What is communism?

Karl Marx and other communist intellectuals theorized that communism is a new form of society that would replace capitalism. They were wrong. The world is still in the middle of a gigantic revolution from traditional forms of society to modern, democratic market nation-states. Communism is part of that revolution.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries the term capitalism referred to oligarchic society. As we have seen, there are serious problems imbedded in oligarchic society. The wealthy oligarchs tend to monopolize political and economic power and govern the society for their own interests. This led to the development of a great deal of opposition to capitalism from the working class and among many intellectuals.

Socialism was the first expression of this anti-capitalist movement, but its only real successes were reforms that made capitalism stronger. As the socialists became frustrated with the slow pace of change, many of them joined the radical faction called communism.

The primary advantage of communism is that it is a simple concept, which is easy to explain, and which sounds reasonable to people that have never experienced it. Instead of letting oligarchs monopolize the power of capitalism, why not put the government in charge of the economy. Let the government own and operate the factories, mines, and railroads. It can use science, mathematics, statistics, and central planning to organize the economy and decide how much of which products should be produced, and what price they should cost. In theory the government could run the economy for everyone’s benefit, not just the oligarch's.

World War I provided a major boost for this concept. In Germany, France, and Russia the government took control of most of the economy and reorganized it for the production of war supplies. Even in the United States, the government nationalized the railroads and reorganized them to deal with the gigantic amount of wartime freight that had to be moved. The evidence seemed clear. When the chips were down, capitalism was inadequate. The government had to take over the economy to get the job done.

Temporary government intervention in a market economy to deal with an emergency situation such as a war is one thing. Ending the capitalist market economy altogether and replacing it with a communist command economy is something entirely different. We now have the experience of actual communist societies to look at, and it is clear that the reality is very different from the theory. An economy that is based entirely on central planning does not work very well.

Central planners are bureaucrats. If given enough resources, they can organize the construction of large relatively simple projects, such as a road, a dam, or a factory. When it comes to the production of food and consumer goods, they are hopelessly lost. Central planners do not know the best way to grow food on a given field. They do not know how to design and build an automobile, a clock, or a shirt. They will never understand the concept of fashion or the fickleness of consumer demand.

Central planning is not the only problem. Communist factories are notorious for their inefficiency. Under capitalism, if a factory does not make goods that can be sold for a profit, it will be closed. The workers and managers will lose their jobs. This is a very powerful incentive that does not exist in a communist economy, where factories are kept open simply to provide work. Products that nobody wants to buy continue in production.

Communist economies have demonstrated that they can not grow enough food to feed themselves. There were a number of different systems for the collectivization of agriculture in both the Soviet Union and in China. None of them worked efficiently.

If communist economics is so unproductive, why did so many people, in so many countries, agitate for communist revolution? In the first half of the 20th century, communism was a new idea. It seemed possible that it would have great potential, but no one could really know how it would develop or whether it would be a success or a failure. The reason why some countries decided to try it is because they were in the early stages of oligarchic society and their newly developing market economies were disaster zones. They chose communism because they knew it would sweep away the aristocrats and oligarchs of the recent past, not because of any definite evidence that it would bring prosperity in the future.

There are relatively few countries that have actually had a communist revolution. Let us take a brief look at some of them.

1. Russia 1917: The country had recently been an aristocrat peasant society. It was now in the early stages of oligarchic society and having a very difficult time. The Russian army was being mercilessly battered by the Germans in World War I. The government and the economy had collapsed. Food was in very short supply and could not be purchased by most people in the cities. Starvation was rampant. Something had to be done immediately, and the market economy did not offer a quick solution. The population was totally dissatisfied with the past and was eager to try something completely new and different in the hope that it would succeed.


2. China 1949: The country had recently been an aristocrat peasant society. It was now in the early stages of oligarchic society and having a very difficult time. Chinese armies had been unable to stand up to the Japanese in World War II. The Chinese government had never actually controlled much of the country. Anarchy was rampant. Hyperinflation had recently destroyed the currency. The market economy had collapsed. Food was not getting to the cities. Many people were starving. The population was totally dissatisfied with the past and eager to try something different.


3. North Korea 1945: The country had recently been a Japanese colony and before that was an aristocrat peasant society. The government and small market economy totally collapsed when Japan surrendered in August 1945. The population tended to equate capitalism with imperialism. They were totally dissatisfied with the past and could easily be talked into trying something new.


4. Vietnam 1954: The country had recently been a French colony and before that was an aristocrat peasant society. The French colonial government had collapsed and the colonial market economy had self-destructed along with it. The only people who had any money were aristocrats and those who had collaborated with the French. Most of the population was totally dissatisfied with the past and eager to try something new.


5. Cuba 1959: The country was in the early stage of oligarchic society. The average Cuban was a landless, shoeless peasant working in sugarcane fields that were owned by wealthy oligarchs. Aside from sugar, the market economy focused on tourism, gambling, and prostitution. Most of the population received no benefit from capitalism and saw no reason to continue it. They were highly dissatisfied with the past and were eager to try something new.

There seems to be a definite pattern here. Countries that had communist revolutions were not leading edge societies confidently striding forward to a glorious future. They were desperately poor countries in the early stage of oligarchic development that was not going at all well. The reason they chose communist revolution was because it offered the best hope of completely overturning the past.

It is possible to identify four kinds of communists, although there is some degree of overlap between these different groups.

1. The classic communist revolutionaries in failing oligarchic societies such as Russia and China as described above.


2. For a few decades after World War II, communism enjoyed a high degree of popularity around the world. A hundred imperial colonies were in the process of becoming independent nations. In most of these new countries nearly all of the native population were dirt poor. There were plantations and mines that produced wealth, but these were all owned by the European colonists. There were railroads to carry this wealth to the coast and docks to load it aboard ships, but these were also owned by the imperialists.
   
   Now the ex-colony was independent, and most of the foreign colonists were leaving. The question arose, who should own the mines, plantations, railroads, and docks. The European individuals and companies that built them claimed continued ownership. Private property is sacred, they said. Independence does not change that. The native population tended to think differently. As they saw it, the imperialists had built these assets through conquest, confiscation, forced labor, and exploitation. There was no reason why they should be allowed to keep them.
   
   The native people did not need Soviet propaganda to tell them that one possible solution was to nationalize the mines, plantations, and railroads. The natives who supported this idea were labeled communists by the ex-imperialists. Many of them accepted this label. If nationalizing the property of foreign exploiters was communism, then fine; they were communists. They were certainly a different kind of communist from the hardcore revolutionaries in Russia and China.
   
   In the post-war years many people believed that communism was the wave of the future. It was supposed to be based on technology and the scientific use of central planning. Why not use it to leapfrog the era of oligarchic capitalism, and quickly become a fully modern society? Communism was a popular idea in many newly emerging countries.


3. In the 1940s, 50s, and 60s many western intellectuals also thought very highly of communism. These people were profoundly worried about the recent history of the world. They believed that capitalism was responsible for imperialism, and that imperialism was responsible for World Wars I and II. As they saw it, the succession of events in the first half of the 20th century—World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II—demonstrated the bankruptcy of capitalism. Imperialism, war, depression, more war—what would come next—a new wave of imperialism. Many very talented and educated people believed that there has to be a better way. Communism was new, exciting, and definitely very different. It was supposedly based on science and modern principles of economic planning. Maybe it was the better way that the world needed.


4. Trade union communism was also popular in post-war Europe. For various reasons a number of European companies had been nationalized over the years. Some of these were companies on the verge of bankruptcy, others were strategic industries that were nationalized for reasons of national security. Many of the working class employees of these companies thought that nationalization was a great thing. They received higher pay. The bosses became more lenient. They no longer had to worry about loosing their jobs if the company went bankrupt. This was a major improvement. So what if the company was less efficient than private industry? The workers were better off.
   
   Workers in many of the nationalized companies were happy, and workers in private industry were envious. They too wanted the better pay, better hours, and better working conditions that were available in the state owned and state subsidized sector of the economy. Many of these people voted communist in the elections. They were not hard core communist revolutionaries. They did not want to collectivize agriculture or have a dictatorship of the proletariat. They just wanted more job security and better working conditions.

We now have four different kinds of communists. There were hardcore revolutionaries in a few countries like Russia and China who wanted to overthrow every aspect of their failing political and economic institutions. There were people in newly independent nations who wanted to nationalize the property of the ex-imperialists and bypass oligarch society. There were intellectuals who believed that imperialism, war, and depression had demonstrated the bankruptcy of capitalism. And there were trade union communists who wanted job security and better working conditions in nationalized industries.

As was famously said by an American politician: “All politics is local politics.” Each of these groups had a different agenda and a different concept of communism. They were not a monolithic structure that was determined to conquer the world.

The one thing that all communists could agree on was that they did not like oligarchic society. Communism, just like socialism, fascism, and Islamic fundamentalism, was an effort to find some other kind of social organization that was different from oligarchic capitalism. At the time no one understood the distinction between oligarchic society and democratic market society. There will be more about communism and the Cold War later in this explanation of history.