COMMUNISM. – A term applied to several doctrinal currents, not always in agreement, except in their aspiration to make the enjoyment of economic goods universal—that is, available to all—through more or less radical or coercive experiments in socializing not only the means of production (capital, land, businesses) but also consumer goods. By abolishing private property, it aims to achieve social equality among all men.
Summary:
I. Ancient Era
II. Modern and Contemporary Era
III. Evaluation.I. Ancient Era
To trace *communism*, as it is understood today, back to primitive, Eastern, or classical antiquity is meaningless.Among primitive peoples, alongside communal property, private and family ownership always functioned distinctly. In classical antiquity, neither the strictly disciplined military orders and communal living outside the family (as in Crete, Sparta, and Megara), nor sudden and quickly suppressed uprisings of lower classes (such as those led by Eunus in Sicily, Aristonicus in Asia Minor, and Spartacus in Rome), nor attempts at redistributing possessions—motivated less by concerns of justice and economic balance than by political reasons (such as the agrarian-communist tendencies of the Spartan king Cleomenes III)—can be regarded, if at all, as anticipations of communism in antiquity, except in a very broad and improper sense. Upon closer examination, it becomes clear that, just as the social reforms arising from the struggles between patricians and plebeians in the Roman world, which allowed more or less significant numbers of proletarians to share in the benefits of the land and enter the class of landowners, these movements ultimately resulted in a strengthening of the institution of private property, which communism, by contrast, seeks to destroy.
Certainly, leveling utopias were not lacking in Greece, and a document of this is the satire written by Aristophanes in *Assemblywomen*. Praxagora, the main character, finds the longed-for equality only in a common life for all: common lands, money, women, and meals, a blessed life that, however, necessarily relies on the labor of slaves. The comedy suggests that communist ideas were already being discussed in Socrates’ 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 communal living to achieve the perfect state (nothing is to remain private: neither money, nor houses, nor lands, nor women, nor children). But this applies only to the two dominant classes of warriors and rulers (philosophers); Plato does not concern himself at all with workers, merchants, or slaves. In the twelve books of *The Laws*, he returns to and insists upon this idea: the ideal, divine state will be one in which the greatest solidarity and commonality prevail among citizens (see especially Book V, 739). Xenophon (*On Revenues*) also proposes socialization; however, the classes of workers and slaves are excluded, as they are considered mere instruments. Aristotle, in his *Politics* (II, 2), while criticizing Plato’s views, follows him closely; he only does not admit the extension of communism to private property. Yet in all these authors, communism is viewed from the perspective of the political class; the Cynics, however, view it from the perspective of the oppressed classes, extending it to all men as such, that is, as equals and brothers.
Alongside the political exigencies from which communism arose in the Hellenic world—an exigency that presupposed the slavery of much of the population—a higher communism, founded on love of neighbor and equality among the children of God, emerged in the early Christian communities (Acts 4:32). But it was not obligatory; just as each person could freely sell all or part of his goods and place the proceeds in common, so too could he retain them (cf. Acts 5:1-10, the episode of Ananias and Sapphira). This voluntary poverty, later practiced by religious orders, was misunderstood by many other heretical movements in later centuries: in the Gnostic, Manichaean, and Mazdakite heresies, which affirmed the divine natural law of the communion of goods; in Montanism or millenarianism, where the expectation of the end of the world spurred the abandonment of property for common use. Unequal streams of communist character, mostly derived from Manichaeism, flowed throughout the Middle Ages: under names such as Cathars, Patarines, Albigensians, or simply "the poor," they were found scattered across Italy, France, and even the Germanic lands, Flanders, Holland, and even the Balkans, embraced and practiced by the Bogomils, Beghards, Joachimites, and others.
At times, this spiritual and religious veneer did not exclude collective violence. In 1248, it was the fullers of Léau in Brabant who revolted; two years later, the *Petits* of Liège rose up; almost simultaneously, metalworkers and weavers rebelled in Dinant and Huy; peasants and humble folk, fanatical and desperate, rallied around the false Baldwin of Flanders, a pretender to the imperial title, from whom they expected a great and complete social reform. Bruges, Ypres, and Ghent were in revolt in 1348, and workers, led by weavers, proposed to exterminate the "good folk," meaning the rich and the property owners. Siena and Florence were shaken by the uprisings of 1371–85 and 1378–82, which marked the final effort and defeat of the lower classes 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 the exploited classes against entrepreneurs, who sought to seize power. The peasant revolts in southern Germany and the famous Jacquerie of France in 1358 did not have pronounced ideological movements. The German uprisings were limited to the liberation of serfs and villeins: the revolt of the Jacques, instead, was an explosion of discontent among the peasants of the Île-de-France and the Beauvaisis, who, driven against the nobility, sacked the manor houses; at their head stood a peasant, Jacques Bonhomme, from whom the nobles, in contempt, took the name, and hence the term *jacquerie* for the uprising.
As the weapons fell from the hands of the insurgents, the unsatisfied aspiration for a more equitable distribution of goods found expression in the realm of utopia (from the Greek οὐ τόπος = no place). The first typical example is *Utopia* by T. More (1516); it was imitated in *I mondi celesti* by Doni (1562), *The City of the Sun* by Campanella (1623), *L'histoire comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil* by Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–55), *Histoire des Sevarambes* by Vairasse (1677), and so on, up to *L’Isle flottante* by Morelly, where the communist principles of his *Code de la nature* (Amsterdam, 1775) are applied, with the principle: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
Of greater importance in the 18th century was the critique of private appropriation by numerous writers who declared it destructive of the natural equality among men. From Meslier to Rousseau, from d’Holbach and Linguet to Mably and Morelly, it was an entire current, at least potentially, communist.
II. MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ERA
The struggle for a communist ideal in the modern age presents itself in terms fundamentally different from those of antiquity, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance. The emergence of modern industry, and the parallel rise of a modern proletariat, are the principal elements that contribute to giving an entirely new formulation to the social problem. Communist programs tend, in broad outline, to become more concrete; the struggle grows more intense. The economic and practical problems of the moment come to the fore; but this does not mean that the movement is entirely free from the utopias cherished by past centuries—the ideal of “islands” administered according to criteria of justice and reason, appeals, varying by country, local conditions, and cultural level, to Plato or Thomas More, to Spartacus or Campanella, to Gioacchino da Fiore, Wyclif, or Hus.
The terms “socialism” and “communism” often coincide or become intertwined and confused. It is almost impossible to distinguish the two terms with precision at all times, and one cannot trace the history of communism without, in a certain sense, also tracing the history of socialism (v.).
In the climate created by the French Revolution—revolution which socialists and communists of all shades defined as “bourgeois”—one can, in broad outline, trace the first seeds of modern communism. Even in earlier revolutions of urban plebs or rural masses, communist ideas and ideals had appeared 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 kind of universal plane, closely linked and intertwined not with backward plebs, but with intellectual and bourgeois elements of one of the most advanced regions of Europe.
In the French Revolution (v.), communist tendencies arose under the impetus of rationalistic fanaticism (rightly or wrongly, a particular form of “lay theocracy” has been spoken of in this connection) or of a vague, traditional, and primitive anarchic impulse. The characteristic messianic attitude that generally accompanies communist movements from antiquity onward seems at times to diminish or disappear under the influence of Enlightenment and rationalism, only to re-emerge later, transformed and strengthened, through a new, massive “creed” based on rigidly enunciated class principles.
In August 1792, the most extreme revolutionary currents decisively gained the upper hand in Paris. The front of the revolutionaries began to split: the differentiation between “bourgeois” on the one hand and artisans and workers on the other became more pronounced; 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” continued to grow. 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 formula of compromise with those elements that tended to abolish private property more or less entirely. In practice, however, the regime of the Terror did not signify merely a merciless struggle against moderate elements, but also repression against groups of pronounced left-wing tendencies (Hébert).
The opposition between a “real” equality (which was to be necessarily achieved) and a “formal and apparent” equality is perhaps the primary Leitmotif, from 1795 onward, Babeuf (v.), BUONARROTI, FLLIPPO (v.), and those who participated in the “conspiracy of the equals.” These figures mark in a truly characteristic way the transition from Jacobinism to revolutionary communism. Filippo Buonarroti in particular played a notable role; he may be considered one of the main links in the chain connecting the “communists” of the late 18th century with those who later operated during 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 wished to place men “free from prejudice” and “virtuous,” untouched by the lure of money and honors, all devoted instead to realizing the ideal of equality. To respect “true” democracy, he argued, one should initially attribute less value to ballots than to the certainty of having at the helm of the revolution men capable of guiding II. Buonarroti was the “master” of Blanqui, who absorbed in particular his energetic will and dictatorial orientations.
The new, concrete needs of the modern proletariat were more or less openly affirmed in the writings of Saint-Simon (v.), in the plans for “phalansteries” Fourier (v.), in the experiment of “New Harmony,” and, in general, Owen (v.). These concrete and modern needs, however, were intertwined now with religious concerns, now with naive utopias, now with predominantly humanitarian attitudes. In these and other “precursors” of socialism and communism (whom the self-styled “scientific” Marxists later defined, not without a tone of criticism and contempt, as “utopian”), one can observe ideological and spiritual connections with the French Revolution or with humanitarian orientations in the 18th-century sense of the term. These “precursors,” in broad outline, are continuators of democratic, rationalistic, Enlightenment ideologies that intend to carry these principles to their extreme conclusions, seeking above all to “develop” them on the economic terrain, in the realm of the so-called “social justice.”
In England, a social thinker of the 18th century with a religious background, Robert Wallace, pondering why man, despite possessing so many gifts, still found himself at such a low material and moral level, believed he had found a panacea in communism. Also in England, a typical exponent of a communism tinged with anarchic tendencies at the beginning of the 19th century was William Godwin. The absolute contrast of interests between capitalists and workers was theorized, more or less simultaneously, by Charles Hall, who was of the opinion that, with the development of modern civilization, wealth would increasingly concentrate in the hands of a small minority of the privileged. 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 more cruel capitalist domination, the cause of a very serious development of unemployment (v. INGHILTERRA, history; SOCIALISMO).
Even when the "scientific" current, rigorously classical, "hard" and authoritarian, ironic and polemical toward "bourgeois freedom" and all petty-bourgeois and democratic ideals, has largely supplanted the eclectic and democratic ideals of its "precursors" (to whom reference has already been made), new adversaries will continually arise in the guise of "fellow travelers" and "comrades of the road," who will soon become the new "heretics." In France, Proudhon (v.) will be a dangerous adversary for the Marxist current due to his markedly individualistic traits, not lacking in attraction in France. BAKUNIN, MICHAIL (v.), the authoritarian current of Marxist stamp will find an even more formidable adversary to overcome, given his combativeness and tireless dynamism. In his numerous violent opponents, he will uphold, with simple and materialistic formulas, the integral freedom to be won and defended against any State, even one claiming to be proletarian. The Russian exile placed greater reliance on the Russian, Italian, and Spanish plebs as "modern proletarians" than on the mechanized and "bourgeoisified" proletariat of England and France.
Blanqui (Louis-Auguste, b. 18 Feb. 1805 at Puget-Théniers, d. in Paris on 1 Jan. 1881), in many respects akin to the ideologies of the Marxist current, delved deeply into the technical aspects of insurrection but disregarded the objective economic and political conditions. According to Blanqui, communism cannot be introduced from above through enlightened and philanthropic intentions, but only through tenacious and tireless struggle from below. With the victory of the revolution, all judges and high-ranking officials should be dismissed en bloc; other officials of the old regime should be retained only "conditionally." With particular reference to France, Blanqui envisaged a **dictature parisienne**, which would direct the republic until the masses were "mature" for democracy.
Lassalle, whose thought can only be fully understood in the context of German idealism—of which he was in a sense a curious epigone—organized the German proletariat, seeing its most important and immediate task in universal suffrage and seeking temporary agreements and compromises even with Bismarck himself. Much later, after Marx's death, SORDELLO (v.) would develop revolutionary syndicalism in contrast to the "scientific" current, with an openly hostile stance toward "bourgeoisified" socialism and parliamentary democracy in general.
The current, self-styled "scientific" and "critical" (which in practice increasingly came to be identified with modern communism), found its most notable ideological expression in the famous **Manifesto** Marx (v.) ENGELTAL (v.), dated January 1848, written on behalf of the "Communist League."
Marx and Engels viewed the history of human society as a continuous history of class struggle. Freemen and slaves, patricians and plebeians, guildmasters and journeymen, oppressed and oppressors have always carried on an uninterrupted, covert or open struggle. Modern bourgeois society, born from the ruins of feudalism, has not eliminated class antagonisms but has merely created new classes and new forms of oppression. It is true that in the past the bourgeoisie played a decisively revolutionary role in history, tearing apart feudal bonds and leaving no other bond 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 dependent the backward or barbarian countries on the civilized ones. But now the productive forces at the bourgeoisie’s disposal no longer serve to promote the development of civilization and the relations of production: "the bourgeois relations of production are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them."
Instead of sentimental regrets and lamentations, the critical current therefore aims to analyze the real historical process. It looks with repugnance and contempt upon alms and philanthropy and instead seeks to make the proletariat fully aware of their concrete situation. Influenced by particular reflections of the industrial situation in England in the first half of the 19th century, Marx and Engels believed that labor in large factories was becoming ever harsher for workers, that wages were tending to decline, and that modern industry was transforming "the patriarchal workshop of the small master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist." The more modern industry progresses, the more the labor of men is supplanted by that of women and children. In short, the middle class is being crushed by competition from big capitalists.
Within the proletariat, communists constitute the "most resolute and progressive" faction. The immediate aim of the communists is the organization of the proletariat into a class party, the overthrow of bourgeois rule, and the conquest of political power.
The proletariat must be warned against equivocal and "unscientific" forms of pseudo-communism, against generic social blandishments that, upon closer analysis, reveal their decidedly reactionary character. Thus, one must guard against that curious "feudal socialism," half elegy and half lampoon, a bit of the past and a bit of the future, which often struck the bourgeoisie with bitter and fierce judgments but was incapable of understanding history and was a typical expression—however demagogic—of a dispossessed aristocracy. One must also combat "petty-bourgeois socialism," characteristic above all of France, an expression of the views and criteria of small urban and rural property owners: this "socialism" would simply seek to restore the old means of production and exchange and with them the old property relations. It is, however, "reactionary and utopian socialism," veiled in idyllic guise. As for the systems of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, etc., and others similar to them, they—while recognizing the class antagonism—fail to see in the proletariat its decisive and special historical function; they merely open the way to new ideologies through small-scale and valueless experiments.
"The communists turn their special attention to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution, which is taking place under conditions of generally more advanced civilization and with a proletariat much more developed than those of England in the 17th century and France in the 18th. For this reason, the German bourgeois revolution can only be the immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution." Marx and Engels thus believed that, due to Germany’s unique historical developments, this relatively backward country in economic terms would, because of its contradictions, become the leader of the revolution. This prediction proved entirely wrong, but it served as a starting point—and it is very important to bear this in mind—for similar considerations by Lenin and Trotsky regarding the concrete possibilities of a proletarian revolution in Russia. Where Marx alluded in 1848, Lenin and Trotsky tactically saw the truth in 1917.
The Manifesto concluded with the assertion that communists scorn to conceal their principles and aims and ended with the well-known battle cry: "Workers of all countries, unite!"
The question of the origin of capital is resolved by identifying a commodity capable of increasing in value, such that selling it yields a profit. This commodity is precisely labor power. The wage for a day’s work represents what is required to maintain 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, surplus value—generates capital (v. Marx). The struggle of the proletariat against its “exploiters” thus becomes distinctly detached from all generically democratic and humanitarian traditions. A powerful “myth” takes hold of vast segments of the working class.
This new “scientific” doctrine of communism is closely linked to the philosophical conclusions reached by historical materialism (v.). In polemic with Hegel’s BACH (v.), Marx and Engels identified human needs as the driving principle of history. “My method,” Marx stated, “is not that of Hegel: for I am a materialist and Hegel is an idealist. The dialectic of Hegel is the foundation of all dialectic, but only when stripped of its mystical form; it is precisely this that distinguishes my method.” Marx thus accused Hegel of seeing in the philosophy of history merely the history of philosophy, reduced in fact to his own particular philosophy. The founders of critical communism sought to differentiate their communism, described as “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 was to be no possibility of union or confusion. However, their polemical stance against representatives of idealist philosophy (deemed reactionary) and their greater aptitude for addressing the problems of revolution rather than those of philosophy gave rise to numerous uncertainties within their philosophical system, to statements that might perhaps be traced back to “vulgar” materialism. It should not be overlooked, however, that, beyond the contradictions alluded to, “philosophy of praxis” for Marx signified a conception of history interpreted as the “continuous creation” of human activity. Indeed, in *Capital*, Marx affirmed: “As Vico says, human history differs from natural history in that we have made the former and not the latter.” 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 in some way akin terms; they nevertheless preferred the former expression, since the term “socialism” seemed to them more generic and perhaps even “profaned” by “humanitarians” and reformers of various tendencies. The abolition of the state—for Marx and Engels—had for the communists only one meaning: the abolition of classes (that is, the abolition of the need for the organized power of one class to keep another in subjection). This and other similar assertions suggested a future point of convergence with anarchist communism; in practice, however, Marxists and anarchists never managed to agree on the concrete term in which the demolition of the state and the abolition of the “transitional” dictatorship were to begin.
The First International, as is well known, was a battleground for the 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 emphasized the directive function of the party over the union, participated successfully in electoral competitions (especially in Germany), and achieved notable successes for workers in terms of wages and social insurance.
The First World War, however, led many socialist parties to align with the war policies of their respective governments, from which the Second International suffered a severe crisis. Lenin, Trotsky, and the other leaders of the Russian Revolution waged an extremely violent campaign against the Second International, denouncing it as the International of “social-traitors.” In opposition to it, they founded a new organization, the Third International, which, to distinguish itself from “opportunism,” chose to revive the term used by the young Marx and call itself “communism.”
From this point onward, socialism and communism again appear as distinct movements, even if, in the face of the massive dogmatism of communism—identified with the views of certain leaders of Russian politics—socialism displayed a whole spectrum of nuances, ranging from direct or indirect support for communism (“maximalism,” “fusionism,” etc.) to a clearly democratic politics.
For the development of communist ideology in Russia, the countries of Eastern Europe, and the history of the principal communist parties, see the entry BOLSHEVISM. Here we limit ourselves to outlining the essential features of communism. Lenin (v.) emphasized the more authoritarian elements inherent in Marxist communism, energetically combating all “petty-bourgeois” and “social-partisan” deviations, as well as Russian socialism with its more or less aggravated petty-bourgeois and democratic tendencies. Trotsky (v.), by contrast, emphasized to the utmost the internationalist ideal and theorized the so-called “permanent revolution.” Unlike Trotsky, Stalin (v.) affirmed instead the possibility of building the new society within the territory of Russia itself, through industrialization and a series of grandiose five-year plans. In exile, Trotsky attempted to give life to the Fourth International, which, however, had very limited development and appealed to the “universal” ideals of the Revolution of 1917. With the victory of the Russian armies in the Second World War, Soviet communism took on an increasingly pronounced nationalist turn: Russia indeed 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 atheist, while intensifying its opposition to Catholicism, found ways to conclude agreements and compromises with the “Orthodox” Church, always in the service of an expansionist foreign policy and “Pan-Slavic” appeals.
Bitter ideological crises have, however, characterized the recent life of communism: the most serious “heresy” was undoubtedly that represented by Marshal Tito, leader of Yugoslavia. This was a reaction of local communism to the danger of total subordination to the plans of Russian political and economic expansionism. Similar “heresies” have occurred in other Russian satellite countries: these have been labeled as deviations inspired by “national communism.” Such movements (with the exception of that led by Tito in Yugoslavia) were swiftly and harshly repressed, as in Hungary and Poland, among others.
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. With the end of the war, however, the temporary motives for this alliance had vanished. Russian policy in fact skillfully exploited all the uncertainties and weaknesses of the “Westerners.” The communist movement had the opportunity to expand its influence in Asia, especially through the complete conquest of China. In Asia, communism still presents itself in a certain sense in an initial phase, strongly emphasizing various “local” nationalisms in contrast to 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 has encountered significant resistance, reinforced through the Atlantic Pact. The policy of religious persecution, expansionist nationalism, and the extermination of “dissidents” (Rajk, Kostov, etc.) has produced widespread and varied opposition in America and Europe, arising from different political and moral viewpoints but united in practically recognizing the irreconcilability between communism and freedom.
III. ASSESSMENT
The evolutionary process of modern communism can be divided into two distinctly separate periods, each with its own characteristics and dominated by certain theoretical principles that, while not perfectly identical, lead to roughly the same conclusion. The first movement of communist ideas is partly connected 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, to which utopian elements were added. The vaporous humanitarianism gave rise to its messianic content of liberating man from the slavery of capital, to establish a society in which the individual could find complete satisfaction of their needs. From the absolute egalitarianism and democratism of the Enlightenment derives its clear stance in the 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 would develop. Starting from an abstract concept of nature, he asserted that although men are born with congenital physical and spiritual disparities, the inequality caused by these had little influence in the original state. The true inequalities arise with the introduction of the institution of private property, whose defense was surreptitiously and deceptively contrived through the system of social laws. The two principles on which pre-Marxist utopian communism would rely were clearly announced by Rousseau and, in a more attenuated form, by the Enlightenment encyclopedists Diderot and Voltaire, who refused to deduce from the concept of equality the inevitable 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 aspect of a generic social dimension. Revolutionary currents soon argued for the necessity of moving, according to the logic of the egalitarian principle, toward real equality and demanded the abolition of private property as the origin and source of all inequalities. Thus, from the agnostic philosophy of the Enlightenment, two antagonistic movements emerged: liberalism, which carried to its ultimate conclusions the principle of man’s total autonomy, and revolutionary communism, which pressed the egalitarian principle to deduce the condemnation of property. Its critical point, therefore, lies in this principle; if it falls, its theoretical edifice collapses.
The flaw in this approach lies in the unwarranted transition from the abstract equality of human nature to concrete and factual equality. All men, considered in their essence, are perfectly equal, since in each of them the same nature is realized with its constituent parts and general exigencies, from which each individual derives certain fundamental rights equally possessed by all. On the abstract plane of nature, therefore, all men are equal; they are not, however, equal on the concrete plane and within the machinery of social life. Even Rousseau himself recognized that men are born physically and morally different; the first disparities on the concrete plane thus derive from generation or nature, which realizes human essence differently. To these undeniable disparities are added those that each individual develops through the use of their originally received capacities. Individuals, endowed with varying physical strength, intellectual power, and will, are ranked in a hierarchical scale almost spontaneously, according to the use or abuse of their faculties, the greater or lesser intensity of their labor, and the vigor with which they master their passions and exploit their subjective and objective possibilities. Thus, upon the equality of nature is grafted the inequality of fact, which is also natural. It is a manifest error to attribute to property alone the origin of all social inequalities and therefore to deduce from the concept of equality the condemnation of property.
Property produces only economic inequalities; if these, however, result—as often happens—from the differing capacities of individuals and their particular industriousness in making use of their talents, they cannot in principle be condemned as long as they do not exceed certain limits beyond which social unrest arises. The communist claim, therefore, to achieve total and real equality in social organization by abolishing the institution of property proves utopian. Social equality cannot be arithmetic but must be proportional: that is, each individual must enjoy in society particular rights, in addition to the universal ones deriving from nature, in proportion to their abilities and the contribution they can make or have made to the common good. This proportion must also be respected regarding possession.
It is impossible, however, to conceal or deny that in communist ideologies there is a core of truth, and this consists in the demand to adapt, as far as possible to the economy of a country, the living conditions of the various classes, so as to mitigate the excessively glaring economic disparities, provide for a fairer distribution of wealth, and achieve a social standard of living that is not only tolerable but marked by general prosperity. This, however, can be achieved without the suppression of property and outside any revolutionary movement, through appropriate structural reforms aimed at highlighting the social function [of property].
The egalitarian principle and the utopian elements have passed into the scientific corpus of the second period, though mingled with others drawn from a particular philosophical and economic conception, which forms the theoretical substratum of Marxism. Regarding the philosophical foundation of Carlo Marx’s theory, see the entries MARXISMO; MATERIALISMO DIALETTICO; MATERIALISMO STORICO. In the present article, only those aspects of communism that concern economics, sociology, politics, and religion will be critically evaluated.
1. Communist economics
The assumption from which communist economic theory takes its departure echoes the theme of total equality. Everything belongs to everyone; nature, with its economic goods, is the common banquet of all men, and therefore private appropriation with the exclusion of others constitutes an injury to justice. The further consequence follows that earthly goods can belong only to the community. The sophism is evident in this sequence of communist assertions. First of all, as with previous theories, there is the leap from the abstract to the concrete. In the abstract, that is, considering men in the most universal exigencies of their nature, all earthly goods are destined by objective order for their use, so that they may attain the ends of life. All men consequently have an equal right to their use, but this right does not belong to all, nor is it a right that can be exercised by all. It is a right that belongs to each individual in relation to his own needs, and the use of goods is subject to the law of justice, which demands that the universal destination of goods be respected.
The existence of classes, of which an approximate concept can be formed, cannot be categorically denied, but it is wrong to suppose, as communism does, that economic factors are the sole and determining cause of their formation. Undoubtedly an economic element enters into 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, also contribute to associating men with one another and to creating a certain affinity among them. The concept of class in communism is distorted by the more general conception of history, whose evolutionary movement would be dominated by material interest.
The second reef on which communist social theory founders is the class struggle, which is also attributed to economic factors. History shows how 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 also shows how the alleged class struggle has not always existed, even in those social organizations in which it should have arisen because of the exploitation of one class by another, as among the castes of India. The class struggle is therefore not a general and necessary law, nor, as has been observed, does it depend exclusively on an economic factor in contemporary society; rather, it stems from a complex psychological state of the masses, in which the feeling of social inferiority of the proletariat plays a large part, along with spiritual motives.
Still more gratuitous is the communist assumption of the homogeneity and competence of the two classes into which contemporary society is supposed to have been simplified. Neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat is so homogeneous as to be free from internal fissures and profound and insurmountable antagonisms, such as those arising from national or patriotic reasons or from the defense of labor and wages. The recent wars have seen the proletarians of one nation take up arms against those of the enemy nation, thereby refuting, through their patriotic sentiment, the communist slogan according to which the proletariat has no country. In the past and in the present, workers of one nation have risen against those of other nations, and labor organizations have supported their antagonistic claims and opposition to the immigration of foreign labor, in order to defend their own working conditions, often with manifest injustice toward the workers of the nations from which they come. Thus, the dream of a homogeneous proletariat marching as a compact army toward the conquest of the new era, as described by communism, which harks back to the utopias of imaginary islands and ideal societies, is far from being realized.
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 bring about a total palingenesis of man, extinguishing in him the disordered stimulus of the passions and particularly of selfishness, in order to root in his nature lasting virtues that correct his defects. Such a transformation is not only in itself an unattainable utopia but, even if it were not, could never be brought about by a conception of life that denies moral and spiritual values and degrades man in his anxious pursuit of material well-being. Frictions and antagonisms, discord and injustice can be mitigated by a highly moral education of the people, but they cannot be totally suppressed as long as man remains a being agitated by opposing tendencies.
Moreover, classes are not arbitrary formations that can be made to disappear through voluntary action; their emergence is due to natural causes that spontaneously operate in the social environment and determine its stratification. The reduction to a single class presupposes the leveling of humanity onto a smooth plane in which the different capacities with which men are born and all the other differences acquired through personal initiative would disappear. As long as men differ in temperament and in physical and moral qualities, and personal industry can create new differential characteristics, there will be different classes in society. Proof of this is found in the Bolshevik experiment, which, after having overthrown the bourgeoisie, created new classes with different standards of living and unequal treatment. The spontaneous dynamics of social coexistence have prevailed over an abstract myth supported by fantastic optimism.
3. The politics of communism
The political conception of communism envisages a transitional phase of social organization, which will be achieved through the dictatorship of the proletariat after the overthrow of the bourgeois state, and a final and resolutive phase in which the state will finally disappear, giving way to a coexistence without authority and without laws among men moved solely by the enthusiasm of disinterested labor performed for the good of the community.
The dictatorship of the proletariat, even among the very prophets of communism, remains an uncertain and shifting concept. According to Lenin, who prides himself on being its most genuine interpreter, the doctrine of class struggle, when applied to the problem of the State, leads to the recognition of the political domination of the proletariat—that is, a power shared by none and founded immediately upon the armed force of the working masses. This dictatorship is not a democracy with welcoming arms, but a democracy of the oppressed, who intend to annihilate their oppressors and thus impose a harsh and merciless suppression of the minority doomed to destruction. In its political action, as Lenin himself expresses it, it knows no limits of law, being an unlimited power that rests upon force and not upon law.
The profoundly inhuman content of this conception cannot escape those who still hold fast to spiritual values. In society, man retains his nobility as a rational being, who must be guided toward the attainment of collective ends by moral and juridical norms that stimulate his conscience to ordered action. Communism substitutes for these the mere material force, violence, reducing coexistence to a prison dominated by the lash of the tormentor. Liberty and justice become empty words in the face of the unlimited power of the proletarian State, which grinds the human person in its gears. If one further considers how the proletarian mass, incapable of governing itself collectively, must entrust power to a fraction of itself, and this to a single leader, one sees how the so-called 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 describing the final phase, toward which communist evolution is to lead at some unspecified future time, communism returns to utopia and borrows from it the vagueness of its ideas. In the future society, according to Lenin, men freed from capitalist slavery and from the countless errors, follies, absurdities, and vulgarities of capitalist exploitation will gradually accustom themselves to follow the most elementary rules of social life, known for millennia and repeated in all traditions, and to respect them without violence, without subordination, and 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, transcending the narrow horizon of bourgeois law: crime and poverty will disappear.
The mere reading of this wandering through the heavens 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 rooted in human order that no opposing force can eliminate 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 render civil coexistence possible.
4. Communism and religion. The irreconcilable antagonism between communism and religion, which the history of the movement reveals in all its tragic violence in the war declared against every form of worship (v. BOLSHEVISM), is not a phenomenon tied to particular contingencies or to the exaltation of some of its representatives, but necessarily arises from the materialistic conception of life and the world upon which it is based in all its aspects. 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 the relations of production and exchange.
As Marx himself defined it, religion in its essence is the region of fog in which the creations of the human mind appear to take on a life of their own and to constitute independent beings in relation to one another and to men, a pure projection of alienated consciousness, which finds itself only when it surpasses and destroys II. Religion, he adds, is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless civilization. Religion is the opium of the people.
Lenin attributes to similar causes the origin of religion. Religion, he affirms, is an aspect of the spiritual oppression that is exercised always and everywhere upon the popular masses, ground down by perpetual labor for the profit of others, by poverty, and by isolation. Faith in a better life in the future arises inevitably from the impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against their exploiters, just as belief in gods, devils, and miracles arises from the impotence of the savage in his struggle against nature.
The genesis of the religious sentiment would thus, according to communism, be due to the sense of impotence of the oppressed classes, which, by means of a fantastic projection, imagine the existence of a future life and of an invisible divinity, and its essence would consist in a puerile illusion that serves the combative impulse of the proletarian masses. Tied to an absurd state of consciousness, as Marx said, and to a particular economic arrangement, it would be destined to disappear when the mystical cloud is swept away along with the classes and their ideological superstructures.
There is nothing truly real except matter, from which all proceeds or into which all is resolved, not excluding the higher values of the spirit. There does not, therefore, exist a personal and transcendent God, an absolute and perfect being. There can be neither Revelation, a supernatural life, nor an otherworldly end to which human life is destined. The end of existence does not transcend the limits of time, within which every ideal is arrested and exhausted. All the postulates of religious belief are thus radically denied, without any possibility of escaping the opaque atmosphere of an unbroken materialism toward a more luminous, natural, and spontaneous aspiration of the human spirit in all ages and in all 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.
It is unnecessary to dwell upon refuting an ideology against which human reason, the traditions of peoples, the spiritualism of Western civilization, and Christian Revelation rise in opposition. Its anti-religious essence explains why the Church has condemned communism from its first appearance on the historical stage.
As early as 1846, Pius IX, in the encyclical Qui pluribus of November 9, rose up against “that nefarious doctrine of the so-called communism, most contrary even to natural right, which, if admitted, would lead to the radical subversion of the rights, of property, and of human society itself.” After this open reprobation, declarations of condemnation of the communist system and its political manifestations have followed uninterruptedly. The same reprobation and condemnation appear in the encyclical Quanta cura of December 8, 1864 (Denz.-U., 1688 ff.) and in the Syllabus (ibid., 1718 a). Among the more recent papal documents, mention should be made of Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum, Pius XI’s Quadragesimo anno and Divini Redemptoris.
In the first of these, the illusion of any hypothetical reconciliation between communism and Christianity is dispelled. “How communism is a declared enemy of the Holy Church and of God Himself,” Pius XI asserts, “is a fact 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 his 1942 Christmas radio message he openly renewed their condemnation. “Always moved by religious motives,” he declared, “the Church—has condemned the various systems of Marxist socialism and condemns them still today, as is her duty and permanent right to preserve men from currents and influences that endanger their eternal salvation.”
The exclusion from the sacraments of those who consciously adhere to communist parties and take an active part in them, and the excommunication of those who propagate and defend its atheistic and materialist doctrine—laid down by a decree of the Holy Office on 1 July 1949 (AAS, 41 [1949], p. 334)—are but the logical development of the Church’s earlier teaching, which separates from her body those who have already, of their own accord, separated themselves by rejecting belief in God and denying all the truths contained in Christian dogma.