Communism

COMMUNISM. – A term designating several doctrinal currents, not always in agreement except in their aspiration to make the enjoyment of economic goods universal—that is, for all—through more or less radical or coercive measures of socialization, not only of the means of production (capital, land, enterprises) but also of consumer goods. By abolishing private property, it aims to achieve social equality among all men.

CONTENTS:

I. Ancient Era

II. Modern and Contemporary Era

I. ANCIENT ERA. – Tracing communism, as it is conceived today, in primitive, Eastern, and classical antiquity is nonsensical.

Among primitive peoples, alongside communal property, private and familial property always functioned distinctly. In classical antiquity, neither military systems with strict discipline and communal living outside the family (as in Crete, Sparta, and Megara), nor sudden and quickly suppressed uprisings of the lower classes (such as those of Eunus in Sicily, Aristonicus in Asia Minor, and Spartacus in Rome), nor attempts at redistributing possessions—motivated not so much by justice or economic balance as by political reasons (such as the agrarian-communist tendencies of the Spartan king Cleomenes III)—can be qualified, except in a very broad and improper sense, as anticipations of communism in antiquity. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that, just as the social reforms resulting from the struggles between patricians and plebeians in the Roman world—by calling more or less notable contingents of proletarians to participate in land ownership and enter the class of proprietors—these movements ultimately strengthened the institution of private property, which communism instead seeks to destroy.

Certainly, egalitarian utopias were not lacking in Greece, as evidenced by the satire made of them by Aristophanes in Women in Parliament. Praxagora, the main character, finds the longed-for equality only in a common life for all: common lands, money, women, meals, leading to a blessed life, which, however, necessarily relies on the labor of slaves. The comedy suggests that communist ideas were already discussed in the Socratic circle, from which Plato and Xenophon emerged. In the ten books of the Republic, Plato considers it necessary to establish the most radical and complete communion to realize the perfect state (nothing of one’s own: neither money, nor house, nor lands, nor women, nor children). But this applies only to the two ruling classes of warriors and governors (philosophers); Plato does not concern himself at all with laborers, merchants, or slaves. In the twelve books of the Laws, he returns to and insists on the idea: the ideal, divine state will be that in which maximum solidarity and commonality prevail among citizens (v. especially V, 739). Xenophon (De vectigalibus) also makes proposals for socialization, but the classes of laborers and slaves are excluded, as they are considered mere instruments. Aristotle, in his Politics (II, 2), while criticizing Plato’s opinions, follows him quite closely; he only does not admit the extension of communism to private property. But in all these authors, communism is viewed from the perspective of the political class; the Cynics, however, view it from the perspective of the rejected classes, extending it to all men as such, that is, all equal and brothers.

Alongside political exigencies, from which communism arose in the Hellenic world—which presupposed the slavery of a large part of the population—a higher communism, founded on love of neighbor and equality among the children of God, emerged in the early Christian communities (Act., 4, 37). But it was not obligatory; just as each could freely sell all or part of their goods and put the proceeds in common, so they could keep them (cf. Act. 5, 1-10, the episode of Ananias and Sapphira). This voluntary poverty, later always practiced by religious Orders, was not well understood by many other heretical movements of later centuries: in the Gnostic, Manichaean, and Mazdakite heresies, which affirm the divine natural law of the communion of goods; in Montanism or Millenarianism, in which the expectation of the end of the world incites the abandonment of property for common benefit. Unequal streams of communist character, mostly derived from Manichaeism, run throughout the Middle Ages: under the names of Cathars, Patarines, Albigensians, or simply the poor, they are found scattered in Italy, France, and also in Germanic countries, Flanders, and Holland, even in the Balkans, embraced and practiced by Bogomils, Beguines, Joachimites, etc.

Sometimes this spiritual and religious veneer does not exclude collective violence. In 1248, it was the carders of Léau in Brabant who revolted; two years later, the Petits of Liège rose up; almost at the same time, metallurgists and weavers rebelled in Dinant and Huy; peasants and commoners joined, fanatical and desperate, to the false Baldwin of Flanders, the pretended emperor, from whom they expected a great and full social reform. Bruges, Ypres, Ghent were in revolt in 1348, and workers, led by weavers, proposed to exterminate the "good people," that is, the rich and property owners. Siena and Florence were shaken by the uprisings of 1371-85 and 1378-82, which marked the extreme effort and defeat of the common people after a century of slow and arduous ascent. The movements of the Bruco in Siena, the Straccioni in Lucca, and the Ciompi in Florence represent the uprising of classes sacrificed by entrepreneurs, who attempted to seize power. The insurrections of the peasants of southern Germany and the famous jacquerie of France in 1358 did not have marked idealistic movements. The German uprisings were limited to the liberation of slaves and serfs: the revolt of the Jacques, however, was an explosion of discontent among the peasants of the Île-de-France and Beauvaisis, who, influenced against the nobility, sacked the lords' residences; at their head was a peasant, Caillet, whom the nobles contemptuously called "Jacques Bonhomme," hence the name jacquerie for the revolt.

While weapons fell from the hands of the insurgents, the unfulfilled aspiration for a more equitable distribution of goods asserted itself in the realm of utopia (from the Greek οὐ τόπος, "a place [that is] nowhere"). The first typical example is Utopia by T. More (1516); it is imitated by The Celestial Worlds by Doni (1562), The City of the Sun by Campanella (1623), The Comic History of the States and Empires of the Moon and the Sun by Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-53), The History of the Sevarambes by Vairasse (1677), etc., up to Floating Islands by Morelly, where the communist principles of his Code of Nature (Amsterdam 1775) are applied, in which the principle is formulated: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

Greater importance in the 18th century is the critique of private appropriation by numerous writers who declare it destructive of the natural equality among men. From Meslier to Rousseau, from D'Holbach and Linguet to Mably, to Morelly, there is an entire current, at least potentially, communist.

The terms "socialism" and "communism" often coincide or intertwine and become confused. It is nearly impossible to always distinguish the two terms precisely, and one cannot trace the history of communism without, in some way, socialism (v.).

Within the climate created by the French Revolution—of that revolution which socialists and communists of all shades defined as a "bourgeois" revolution—one can, in broad terms, identify the first stirrings of modern communism. Even in earlier revolutions of urban plebeians or rural masses, communist impulses and ideals had emerged in more or less partial or primitive forms. But in the climate of modern France and the great revolution, communist ideals appeared for the first time on a, so to speak, universal plane, closely connected and intertwined no longer with backward plebeians but with intellectual and bourgeois elements from one of Europe’s most advanced regions.

French Revolution (v.), communist tendencies arose under the pressure of a rationalistic fanaticism (rightly or wrongly, one has spoken in this regard of a particular form of "secular theocracy") or of a vague, traditional, and primitive anarchic impulse. The characteristic messianic attitude that generally accompanies communist movements since antiquity sometimes seems to fade or disappear under the influence of Enlightenment and rationalism, only to resurface later, transformed and strengthened, through a new "creed" firmly grounded in rigidly enunciated class-based foundations.

In August 1792, the most extremist revolutionary currents decisively gained the upper hand in Paris. The revolutionary front thus began to split: the differentiation between "bourgeois" on one side and artisans and workers on the other sharpened; in political terms, the differences between constitutional monarchists and moderate republicans appeared smaller than those between the latter and the left-wing republicans, around whom the number of generic "social reformers" increasingly grew. The dictatorship of Robespierre identified itself with a fanatical will to fight "against the internal and external enemy"; Robespierre was not averse to finding a compromise formula with those elements that sought to abolish private property more or less entirely: in practice, however, the regime of the Terror meant not only a ruthless struggle against moderate elements but also repression against groups of the far left (Hébert).

The opposition of a "real" equality (which would necessarily have to be achieved) to a "formal and apparent" equality is perhaps the main Leitmotif, starting from 1795, Babeuf (v.), BUONARROTI, FLLIPPO (v.), and those who participated in the "conspiracy of equals." These figures mark in a truly characteristic way the transition from Jacobinism to revolutionary communism. Buonarroti, in particular, played a notable role, as he can be considered one of the principal links in the chain connecting the "communists" of the late eighteenth century to those who were active at the time of the Paris Commune, who indeed preserved memories and traditions of him.

At the head of the new revolutionary regime, as true dictators, Buonarroti wanted to place men "free from prejudices" and "virtuous," untouched by the attraction of money and honors, all striving instead to realize the ideal of equality. To respect "true" democracy, according to Buonarroti, one would have to attribute, at least initially, less value to the ballot than to the certainty of having energetic men at the helm of the revolution. Buonarroti was the "master" of Blanqui, who particularly absorbed his energetic will and dictatorial orientations.

The new, concrete demands of the modern proletariat asserted themselves more or less openly in the writings of Saint-Simon (v.), in Fourier’s (v.) projects for "phalansteries," in the experiment of "New Harmony," and, in general, in all of Owen’s (v.) activities. These concrete and modern demands, however, intertwined at times with religious demands, at times with naive utopias, at times with predominantly humanitarian attitudes. In these and other "precursors" of socialism and communism (whom Marxist communism, self-described as "scientific," later liked to define, not without a tone of criticism and disdain, as "utopian"), one notes ideological and spiritual connections with the French Revolution or with humanitarian orientations in the eighteenth-century sense: these "precursors" are, in broad terms, continuators of democratic, rationalist, and Enlightenment ideologies, which they intend to carry to their extreme consequences, particularly seeking to "develop" them on the economic terrain, on the plane of so-called "social justice."

In England, a social thinker of the eighteenth century with a religious background, Robert Wallace, wondering how man, despite being endowed with so many gifts, still found himself at such a low material and moral level, believed he had found a panacea in communism. Still in England, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, William Godwin can be considered a typical exponent of communism with anarchist leanings. The absolute contrast of interests between capitalists and workers was theorized, more or less contemporaneously, by Charles Hall, who was of the opinion that, with the development of modern civilization, wealth would become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small minority of privileged individuals. The so-called "Luddites" (machine-breakers) represented a characteristic aspect of the revolutionary movement in England at the dawn of modern industrialization: in machines, they saw the instruments of a crueler capitalist domination, the cause of a serious increase in unemployment (v. storia; SOCIALISMO).

BIBL.:
In addition to the works cited in the preceding section, see: A. Mathiez, La Révolution française, 3 voll., Parigi 1922-1927; G. Lefebvre, La Révolution française, Parigi 1930; J. Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française, 4 voll., Parigi 1922-1924; A. Lichtenberger, Le socialisme au XVIII siècle, Parigi 1895; G. Bourgin, Babeuf, Parigi 1907; P. Robiquet, Buonarroti et la secte des Égaux, Parigi 1910; G. Weill, Histoire du catholicisme libéral en France, Parigi 1909; G. D. H. Cole, A History of Socialist Thought, 5 voll., Londra 1953-1960; E. Dolléans, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier, 2 voll., Parigi 1936; M. Leroy, Histoire des idées sociales en France, 3 voll., Parigi 1946-1954; G. Bourgin, Le socialisme français de 1789 à 1848, Parigi 1948; G. M. Bravo, I socialisti utopici, Torino 1968; L. Dal Pane, Il socialismo italiano dal 1815 al 1848, Bologna 1949; A. Saitta, Filippo Buonarroti, Roma 1950; G. Manacorda, Il socialismo nella storia d'Italia, Bari 1966; G. Procacci, Studi sulla fortuna del « Manifesto », Roma 1968. Celestino Melzi.

Even when "scientific" communism, rigidly classical, "hard" and authoritarian, ironic and polemical toward "bourgeois freedom" and all petty-bourgeois and democratic ideals, had largely supplanted the eclectic and democratic ideals of its "precursors" (previously mentioned), new adversaries would arise from time to time in the guise of "fellow travelers" and "comrades of the road," who would soon become the new "heretics." In France, Proudhon (v.) would prove a dangerous opponent to Marxist communism due to his markedly individualistic traits, not without appeal in France. BAKUNIN, MICHAIL (v.), authoritarian communism of Marxist imprint would find an even more formidable adversary to overcome, owing to his combativeness and tireless dynamism (in his countless and violent pamphlets, he advocated with simple, materialistic formulas the integral freedom to be conquered and defended against any state, even one that claimed to be proletarian: the Russian exile placed more trust in the Russian, Italian, and Spanish plebeians than in the "modern proletarians," mechanized and "bourgeoised," of England and France). Blanqui (Louis-Auguste, b. 18 Feb. 1805 in Puget-Théniers, d. in Paris 1 Jan. 1881), akin in various respects to Marxist communist ideologies, deepened the technical aspects of insurrection but disregarded objective economic and political conditions. According to Blanqui, communism could not be introduced from above, through enlightened and philanthropic intentions, but only through a tenacious and unrelenting struggle from below. With the victory of the revolution, all judges and high-ranking officials should be dismissed en bloc: other functionaries of the old regime should be retained only "conditionally." With particular reference to France, Blanqui envisioned a dictature parisienne, which would direct the republic until the masses were "mature" for democracy. Lassalle, whose thought can be fully understood only within the framework of German idealism, of which he was in some ways a curious epigone, organized the German proletariat, seeing the most important and immediate goal in universal suffrage and seeking temporary agreements and compromises with Bismarck himself. Much later, after Marx's death, SORDELLO (v.) would develop revolutionary syndicalism in contrast to "scientific" communism, with a marked hostility toward "bourgeoised" socialism and parliamentarism in general.

"Scientific" and "critical" communism (which came to be increasingly identified with modern communism) found its most notable ideological expression in the famous Manifesto of Marx (v.) ENGELTAL (v.), written in January 1848 on behalf of the "League of Communists."

To Marx and Engels, the history of human society appeared as a history of continuous class struggles. Free men and slaves, barons and serfs, guild masters and journeymen, oppressed and oppressors always waged an unceasing struggle, hidden or open. Modern bourgeois society, arisen from the ruins of feudalism, has not eliminated class antagonisms but has merely created new classes and new forms of oppression. In the past, it is true, the bourgeoisie played a decisively revolutionary role in history, tearing apart feudal bonds and leaving no other tie between man and man than naked self-interest. "It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism in the icy water of egotistical calculation." The bourgeoisie has subjected the countryside to the city, created enormous urban centers, and made backward or barbaric countries dependent on civilized ones. But now the productive forces at the bourgeoisie's disposal no longer serve to advance civilization and the relations of production: "The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to contain the wealth created by them."

Instead of sentimental regrets and lamentations, critical communism thus intends to analyze the real historical process. It views alms and philanthropy with repugnance and contempt and instead seeks to make proletarians fully aware of their concrete situation. Influenced by particular aspects of the English industrial situation in the first half of the 19th century, Marx and Engels believed that labor in large factories was becoming increasingly harsh for workers, that wages tended to decrease; moreover, modern industry would increasingly transform "the patriarchal master's small workshop into the great factory of the industrial capitalist"; the more modern industry advanced, the more men's labor would be supplanted by that of women and children. As a whole, the middle class would be crushed by the competition of large capitalists.

Within the proletariat, communists came to be the most "resolute and progressive" faction. The immediate aim of communists is the organization of the proletariat into a class party, the destruction of bourgeois domination, and the conquest of political power.

It is necessary to warn the proletariat against ambiguous and unscientific forms of pseudo-communism, against generic social allurements that, upon closer analysis, would reveal their decidedly reactionary character. One must thus beware of that curious "feudal socialism, half elegy and half lampoon, partly an echo of the past and partly a threat of the future, which often wounded the bourgeoisie with wittily bitter and fierce judgments," but incapable of understanding history and a typical expression, albeit demagogic, of a dispossessed aristocracy. It is also necessary to combat "petty-bourgeois socialism," characteristic primarily of France, expressing the views and criteria of small urban and rural proprietors: this "socialism" would simply restore the old means of production and exchange and, with them, the old property relations: it is, however, "reactionary and utopian socialism," beneath the veil of idyll. As for the systems of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, etc., they—and other similar systems—see the class conflict but do not recognize the proletariat's decisive and special historical function; they merely pave the way for new ideologies, with small, futile experiments devoid of scientific value.

"The communists turn their attention especially to Germany, because Germany is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution, which is taking place under generally more advanced conditions of civilization and with a much more developed proletariat than England had in the 17th century and France in the 18th. For this reason, the bourgeois revolution in Germany can only be the immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution." Marx and Engels thus believed that, due to Germany's unique historical developments, this country, relatively backward from an economic standpoint, would, because of its contradictions, become the leader of the revolution. This prediction proved entirely mistaken, but it served as a starting point—and it is very important to bear this in mind—for similar considerations by Lenin and Trotsky on the concrete possibilities of a proletarian revolution in Russia. Where Marx was mistaken in 1848, Lenin and Trotsky saw tactically right in 1917.

The Manifesto concluded with the assertion that communists disdain to conceal their principles and aims and ended with the well-known battle cry: "Workers of the world, unite!"

The question of the origin of capital is resolved by identifying a commodity that can increase in value, such that, when sold, a profit is realized. This commodity is precisely labor power. A day’s wage represents what is needed to sustain the worker, but it does not represent what the worker produces in a day’s labor. Labor power, by producing a value greater than its own worth—that is, a surplus value—generates capital (v. MARX). The proletariat’s struggle against its "exploiters" thus becomes sharply detached from all generically democratic and humanitarian traditions. A powerful "myth" comes to grip vast strata of the working class.

This new "scientific" doctrine of communism is closely linked to the historical materialism (v.). In polemic with Hegel’s BACH (v.), Marx and Engels identified human needs as the driving force of history. "My method," Marx said, "is not that of Hegel: because I am a materialist and Hegel is an idealist. Hegel’s dialectic is the foundation of all dialectic, but only once it has been freed from its mystical form; this is precisely what distinguishes my method." Marx thus accused Hegel of seeing in the philosophy of history the history of philosophy, indeed reduced simply to his own particular philosophy. The founders of critical communism sought to differentiate their communism, termed precisely "historical" or "dialectical," from what they preferred to call "vulgar" communism. Between the two conceptions of materialism, in the intention of Marx and Engels, there were to be no possibilities of union or confusion. Nevertheless, their polemical stance against the representatives of idealist philosophy (deemed reactionary) and Marx and Engels’ greater aptitude for addressing the problems of revolution rather than those of philosophy gave rise to numerous uncertainties in their philosophical system, to assertions that could perhaps be traced back to "vulgar" materialism. However, it should not be overlooked that, above the contradictions mentioned, the "philosophy of praxis" for Marx signified a conception of history interpreted as the "continuous creation" of human activity. Indeed, in Capital, Marx stated: "As Vico says, the history of man is distinguished from the history of nature in that we have made the former and not the latter." Naturally, a fundamental question remained open: did historical materialism enunciate an absolute law of the becoming of reality, or was it merely a useful "red thread" of an empirical nature for the revolutionary, to avoid losing touch with reality?

Marx and Engels were aware that communism and socialism were to some extent related terms: they preferred the former, however, because the term "socialism" appeared to them more generic and perhaps even "profane" due to "humanitarians" and reformers of various tendencies. The abolition of the State—for Marx and Engels—had but one meaning for communists: the abolition of classes (that is, the abolition of the need for the organized power of one class to keep another subjugated). This assertion and others like it suggested a future point of convergence with anarchist communism: in practice, however, Marxists and anarchists never managed to agree on the concrete moment when the demolition of the State and the abolition of the "transitional" dictatorship should begin.

The First International was, as is known, the terrain of bitter struggle between Marx and Bakunin. The Second International, formed after 1880 through the federation of various workers' parties, instead chose to define itself as socialist: it indeed emphasized the directive function of the party vis-à-vis the trade union, participated successfully in electoral competitions (especially in Germany), and achieved notable successes for workers in terms of wages and social security.

The First World War, however, led many socialist parties to adhere to the war policies of their respective governments: as a result, the Second International suffered a grave crisis. Lenin, Trotsky, and the other leaders of the Russian Revolution waged an extremely violent campaign against the Second International, which they defined as the International of "social-patriots" and traitors. In opposition to it, they brought to life a new organization, the Third International, which, to differentiate itself from "opportunism," sought to reclaim the term used by the young Marx and called itself "communist."

From this moment onward, socialism and communism appear once again as distinctly differentiated movements, even if, faced with the massive dogmatism of communism—identified with the opinions of certain leaders of Russian politics—socialism displayed a range of nuances, ranging from direct or indirect support for communism ("maximalism," "fusionism," etc.) to a clearly democratic policy.

For the development of communist ideology in Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe, as well as for the history of the principal communist parties, see the entry BOLSCEVISMO. Here, we limit ourselves to outlining the essential features of Leninist communism (v. LENIN). Lenin emphasized the most authoritarian elements inherent in Marxist communism, combating with energy all "petty-bourgeois," "social-patriotic" deviations, as well as Russian socialism with its more or less agrarian, petty-bourgeois, and democratic character. Trotsky (v. TROTZKIJ) maximized the internationalist ideal and theorized the so-called "permanent revolution." Unlike Trotsky, Stalin (v. STALIN) instead asserted the possibility of building the new society on Russian soil itself, through industrialization and a series of grandiose five-year plans. In exile, Trotsky sought to give life to the Fourth International, which, however, had very little development and appealed to the "universal" ideals of the 1917 Revolution. With the victory of the Russian armies in the Second World War, Soviet communism took an increasingly pronounced nationalist turn: Russia, in fact, developed a policy characteristic of a great power and revived ideologies inspired by Pan-Slavism and certain national traditions of foreign policy.

Soviet communism, rigidly atheistic, while accentuating its hostility toward Catholicism, found ways to conclude agreements and compromises with the "Orthodox" Church, always in function of an expansionist foreign policy and Pan-Slavic "appeals."

Harsh ideological crises have, however, recently characterized the life of communism: the most serious "heresy" was undoubtedly that represented by Marshal Tito, leader of Yugoslavia. This was the reaction of local communism to the danger of total alignment with the plans of Russian political and economic expansionism. Similar "heresies" occurred in other satellite countries of Russia: they were labeled as deviations inspired by a "national communism." Such movements (with the exception of that led by Tito in Yugoslavia) were rapidly and harshly repressed in Hungary, Poland, etc.

BIBL.:
- K. Marx - F. Engels, Manifesto del Partito Comunista, ed. critica a cura di E. Cantimori Mezzomonti, Firenze 1948;
- K. Marx, Il Capitale, trad. it., Roma 1951-53;
- F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach e il punto d'approdo della filosofia classica tedesca, trad. it., Roma 1949;
- G. V. Plechanov, Saggi sul materialismo storico, trad. it., Roma 1946;
- V. Lenin, Opere scelte, trad. it., Roma 1947-50;
- L. Trotzkij, La rivoluzione permanente, trad. it., Milano 1946;
- J. Stalin, Questioni del leninismo, trad. it., Roma 1949;
- A. Gramsci, Il materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce, Torino 1948;
- N. Berdjaev, Le fonti e il senso del comunismo russo, trad. it., Milano 1949;
- G. Wetter, Il materialismo dialettico sovietico, trad. it., Torino 1948;
- A. Rosenberg, Storia del bolscevismo, trad. it., Firenze 1950;
- G. D. H. Cole, Storia del pensiero socialista, trad. it., Torino 1949-50;
- E. H. Carr, La rivoluzione bolscevica, trad. it., Torino 1950-52;
- AA. VV., Il comunismo, Roma 1948.

G. B.

The Second World War, with the threat of German expansionism, had led to an alliance between communist Russia and the democratic powers of the West. However, with the end of the war, the temporary reasons for this alliance ceased to exist. Russian policy, in fact, skillfully exploited all the uncertainties and weaknesses of the "Westerners." Communism had the opportunity for wide diffusion in Asia, especially through the total conquest of China. In Asia, communism still presents itself in a somewhat initial phase, strongly emphasizing various "local" nationalisms in contrast with European and American interests. In these still "primitive" territories, the actual communist postulates are generally kept in the background. In the West, on the other hand, communism encountered significant resistance, strengthened by the Atlantic Pact. The policy of religious persecution, expansionist nationalism, and the extermination of "dissidents" (Rajk, Kostov, etc.) produced vast and varied opposition in America and Europe, stemming from different political and moral perspectives, but in agreement in practically recognizing the incompatibility between communism and freedom.

The evolutionary process of modern communism divides into two clearly distinct periods, each possessing its own characteristics and dominated by certain theoretical principles that, while not entirely identical, lead roughly to the same conclusion. The first movement of ideas in a communist direction partly connects to utopian currents, which had delighted in the fantastical description of perfect cities or islands, as in Campanella and Thomas More, and predominantly to the humanitarian and egalitarian conceptions of the French Enlightenment, intermingled with utopian elements. From vaporous humanitarianism stems its messianic content of liberating man from the slavery of capital, for the establishment of a society in which the individual may find total satisfaction of his needs. From the absolute egalitarianism and democratism of the Enlightenment derives its clear position of struggle against private property. In his work on the origin and foundations of inequality, Rousseau had already laid down the principles from which communist ideas were to develop. Starting from an abstract concept of nature, he had asserted that, although men are born with congenital physical and spiritual disparities, the inequality caused by these had little influence in the original state. True inequalities arise with the introduction of the institution of private property, for whose defense the system of social laws would have been surreptitiously and deceptively devised. The two principles upon which pre-Marxist utopian communism would leverage were clearly announced by Rousseau and, in a more attenuated form, by the Encyclopedists Diderot and Voltaire, who hesitated to deduce from the concept of equality the fatal consequence of condemning property.

In the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789 and the Constitution of 1791, the moderate current triumphed. The equality recognized in man was merely formal—equality before the law—and the institution of property was consecrated and defended, with only the mitigating factor of a generic social aspect. Revolutionary currents soon began to assert the necessity of moving, according to the logic of the egalitarian principle, toward real equality and to demand the suppression of private property as the origin and source of all inequalities. Thus, from the agnostic philosophy of the Enlightenment, two antagonistic movements emerge: liberalism, which carries the principle of total human autonomy to its ultimate consequences, and revolutionary communism, which presses upon the egalitarian principle, from which it deduces the condemnation of property. Its critical point, therefore, lies in this principle; if it falls, so too does its theoretical construction.

The flaw in this approach consists in the improper transition from abstract equality of human nature to concrete, factual equality. All men, considered in their essence, are perfectly equal, since in each the same nature is realized with its constitutive parts and general exigencies, from which every individual derives certain fundamental rights equally possessed by all. On the abstract plane of nature, therefore, all men are equal; they are not equal, however, on the concrete plane and within the machinery of social life. Rousseau himself acknowledged that men are born physically and morally different; the first disparities on the concrete plane thus derive from generation itself or from nature, which actualizes human essence differently. To these undeniable disparities are added those that each individual develops through the use of originally received capacities. Individuals, endowed with varying physical strength and intellectual and volitional power, arrange themselves almost spontaneously in a hierarchical scale, according to the use or abuse of their faculties, the greater or lesser intensity of their labor, the vigor placed in the mastery of their passions and the exploitation of subjective and objective possibilities, so that upon the equality of nature is grafted a factual inequality, which is also natural. It is a manifest error to attribute to property alone the origin of all social inequalities and thus to deduce its condemnation from the concept of equality.

Property produces solely economic inequalities; if these, however, are a consequence—as often happens—of the differing capacities of individuals and their particular industriousness in making the most of their gifts, they cannot in principle be condemned, so long as they do not exceed certain limits beyond which social distress is created. The pretension, therefore, of communist currents to achieve total real equality in social organization by abolishing the institution of property proves utopian. Social equality cannot be arithmetic but must be proportional: that is, every individual must in society enjoy particular rights, in addition to the universal ones arising from nature, in proportion to his capacities and the contribution he can make or has made to the common good. Such proportion must also be respected regarding possession.

It cannot, however, be concealed or denied that communist ideologies contain a kernel of truth, which consists in the exigency of adjusting, as far as a country’s economy permits, the conditions of existence of the various classes, so as to attenuate the most glaring economic disparities, provide for a fairer distribution of wealth, and achieve a standard of social life not merely tolerable but one of general well-being. This, however, can be attained without the suppression of property and outside any revolutionary movement, through appropriate structural reforms that emphasize its social function.

The egalitarian principle and utopian elements have passed into the scientific communism of the second period, though mingled with others derived from a particular philosophical and economic conception, which forms the theoretical substratum of Marxism. Regarding the philosophical foundation of Karl Marx’s theory, see the entries V. MARXISMO; MATERIALISMO DIALETTICO; MATERIALISMO STORICO. In the present discussion, only the aspects of communism concerning economics, sociology, politics, and religion will be critically evaluated.

1. Communist Economics

The axiom from which the economic conception of communism takes its starting point echoes the theme of total equality. Everything belongs to everyone; nature with its economic goods is the common banquet of all men, and thus private appropriation with the exclusion of others is an injury to justice, from which follows the further consequence that earthly goods can belong only to the community. The sophism is clearly embedded in this sequence of axiomatic assertions. First of all, as with previous theories, one must observe the transition from the abstract to the concrete. In the abstract—that is, considering men in the most universal demands of their nature—all earthly goods are destined by the objective order for their use, so that with them they may attain the ends of life. Consequently, all men have an equal right to their use, but this right is not a positive ownership of earthly goods by the whole of humanity; rather, it is a faculty to make them one’s own, uniting them with the ends of the human person through a positive act of appropriation, from which real ownership arises. In other words, the economic good is originally common in a negative sense, insofar as, as long as it is free, it can be occupied by anyone who wishes. If the economic good, as communism asserts, belonged to all humanity in a positive manner, even the possession of political collectivities would be against justice, since this would exclude the possession of other communities. Communism, therefore, simultaneously affirms and denies the principle of the original ownership of economic goods by all men, since it admits the possession of the community. But if this common or national possession does not violate justice, neither does private possession: a universal principle cannot suffer any exception. Communism destroys itself with its own weapons; for a more extended justification of private property, however, V. PROPRIETÀ.

Condemned as unjust, private appropriation is countered by communism with the necessity of collectivist management, in which the State, owner of all means of production, provides for administration and distribution. To individual capitalism, it opposes a State capitalism. Its introduction, however,

does not eliminate the defects justly lamented in the capitalist organization but multiplies them, adding others that are more serious and more dangerous. First of all, it is anti-economic, since it suppresses the driving stimulus of every economy, removing the spur of the producer’s immediate interest, a source of energy in the pursuit of utility that cannot be replaced by other incentives. Moreover, it makes saving impossible, the second vital spring of production, since, with private property abolished, man would no longer have any incentive to make sacrifices to provide for future needs. The State would have to replace individual savers, setting aside reserves that would weigh more heavily on the working classes than under the regime of individual property. To further disrupt the economic process is the inevitable encroachment of politics, before which the criterion of economic convenience in the organization of productive factors must capitulate, and the State monopoly, flawed by more serious defects than personal monopoly, due to the impossibility of escaping its pressure and mitigating its stifling effects through competition. Finally, collectivist economics cannot escape the system of planning, which becomes its general rule and normal process. A central authority would have to maneuver the entire varied, complex, and colossal economic mechanism of an entire people, interfering in man’s life in a capillary manner to achieve productive ends, establishing production quotas for every commodity, regulating consumption, fixing professions and their distribution, thereby introducing the slavery of labor. In collectivist and planned economics, the human person thus loses all autonomous value with the total suppression of his freedom of choice, which he can never assert against an employer who owns all means of subsistence and can dispose of them in absolute independence.

The cornerstone of communism’s economic conception is the Marxist theory of value, which has been the subject of particular criticism to demonstrate its total lack of foundation. The value of a commodity does not derive solely from the quantity of social labor crystallized in II. Exchange value results from many components: desire, utility, the rarity of the product, the need of the buyer, and other factors, among which labor is undoubtedly to be counted, insofar as it ordinarily increases the utility of the commodity. The primary source of exchange value, as Aristotle already established, is man’s need and the commodity’s ability to satisfy it—that is, utility.

2. Communist Sociology

The social conception of communism rests on the concept of class, of the struggle between classes, and of a future messianic era in which, with the disappearance of class division, struggle and competition will cease, giving way to an era of fruitful collaboration in a renewed society. “The history of humanity, as it has unfolded thus far, is the history of class struggle,” and bourgeois society, as the Manifesto of the Communists, written by Marx and Engels, affirmed, would not have destroyed the opposition of classes, though it had simplified it, reducing it to the opposition of only two: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Yet a time will come, it prophesied, when fratricidal struggle will mark the advent of a new civilization, of a classless society without economic conflicts, without contradictions and without injustices. “In place of bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms, there will arise an association in which the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all.”

The first difficulty that arises to undermine this fantastic construction stems from the very concept of social class, which is difficult to define in a way that attributes to it an exact and unambiguous content, capable of scientifically marking its limits and precisely establishing where it begins and where it ends. The individuals of a given social complex are distributed into categories so different and so tenuously separated from one another that it is impossible to determine exact divisions. Without denying, however,

the existence of classes, of which an approximate concept can be reached, it must be firmly denied that the only cause producing their formation, as communism supposes, is the economic one. Undoubtedly, an economic element is mixed in the constitution of social classes, but it is an error to elevate it to an exclusive and determining factor, since other motives of a higher and spiritual order, free from any economic consideration, contribute to associating men with one another and making them feel a certain affinity. The concept of class in communism is distorted by the more general conception of history, whose evolutionary motion would be dominated by material interest.

The second obstacle on which the social theory of communism founders is the class struggle, likewise attributed to economic factors. History demonstrates that classes can have other origins, such as religion, which gives rise to priestly castes, or civil and military functions, which create special categories of citizens. History itself shows that the alleged class struggle has not always existed, even in those social organizations where it should have arisen due to the exploitation of one class by another, as among the castes of India. Class struggle is therefore not a general and necessary law, nor, as has been observed, even in contemporary society, does it depend exclusively on economic factors, but rather on a complex psychological state of the masses, in which the proletariat’s sense of social inferiority plays a large part, intertwined with spiritual motives.

The communist assumption regarding the homogeneity and compactness of the two classes into which contemporary society is supposedly simplified also proves groundless. Neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat is so united as to lack internal fractures and profound, insurmountable antagonisms, such as those arising from national or patriotic reasons, or from the defense of labor and wages. The last wars saw the proletarians of one nation take up arms against those of the enemy nation, thus contradicting with their patriotic sentiment the communist slogan that the proletariat has no fatherland. In the past and present, workers of one nation have risen against those of others, and trade unions have supported their antagonistic claims and opposition to the immigration of foreign labor, often defending their own working conditions with blatant injustice toward workers from overpopulated nations. Thus, the dream of a homogeneous proletariat marching as a compact army toward the conquest of a new era is far from reality. In its description of this new era, communism reconnects with the utopias of imaginary islands and ideal societies.

Even a superficial study of human nature, its tendencies, and its needs is enough to dispel the messianic dream of a classless society in which freedom, harmony, prosperity, and justice would reign undisturbed. To achieve this goal, the class struggle would have to effect a total palingenesis of man, extinguishing the disordered stimulus of passions—particularly egoism—and rooting in his nature enduring virtues to correct its defects. Such a transformation is not only an unattainable utopia in itself but also, if it were not, could never be achieved by a conception of life that denies moral and spiritual values and degrades man in the anxious pursuit of material well-being. Frictions and antagonisms, discord and injustices can be mitigated by a highly moral education of the people, but they cannot be entirely suppressed as long as man remains a being driven by opposing tendencies.

Furthermore, classes are not arbitrary formations that can disappear through voluntary action; their emergence is due to natural causes that spontaneously operate within the social environment and determine its stratifications. The reduction to a single class presupposes the leveling of humanity on a smooth plane, where the different capacities with which men are born, along with all other differences acquired through personal initiative, would have to disappear. As long as men differ in temperament and physical and moral qualities, and as long as personal industry can create new differential traits, there will be different classes in society. Proof of this is found in the Bolshevik experiment, which, after overthrowing the bourgeoisie, created new classes with differing standards of living and unequal treatment. The spontaneous dynamics of social coexistence have prevailed over an abstract myth, supported by a fantastical optimism.

3. The Politics of Communism
The political conception of communism envisions a transitional phase of social organization, which will be achieved through the dictatorship of the proletariat following the overthrow of the bourgeois state, and a final, definitive phase in which the state will ultimately disappear, giving way to a coexistence without authority or laws among men driven solely by the enthusiasm of disinterested labor for the good of the community.

The dictatorship of the proletariat, even among communism’s own prophets, remains an uncertain and fluctuating concept. According to Lenin, who prides himself on being its most genuine interpreter, the doctrine of class struggle, applied to the problem of the state, culminates in the recognition of the proletariat’s political dominance—that is, a power shared with no one and immediately founded on the armed force of the working masses. This dictatorship is not a democracy with open arms but a democracy of the oppressed, who intend to annihilate the oppressors and thus a fierce and merciless suppression of the minority doomed to death. In its political action, as Lenin further expresses it, it knows no legal limits, being an unlimited power that rests on force and not on law.

The profoundly inhuman content of this conception cannot escape anyone who still holds faith in spiritual values. In society, man retains his nobility as a rational being, who must be guided toward the achievement of collective ends by moral and legal norms that stimulate his conscience to ordered action. The dictatorship of the proletariat replaces these with pure material force, violence, reducing coexistence to a prison dominated by the lash of the executioner. Freedom and justice become empty words before the unlimited power of the proletarian state, which crushes the human person in its mechanisms. Moreover, if one considers that the proletarian masses, incapable of governing themselves collectively, must confer power upon a fraction of their number, and this fraction upon a leader, it becomes clear how the supposed dictatorship of the proletariat becomes the dictatorship of a class and of a man, with the establishment of a totalitarian state that oppresses the proletarian in the most extensive political slavery in the name of the proletariat.

In its description of the definitive phase, to which communist evolution is supposed to lead at some unspecified future date, communism once again draws from utopia, borrowing the nebulousness of its ideas. In the future society, according to Lenin, men liberated from capitalist slavery, from the countless errors, follies, absurdities, and vulgarities of capitalist exploitation, will gradually accustom themselves to following the most elementary rules of social coexistence, known for millennia and repeated in all traditions, and to respecting them without violence, without subordination, without a special coercive apparatus of the state. Their labor will become so productive that they will spontaneously give all the activity of which they are capable, surpassing the narrow horizon of bourgeois right: crime and misery will disappear.

A mere reading of this wandering through the skies of fantasy, where the earthly reality of concrete man has vanished entirely from view, is enough to show to what chimerical end the evolution of history is directed. The state, with its directive and coercive powers, is so deeply embedded in the human order that no opposing force will ever succeed in eliminating II. The death of the state is the death of social life and the establishment of anarchy, with the collapse of all moral forces that make civil coexistence possible.

BIBL.:
G. Gentile, Genesi e struttura della società, Firenze 1946; N. Berdjaev, The Origin of Russian Communism, London 1937; L. Sturzo, Il comunismo, Roma 1944; V. Lenin, Stato e rivoluzione, Milano 1945; A. Fanfani, Cattolicesimo e protestantesimo nella formazione storica del capitalismo, Milano 1934; G. Sorel, Réflexions sur la violence, Paris 1908; K. Marx - F. Engels, Manifesto del partito comunista, Roma 1948. - A. Brucculeri.

4. Communism and Religion. The irreducible antagonism between communism and religion, which the history of the movement reveals in all its tragic violence through the war declared against every form of worship (v. BOLSHEVISM), is not a phenomenon linked to particular contingencies or the exaltation of some of its representatives, but necessarily arises from the materialistic conception of life and the world to which it adheres in all its attitudes. In the Marxist vision, religion, like every other spiritual value, is one of the secondary products of the interplay of economic factors, mutable in content and form according to changes in relations of production and exchange.

As Marx defined it, religion in its essence is the nebulous realm in which the creations of the human brain appear to animate themselves with a life of their own and constitute themselves as independent beings in relation to one another and to men, a pure projection of alienated consciousness, which rediscovers itself only when it surpasses and destroys II. Religion, he further adds, is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the soul of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a civilization from which spirit is excluded. Religion is the opium of the people.

The causes to which Lenin attributes its origin are no different. Religion, he asserts, is an aspect of spiritual oppression, which is always and everywhere exercised upon the popular masses prostrated by perpetual labor for the profit of others, by misery and isolation. The faith in a better life in the future inevitably arises from the impotence of the exploited classes in the struggle against the exploiters, just as the belief in deities, devils, and miracles arises from the impotence of the savage in the struggle against nature.

The genesis of religious sentiment would thus be due, according to communism, to the sense of impotence of the oppressed classes, which, by virtue of a fantastical projection, imagine the existence of a future life and an invisible deity, and its essence would consist in a childish chimera that enervates the agonistic drive of the proletarian masses. Linked to an absurd state of consciousness, as Marx said, and to a particular economic order, it would be destined to disappear when the mystical fog is swept away along with the classes and their ideological superstructures.

Truly real is only matter, from which everything proceeds or into which everything resolves, not excepting the higher values of the spirit. There does not exist, nor can there exist, a personal and transcendent God, an absolute and most perfect Being. There is no Revelation, no supernatural life, and no ultramundane end to which human life is destined. The purpose of existence does not surpass the limits of time, within which every ideal is arrested and exhausted. All the postulates of religious belief are thus radically negated, without any possibility of escaping from the opaque air of a materialism without fissures toward a more luminous atmosphere, the natural and spontaneous aspiration of the human soul in all times and latitudes. Atheism, not only ideological but also militant against every religious creed, becomes for communism a systematic necessity, and hatred of the sacred a destructive impulse.

There is no need to dwell on refuting an ideology against which human reason, the traditions of peoples, the spiritualism of Western civilization, and Christian Revelation all rise up. Its anti-religious essence explains why the Church has condemned communism from its first appearance on the stage of history.

Already in 1846, Pius IX, in the encyclical Qui pluribus of November 9, spoke out against «that nefarious doctrine of so-called communism, most contrary to natural law itself, which, if admitted, would lead to the radical subversion of the rights, things, property of all, and of human society itself». After this open reprobation, declarations of condemnation against the communist system and its political implementations have followed uninterruptedly. The same reprobation and condemnation are found in the encyclical Quanta cura of December 8, 1864 (Denz-U, 1688 ff.) and in the Syllabus (ibid., 1718 a). Among the more recent pontifical documents, the Rerum novarum of Leo XIII, the Quadragesimo anno, and the Divini Redemptoris of Pius XI should be recalled.

In the first, the illusion of any hypothetical conciliation between communism and Christianity is dispelled. «How much communism is a declared enemy of the Holy Church and of God Himself», Pius XI asserts therein, «is unfortunately demonstrated by experience and known to all». The nature of communism is impious and unjust.

Pius XII did not lag behind his predecessors. In the Christmas radio message of 1942, he openly renewed its condemnation. «Always moved by religious motives», he proclaimed, «the Church condemned the various systems of Marxist socialism and condemns them even today, as is her duty and permanent right to preserve men from currents and influences that endanger their eternal salvation». The exclusion from participation in the Sacraments of those who knowingly adhere to communist parties and militate in them, and the excommunication of those who propagate and defend their atheistic and materialistic doctrine, established by decree of the Holy Office on July 1, 1949 (AAS, 41 [1949], p. 334), are nothing but the logical development of the Church’s previous teaching, which separates from its body those who have already separated themselves from it by their own initiative, through the rejection of faith in God and the denial of all the truths contained in Christian dogma.