these social reformers as "utopian socialists" to contrast
them with his program of "scientific socialism" (a term coined by Friedrich Engels). Other
writers described by Marx as "utopian socialists" included Saint-Simon.

In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement of 19th century
Europe.[citation needed] As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism
for the misery of the proletariat — a new class of urban factory workers who labored under
often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were the German philosopher Karl
Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition
of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist
Manifesto.15 Engels, who lived in Manchester, observed the organization of
the Chartist movement (see History of British socialism), while Marx departed from his
university comrades to meet the proletariat in France and Germany.

 GROWTH OF MODERN COMMUNISM

In the late 19th century, Russian Marxism developed a distinct character. The first major
figure of Russian Marxism was Georgi Plekhanov. Underlying the work of Plekhanov was
the assumption that Russia, less urbanized and industrialized than Western Europe, had many
years to go before society would be ready for proletarian revolution to occur, and a

14
"Communism" A Dictionary of Sociology. John Scott and Gordon Marshall. Oxford University Press 2005.
Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.
15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism#cite_ref-britannica_25-2
transitional period of a bourgeois democratic regime would be required to
replace Tsarism with a socialist and later communist society.

In Russia, the 1917 October Revolution was the first time any party with an avowedly
Marxist orientation, in this case the Bolshevik Party, seized state power. The assumption of
state power by the Bolsheviks generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within
the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon
foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development. Russia, however, was one of
the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority
of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of
bourgeoisie capitalism.16 Other socialists also believed that a Russian revolution could be the
precursor of workers' revolutions in the West.

The moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenin's Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution before
capitalism was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based
upon the slogans "peace, bread, and land" and "All power to the Soviets", slogans which
tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War,
the peasants' demand for land reform, and popular support for the Soviets.

The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after 1917, when the
Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a single party regime
devoted to the implementation of socialist policies under Leninism. The Second
International had dissolved in 1916 over national divisions, as the separate national parties
that composed it did not maintain a unified front against the war, instead generally supporting
their respective nation's role. Lenin thus created the Third International (Comintern) in 1919
and sent the Twenty-one Conditions, which included democratic centralism, to all
European socialist parties willing to adhere. In France, for example, the majority of
the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party split in 1921 to form
the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC). Henceforth, the term
"Communism" was applied to the objective of the parties founded under the umbrella of the
Comintern. Their program called for the uniting of workers of the world for revolution, which
would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the

16
Marc Edelman, "Late Marx and the Russian road: Marx and the 'Peripheries of Capitalism'" - book
reviews. Monthly Review, Dec., 1984.
development of a socialist economy. Ultimately, if their program held, there would develop a
harmonious classless society, with the withering away of the state.

During the Russian Civil War (1918–1922), the Bolsheviks nationalized all productive
property and imposed a policy of war communism, which put factories and railroads under
strict government control, collected and rationed food, and introduced some bourgeois
management of industry. After three years of war and the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion, Lenin
declared the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which was to give a "limited place for a
limited time to capitalism." The NEP lasted until 1928, when Joseph Stalin achieved party
leadership, and the introduction of the first Five Year Plan spelled the end of it. Following the
Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks formed in 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR), orSoviet Union, from the former Russian Empire.

Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Communist parties were organized on a

hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base; they were made up only of
elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject
to party discipline.17

After World War II, Communists consolidated power in Eastern Europe, and in 1949,
the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Mao Zedongestablished the People's Republic of
China, which would later follow its own ideological path of Communist development.[citation
needed]
Cuba,North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, and Mozambique were among
the other countries in the Third World that adopted or imposed a pro-Communist government
at some point. Although never formally unified as a single political entity, by the early 1980s
almost one-third of the world's population lived in Communist states, including the
former Soviet Union and People's Republic of China. By comparison, the British Empire had
ruled up to one-quarter of the world's population at its greatest extent.[32]

Communist states such as the Soviet Union and China succeeded in becoming industrial and
technological powers, challenging the capitalists' powers in the arms race and space race and
military conflicts.

17
Norman Davies. "Communism" The Oxford Companion to World War II. Ed. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot.
Oxford University Press, 2001
  COLD WAR YEARS

By virtue of the Soviet Union's victory in the Second World War in 1945, the Soviet
Army had occupied nations in both Eastern Europe and East Asia; as a result, communism as
a movement spread to many new countries. This expansion of communism both in Europe
and Asia gave rise to a few different branches of its own, such as Maoism.

Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new nations into the
sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Eastern Europe. Governments modeled on Soviet
Communism took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East
Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. 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. Titoism, a new
branch in the world communist movement, was labeled deviationist. Albania also became an
independent Communist nation after World War II.

By 1950, the Chinese Communists held all of Mainland China, thus controlling the most
populous nation in the world. Other areas where rising Communist strength provoked
dissension and in some cases led to actual fighting through conventional and guerrilla
warfare include the Korean War, Laos, many nations of the Middle East and Africa, and
notably succeeded in the case of the Vietnam War against the military power of the United
States and its allies. With varying degrees of success, Communists attempted to unite
with nationalist and socialist forces against what they saw as Western imperialism in these
poor countries.

 AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF SOVIET UNION

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union and relaxed central control,
in accordance with reform policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The
Soviet Union did not intervene as Poland,East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania,
and Hungary all abandoned Communist rule by 1990. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself
dissolved.
By the beginning of the 21st century, states controlled by Communist parties under a single-
party system include the People's Republic of China,Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and
informally North Korea. Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically
important in many countries. President Dimitris Christofias of Cyprus is a member of
the Progressive Party of Working People, but the country is not run under single-party rule.
In South Africa, the Communist Party is a partner in the ANC-led government. In India,
communists lead the governments of three states, with a combined population of more than
115 million. In Nepal, communists hold a majority in the parliament.18

The People's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; and the
People's Republic of China, Laos, Vietnam, and, to a far lesser degree, Cuba have reduced
state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. The People's Republic of China
runs Special Economic Zones dedicated to market-oriented enterprise, free from central
government control. Several other communist states have also attempted to implement
market-based reforms, including Vietnam.

A tableau in a communist rally in Kerala, India, of a young farmer and worker.

Theories within Marxism as to why communism in Eastern Europe was not achieved after
socialist revolutions pointed to such elements as the pressure of external capitalist states, the
relative backwardness of the societies in which the revolutions occurred, and the emergence
of a bureaucratic stratum or class that arrested or diverted the transition press in its own
interests. (Scott and Marshall, 2005) Marxist critics of the Soviet Union, most notably

18
"Nepal's election The Maoists triumph Economist.com". Economist.com. 2008-04-17. Retrieved 2009-10-18.
Trotsky, referred to the Soviet system, along with other Communist states, as "degenerated"
or "deformed workers' states", arguing that the Soviet system fell far short of Marx's
communist ideal and he claimed the working classwas politically dispossessed. The ruling
stratum of the Soviet Union was held to be a bureaucratic caste, but not a new ruling class,
despite their political control. Anarchists who adhere to Participatory economics claim that
the Soviet Union became dominated by powerful intellectual elites who in a capitalist system
crown the proletariat’s labor on behalf of the bourgeoisie.

Non-Marxists, in contrast, have often applied the term to any society ruled by a Communist
Party and to any party aspiring to create a society similar to such existingnation-states. In
the social sciences, societies ruled by Communist Parties are distinct for their single party
control and their socialist economic bases. While some social and political scientists applied
the concept of "totalitarianism" to these societies, others identified possibilities for
independent political activity within them,19 and stressed their continued evolution up to the
point of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe during the late
1980s and early 1990s.

Today, Marxist revolutionaries are conducting armed insurgencies

in India, Philippines, Peru, Bangladesh, Iran, Turkey, and Colombia.

19
J. Arch Getty (1985). Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered: 1933–1938.
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-33570-6
 CRITISIM OF COMMUNISM

Criticism of communism can be divided in two broad categories: Those concerning

themselves with the practical aspects of 20th century Communist states and those concerning
themselves with communist principles and theory. Although they often overlap, these two
categories are logically distinct.

One may agree with communist principles but disagree with many policies adopted by
Communist states (this is quite common among Trotskyists), or, more rarely, agree with
policies adopted by Communist states but disagree with communist principles. Most people
who criticize communism are against both communist principles and policies.

 Criticism of the practical aspects of 20th century Communist states

Differentiated from both liberal democracy and traditional forms of autocratic rule such
as tsarism, communist party rule, notably in the Soviet Union, one of two
world superpowers for nearly four decades after the end of World War II, and the People's
Republic of China, the world's most populous state, has represented an important and distinct
type of modern political regime.20 Criticisms of these regimes have related to their effects on
the domestic development of various states, and their role in international politics, including
the Cold War, and the collapse of the Eastern bloc and later the Soviet Union itself in the late
1980s and early 1990s.

After the Russian Revolution, communist party rule was consolidated for the first time
in Soviet Russia (later the largest constituent republic of the Soviet Union, formed in
December 1922), and criticized immediately domestically and internationally. During the
first Red Scare in the United States, the takeover of Russia by the communist Bolsheviks was
considered by many a threat to free markets,religious freedom, and liberal democracy.
Meanwhile, under the tutelage of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the only party
permitted by the USSR constitution, state institutions were intimately entwined with those of
the party. By the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin consolidated the regime's control over the
country's economy and society through a system of economic planning and five-year plans.

20
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_Communist_party_rule#cite_note-0
Between the Russian Revolution and the Second World War, Soviet-style communist rule
only spread to one state that was not later incorporated into the USSR; in 1924, communist
rule was established in neighboring Mongolia, a traditional outpost of Russian influence
bordering the Siberian region. However, throughout much of Europe and the Americas,
criticism of the domestic and foreign policies of the Soviet regime
among anticommunists continued unabated. After the end of World War II, the spread of
communist rule throughout Eastern Europe coincided with the early years of the Cold War. In
the West, critics of communist rule pointed out that the Soviets were
imposing Stalinist regimes on unwilling populations in Eastern Europe. Following
the Chinese Revolution, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949 under the
leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Between the Chinese Revolution and the last
quarter of the 20th century, communist rule spread throughout East Asia and local and
international criticism.

Western criticisms of the Soviet Union and Third World communist regimes have been
strongly anchored in scholarship on totalitarianism, which points out that communist parties
maintain themselves in power without the consent of the populations they rule by means
of secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, repression
of free discussion and criticism, mass surveillance, and state terror. These studies of
totalitarianism influenced Western historiography on communism and Soviet history,
particularly the work of Robert Conquest and Richard Pipes onStalinism, the Great Purge,
the Gulag, and the Soviet famine of 1932-1934.

Western criticisms of communist rule have also been grounded in criticisms of socialism by
economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who argued that the state
ownership and economic planning characteristic of Soviet-style communist rule were
responsible for economic stagnation and shortage economies, providing few incentives for
individuals to improve productivity and engage inentrepreneurship.

Ruling communist parties have also been challenged by domestic dissent. In Eastern Europe,
the works of dissidents Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Václav Havel gained international
prominence, as did the works of disillusioned ex-communists such as Milovan Đilas, who
condemned the "new class" or "nomenklatura" system that had emerged under communist
rule.
Communism: Promise and Practice (1973) detailed what its author termed flagrant gaps
between official Soviet policies of equality and economic justice and the reality of the
emergence of a new class in the U.S.S.R. and in other communist countries, which thrived at
the expense of the remaining population.

 CRITICISM OF COMMUNIST PRINCIPLES AND THEORY

Various aspects of Marxist theory have been criticized. These criticisms concern both the
theory itself, and its later interpretations and implementations.

Criticisms of Marxism have come from the political left as well as the political
right. Democratic socialists and social democrats reject the idea that socialism can be
accomplished only through class conflict and a violent proletarian revolution.
Many anarchists reject the need for a transitory state phase. Some thinkers have rejected the
fundamentals of Marxist theory, such as historical materialism and the labor theory of value,
and gone on to criticize capitalism - and advocate socialism - using other
arguments. Racist attitudes have been identified in works by Marx and Engels including
claims of certain nations being at a higher level of civilization than others, and claims that
certain races, such as Slavs were uncivilized, traitors, and enemies of proletarian revolution.[1]

Some contemporary supporters of Marxism argue that many aspects of Marxist thought are
viable, but that the corpus also fails to deal effectively with certain aspects of economic,
political or social theory. They may therefore combine some Marxist concepts with the ideas
of other theorists such as Max Weber: the Frankfurt school is one example.
 CONCLUSION

After doing my research on communism I could conclude that Communism, which is also
described as "Revolutionary Proletarian Socialism" or "Marxism," is both a political and
economic philosophy. The abridgment of Communism is enclosed in two primary writings:
(1) The Communist Manifesto, which was first published in 1848 by Karl Marx, and
(2) Principles of Communism, by Friedrich Engels. At the request of the Communist League,
an activist group they were members of, Marx and Engels together authored The Communist
Manifesto. The main goal of The Communist Manifesto was to focus on class struggle and
motivate the common people to riot. Even more so, it was designed to envision a model
government, whose economics would destroy the upper class - freeing the lower class from
tyranny. According to The Communist Manifesto, Communism has ten essential planks:

 Abolition of Private Property.

 Heavy Progressive Income Tax.
 Abolition of Rights of Inheritance.
 Confiscation of Property Rights.
 Central Bank.
 Government Ownership of Communication and Transportation.
 Government Ownership of Factories and Agriculture.
 Government Control of Labor.
 Corporate Farms and Regional Planning.
 Government Control of Education.

Fundamentally, The Communist Manifesto was a rebellion against the extreme poverty of the
lower class.

Communism doesn't end with economic and political reform. By definition, it further
demands the abolition of both Religion and the Absolute Morality founded upon Religion.
The irony is that Communism supposedly attempts to enhance civility within society, but
removes all notions of Absolute Morality, the very cornerstone of civility. Furthermore, after
Communism is instituted by the people, the system becomes Totalitarian, resulting in greater
oppression of the people it was designed to "serve." This fact is well documented throughout
the history of Communist nations.

Communism, though distinctive, is thought by some to have been heavily influenced by

Czarism, a Totalitarian regime replaced by Communism after Russia's 1917 Revolution.
While most of Europe's history has been symbolized by the rule of limited centers of power,
Russia resisted Europe's movement to limit monarchical power. Legal historian Harold
Berman writes regarding historical European political policy, "It also has been, or once was, a
source of freedom. A serf might run to the town court for protection against his master. A
vassal might run to the king's court for protection against his lord. A cleric might run to the
ecclesiastical court for protection against the king." (Law and Revolution). Russians under
Czarist rule had no such protection from the wiles of an unjust Czar. And so it is for
Communists. Under Communism, the government is absolute. Under Stalin, perhaps the most
notorious Communist, around 40 million Russian citizens were murdered for "the good of the
state."

The practical results of Communism have been horror and atrocity for those under
communist rule. So much so, advocates of Marxism have made every attempt to point out
where communist leaders have strayed from the fundamental teachings of Karl Marx, in an
attempt to absolve Communism. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Marxist influence
brought about many of these horrors. The irony is, Marxism renounces religion, not because
of religious doctrine, but because of the actions of "religious" men. No one could accuse a
religion such as Christianity of evil doctrine. However, it seems that men are intrinsically evil
and need only an opportunity to express this inherent reality. One must look at the overall
outcome of a philosophical doctrine on society, both good and bad, not specific instances of
abuse. Christianity, for example, has been used by wicked men to do much evil, but its
underlying doctrine has been the cause of much good in the world. Communism, on the other
hand, has brought only atrocity into the world. Communism has not brought relief to the
majority as promised, nor has it ended oppression as purposed. Communism has only served
to remove Morality from the masses -- a dangerous and costly experiment.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Stephen, Whitefield. "Communism." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of

Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press,
2003.

2. Terence Ball and Richard Dagger. "Political Ideologies and the Democratic
Ideal." Pearson Education, Inc.:2006.

3. Harding, Neil (ed.) The State in Socialist Society, second edition (1984) St.
Antony's College: Oxford

4. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm
VISITED ON 2-04-2010 AT 5:30 PM

5. Wittfogel, Karl Oriental Despotism, Vintage, 1981