Differences among Communism, Socialism, and Marxism By Zevi
The words Communism, Socialism, and Marxism are used frequently with varying degrees of interchangeability. Are they the same thing? What are the differences? Objectively speaking, it is not necessarily incorrect to use these terms in place of each other, and many people hold such disdain for the whole lot of them that any effort to separate them out would be devoting a painful amount of attention to a subject that would seem to have been better cursed away from the get-go. To the hasty mind, I will sum it up: A rule of thumb for most circumstances is: a Marxist would describe her/his self as a “socialist” when desiring acceptance, a “communist” when she or he is feeling provocative, and a “Marxist” when she or he is trying to impress. To the careful mind, I will offer a little more. The purpose of this essay is, out of complete frustration, to illustrate the fact that due to the way history and politics unfolded in the twentieth and late nineteenth centuries, the word “communism” has attracted a whole lot of confusion to itself (as well as negative stigma), that has since become almost inseparably attached to it. The meaning of the word is a lot broader than what people usually think it to be. To most Americans, this confusion is just fine. A large percentage hate the word, know little to nothing about it, and are perfectly content to write it off from the vantage point of relative ignorance. Another percentage equate the term “communism” with Marxism, a forgivable offence, and may dislike it or write it off on this basis. A very small percentage are Marxists who call themselves communists, also equating the two terms. However, I hope to offer a few good reasons the word “communism” should be understood as something completely different than a simple synonym for either socialism or Marxism. I understand that there are probably very few people that care a whole lot about this subject matter, and that’s fine. Obviously, I care a little; for me this is more important than just un-mincing words. My belief system is opposed to unbridled Capitalism, sure. It is also very much opposed to socialism of any sort, and opposed as well to orthodox Marxism. I have read a lot of Marx, but could not possibly consider myself a Marxist, although I find many of his critiques of Capitalism to be dead on. My dilemma is that there is no word I am aware of in the English language that more accurately, in a technical sense, describes my beliefs in relation to private property, equality, sharing possessions, and such things, than “communist”. However, when I say this word to other people, ninety-nine times out of ten, the meaning being conveyed is entirely different than the meaning intended.
Why not simply choose a different word? (I get this constantly.) The problem is that other words are not technically accurate, and this one is. If the shoe fits, right? The problem is not the word, it’s the popular understanding of it. This popular understanding—or misunderstanding, rather—isn’t just limited to NASCAR and football fans either, but is almost universal. So I really can’t get away with telling anyone that I am a communist without clarifying the matter further. There usually isn’t space for this in conversation, so once, and for all, this is that clarification. Were I to think somewhat ambitiously, this could also clear up a little confusion in language for a few folks, too. There are confusion problems with a lot of unrelated words in the English language. I remember several years ago listening to NPR, and a guy, maybe an etymologist, listed several everyday-ish words that had become so damaged by vernacular abuse that they were almost universally held to mean, and commonly used in such a way that their meaning had come to be understood as the opposite of what the words had meant originally, or what they still might mean in the proper sense. Take the word “peruse”. Most people think it means to skim over in reading, when it actually means something along the lines of reading carefully paying close attention to detail, or something like that if I remember correctly. This is the only example he listed that I can remember. One common college-kid definition/distinction between communism and socialism is “communism is a country with a socialist economy and a totalitarian form of government”, or communism is “an extreme form of socialism”. Of all the definitions available or used for the word “communism”, either of these ranks as most likely to induce me to puke. My problem with these definitions of the word communism is that it excludes many of the things that the word actually defines. It is like defining an “octagon” as “a heavy gauge metal sign that is primarily red in color, has a white border, eight sides, and on which the word ‘stop’ is printed in white capital letters, usually displayed at traffic intersections”. Marxism, is indeed an extreme form of socialism, whereas only one specific type of communism is. Although Marx really didn’t, Lenin did lay out pieces of his theories in such a way that a sensible distinction could be made, at least in some places, between the terms Communism and socialism. Other places he used them interchangeably like Marx. There are additional reasons for not abandoning Lenin’s distinctions regarding this I hope to touch on a little later, too. Marx’s sloppy abstinence from distinguishing the two terms more carefully, and thus the creation of this language confusion might not necessarily have been accident; who knows? Communism, according to Lenin, was the future society as predicted by Marx that could be noted by its classless (absence of a significant gap between rich and poor) social structure, and complete absence of a “state” (anarchy). Socialism according to Lenin, on the other one of his hands, was the transition period between Capitalism and Communistanarchy, which often did include a very strong, authoritarian central government, responsible for the administration of the expropriation of the Capitalists (and other normal government functions) until such a time as society could have been molded enough gradually take over all functions of government itself, thereby creating an organized self-rule among the masses (Communist-Anarchy). Stalin had formally socialized the Soviet economy by the mid-nineteen-thirties, and made an entry into the
Soviet constitution stating as much. Most people have a remote awareness of the brute deeds of Jo Stalin’s dictatorship, but most people seem to be completely unaware that under Stalin, the Soviet Union practiced Socialism, NOT communism. This is true for all subsequent Soviet administrations as well. Why then, is it so common for the former Eastern Bloc countries to be referred to as “communist”? This is very simple. All of those countries owed their forms of government to the writings of Marx. They were Marxist. Marx advocated a form of Socialism that retained a “goal” of communism, at least if you want to stick with Lenin’s semantics. Marx’s most well known work is of course the “Communist Manifesto”, and Marxists do call themselves “Communists” chiefly to differentiate themselves from other socialists, who are often less radical. Marx took the name to differentiate his theory from socialists of his day, which are nothing like what most people regard socialists as being today. For one thing, the socialists of his day were not working class, they were members of the educated classes. He probably would have wanted to differentiate himself from the “Marxists” of today, if only for the same demographic reasons. Socialism, according to Marx and Lenin, was to be forcibly imposed by a “dictatorship” until the strong centralized state had “withered away”, a.k.a., become unnecessary due to the redemption and self-empowerment/self-rule of the working class. Only after the disappearance of the State along with its various protections of privilege and the class structure could Lenin’s “communism” have appeared. Of course, this never happened. None of the eastern-bloc governments ever “withered away” in the Marxist sense. So none of the eastern bloc countries ever practiced communism. They were called communist because the official party line was that, of course, they hoped to wither away (had the stated goal of communism) sometime during some future administration, but the promise didn’t quite hold. They were therefore “Socialist”, like the name of the former Soviet Union implies, until they collapsed along with the Soviet Union. Marx’s political ideas could best be understood as a group of hypotheses that incorporated socialist, communist, pro-industrial, anti-privilege, pro-worker, and anarchist sentiments rolled together into one. His writings were very complex and this summary does not do them justice, nor is it really intended to. For the purposes of this paper, what is important to understand is that orthodox political Marxism is a belief in an authoritative Socialist government that would eventually give way to communist anarchy. Now to editorialize a little, I happen to agree with the common criticism of Marxism, that once you endue a ruling class with authoritarian power, it is not likely to give it up. Additionally, it is not unlikely that the populace it is imposed upon will tend to push back at that power, resenting government intrusion. Also, distribution methods utilized by a national government bear little resemblance to distribution methods practiced by smaller groups of individuals, so it is more likely that as a state “withered away”, the methods for distribution would vanish as well, leaving the people to fend for themselves in an individualistic environment. This is precisely what happened after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Marx’s theories regarding Socialist to Communist transition, in reality, are more like a communist worm on the end of a socialist hook. You don’t get to eat the worm, you just get “stuck” with Socialism.
Are socialists distinct from Marxists at all? Of course. Marxism to me is far more socialist than communist, but this does not imply that Marxism is the equivalent of socialism. I believe that all Marxists are socialists, but that Marxism is only one example of socialist thought. All orthodox Marxists could be considered socialists, but the reverse is definitely not true. Some characteristics of socialism include centralized social welfarism in various forms/degrees (universal health care, poverty relief, care for the aged, etc.), stiffly regulated trade, heavy taxation especially for the wealthy (redistribution of wealth), and a strong (but not necessarily totalitarian) central government. Unlike Marxism, there is not necessarily one central authority of socialist dogma. Many socialists are at least influenced, to some or other degree, by Marx, whether they acknowledge it or not. There are definitely parallels that socialists share with Marxists, but also areas in which they go completely askew. One thing worth noting about the list of characteristics of socialism in the previous paragraph is that all of the ideas contained there are distinct, can be implemented in different ways, to different degrees, in different stages, and completely independently of each other. This is the hallmark difference, in my opinion, between generic socialism and orthodox Marxism. Marxism contained a rigid quasi-scientific predictive formula for how the future would unfold that is unique. Marx predicted if not advocated the eventual overthrow of the ruling classes all at once and the implementation of all of the above ideas or types of ideas all at once and in extreme measures. Hence the somewhat misplaced college kid definition, “extreme form of socialism”. More moderate socialists can implement their ideas by degrees, through normal democratic legislative processes over time. Marxists believe in violent overthrow of the ruling classes, while many socialists are content to rise to power through national elections and leftist legislation. Marx sought the complete material leveling of society, and the complete eradication of inequality and privilege. Socialists just want to trim the extremes somewhat, lifting up the poor a little at the expense of the rich. Marx spoke of a “dictatorship” of the proletariat, while socialists might believe in democratic forms of government. They can utilize existing political structures to achieve their ends. It might even be difficult to draw a clear line of demarcation between a country that could in any way be considered “socialist” and one that is more “free market”, since most Western nations today are a hybrid between the two to some degree. For that matter, the Far Eastern nations like China are just as much a hybrid, following the worst aspects of the Western pattern more and more. Socialism incorporates economic collectivism, (a fiscal practice that puts the interest of the whole above the interest of the individual) that is both centralized, and centrally imposed upon the populace. This is the primary commonality between socialism and Marxism. On the other hand, another distinction is that socialists that are not Marxists do not necessarily believe or hope for society to move beyond socialism to communist anarchy. Orthodox Marxists consider socialism a means to an end, while many socialists consider it an end in and of itself. Also, Marx looked forward to the complete eradication of capitalist relations of property, whereas socialism and capitalism are quite compatible, and today seem to coexist in the
same nations quite comfortably. After all, what kind of consumers do penniless peasants make? Put them on fixed income and they can afford to become regular contributors to the market economy. Or more, consolidate a populace into one social class, and you’ve made the market that much more efficient, not having to cater to different income brackets. Complete consumer conformity! What more could a corporation ask for? This finally brings us full circle to the subject of communism, and understanding exactly how it can be distinguished from these other strictly political philosophies. Communism is defined by the Webster’s Third International Dictionary (Unabridged), as “1a: a theory advocating elimination of private ownership of property or capital b: a system or condition real or imagined in which goods are owned commonly rather than privately and are available as needed to each one in a unified group sometimes limited, sometimes inclusive, and often composed of members living and working together : a similar system preventing the amassing of private goods and assuring equalitarian returns to those working…”
Of course, definition two, the next definition under the same entry in the same dictionary certainly describes Marxism. The definition above, however, describes a very large variety of systems of social organization. Most of these are completely unrelated to Marxism. I am not saying that Marx was not a communist. However, Marxism is to communism somewhat like what “Coke” was to soda-pop, in an inverse sense, in the eighties where I grew up. There, people would simply use the word “Coke” to refer to all of the slew of over-sweetened carbonated junk beverages such as Coca-Cola, be it Pepsi, Fanta Orange, or Seven-up. People use the word “communism”, however, to refer to only one of many name-brands of communist theory/practice, that is, Marx’s. Such an indiscretion is unfair and completely intellectually damaging. The harm comes in that there are many schools of thought/practice that are less well known, and in most cases even less self-aware, that have their own distinct historical and even American significance, that are swept off of the table and subsequently out of thought and out of discussion. No big deal if you are the Average American, but if you happen to ascribe to such a school of thought, it is quite unfortunate, because your human desire to be understood is going to be frustratingly obstructed. Now Marxism was by a wide, wide margin, the most popular, well-known, and historically significant version of “communist” theory/practice. Marxism was important because it was a political phenomenon that massively and overwhelmingly impacted the historical face of the twentieth century. Maybe even that is an understatement. Many of us still remember the red scare, the cold war, and the way the earth was divided between two major groups of superpowers for most of a century. So much happened in the twentieth century as a result of this global divide that its importance could hardly be overstated. The space race, the arms race, nuclear proliferation, etc.
On the opposing set of digits, perhaps this historical significance is exaggerated by the fact that it all only happened recently. If history continues to experience an exponentially increasing rate of change due to continued rapid advances in technology and communication, the twentieth century could become a blip. Cassettes used to be big news, right? The tyrants of the not so distant future could dwarf the atrocities of past tyrants, and their deeds could make the crimes against humanity of the twentieth century look like mere misdemeanors in retrospect. Ruling oppressors could arise in centers of power and wealth from which they have never arisen from before, and would not be expected. Society could be vulnerable to new methodologies of authoritarian oppression in ways it never has. We’re all aware of the novelty of the terrorist threat. Are we not aware of the threat of the level of power being acquired and wielded by the corporate Empire? What if global corporate rule is to be the fourth Reich? This is of course is a by-way and baseless speculation, but the point I am trying to make is simply, who’s to say we live in such a supremely historically important time? Who’s to say important things might happen in the near future that make Soviet Marxism seem even that much less important than it was in the fifties? If you stretch the period of Marx’s impact out to the maximum one-hundred and fifty years, that’s still just over two percent of seven thousand or so years of recorded human history. Pre-Marxist, or non-Marxist communism existed in prehistory, and has in small but consistent ways throughout history, existed or sprung up in pockets here and there and continues to exist in significant pockets throughout the globe. It was even, in a twisted and unfortunate way, part of the inspiration for Marxism itself. There are probably hundreds of types of communism. However, once you eliminate Marxism, all the other types of communism look amazingly similar. Curiously similar. A small religious group of farmers in North Dakota. A small group of native tribes people in South America. A small group of farmers in Israel. A small group of Eskimos, sharing rotten seal meat in the North. A small group of cave-people, sharing a fire and a fresh kill. Communism has sprung up in carefully crafted and skillfully led intentional communities among gifted social critics. It has also sprung up where people lacked any and all sophistication or penchant for social thought. Most of the time, though, it springs up or exists among small people groups, roughly the same size range a natural tribe could be imagined or expected to be. The root word of communism is the same as the root word for “community”, and one phrase frequently used to describe non-Marxist communism is “community of possessions”. Not so long ago, the verb “to communicate”, from the same root word, meant not to transfer information, but to share things. Another related word is “commune”, both the verb and the noun. The root word of “socialism”, however, is a lot like “society”. Every type of socialism I am aware of except Robert Owen’s addresses social organization on a national, or nationstate level. Every type of communism I am aware of except Marx’s version addresses social organization on a tribal or small community level. At the time of writing, Engels said he and Marx could not have possibly called their most well known work the “socialist manifesto”, as in those days socialism was commonly understood to refer to
something else, something more like what Owen described. In hindsight, I believe “socialist manifesto” might have been a much more accurate title for Marx and Engels’ work. You see, apart from the dreamy vision of future fulfillment of the human experience through a siblinghood of humanity, what Marx recommended and spelled out for the immediate future was definitely socialism, albeit “an extreme form” of socialism, which he carefully explained to be the only possible pathway towards communism. A possible Achilles’ heel of his theories, however, was that communism had already been widely attained without such a transitional coup, only, not on a nation-state level. Lenin, I hear, did not care much for such types of communists. Somewhere I once read that Lenin was once told that there existed groups of people that already practiced communism in Russia in his time, and his reply was something along the lines of “yes, but no one has heard of them; and when we’re done with them, nobody ever will”. How much either of them loved the communist bait over the socialist hook is something I have reason to doubt. Perhaps he felt threatened by these other groups of peaceful communists living in what was to become “his” country. Wouldn’t someone who wanted society to become communist rather have learned something from these groups than exterminate them? Wouldn’t someone who wanted to exterminate them in actuality want also to exclude them from history, both past and future? If you can erase the definition of your opponent’s cause from the popular vocabulary, you’ve done leaps and bounds toward eliminating him from popular thought, as well. Erasing them from popular thought is easier than erasing them from the history books and the dictionary, however. There, communism can refer to things like primitive peoples’ treatment of material goods, like their habit of sharing things (Evil!). Or it could refer to the Kibbutzim in Israel; they also share things. (Bad!) They can refer to many of the hundreds of religious and secular utopian experiments common in America in the eighteen-hundreds, or even found among the very first American colonies. Again, the Hutterites have lived as communists for almost five-hundred years. Most types of communism are either voluntary or are a cultural default, such as primitive peoples who know no other way. Only a tiny fraction of versions of communism are imposed by a central authority, or even involve nation-state politics at all. If you are an Eskimo, a South-American native, or an ultra-religious Anabaptist farmer, and you listened to Joe McCarthy’s scathing allegations against communism, you might not have felt personally attacked. Most Americans of that time would probably not have been pointing their fingers at you. The facts, however, are that although you might not well understand or think too deeply about your attitudes and practices toward the objects you are surrounded by and interface with and even eat on a daily basis, these attitudes and practices are technically best described by the very term he derided as the epitome of everything Americans must fear and hate. Communism. For instance, once I got a ride hitch-hiking from Denver to Dallas. About a third of the trip, the driver was sharing with me many details of a book he’d just finished reading
about an American or British scientist (or something) in the eighteen or early nineteenhundreds that had spent large amounts of time living with and studying Eskimos. He told me lots of really neat stories, such as this person’s reaction to their apparent habit of letting seal meat rot a little before eating it. At first he might have been somewhat taken aback, but eventually developed a preference in favor of the flavor of the stuff. One story he told me was that when the scientist first arrived, he was welcomed but the Eskimo women immediately took his bag and began to distribute his possessions among themselves and everyone else there. When he objected or intervened, the women laughed at him, perhaps not even believing he was serious, and continued. They had no concept of private ownership whatsoever. It was a joke. This, like it or not, is communism. Those igloo things they supposedly live in, are actually the hatches for under-tundra ICBM silos. They slipped in right under the Canadian’s red noses. Of course, the Canadians are socialists, so go figure. This past summer, I got a short ride with a woman who taught at the University of New Mexico. She related to me her experiences in the field studying immunology and epidemiology among primitive peoples in South America, and had spent significant time living among at least three tribes. These tribes were remote and did not interact with “outsiders” normally, but she and two other companions were welcomed for some reason or other. I had been thinking a lot about primitive communism, and wanted to discuss it in something I was writing at the time. I had been having a little trouble finding much information about specific examples of primitive communists, so naturally I discussed with her whether they practiced common ownership. She told me they did, and recommended a couple of books about related subjects. I was happy to know that there are still people in the woods in South America who are perfectly happy not to interact with society at all, and that the economic system they saw fit to use was primitive communism. These examples do not entail people groups that have developed radical revolutionary material philosophies that threaten the free world. Nor do they represent submission to the mandates of violent and repressive totalitarian regimes. These people share things not because they are afraid of government purges and persecution, or even because they put a lot of thought into it, but because it is practical, it works for them, and perhaps most significantly, it is all they have ever known. People say that communism can’t work, but it does work, and has worked for thousands of years longer than capitalism has “worked” (or has exploited the work of others). More often than not, though, when people say communism can’t work, they are more-orless talking about Marxism. The statement that communism can’t work is immediately falsifiable. The Hutterites of the Northern United Sates and Canada have maintained a communist economy since 1529, for example. How does Marxism compare? Marx’s guesses regarding the unfolding of the class struggle are also immediately falsifiable. His critique of the system of wage exploitation and many other things might be wonderful, but the industrial revolution, about which he seemed to maintain a quiet optimism, changed the world in many ways that he did not account for. The working class, although they continue to be exploited by the profit system, have grown to be far
less revolutionary in temper than they were in Europe in his day. They are too comfortable, too apathetic, and too glued to their beers and TV remotes. Indeed, the same industrial-capitalist system that brought them under the yoke of wage slavery has made material goods so inexpensive that these poor working schlubs are now all rich, too, and far too dumbed down to comprehend even a few pages of “Das Capital”. They have four-wheelers, motor boats, cars, clothes, food, candy, take vacations, and can all too easily forget the class struggle, if indeed it has even ever occurred to them, at the end of each and every day. The old roman adage, “give the people bread and circus, and they will not revolt,” has been co-opted by the corporate ruling class and altered: “Sell the people bread and circus, and they will quietly serve you forever”. What revolutionary spirit Wal-Mart can’t kill, the socialist providence of the local foodstamp office and welfare agency will at least keep subdued and anesthetized. The peasant classes in America and elsewhere are provided with food, shelter, medical care, and significantly, a small disposable income. So they get enough of a piece of the consumerist pie to quell their anger, as well. In what places the revolutionary spirit of Marxism did take root and bear fruit (in places, by the way, which he considered too under-industrialized to be “ripe” for revolution- he predicted the workers of the Western Nations would revolt, not the Russians), the Socialist ruling classes could hardly resist the impulse to become more oppressive than the capitalist bosses, only furthering the plight of workers. Today, one of the remaining “communist” countries, China, has labor laws that are so non-existent that capitalist multinationals can hardly afford not to manufacture there and still stay competitive, human labor is so cheap and unprotected. So much for “redemption”! Political Marxism largely having gone by the wayside, I still believe there is now more than ever an overwhelming social need for widespread voluntary communism. The individualism that we have been socialized to want is unnatural, unhealthy, is the ultimate destroyer of the environment, and benefits only the merchant classes. People seeking their own piece of the pie their whole lives die alone. All the distractions they are sold never will compensate for this. The religion they display, the antidepressants they swallow, the goods they purchase for themselves, cannot make up for the fact that they live a life without meaning and without purpose. Humans are ultimately social creatures, and have an innate need for relationships with others. The selfishness and self-centeredness that individualist societies encourage is the ultimate destroyer human capacity to have meaningful relationships. Take that away and society begins to act like dogs eating one another, which is very suitable if you are a top dog. To participate in voluntary communism is to place the needs of one’s neighbor on par with one’s own needs. It is essentially combining the needs of the individual with the needs of one’s closest friends and allies, and combining their needs, and the service of those needs, with natural benevolent self-interest. To outline what is here meant by communism, let us turn once again to the dictionary definition, and break it down piece by piece:
“ a theory advocating elimination of private ownership of property or capital�
The advocacy of doing away with private property has traditionally come in a few flavors. One variety is simply forming a collective, in which rights to private ownership is voluntarily renounced as a pre-condition of membership. So in this sense, it is a group of people who wish to eliminate private ownership from within their ranks, or if it is not there to keep it out. Primitive communists, I would intuit, practice communism but have no such theory, because isolation from other ways of doing things might prevent them from having much awareness of the significance of their sharing of things, because they have always done so, know nothing else, and so have no basis for comparative analysis or critique. Other varieties of communism, including but not limited to Marxism, advocate elimination of the private property rights of others, such as the type advocated by the antagonist groups in the Peasant Wars of the sixteenth century. On this basis, we can therefore divide communism into three categories: Primitive communism, voluntary communism, and the last type, an involuntary, forced, or imposed communism. Primitive communists might have little to no self-awareness of their practice, voluntary communists might form or advocate forming groups that practice community of possessions, and communists-by-imposition such as Marxists advocate sharing among the willing as well as the unwilling. Historically, the latter type has fared the most poorly. In the case of Marxism, it is a well known case history. The Soviet Union and its satellite nations imploded, while China and its satellites, though still maintaining a stated goal of future communism, has largely departed from the path set out by Marx and is increasingly privatizing. It is not so easy to force an unwilling populace to embrace a collective ideal. In the case of movements like the Peasant uprisings before Marx, the oppressed class that sought to redeem itself by forcing wealth and power out of the hand of the oppressor was often crushed by the same fist that held a disproportionate share of wealth and power firmly to its own breast. Primitive communism has been known to be successfully practiced almost indefinitely by primitive peoples, at least until they are infected by too much contact with the outside world. Western missionaries are probably one of the most lethal groups of people that might infect and destroy a primitive communist culture, more often than not failing to separate between corrupt Western-ism or Americanism and whatever religious concepts they seek to propagate. Voluntary communism has fared more successfully than Marxist types, but less successfully on average than primitive types. While some groups have continued for hundreds of years through the present, others have collapsed, or renounced communism in favor of private ownership. The success of voluntary communist ventures seems to depend largely on the level of dedication to communist principles, specifics within the principles themselves, or external circumstances. That being said, some communist
groups have thrived and proliferated despite efforts of the ruling classes or the church to crush them, while some have buckled from the inside even in relatively easy external conditions. “ b: a system or condition real or imagined in which goods are owned commonly rather than privately and are available as needed to each one in a unified group sometimes limited, sometimes inclusive”
“Real or imagined” is a noteworthy phrase in this definition. Several authors, such as Plato, Etienne Cabet, and Sir Thomas More have described imaginary Utopian systems in their works in which community of possessions was a key feature. Imaginary future communism was a feature of Marx’s works that might have helped “sell” his programme of revolutionary socialism to its adherents. Others have used action instead of words and developed communist groups that immediately put communism into practice. People voluntarily engaging in such systems agree to equally share the things they own, at least among themselves. There are many different types of motivations that seem to inspire people to live this way. They can stem from political, philosophical, religious, pragmatic, economic and possibly a variety of other reasons. It can seem like a great sacrifice to not own and control the various things Americans tend to fill their houses up with, but there can also be strong reasons such a lifestyle could be more attractive to those who favor the practical or ideological over the comfortable. For instance, when a significant number of people share things, they can get away with owning a lot fewer things per capita. If a few dozen families share a field, they only need to own (and therefore purchase), say, one tractor instead of a few dozen to farm the field. So each would need to generate a lot less revenue to purchase the tractor. So working less for money, and more on things in life that actually matter, becomes not such a dream, as in America, but more of an attainable reality. Historically, this has been of great pragmatic value in harsh or uncertain conditions, such as settling a new land. Hardships are shouldered by the group as a whole instead of by one or a few people. So are financial burdens, and real productivity requirements. Grassroots communal development is also a suitable method for weathering uncertain economic times or disasters without losing the security of access to basic needs. The old argument against Marxism, that people will not work if their labor is not rewarded, just does not apply to small collectives. If one of fifty individuals works particularly hard, it can make a tangible difference to the group; the entire group can experience the benefit. Since the individual experiences what the group experiences, the hard working individual will not only experience the benefit of the actual fruits of her or his labor, but also a plethora of social rewards as well, as others can trace the origins of many benefits to her or him.
True, the diligence of one individual will not tangibly raise the GDP of a nation of millions, unless it is the labor of someone along the lines of a Nobel prize contender. Someone in Boston will not know to thank someone in Lubbock who sweated particularly hard over a given season for their infinitesimal contribution to their standard of living. So why would anyone try? If no matter how hard you worked, how much passion you placed into your contributions, society rewarded you in the exact same amount and way, sure, why try? That argument implodes, however, when scrutinously speaking about a small group of people. “and often composed of members living and working together : a similar system preventing the amassing of private goods and assuring equalitarian returns to those working”
Communist groups and communal living arrangements are often natural partners. By sharing a house or land, many other communist practices become almost natural. Communal living isn’t for everyone, and it is not necessary for the practice of communism. It is difficult for Americans, who are socialized to practice extreme individualism, to figure out how to live peacefully with each other. Some communal living situations are more successful than others. Some have various hang-ups that prevent them from working well. Communal living, for Americans who have never done it successfully, is learned behavior. This does not mean that everyone who tries to live this way has to operate with zero knowledge, or is doomed to failure. Talking to people involved with, communicating well and productively with others you are working with, and studying or visiting communities who have figured it out can aid in avoiding mistakes that have already been made and learned from over and over. Also, it is common but not universal for communist groups that exist in free-market countries to commercially interact with the larger society. This can be part of what is meant by “living and working together”. Some communes run collectively owned businesses. However, some important differences should be noted between a true communist enterprise and many “co-operatively owned” or “worker owned” businesses. Worker-owned or co-operatively owned businesses represent an important step toward communist-enterprise, and are valid in their own right. However, there are distinctions. In communist enterprise, the ownership structure is unique. It is truly collective in nature, and may or may not be divisible. In what cases it is divisible, the assets, rights, etc., are divisible only in equal portions. Profit is handled uniquely, as well. It is not funneled into anyone’s pockets, but is often used as future “working capital” or can be distributed outside the group or shared between groups, and the workers needs are either provided for by the commune, or money/ goods are distributed equally or on a by-need basis. Capital is not distributed in such a way that anyone is able to accumulate large sums they are privately entitled to. Communism and commercial interaction are not necessarily opposed, but communist practice and personal wealth or unequal distribution are
ideologically opposed. Worker-owned “collectives” may hide the fact that there still might be a majority owner, who gets the lion’s share of profits from the business, while the portion the workers actually own is comparatively small, sometimes only a fraction. It is a progressive step toward communist practice, but can be limited in value by various degrees. “Living and working” together can also mean, in more cases, that the community is selfsufficient and has little to no commercial interaction with outsiders. This is true of most primitive communist groups. It is also true for some voluntary communist groups. These differing ways of “living and working together” are not mutually exclusive. One can be done for the sake of developing the other, or they could completely overlap. That being said, I would like to turn to one other definition of communism that further support my general thesis. In the Harper Dictionary of Modern Thought, Communism is further defined by Bullock and Stallybrass as: “A term denoting: (1) A set of ideas and the ideological tradition…[sic] connected with them. Historically the point of reference for communist ideas is the communal ownership of all property. Thus primitive communism refers to non-literate societies, in which basic economic resources (such as land, boats, etc.) belong to the community as a whole and not to individuals or families. Religious groups (such as early Christians or medieval monasteries) are referred to as examples of communist organization; so are historical communities, such as Sparta, the Muenster Anabaptists, or the Jesuit Paraguay republic, as well as theoretical schemes for ideal societies, such as Plato’s Republic, Sir Thomas Moore’s Utopia, or Campanella’s City of the Sun.” (Def.1, 116) Thanks.