Bloggers of the Web, Write!

Hi!

So I've been studying the Russian Revolution lately.  No particular reason; I was just watching The Hunt for Red October and it occurred to me that I knew nothing about Russian history beyond what I learned from Animal Farm.  I thought I'd do some research.  Who knew what I might find?  Maybe Stalin was really just a normal guy bent by the power given to him.  (News Flash:  He wasn't.)

Anyway, I'm not done yet, but having just read the Communist Manifesto, I thought I'd take up the topic of communism—especially now as it's stirred up some of my old feelings from history class.  Now, I don't remember anyone taking the time to outline Marxism for me, but I do remember getting pretty upset when I read about the whole Red Scare.  How dare our government start a witch hunt just to put down communists!  Investigating potential spies I understood, but it was outrageous to think of anyone being arrested simply for having communist sympathies.  Any government that feels threatened by communism—or any other body of thought, for that matter—should do some serious self-evaluation.  Besides—whether the politicians like it or not, the constitution grants us the right to vote in communism if we want to.  Should we suppress Marxism simply because someone used it so slaughter millions in a regime of terror?  Heck, no!  This is America!  We want dumb government, we get dumb government!  That's the beauty of democracy:  It's built with its own little self-destruct button.

Curse you, Cleisthenes!

The shame nowadays is that because of the Soviet Union's overarching legacy of corruption and terror, we don't bother studying communist philosophy as much, and very few people know what it is.  It's easier to assign labels to things without thinking too hard about them.  (Think:  "Four legs good, two legs bad")  The Soviet Union represents a failed experiment in communism, thus all communism is "bad," and a whole mountain of thought is swept away.

What I didn't know before I read the manifesto is that communism is really based on the idea of human cooperation.  Marx observed how, in every society, people were always separated into three groups:  The working class, or proletariat, the merchant class, or bourgeoisie, and the ruling class.  He pointed out how the bourgeoisie grew steadily over the years to the point where the ruling class became more a hindrance than a help, and so the bourgeoisie would get rid of it altogether.  (Not unlike what happened when the American colonies declared independence from England.)

He admired the speed at which progress took shape under the bourgeoisie:  Capitalism pushed science, medicine, communication and transport to the nth degree.  (When he said this he was referring to the industrial revolution, but since the formation of the internet, his notes on global connectivity seem almost prophetic.)  But he was frustrated by the fact that so few people got to share in its rewards.  Didn't the working class deserve a portion of what it was helping produce?  The factory worker slaved all day, often in dangerous conditions, and received not a one percent of a tycoon's salary.  In fact, Marx said, the more menial and unpleasant a job, the less money it was likely to pay.

In lieu of this, Marx predicted that one day the working men of the world would rise up and abolish the bourgeoisie and all class separations, creating a society of free and equal workers able to share their labor and their products with one another.  He proposed that such a society would have to eliminate all private property and all rights to inherit property:  Everything must belong to everyone.  There must also be free education available to all, an equal liability of all to work, centralization of money in a national bank, state-controlled communication and travel, combination of agriculture with manufacturing industry, and confiscation of all property of emigrants.

What Marx did not propose—contrary to popular belief—is totalitarianism.  That would constitute a "stratification" that Marx hoped to remove:  In a true communist society, the ruling class and the working class are one and the same.  The proletariat rules itself, via proper representation.  In this sense, communism is remarkably like democracy, but a democracy where people are more invested in each other than in outdoing each other.  So in reality, Marxism is a dream—a beautiful dream in which we can work alongside one another, for one another.  It is truly sad that, in practical application, it could never work.

Part of the problem is that communism asks people to forego a key ingredient to any society:  Advancement.  The reason capitalism works so well is that it provides hope that current unhappiness can be cured, constantly producing new goals to suit new ends.  In its frame writhe thousands of individual men and women, striving for individual gain.  "If only I can have this, THEN I'll be happy"; "If only I could get that—then at last I'd be content."  Every time one goal fails to produce the desired effect, a new one takes its place.  If a blender loses its appeal, perhaps a better one will set things right.  If one mercedes isn't enough, maybe two will bring fulfillment.  But communism represents only one goal:  Equality and brotherhood.  These achieved, it then makes no allowance for personal gain.  Man is halted in pursuit of his most basic instinct:  Selfishness.

I don't say this to be cynical.  I believe that human beings are born selfish ("The heart of man is deceitfully wicked of above all things; who can know it?"—Jeremiah 17:9) but I also think that they long for something better, and many in fact want to do good if they're not too scared or too distracted.  (". . . The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."—Matthew 26:41)  Ultimately, the reason for this need for more stems from the need for Christ which capitalism of course will never fulfill, but in an imperfect world capitalism does a good job utilizing our needs to preserve civilization.

(Look, I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry; philosophy is just too easily translated by scripture.  The bible literally applies to everything.)

Now, even though Marx didn't insist upon totalitarianism, it amazes me that for all his keen analysis of history he didn't see it coming.  He seemed to believe that workers could and would be trusted to pull through for one another and govern one another in a vast, interconnected system of farms and industries. Part of the problem with this is that it requires a long-term understanding of the world from the common man that the proletariat is least likely to receive.  Part of being the working class is being unable to afford good education.  Now, the mandate for public education would seem to combat this, but—as Stalin was so gracious in demonstrating—the state can be just as effective at maintaining the problem as fixing it.

(Funnily enough, homeschooling actually works very well with the principles of communism, because it relies on cooperative instincts built into the family and gives control to the worker rather than to any ruling class.  I'm not saying everyone should be homeschooled, but it should always be left as an option.)

But education isn't the only problem.  Even with a pool of highly educated workers, the larger the number the better the odds that someone will stop pulling their weight.  That leaves the leadership in a difficult position:  Do you spend all your time representing a lazy populace?  Or do you take steps to enforce labor?  If you let people drag behind, it could take the whole system down.  But in order to police it you set yourself up as an authority, dictating who is doing their part and who is not.  The natural conclusion:  He who controls the military becomes the ruling class.

In the hands of a benevolent man, capable of trust, forgiveness, and understanding, this situation would be hard at best.  Now imagine it in the hands of a class-A paranoid.  The rest is history.  Ugly, brutal history.

One solution would be to dissolve the military altogether, and redistribute land to small, self-governed communities.  But this is completely impractical in the modern world.  With no defense, these communities could be conquered in a fortnight and forced into the working class of another capitalist state.  Another solution would be to fund two different armies under two different ministers, but then there would be differences of opinion on which communities needed policing and which didn't, and in the defense of different workers you'd have the armies fighting each other.  Yet another solution would be to keep the military under joint leadership, with its actions carefully mapped out by a democratic committee.  This seems fair, but it's extremely time-consuming:  An army needs decisive leadership and direction; it cannot wait while politicians debate endlessly over where it should go or where it should be.

In the end, totalitarianism emerges so naturally it's positively terrifying.  And from there it can only get worse.  Because a totalitarian government is by definition dissatisfying to the populace, it has to work all the harder to ensure loyalty.  But the greater steps it takes to ensure this, the great the dissatisfaction and the harder steps it must take, watching a person's every move, preventing them from traveling out of country, teaching their children blind loyalty to the state, etc.  It's a vicious cycle.  The only way it could even begin to work is if the government could a) be perfect, b) have unlimited access to its citizens, and c) actually have a healthy relationship with all of them.  In other words, it would have to be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  (Hey, why do you think it reads, "No one claimed any of their possessions as their own, but they had everything in common"?  (Acts 4:32))

So in reality, the only way communism works is with Christ at its head with the church as the "proletariat."  Some americans in the sixties tried communism on a smaller scale (while still living within the borders of a heavily armed capitalist nation) but obviously it didn't work out too well for them, either.  On the one hand, authority can make life seem worse than death.  On the other, no authority at all leads to anarchy and negligent behavior.

All in all, America has a pretty good system in place.  Instead of a ruling class lording over the working class from under a different title, we allow the bourgeosie turns ruling in a limited capacity.  We have representation, free elections, a clear leader with a limited amount of time in office, and the support of socialized programs as well as free enterprise.  Capitalism, pigheaded and proud, reigns supreme.  Are we passing reforms blindly on the influence of corporations?  Yes.  Are we gorging ourselves on our own depravity?  Absolutely.  But at least the government can't do a dang thing to stop us.

And it's interesting how the ideas of true communism—those of class abolition—have become obsolete.  One of the main issues of capitalism in Marx's day was the unfair distribution of wealth and art.  Art, at least, has never been cheaper.  Our highest mode of entertainment—cinema—can be distributed worldwide and accessed for a couple of dollars at the door.  And while youtube and pinterest may not always represent art, there is virtually no limit to the audio and visual stimuli that can be shared between all classes.

Plus, it's awfully hard to sustain communist sentiment in a country that outsources most of its real labor. The proletariat of the United States is here to serve its bourgeoisie their lattes.  You can't very well ask the plumbers and baristas of the world to unite.—Well, I suppose you could try, and it might be interesting, but I doubt you'd get the desired effect.  Ahh, well.  There's still the construction crews.

In effect, communism may not be the wisest choice of government—or at least, not pure communism—but the spirit shouldn't be set aside, either.  The principles of responsibility, cooperation and generosity will always be noble, but it isn't fair to impose them on other people.  Better to be a communist as a citizen and a capitalist as a voter.