by Gill Hands
The socialist movement developed from the communist one, so the ideas of Marx were an important part of doctrine at the beginning of the twentieth century. The First International was the first place where socialist doctrine was promoted on an international scale and Marx’s involvement with this led to his ideas being accepted by workers around the world, but especially in Europe. As more and more countries brought in universal suffrage, more working men began to rise to positions of power within government and could start to put socialist ideas into practice. This led to the development of a lot of socialist ideas, such as the welfare state and nationalization of industries, without the need for revolution. As conditions for working people improved, most of them felt there was no need to have a revolution at all. For example, in Britain work by the intellectuals of the Fabian Society finally led to the Labour Party being formed in 1906 and a similar party was formed in France in 1905.
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Insight
The Fabian Society began in 1884 and still exists today. It is an intellectual socialist movement that works towards gradual change in society rather than revolution.
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In Germany Karl Kautsky led the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, and although this was ostensibly Marxist and revolutionary, it eventually became reformist. The more radical members split off to follow Rosa Luxumberg, a Polish-born Marxist who was eventually beaten to death by state police during a failed communist uprising in Berlin in 1919. The period after the First World War was probably the time when the international communist revolution was most likely to have happened, for there were uprisings in Germany, Hungary and Finland and a lot of communist activity in other European states. However, brutally repressive regimes crushed the Communist opposition and some historians consider this as the beginning of the rise of fascism.
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Insight
Fascism does not have a simple definition but usually implies an authoritarian and nationalist form of government, usually a one-party state, where class conflict (and therefore communism) is seen as undesirable.
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The First World War put an end to much of the internationalist nature of the socialists, as most of the reformists had strong patriotic tendencies and they supported their own countries rather than a worldwide revolution. Lenin decreed that the war was an imperialist conflict and called for all true communists to forge a worldwide revolution, but he had to fight to bring about communism in Russia without much support.
Russian communism
Russia was the first communist country in the world. The type of communism that eventually evolved there had little in common with Marx’s thoughts on how communism should develop after the revolution. However, because it was the first communist country, and the only communist country for many years, people often believe that Russian communism is ‘true communism’.
The first revolutionary communists were the Bolsheviks in Russia, led by Lenin. They overthrew the Romanov dynasty that had ruled the country in a feudal manner for 300 years. The communist uprising of 1917 came as a surprise to most of the world, which had never heard of communism or Karl Marx.
Marx predicted that revolution would be started by the industrial working class or proletariat. This class hardly existed at all in Russia in 1917. It seems curious that the first communist revolution took place in a country that had a large peasant population – at least 80 per cent of the population as a whole. In his later years, Marx had not entirely ruled out the idea that a Russian revolution might occur without the country first passing through a period of capitalist society because of its unique social structure.
The Russian Empire at that time was vast, and compared with much of Europe it was very backward and had little industrialization. Three quarters of the people lived off the land and barely subsisted through the harsh winters. Although feudalism had been officially abolished in 1861, the serfs had to pay compensation to their landlords and were worse off than before.
At the time of the revolution Russia was ruled by the autocratic leader Tsar Nicholas the Second. He nominated friends and family to the State Council, which was the chief governing body. It was obvious to outsiders that the state was corrupt but it was not obvious that a revolution would take place. Although country landlords had been made poor, they were passive and the peasants were loyal to the tsar. The urban working class were a very small part of the population and were badly organized. Although the government was inefficient, it was ruthless in repressing any signs of anti-government activity. The press was censored and dissidents were sent to live as outcasts in the harsh terrain of Siberia; traditions that the communists followed when they came into power.
Marxism came to Russia through the work of Georgi Plekhanov, son of a landowner who moved to Europe. He was the first native Russian to write about Marxism as it applied to his home country. His ideas were carried by students to factories and towns and one of his chief converts was Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov, later to be known as Lenin. Lenin was sent to Siberia for three years for preaching the words of Marx to factory workers. He became a ruthless leader of the people and took advantage of the chaos in his country to take power. Although Lenin was a charismatic leader, it was not just his interpretation of Marx that led to revolution. It was a war that Marx could not have foreseen that became the catalyst for revolution and led to the first communist state.
Russia was already ravaged by industrial unrest and social dissatisfaction when the First World War began. Initial patriotism turned into discontent, especially as many lives and areas of land were lost. Refugees caused a housing crisis, people were starving and prices were rising. The population became demoralized and war-weary. Lenin realized that peace was important to the population and insisted that the war would only end if capitalism was overthrown. He called for the peasants to redistribute the land and for political power to be held by the soviets, a kind of local council. The Bolsheviks took power in October 1917 and declared a decree on peace. Lenin inaugurated the dictatorship of the proletariat to justify the role of the Communist Party, which did not have the complete support of the population. He believed it was important to create a true ‘socialist man’ who was free from the false consciousness that alienated him. The Bolsheviks then changed the name of their revolutionary party to The Communist Party and eventually the Third International became Comintern. It was transformed from an independent international organization of communist countries into an agency of the Soviet Union which co-ordinated world communism.
The communists hoped that spontaneous revolutions would take place throughout Europe following the example of Russia, but they never took place. Marx had seen this as imperative for the Russian state if it was to develop into a communist society after revolution, but Russia was the only socialist state in Europe for some time. After many years of civil war in Russia, a so-called communist state eventually evolved which had very little to do with the society envisaged by Marx and Engels. At first, things looked favourable: free enterprise was abolished; land, banks, foreign trade and shipping were nationalized. These measures should have been the start of the ideal communist state that Marx believed in. However, Russia was really not developed enough economically for true communism to exist. The civil war that ravaged Russia after the revolution left the economy in ruins and the idealist leaders of the first revolution were eventually replaced or died, some in suspicious circumstances. Josef Stalin became the virtual dictator after Lenin’s death and the state that should have ‘withered away’ became all-powerful. Stalin built up a personality cult around himself and any opposition, even from within the party, was dealt with ruthlessly. Although Stalin was a powerful dictator, he did not write a great deal, or formulate policies in the way that Lenin had done. The Soviet Union was ostensibly a Marxist-Leninist regime under his rule, although there was nothing like the society envisaged by either Marx or Lenin. Stalin believed in ‘socialism in one country’, which went against the internationalist ideals of Marxis
t-Leninist policy. This led to the Soviet Union becoming increasingly isolated economically. Stalin had to make Russia economically viable. To this end, he pushed through several disastrous policies, which were intended to bring the very backward peasant economy in line with the major capitalist nations.
COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE
Because agricultural production was inefficient, farmers were forced to join together in collectives and to work land in common. The state set the targets for production, set the price for the crops and bought up any surplus products. In theory, this should have worked, but in practice it failed because machinery and transport were inadequate. The farms were then inefficient. The state quota of the surplus product was set far too high so that peasants starved, animals starved and there was often not enough seed to sow for the next year. This is one indication of how difficult it is to put Marxist theory into practice, especially in a country which has not attained the level of development Marx believed would be attained before revolution took place.
FORCED INDUSTRIALIZATION
Stalin wanted to transform Russia from an agricultural society into an industrial one. He intended to do this by planning all industrial production from the centre. Production targets dominated political and economic life. Five-year plans were implemented, with set targets to be reached by the end of the allotted time. In industrial terms, the plans worked and the aims were achieved.
Russian industry developed rapidly, in ten years it was level with that of the capitalist countries who had taken nearly two centuries to reach the same level. In human terms, it led to great hardship for the people and a decrease in consumption, which eventually depressed the economy. Again this shows how difficult it is to put theory into practice, especially under the wrong conditions.
PURGES
Stalin wanted absolute power and the state became his tool. He used the army and the secret police to wipe out dissidents. Thousands were made to take part in show trials as enemies of the people and were sentenced to life in labour camps or mental hospitals. Stalin wanted to bring Russia into the modern world and was prepared to inflict suffering on the people in order to do it. It has been estimated that 20 million people died as a result of his reign of terror.
AFTER STALIN
Stalin ran the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state, and after his death in 1953 the leader who followed him, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced him as a dictator. Khrushchev wished to go back to the ideals of Marx and Lenin and this heightened differences with the regime in communist China (which until then had been one of their main allies), leading to a split between the two countries. The Soviet Union became even more isolated economically from the rest of the world and also politically as the Cold War began to take hold. The ultimate decline of communism in Russia is discussed later in this chapter.
Chinese communism
Russia remained the only communist country in the world until joined by China. Like Russia, China was not ready for revolution in the Marxist sense because it had a largely rural and illiterate population and little industrialization. In the 1920s it was ruled over by a warlord class in a feudal manner. Nationalist and communist groups formed a united front to try to overthrow this class but the alliance fell to pieces after interference from Stalin and Hitler.
After many years of fighting, the People’s Liberation Army, under the leadership of Chairman Mao, declared the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Mao was a brilliant military strategist and expert in guerrilla warfare. His victory, much like that of the Bolsheviks in Russia, was aided by another war that affected the internal conflict. When Japanese forces invaded China, in the Sino-Japanese war of 1937, many people joined with the communists in order to flee from the Japanese.
Chairman Mao wanted to educate the peasants into the ways of communism, so he wrote many texts loosely based on those of Marx. These became the basis of Chinese communism, also called Maoism or Mao Zedong thought, and were eventually published in the West as the infamous ‘Little Red Book’. This was sold very cheaply around the world during the 1960s.
Maoism is a further development of Marxist thought, and although it is officially still a part of Chinese communism in the twenty-first century, its influence has been greatly reduced since the death of Chairman Mao in 1976. Maoist thought differed from the traditional Marxist-Leninist policies and was much more militaristic. One of Mao’s most famous sayings is that ‘political power comes from the barrel of a gun’. He believed that class struggle continues throughout the socialist period that follows revolution, so that even after the proletariat seize power there is always the chance that the bourgeoisie will regain control. It was this that led to the formation of the Red Guard and to the Cultural Revolution.
At first Mao believed that rural development was the way forward for China and he ignored industrialization to a great extent until the Great Leap Forward, which began in 1957. This was an attempt to increase steel production and bring agriculture up to date. The Great Leap Forward, however, was not a success and its failure was largely due to inefficiency and terrible climate conditions. It led to terrible famine where millions of people died.
The Cultural Revolution began in 1966 and some see it as an attempt to divert attention away from past failures and focus attention on a scapegoat for the problems communism was facing in China. Mao stressed the importance of changing the whole mental outlook of society by transforming education, literature, art and any other parts of the superstructure that did not correspond to the socialist economic base. It was felt that the only true communists were the proletariat and anybody else was likely to be an ‘imperialist’.
The Red Guard, composed mainly of students, was an all-powerful communist militia that imposed communist thought on the populace. Anyone considered to be an ‘imperialist’ was purged; intellectuals and anyone believed to have bourgeois thoughts were imprisoned, exiled to work in labour camps or re-educated; many disappeared. Traditional Chinese culture was ignored and followers of all religions were persecuted. The long-term result of this was that during that time, economic activity in China was virtually halted in favour of revolutionary activity, higher education was ignored and many young people were moved to rural areas to carry out propaganda missions. The effects of the Cultural Revolution are seen as disastrous, even among the communist party in China itself.
Since Mao’s death, China has been gradually moving towards a free market economy under Deng Xiaping and has seen a huge increase in economic growth since the 1990s. China is still officially a communist state under an authoritarian single-party system, but many would say it is communist in name only. There is now a growing middle class, much free trade, and some indications that Confucian philosophy, which was previously banned, is becoming part of the culture again.
The Cold War
‘A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism’, Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto. After the Second World War the spectre of communism seemed to be haunting the whole world. This was the period of the Cold War when it seemed everyone was on the alert for ‘reds under the bed’.
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Insight
Fear of communism led to communist ‘witch hunts’ in the USA during the 1950s, led by senator Joseph McCarthy backed up by the FBI and The House Committee for un-American activities. Many Hollywood actors, writers and musicians were accused of being communists and blacklisted, persecuted or imprisoned.
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The Cold War did not result in an actual military war with open hostility; it was a prolonged series of political, ideological and economic conflicts between communist and capitalist countries that lasted for about 45 years. It centred round a huge arms race involving nuclear and conventional weapons, largely between the superpowers of the USA and the USSR. It was feared that this would lead to a full-blown conflict, perhaps involving nuclear weapons, in which millions of people would be killed and the world totally destroyed. This was especially true during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962,
which was the most openly confrontational incident in the Cold War.
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Insight
The Cuban missile crisis came about when the US intelligence service discovered nuclear missiles had been placed on Cuba by the Soviet Union. There were some tense negotiations before they were finally removed and it was the closest that the Cold War came to an actual nuclear war.
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In addition to the arms race, there was a huge propaganda war involving espionage and spy scandals and a kind of economic war with blockades and trade embargoes. Also, what have been called ‘proxy wars’ took place, where the superpowers became embroiled in the internal policies of overseas nations during civil wars, such as in Korea and Vietnam.
The origins of the Cold War are still being debated by historians. At the time it began, the justification for it was that Stalin’s policies in the Soviet Union were expansionist and that as Marxist doctrine insisted on a worldwide proletarian revolution, then a conflict between capitalism and communism was inevitable. The way that the world was divided up after the Second World War played a great part in aligning the participants into ‘blocs’. During the war, the allies – the United Kingdom and the USA – had been prepared to support communism in order to prevent the rise of world fascism. When fascism was defeated communism was seen as the main threat to the balance of power. The Soviet Union, as Russia was now called, and China were seen to be becoming more powerful. In 1947 President Truman of the USA made a declaration that the USA was prepared to counter communist expansion throughout the world. The US government was worried by the implications of more communist states arising not just as a result of revolution but also by the way in which the World War had been resolved: