Do you like how I worked a popular song title in as my post's title? That wasn't my original intention, but I think its very clever.
Based on the comments left on my previous post it is time to write this follow-up. Let me begin by defining communism. To do so I start at dictionary.com. Personally I find this definition misleading and inadequate. So I went to wikipedia. The article there is great. I recommend that anyone who thinks they understand communism to read this article. However, my definition of communism is farther still from the dictionary definition, so instead of communism itself, let's focus on the ideals embodied in communism, because that is what I mean when I say communism. For the rest of this post, when I say "communism" I mean "the ideal of communism." The goal of communism is to prevent the exploitation of the common man for profit. The dominant ideal is that of the worth of every man. The communist approach is to believe that every person has the same worth no matter what their social status, and as such should not be seen as a means to an end. Furthermore, communism asserts that each of us should be concerned with the welfare of everyone in our society and see it as our responsibility to help those in need. Communism stresses community. In America we look at Communism as a form of government, specifically one that opposes our own. That is not true, by my definition. In my opinion communism is a social construct, not a form of government. There have been talks and attempts of creating governments that uphold the communist ideal above all else. These have all failed, and I will talk about that later. But that doesn't mean that communism is those governments. Calvin set up a government meant to uphold Christian ideals with horrible results. That doesn't mean that Christianity is a failure, just Calvin's government. As with communism, I don't believe that Christianity should or can be the basis of any government in this life, but that doesn't stop me from being a Christian. Communism is a beneficial ideal around which evil governments have been built.
As I said earlier, we are accustomed in the US to see communism as a form of government. That prevents us from seeing the ways that our society conforms to the communist ideal. I think that our society is very communist in many ways. In fact, I am of the belief that Marx would not have felt that revolution was necessary had he lived in modern day America (on the other hand, modern day America may not look the way it does if Marx and others had not thought revolution was necessary). Here are some ideas that conform to the communist ideal and can largely draw their origins to communist thinkers: public education, minimum wage, child labor laws, overtime pay, payed time off, public transportation, pensions. There are more, of course, and there were non-communists that advocated similar practices. However, I contend that these are all consistent with the communist ideal. Capitalism alone would not stand for most of these institutions. Capitalism looks for the greatest profit. Capitalism alone does not care about individuals. When you add communism to capitalism you end up with a kind of Compassionate Capitalism in which humanity and profit are balanced. You can tip the scale one way or the other, leading to more socialist or more profit-driven societies, but I believe that both ideals are necessary for a functioning society. It is my personal belief that the communist ideals should be enforced by society and the capitalist by the government. And that is what makes me mostly Libertarian, but that is the subject of a previous post.
So this brings me to the much anticipated finale -- why communism cannot work as a formal system. As I stated earlier, the ideal of communism is the importance of each individual in a society. In order to care about the well-being of others one must have compassion towards them. And compassion cannot be dictated. When governments try to dictate compassion they become oppressive and evil. They come up with practices that lead to stagnation and poverty like forced equal distribution of wealth and the abolition of private property. These governments do succeed in eliminating a small private class that exploits the common man, but they replace it with a government that is even more exploitive. They narrow the exploiting class and broaden the group being exploited. They are evil. Trying to enforce compassion, or personal morality at all in my opinion, necessitates that a government have its hand in every aspect of each individual's life. This means that the government has to own all the wealth -- so it can be "correctly" distributed -- as well as observe each individual to make sure he is not violating the moral ideals in his personal life -- giving birth to "secret police" organizations. Furthermore, without the motivation of reward, there is a large class of people that will not put any effort into their work. This leads to a terrible economy in which most people are equal, but equal in misery rather than prosperity. There is no good way to make communism a forced system. It needs to be voluntary and stem from an individual desire to work for the good of society in general rather than themselves alone.
Communism, in my opinion, is an ideal. Like Christianity, it cannot be forced on people without disastrous results. However, past attempts by violent men to force this ideal on people should not lead us to reject it. Furthermore, our society is already heavily influenced by communist thought and conforms to its ideal in many ways. What is left is for us to further conform our own lives to match this ideal to achieve the benefits of a society in which everyone is cared for and each individual considers himself to be less important than the society at large. This leads to a Compassionate Capitalism in which workers and consumers are not exploited by owners and manufacturers in order to glean a greater (and immoral) profit. My intention in writing these posts is to express my belief that communism is not in and of itself evil, but forcing it on others is. Therefore we should not universally reject communism, only attempts to make it a form of government. Additionally, if we attempt to implement communist ideals in our own lives we may be able to change our society for the better and lead others to learn to live for something other than their own gratification and thereby lead more fulfilling lives. My final thought on the subject is that communism and Christianity share many ideals and that a more communist society is more conducive to moral Christianity, and perhaps if our society (not our government!) were more communist less Christians would find it so difficult to live up to the Christian ideals of self-sacrifice and love for those in need.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Barnabas, your point is well taken. I had considered that maybe its best to simply come up with a new name since communism carries so much baggage for so many people. However, I think that its noteworthy that Marx did not invent communism, nor did he even coin the term. Communist groups in Germany and England asked Engles and him (Engles was actually very influential but rarely gets mentioned for some reason) to write a formal definition of their movement, which became the Communist Manifesto. He was not the first, nor does Marxism have a monopoly on communist thought. The reason that it is useful not to lose the term "communism" is because there has already been a lot of good thought made in the name of communism. If we can accept that many communist thinkers were good but misled people with the best intentions then we can consider their works and ideas and glean what is beneficial from them. If we say that communism is inherently evil and choose a new name then in all liklihood we will never consider these authors/thinkers works because they are already labelled communist, rather than whatever new label we come up with. My hope is to redeem the ideal of communism from some of the actions taken in its name so we can benefit from it rather than leaving it behind as a wholly failed line of thinking.
maybe I'll read this tomorrow, clanky. Let's try to start keeping these under 1,000 words, ok?
I have a few questions and comments, which I'll number into a neat little list for everyone's reading pleasure.
1.) why doesn't capitalism care about the individual? I'd say our free market cares quite a bit - more than communism, in many cases. Communism devalues the individual and says the whole is more important than him; that he does not have value on his own, but only as a member of society. Capitalism asserts the individuals' right to freedom - freedom to join or not join society, freedom to buy or sell, and freedom to keep whatever they've worked hard for. In this way, I think capitalism and our free market is far more respectful of individual rights than communism. Communism has a point to make - community and sacrifice are important - but that doesn't make it "nicer" to the individual than capitalism. They're both good and bad.
2.) If so many of communism's major points have been well integrated in our predominantly-capitalist society, are they really exclusive to communism? Does this mean communism, while holding good ideals, is outdated in practice?
3.) I agree that communism has many useful ideals, but it's also got some bad ones. As you've suggested already, I think you'd find you're more persuasive and productive by talking about these ideals specifically than referencing the blanket of communism. Say that sacrifice and community are important and people will listen - say communism is good and they'll rightly get skeptical. As you've pointed out, communism is a large movement developed at different times by many different people. The brand of communism you're peddling here isn't much like the communism of lenin or moa, who, while tyrranical despots, were also very influential communists. You might argue that your communism is "pure" communism, but Lenin would disagree, and maintained that communism was a) meant to be a government, b) absolutely opposed to religion, and c) founded on absolute materialism. I agree that your communism has great ideals, and even Lenin himself probably said some good things, but the whole of communism is much bigger than the skelaton philosophy you've laid out here, and it's weighed down by that (mis)association.
Barnabas, I would start with the Communist Manifesto. About half of it is interesting information and ideas, the other half is Marxist government. But its kind of all mixed together. Anyway, I think it would be an interesting read for you, and its pretty short. A lot of Latin American thought is classified as communist but is still relevant and interesting. We read several different authors in my high school Spanish class -- I'll try to find their names again if you're interested.
Redhurt, I contend that Capitalism is based on personal profit. Each individual is free to do what they want, provided they have the capital to achieve it. This means that those with the most capital can create a dictatorship over those with the least, leading to an immoral society like that during the Industrial Revolution, especially in Europe. Capitalism must be temepered by compassion. The movement that worked to implement this compassion during the IR was communism, and so I equate communism with those beneficial ideals that make Capitalism humane.
My final conclusion is that a movement cannot escape the figures that tout its name. Therefore communism can never be free of the influence of Marx, Lenin, and the rest. Although many of its ideals are good and beneficial, communism itself is now defined by these immoral incarnations because they are the most famous and prolific. Therefore my final statment is this: many communist ideals are good and beneficial, therefore not all communists are evil. However, communism itself is tainted by evil men and therefore is not good.
Post a Comment