Communism seeks to create a classless society by abolishing private property and sharing goods equally. While it may seem like a good idea, in practice it often leads to authoritarian rule, corruption, and a focus on production at the expense of the arts. Human greed also undermines the system, making capitalism a more effective option.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. This is one of the phrases that crystallize the meaning of communism. It’s not easy to get an unbiased definition of communism, but one of the best ones describes it as socialism that abolishes private property and seeks to create a classless society.
Communism has been a major historical theme since Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels popularized communist ideology in their 1848 work, The Communist Manifesto. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, founder of the Bolshevik Party, was inspired by this work and eventually became Russia’s first communist ruler.
Communism seems like a good idea. In the purest form of communism, all people have in custody all the land, factories and so on, so to speak. In this way, all goods are shared equally by people. There is no poverty, nor is there an upper class. In 1930s Depression-era America, many people joined the Communist Party because it seemed to sympathize with the needs and wants of the worker, rather than the bosses.
Unfortunately, communism in practice tends to be a little different, as those who lived in the 20th century know. The communism practiced by Lenin, Stalin and Chairman Mao is an entirely different proposition. This type of communism establishes authoritarian rule, with the best goods and services going to those in government.
It wasn’t uncommon in Soviet Russia for people to compete for government jobs, not because they were such fans of communism, but because they had a bigger apartment. Capitalists complain about corruption, but communist governments are just as rife with it as capitalist systems. Government members tend to rationalize that they deserve the best of everything because they govern for the people.
Another problem with political communism is that governments tend to focus on “production” as the ultimate goal. Production is usually defined as that which comes from factories and farms. As a result, the arts can suffer under a communist regime. This was certainly true for years in China when Chairman Mao instituted the “cultural revolution”. Since these governments tend to become insular and paranoid, they also usually form a secret police force to quash any hint of revolution by the people.
Communism would probably work just fine if humans didn’t have the unfortunate tendency towards greed. Some argue that if everyone had the same, no one would want more. This, of course, has proven to be a mistake time and time again. If there are no goals to achieve, and nothing to work towards but a production quota, where is the incentive to excel? Capitalism is also not a perfect system. It simply works better in the face of human greed than other systems, as it offers the carrot of financial gain for hard work.
An article like this cannot delve into the minutiae of communism. However, there are many excellent resources on the internet that discuss communism as an ideology as well as a political system. Communism is worth researching for a better picture of an ideology that helped shape history in the 20th century.
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