by Gill Hands
Eleanor Marx was a popular speaker on socialist topics and on women’s rights. She led mass rallies on the shorter working day in Hyde Park and played an active part in organizing strikes among women who worked in match factories. She wrote about her father and his work, fundraised in the USA for the German Social Democratic Party and in 1889 she was a delegate for the Second International in Paris. Sadly, her work in disseminating her father’s ideas was cut short as she committed suicide in 1898; it was thought this was due to problems in her relationship with Edward Aveling.
The development of socialism
The socialist and communist movements in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century were closely intertwined. At first, they both mainly concentrated on workers’ rights and on universal suffrage. Both movements were based on the theories of Marx, but it became apparent as time went on that some people were more moderate than others and a split began between the followers of evolutionary and revolutionary strands of thought. This eventually led to the breakup of the Second International. Those with a more revolutionary and communist interpretation of Marx broke away to form the Third International during the First World War, while the reformists developed social democracy or socialism. Socialism is a word that can be confusing in Marxist literature because the term in general use differs from the Marxist term. Generally it is taken to indicate belief in a socio-economic system with some kind of State or collective ownership of the means of production, but it is a very vague term that covers many diverse types of government. In the main, it differs from communism because this is usually identified with a one-party totalitarian state. In classical Marxism, Marx is often described as a ‘scientific socialist’ and socialism refers to the period occurring just after the revolution before true communism is reached. This is how confusion often occurs.
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. 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.
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 Luxemberg, 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. 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.
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 re-distribute 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 Inte
rnational 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 by 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 Marxist-Leninist policy and the beliefs of Marx and Engels.
‘Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?
No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries.’
Friedrich Engels, The Principles of Communism, 1847
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
As Marx and Engels had predicted it was difficult for a lone communist state to survive and the Soviet Union became 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 that has not attained the level of development Marx believed would be attained before revolution took place.
Spotlight
Stalinist joke
Farmer: Comrade Stalin, the farm has grown so many potatoes that if we piled them up they would reach to heaven!
Stalin: Comrade, religion is the opium of the people. You know there is no heaven.
Farmer: There are no potatoes either.
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 plan worked and the aims were achieved. Russian industry developed rapidly; in ten years it was level with that of the capitalist countries that 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 the 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. 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.
‘Every communist must grasp the truth; “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”’
Mao Tse-tung, Problems of War and Strategy, 1938, Selected Works, Volume 2, p. 224
Case study: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung
Mao was born on 26 December 1893 in a rural province of China at a time when China was poor and had been weakened by both Japanese and Western imperialism. Nationalism was an important movement when Mao was young, which sought to develop China from a patriarchal hierarchy into a modern state. Although Mao’s Chinese Communist Party eventually differed with the Nationalists, the ideal of Chinese nationalism was very important in the formation of Mao’s own philosophy.
Mao’s philosophy came to the West in the form of a small red-covered book, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, also popularly known as The Thoughts of Chairman Mao and The Little Red Book. This had originally been publis
hed in 1964 as an inspirational book for use in the Chinese military, but there was such demand in China for the book that the Ministry of Culture decided to produce it in vast quantities so that the majority of the population would be able to read a copy; hundreds of printing houses were set up and there were shortages of paper and ink while it was in production. It was generally sold as small pocket-sized book that could be carried and used for daily inspiration, although more elaborate editions were available.
In 1966, the Chinese Propaganda Department authorised a revised edition to be translated and sold outside China. This was sold very cheaply around the world during the 1960s and early 1970s. For Western readers, one of the best known of these quotations uses the old Chinese analogy of a paper tiger (something that looks fierce at first view but is intrinsically weak) to describe the underlying weakness of Western capitalist society.
‘All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality, they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are powerful.’
‘Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong’, 1946
Mao 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.