The main ideas of communism took shape by the middle of the 19th century. The doctrine developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was intended to become an alternative to traditional liberalism and conservatism. This became possible due to the rapid growth in the number of hired workers, which determined a new structure of society: the industrial proletariat class was opposed by the capitalists.
Backstory
The peculiarity of the mentality of the first proletarians was the lack of political culture and serious education, so the propaganda of fairly radical communist ideas was not a difficult task. At the forefront of secret societies developing new ideas were German emigrants. In 1834, the "Union of Exiles" appeared in Paris, an organization that called for a violent change in the political structure. The "Union of Exiles" and the "Union of the Just" that arose after its defeat by the authorities offered to use the services of marginal strata of society - bandits, thieves and vagabonds - to achieve their goals. In 1839, members of the Justice League tried to arrangearmed uprising, but the attempt was unsuccessful. Some members of the society managed to avoid arrest and moved to London, where in 1847 the "Union of Communists" was created, headed by Marx and Engels.
Communist Manifesto
The first policy documents of the new organization quite clearly demonstrated the direction of the thoughts of the communists. The charter of the union also sounded the main idea of communism of the 19th century: the proletarian revolution, which will put an end to the exploiting industrialists, is inevitable. The "Manifesto of the Communist Party" that appeared soon after emphasized that the overthrow of the former system would be violent, and that the dictatorship of the proletariat would be established when the communists came to power.
Thus, the essence of the idea of communism was not to smooth out the contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but to escalate them. The reason is simple: without the growth of social tension, the idea of a communist revolution would have been unclaimed.
Basic principles and ideas of communism
Outwardly, the constructions of Marx and Engels drew a utopian picture of the future, in which injustice is forever over, and every person will be involved in government and the redistribution of income on a fair equalizing basis. This was supposed to be achieved as follows:
- all forms and types of property will be in common use;
- destruction of private property and all formsdependencies;
- creating a system of social relations based on a class approach;
- education of a new type of person, whose moral guidelines for selfless labor will replace the former material interest;
- prevalence of public interests over personal ones;
- implementation of the principle of equality of results as opposed to liberal equality of opportunity;
- fusion of the state and the communist party.
Principles of work organization
First of all, Marx was an economist, so he could not help but think about creating a new exchange equivalent to replace money, which also had to be withdrawn from the life of society. Among the basic ideas of communism is also the creation of labor detachments, membership in which every person, without exception, was obliged. To avoid the accumulation of property in one hand, it was supposed to abolish the right to transfer property by inheritance. Satisfaction of the basic needs of society would be transferred to the party-state, which, on the basis of central planning, would establish consumption norms ("from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs").
Logistics and banking were to play an important role in the life of a new type of state. This problem was also solved in line with the political and legal ideas of early communism: all means of transport and communications were to come under the control of the party-state, like all banks. The rents for the use of the land were withdrawn from the hands of their formerowners and sent to the state budget. All these measures, according to Marx and Engels, were to form the content of the period of transition to socialism.
Social aspect
One of the main ideas of communism is the creation of a new type of human. The State-Party was to take control of education. It was supposed to train the younger generation on a gratuitous basis. Serious attention was paid to the ideological training of the youth. All young men and women had to accept the basic ideas of communism and scientific socialism, carefully follow them in everyday life. Religion - as a belief system opposed to communism - was to be expelled from the spiritual sphere of society.
Elimination of inequality also assumed the gradual erasure of differences between the city and the countryside. However, this was planned to be done in a peculiar way: agriculture, managed from the center, was supposed to meet the needs of industrial enterprises.
Destructive elements of the theory
Communism was born in a tough confrontation with other theories of social development, especially with liberalism. If liberals assumed that every individual is free and his behavior is reasonable, then communism was based on the need to inject revolutionary ideas into society. The proletariat and the peasantry seemed insufficiently conscious to the ideologists of communism.
From this the conclusion followed that the enlightenment work of the communists could be sabotaged by his opponents. On theIn practice, this turned into a search for an enemy. All carriers of a different ideology, especially foreigners, unconditionally fell into this category. The communist theory of the upbringing of young people in practice comes down to memorizing the basic postulates of the doctrine without critical consideration of them. Hence the rejection of religion from the very first days of the existence of the doctrine: in essence, communism imposed a new faith on people, and to consolidate this position, it completely dissolved the individual in society.
Soviet experience
The first attempt to implement the basic ideas of communism was made in Russia. Although Marx himself was skeptical about the possibility of a communist revolution in Russia, history decreed otherwise. At present, the term "Marxism-Leninism" is used to denote the ideology established in the USSR, but the political practice of the young Soviet Republic was based on the ideas of Marx to a greater extent than Lenin.
The First World War and the Civil War resulted in a complete regression of the productive forces. A declassed and demoralized society turned out to be incapable of productive activity. Meanwhile, the new state needed funds to protect sovereignty in the face of possible expansion from Germany and the Entente, as well as to fight the white movement. At first, the Soviet government tried to adhere to orthodox Marxism: it published diplomatic documents of the Russian Empire in order to discredit imperialism, refused to pay debts, citing the abolition ofcommodity-money relations, etc. But already in April 1918, the failure of such a course became obvious.
War Communism
For many historians, there is a rather difficult problem: was war communism an idea or a necessity? On the one hand, it was an attempt to prevent a complete collapse of the economy, on the other hand, war communism was a doctrine that continued the theory of Marx and Engels. There is also a third position: there is no reason to link the post-revolutionary regime in Russia with orthodox communism. According to these researchers, we are talking only about the natural need of the society of the period of mass devastation to organize itself into a commune.
Researchers of the third group, as a rule, do not take into account the ideological component. According to the theory of orthodox communism, the revolution must spread from one country to the whole world, since the proletariat is everywhere an oppressed and disenfranchised class. Therefore, one of the goals of the policy of war communism was to create a regime that would allow the Soviet state to hold out in a hostile environment until the start of the world revolution.
Scientific Communism
The theory of permanent revolution turned out to be wrong. After realizing this fact, the Soviet leadership moved on to building socialism in a single country. Particular attention was again paid to ideology. The teachings of Marx and Engels, and later Lenin, began to be perceived as a scientific discipline, without studying which the Soviet person would notcould exist. The authors of the idea of scientific communism developed their own methodology of analysis, which, in their opinion, worked in any branch of science - both in history and in biology or linguistics. Dialectics and historical materialism became the basis of scientific communism.
Since the USSR was for a long time the only country in which a communist revolution took place, it was the Soviet experience that was put at the forefront. An essential part of the theory of scientific communism was Lenin's teaching on the technology of carrying out the proletarian revolution.
Communism and socialism
As already mentioned, communism from the very first days of its existence was sharply opposed to other teachings about the development of society. Utopian socialism was no exception. The theorists of communism pointed out that it was only on the basis of their teaching that it was possible to combine the working-class movement and the basic postulates of socialism. A particularly negative attitude of communist ideologists was caused by the absence in the ideological platform of socialism of the provision on the inevitability of a socialist revolution. In fact, the authors of the theory of communism from the very beginning carried out the idea that it was their teaching that was the only true one.
The meaning of the ideas of communism
Despite all the distortions and mistakes in applying the teachings of Marx and Engels in practice, the basic ideas of communism had a fairly significant positive impact on the development of social thought. It is from there that the idea of the need for a socially oriented state, capable ofto protect the oppressed sections of society from the arbitrariness of those in power, to give guarantees of a tolerable existence and provide an opportunity for self-realization. Many ideas of orthodox communism were accepted by the social democrats and implemented in the political practice of many states, indicating the possibilities for a balanced development of the socio-economic sphere of life.
