What were the idealistic qualities of communism - Research Paper Example

Research Paper, History and Political Science Topic: What were the idealistic qualities of communism…? Introduction and Idealistic qualities of Communism: Idealistic qualities of Communism are only on paper. If any political system is ideal, it cannot be Communism. However, this philosophy progressed through several stages. In principle it was the revolutionary philosophy that propounded the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was based on the economic principle of ability and need. The principle enunciated by Marx was followed by Russian communist leadership, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. Class domination was abolished as it was not conducive to the welfare of the masses. Production was not for profit and human labor had a new social role. The State was in absolute control of all the economic activities. Worker worked with the missionary zeal and produced commodities not for the profit of his individual master, but he was part of the collective efforts for the welfare of the state. He would work hard to give maximum output. Political power was not an instrument of organized class oppression as under Capitalism and Socialism and classes stood dissolved and there was no possibility of class oppression. Every human being shared equal responsibility, but all this was mere idealism and the grassroots realities for the common man were entirely different and they went through a period of unmentionable miseries. The realities of daily life for people living under Stalin Stalin did not learn something from his own sufferings in childhood and inflicted cruelties on the people and terrorized those who opposed him. He sent his political opponents to prison and labor camps, where grueling hard work awaited them. As a youth leader he had taken part in violent attacks and strikes and he continued with the same working style on getting the supreme position of power in the communist hierarchy in Russia. He initiated the five year plans for development of Russian economy, introduced collective farming, and took away land from the rich farmers to created state-owned farms. This was his first stroke of highhandedness to destroy the farming community and their individuality. He hoped for bumper production of food grains but that did not happen and many people starved. On the political front, he usurped more power and those who opposed his reforms were either shot dead or sent to Siberia. He created a dreaded intelligence agency to spy over the activities of people and to collect information from all over the world. Destiny played its part and more suffering awaited the people of Russia. World War II broke out and in 1941 Hitler broke the pact and invaded Russia. The Soviet army defeated the Germans and in the process millions of military personnel and the civilians died. A section of the people benefited during the regime of Stalin. He supported women empowerment, gave them jobs and education. On the economic front, with the improvement in transportation facilities and with the construction of new railway lines, people heaved a sigh of relief. Stalin exhibited sterling qualities of a statesman, when Germans captured Yakov, son from his first wife; they desired to trade him for a German Officer. Stalin did not relent and asserted that he had millions of sons and that Germans must free all or none of them. Communist ideology did not thrive under Stalin and people suffered much. The original revolutionaries lost much of their fire and inspiration and exploitation of the people began. Turn the pages of history, and we find that the people were always attracted by the lofty ideals of fraternity equality and liberty. When these rights were denied to majority of the citizens, societies went through great convulsions. With the onset of industrial revolution, workers migrated from rural areas to towns and lived in a new set up. Gradually, the worker became a victim of injustice, harassment and exploitation. Protest movements originated. The philosophy of Communism intervened and according to Karl Marx, a great social thinker and reformer, the root cause of exploitation was traced to private ownership of the means of production. If this ownership was transferred to State, exploitation would cease! Stalin tried to implement the same principles but did not succeed. When the exploiter class was been finally done away with, with no chances of it’s rising to power again, the State would be replaced by a classless society. Since there was no private property in a communist state, the individual was reduced to a cog in the giant state wheel. The old exploiter had been removed and a new exploiter took over and the people suffered more, with no machinery to look into their grievances. In the name of defeating the counter-revolutionaries, the state apparatus became more and more totalitarian. The process of dehumanization of the individual got accelerated. This was the post-revolution picture in Russia under Stalin. The so-called great ideals of classless society remained only on paper. The perfect state of Communism proved to be a mirage. Stalin continued to swear by Communist ideology amidst failure in all fronts. He had only passion for his political advantage as a world communist leader and his passion for the welfare of workers remained only a slogan. The pure ideology of Communism was not there and Stalin was only beating the dead corpse. Undoubtedly Stalin was to be blamed for some of the heinous crimes recorded in human history in the name of Communism. Actually, Marxist principles validate such crimes. Communism as propounded by Marx and the communism as was practiced by Stalin were poles apart. Robert Harvey in “A Short History of Communism”, writes, “Through all the ravages done in his name, Marx would have clung to one thought, now a twentieth-century political cliche: the end justifies the means. The terrible history of Marxism in the twentieth century would, in its creator’s view, have been justified if from it had emerged the kind of society he envisaged: one with no classes, no exploiters or exploited, no bureaucracy, and no ‘political’, as opposed to civil, society.” (23) Stalin tossed Communism like a rubber ball with his own interpretation, and once the revolution was over, the welfare of people seemed of no consequence to him. Heartless middle-level leadership authorized by Stalin presided over the destiny of people; they underwent untold miseries, grinding poverty and servitude comparable to the period of slavery of the black race in America. For the alleged cause of economic progress and collective farming, thousands were murdered and/or imprisoned. The pampered military machine ruled at will, people lived in fear psychosis. Emil Lederer argues, “A radical aim cannot dominate the scene to the exclusion of all others. Conditions must "settle down" as they usually do, and even if the state of revolution is officially declared to continue, it is no longer the masses that are behind the important decisions, but the new social setup.”(174) So, Stalin’s efforts to create a self-managed society, where means of production and distribution were collectively owned were a failure from all ends. One set of managers were replaced by another set of cruel managers and the conditions of the workers turned from bad to worse. What Irma Ivanovna Kniazeva revealed was from the point of view of a rural peasant. She was like any other simple folk in the village, who underwent tremendous hardship before and after the revolution. Her ideal of life was not Marx, Lenin or Stalin. “Her ideal of the good life was a peasant ideal: a barnyard full of animals and a granary full of grains”. (A Revolution, 118) But she had great regards for Lenin. “In her mind, Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution were inseparable”. (118)The following conversation between her interviewer and the reply she gave revealed the state of affairs of the poor people in the post-revolution era. “What do you think: If the revolution hadn't taken place in '17, how would you have lived?” “I can't say how. I don't know whether things were good or bad under Nicky Tsar Nicholas III. It seems to me that things were good. We had animals, our barnyard was full, and the granary was full of grain.”(131) This indicated that the aspirations of the people were not met and they went through suffering to an unimaginable extent and the revolution increased their miseries and destroyed their family life. These poor people had expected that something tangible would happen in their lives and the revolution would be the glorious path to their prosperity. But the authorities, who managed the post-revolution period, snatched their meager belongings and virtually rendered them destitute. Their children starved and some of them died of hunger .No authority were there to look into their grievances. Nadezhda Krupskaya was a radical fighter, women’s libber and pioneer of socialist education, in her own right. Being the wife of Lenin, she had the support of chair-power of topmost politician of the era in Russia. In her later years she tried her best to keep the legacy of Lenin, challenged the deviance of Stalin to the extent possible, and she published her famous Reminiscences of Lenin. Revolutionary spirit was nothing new to her. She was born into a family of radicals and with her life partner Lenin, led the working class to power in 1917. Both of them were part of the Bolshevik Party. Immediately thereafter, her areas of interests were towards overhauling and improvement of the education system and cultural life of the country. Lenin died in 1924, and that was the beginning of the period of setback for her intended goals. Bureaucratic and conservative forces were trying to come to the center stage of power, and in 1926 Stalin established his regime. With that her influence was gone and Stalin even went to the extent of debarring the mention of her name in public media or any other government publications. She was a great intellectual and was influenced by the writings of Marx. For her work in the cause of education and for propagating communist literature, she was arrested and sent to jail in Siberia. Lenin was already there in the jail. Socialist education was the subject dear to her heart and she propagated it from all the platforms available to her in the different stages of her life. The working style and the vision of Krupskaya was perfect and had she continued in power and implemented her intended programs in the education system and carried out the cultural reforms, the problems faced by peasants like Kniazeva would have been attended to. Krupskays was an ideological giant, whereas Kniazeva, was a simple believer the revolution would usher an era of prosperity for the peasants, and she would have definitely supported Krupskaya in her endeavors. The idealism of both the women was identical. The conditions in Nigerian Society were somewhat similar in comparison to the plight of the people in the era of revolution in Russia. In Nigeria the missionaries indulged in religious dominance and in Russia it was the ideological dominance. People suffered in both the cases. The prime aim of the powers in both the cases was to destroy the native culture and give them a psychological shock. The backbone and sustaining power of any nation was the cultural heritage. In both the cases, the authorities tried to replace the ancient values with new systems so that the next generation would lose their self-esteem, so that it would be easy for the ruling powers to dominate the people. In “Things Fall Apart” Chinua Achebe, highlighted how the role of customs and traditions was incredibly important and had immense bearing on the fate of all sections of the society. He writes, “The total effect was gay and brisk, but if one picked out the flute as it went up and down and then broke up into short snatches, one saw that there was sorrow and grief there.”(4)Through this observation, the author revealed about the societal conditions and its impact on the common man and how the traditional families functioned. After the first flush of enthusiasm created by the revolution was over the process of normalization continued, and most of the communist nations reverted back to square one. From internationalism, they were moving towards nationalism. The slogan, ‘Workers of the world unite!’ had lost much of its fire. Benedict Anderson writes, “Eric Hobsbawm is perfectly correct in stating that Marxist movements and stages have tended to become national not only in form but in substance, i.e., nationalist. There is nothing to suggest that this trend will not continue.”(2-3) The technological revolution and globalization added to the woes of communist countries, and they realized that they would not be able to function in isolation and there had to be free flow of information between all the countries, irrespective of their political philosophies. Conclusion: Marxist philosophy was right once upon a time, under certain conditions. It was supposed to bring prosperity to the working class; but it did not. The land of Lenin and Stalin disintegrated, and one hardly finds distinction between the functioning of the capitalist county and the so-called communist country. The position of the workers remains the same. If they work, they will get the salary. But in certain communist countries, the state of economy is so bad and the question is whether they will get the work! Works Cited Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso; 2006, Print. Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Everyman’s Library, 1994 Harvey, Robert. A Short History of Communism. Thomas Dunne; 2004,Print Lederer, Emil. State of the Masses: The Threat of the Classless Society. W.W. Norton & Co; 1940, Print. A Revolution of Their Own - Instructional Support Center Irma Ivanovna Kniazeva. 117. From Peasant to Journalist Web: http://isc.temple.edu/…/revolution-of-their-own.pdf, Accessed on May 21, 2013 Read More