On communism in theory, attempts at communism in practice, and the implications for socialism.
I wrote a book about Alternative Societies. It was about ways of organising society differently to how we do now (a blog summarising its themes is here). Someone said I should write another one on the same themes and examples for a broader audience. To be honest, I felt pretty booked out. But I thought I could pick topics from the book and write introductory blog posts on them. It would be more accessible, at least in being free of charge. This was one reason I set up this blog a few months ago.
If capitalism is the society we live in, the most obvious place to start looking at alternatives is communism. I may come back to other alternatives in other posts.
Communism in theory
Defining communism
Communism is about collective ownership of the economy, for the production and distribution of goods and services for the needs of all. This is as opposed to private ownership by some for making profit for themselves, what capitalism is about.
Communism takes different forms. The most influential has been Marxist communism. This is what I’m outlining here. There are more libertarian or cooperative communisms, alternatives in light of the problems of Marx-inspired communism I'll discuss shortly.
I’m using the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’. There are different ways of distinguishing these. One is to see socialism as a statist stage on the way to more communal communism (see below). I’m using socialism primarily as a broad category for collectivist and egalitarian approaches, and communism as a specific type focused on collective ownership for need. They overlap and I use them interchangeably in places.
Communism as based in capitalism
Marxist communism is distinctive in that it's based in a critique of capitalism as much as on the idea of communism itself. It’s different in this way to utopian socialisms which centre on ideal images of a communal, equal, or free society. Marxist Communism is more grounded in capitalism and how communism is a solution to the problems of that system.
Communism has a historical materialist understanding of contradictions and developments in capitalism leading towards communism. It's materialist in that it's based on the material base of capitalism; historical in that it sees the future direction this takes us in, towards communism.
Marx sees there being a contradiction between the social nature of production under capitalism on one hand and the private accumulation of the wealth produced, on the other. We produce the wealth of society together, but lots of it gets appropriated by private owners of businesses. This is seen as an unsustainable contradiction, overcome by social production being matched with social appropriation of the wealth produced. This requires social ownership of production, so the social producers are also the social owners who can thus keep the wealth they make.
Marx saw capitalism creating sociological change that leads to its own downfall. Capitalism creates a working class; everyone who has to sell their labour to an employer, a broad category. They have a common interest, and a consciousness that will develop, of their interests as in conflict with capitalists who reap the benefits of their labour. So their interests are in conflict with private ownership. The action this consciousness leads to is overthrowing capitalists for social ownership.
So, communism isn't an idealistic pipe dream. It's embedded in the nature of capitalism and where its development takes us.
Of course, some of classical Marxism's predictions haven't (yet) come true. The contradictions of capitalism seem logically so, but in real terms haven't led to its downfall. Many working-class people aren't socialist. Some see themselves as more middle than working class. Others see their identity mostly not in class terms, but more individualistically, or in terms of identities such as race, gender, or sexuality, for instance.
From capitalism to communism
In a communist society, production will be collectively owned and for social need; rather than privately owned by individuals, families, or shareholders and done for their own private profit. As wealth will be collectively appropriated rather than creamed off by the rich, there'll be greater resources for all.
Communists tend to focus on worker ownership of production. But, what happens in the economy affects other groups too - local communities, consumers, and those affected by the environmental effects of production, for instance. If all affected by the decisions of a utility or company should have a say, these groups should be included in ownership or control.
On the environment, climate catastrophe affects us all. So some see communist collective ownership as a solution. I may come back to means for green transition in a future post.
One question is how peoples’ needs can be ascertained and who will work this out. If it's done bottom-up, information can get distorted (accidentally or deliberately) or disagreed about on the way up to the planners. That can lead to leaders having to decide about people’s needs on their behalf, which could lead to inaccurate assessments of needs, isn't that democratic, and is open to abuse.
Marx believed that once the workers’ party has seized power from capitalists, it can be dispersed to the people via a system of communes and collectives, replacing the state. The problem of defining needs could be solved if it's done by people themselves at lower down levels. But one issue is whether once power has been concentrated in the state, it’s realistic to envisage those who hold it then handing it over to the people.
Exploitation is where, under capitalism, workers produce goods worth a certain value yet much of that is taken from them by the owners, with only a small portion returned in wages. With collective ownership, workers own the production process, so the wealth they produce isn't taken by others but is collectively theirs. The exploitation of workers by owners is overcome under communism, as workers are the owners.
In capitalism, we're alienated from production and the product because they're owned by capitalists, and alienated from others by the hierarchical division of labour. But under communism people collectively control production and the product, communally reap the rewards of their production rather than it being appropriated by others, and are united with fellow humans in one class of collective owners. Alienation from each other and our work is overcome, as we own and determine that collectively with our fellow humans.
Under communism, the main class division in society, between workers and employers, is abolished. There are no longer two classes – capitalists and workers – because everyone collectively owns production, so are in one common class. We're all collective owners without employer-worker divides between us.
An important criticism of Marx’s view on the end of class is that it doesn’t pay enough attention to conflict and power in less directly economic structures, like patriarchy and colonialism, through, for example, divisions of gender, ethnicity, nationalism, and sexuality. The focus is on economic class divisions, and it’s assumed that the end of other social divisions, based, in part, on non-economic factors will follow.
Without a division of classes, a state is no longer needed by one class to maintain control over other classes. So the idea is that under communism the state will wither away. Fundamental ideological divisions will end, because there's no longer a divide between groups with contending material interests that generate diverging values. So, the state, as a site of ideological conflict between classes, is no longer necessary. All that's needed is an administrative machinery to carry out communally determined societal planning.
Freedom should be increased under communism, because people collectively control their destiny rather than being ruled by a capitalist class and state under conditions of great inequality. We should be freer, because as a collective entity we are in control of the economy that previously dominated over us.
Collective ownership, together with the productivity of new technology, can be used for the general good, to shorten the working week rather than increase production and profits for the rich. Instead of production being increased to produce wealth for owners, production can be kept at current levels (there can even be degrowth) and the earnings go to ordinary people so they won’t have to work such long hours to get the income they need. People will have more free time. There needn't be such a rigid division of labour if the organisation of labour is socially determined.
Marx wasn't primarily interested in an equal distribution of things; he was mainly concerned with collective power over production, and that could be used to decide on distribution. However, he did envisage that on the way to communism, distribution would go to people according to the labour they put in rather than according to power or market demand, as under capitalism. Then, as communism develops, people would contribute according to their ability, and distribution would be done, if not according to equality, according to need. Not all will need the same, but you'd imagine distribution according to need would be much more equal than the unequal distributions of capitalism.
The advocacy of distribution according to need raises a classic criticism of communism. If the distribution of goods, services, or income is not linked to the work you do, and you get these according to need, why would people work hard and come up with great innovative ideas in their jobs? You'll get paid the same however you perform. So, there are likely to be incentives or motivation problems under communism.
A Marxist response can refer to the two-stage approach to post-capitalist society. The first stage, where what you get is based on labour, involves people being rewarded according to their contribution, what they put in. So, there's an incentive to work. Then a more communist mentality could grow, where people would be ready for the second stage of full communism, based on need. At this point, communism can develop its own incentive system based around contribution to the collective good, working for the social good rather than personal pay. People will not be just individualistic but also driven by altruism.
This vision of a communist society for all, and the analysis behind it, inspired many in the first half of the 20th century. Attempts to put it into practice disillusioned many in the second half.
Attempts at communism
Communism wasn’t communist
Societies that called themselves communist didn't achieve communism. These range from the Soviet Union and China to Cuba, to Central and Eastern European states after the second world war. They were statist, not communist. Although they had state ownership and planning, they never achieved genuine dispersed collective ownership or the disappearance of the state. Collective ownership stayed at a state level, albeit theoretically on behalf of the people, rather than the economy being socially controlled by all, and a dominant political class took the place of the dominant economic class. The party and state, which was supposed to seize capitalist power and then disseminate it to collective ownership, did not let go of the power it had gained control of. State socialism is a better term for what materialised.
Conformity to state socialism was maintained by propaganda and repression rather than voluntary will (although there were genuine supporters), and freedom was, as such, curtailed. State socialist societies had centralised states, dominated by communist parties. The state penetrated society in a way we're not used to under capitalism, at least not to the same extent. There was an official ideology that determined the content of the media, education, art, and culture, and the suppression of religion and criticism. Surveillance was spread throughout society via systems of paid informants in the institutions of everyday life. You never knew who the spies were, and this created a climate of terror where dissent was inhibited through fear and repression. In some cases, there was mass murder. So-called communist societies were not free, as Marx had promised.
But there were elements of socialism
However, making some generalisations, such societies did attempt forms of collective ownership and production according to a calculation of need, decided by the political class, rather than on the basis of profit for capitalists. In areas, there was greater economic equality than under capitalism. There was an attempt at socialist institutions, but this got stuck at the statist transitional stage, went off track and stopped well short of true communism. In practice, societies that called themselves communist and claimed to follow Marx had state ownership and planning for some conception of what people needed – rather than just acting in response to market demand – reducing the role of private ownership and the market, sometimes with greater economic, if not political, equality.
Assessing communism
Why did things go wrong in attempts at communism?
Communism wasn’t communist enough
Defenders of communism say these societies failed in their communist promise because of their lack of internationalisation. Communism becoming worldwide was needed for its success. But this didn’t happen and capitalist states were able to stay a major threat, undermining them through war, economics, and politics.
Most communisms attempted socialism from peasant societies, so they skipped the capitalist stage that Marx said could provide the development of technology and the collective consciousness of the working class that could underpin communism. Or they had socialism imposed on them, as in Eastern Europe after the Second World War, rather than it being created through revolution by the people. So, they did not have the preconditions that come out of a transition through capitalism and the power of workers that Marx said was important (if not always absolutely necessary).
But is socialism partly to blame for its own flaws?
However, I don't believe, like some on the Left, that you can look at so-called actual communism and say it had nothing to do with socialism or communism, and that we can just continue being socialist without paying attention to what went wrong in those attempts. Marx saw communism as a society where state power has dissolved, and that's very different to what actual communism was like. But actual communism did try planning for need, which is a communist aim, and state ownership on behalf of the people, which is one type of collective ownership. So, I don't think you can say that socialism can just carry on regardless, unaffected by learning from what happened in such societies. If we're interested in alternatives to capitalism, we need to look at what happened in such cases and see if we can learn from that.
One question is whether there's something in socialist ideas that leads to the consequences of communism in practice, however possibly unintended, and not in line with what socialism is supposed to be about. The problems communist societies had could be (if not inevitably) what happens if, with the best intentions, you try to pursue communism. If this is the case, then communist theory cannot be absolved for what happened in practice.
Communist societies had a minimal blueprint for communism, so it was easy for people like Stalin to claim they were being communist when they weren't. Marx said he couldn't lay out what the ins and outs of communism would be because that was down to history and the democratic decision-making of the people to decide. But if Marx had set out a more detailed vision of communism it would have been more difficult for others to hijack his idea and claim they were being true to it when they weren't.
So-called communist societies got stuck at the statist, repressive transitional phase and didn't disperse power more communally. Perhaps it was naïve of Marxist theory to believe the latter would happen. Marx said we would have to go through such a stage to get to communism, to fight against attempts at counter-revolution and people trying to defend private property. But these so-called actual socialist societies got fixed at this stage. So, we need to consider whether this is the right means to alternative societies. Socialism needs to be democratised from the start, not at some later stage, and built bottom-up as well as from top-down.
At first, planning had successes. But, over time, problems with collecting the information needed to plan, reliably and without distortion, affected the efficiency of this economic approach. Collective information about needs became difficult to collect and was often distorted by corruption at different levels of the system. The result was that needs had to be decided top-down.
After initial successes, attempts at communism suffered from stagnation, perhaps due in part to the incentives problems mentioned earlier as well as these information ones. Communists may have been overconfident about communist motivations replacing individualist capitalist incentives. Without a new incentive system developing, there was a lack of economic dynamism.
The theory of socialism for need may be flawed on informational and incentives grounds. It may need to be adapted to be better suited to such challenges.
When collective ownership was introduced, non-class divisions of nationality, religion, ethnicity, gender and such like didn't go away. This was, in part, because these are as much cultural divisions with a long-running history (as in patriarchy and racism) as economic ones originating in capitalism. So, when the economic system of capitalism went these historical cultural divisions did not. Socialism may need to be more pluralist and open to other approaches to countering social divisions.
As mentioned, Marx said it would help (if not be necessary) to go through capitalism for the preconditions for communism to be built. One of these is collective consciousness, which you need for a communist society to work. This can develop under capitalism, which creates a working class with such a consciousness. This mutual, communistic sensibility can be the basis for a fully developed one under communism, with the loss of individualistic motivations replaced by altruistic social concern. Actual communism often happened in peasant societies, not capitalist ones, so didn't go through the capitalist stage. One of the problems that people like Che Guevara and Mao Tsetung tried to address when building communism was that the required social consciousness had not come to fruition, and they were concerned about how to build that.
Having a collective consciousness can help deal with the incentives issues mentioned, because people are motivated by communal commitments in place of economic self-interest. It can also help with the informational problems by guarding against people distorting information about needs in pursuit of their self-interest.
Learning the Lessons
So, there are (at least) two lessons to learn from actual communism if we're thinking about alternative societies. One is about democratic, decentralised, and non-authoritarian means for getting to the alternative and organising it. Another is about developing collective consciousness now and not leaving it to a later date when the alternative society exists. These two factors connect with most (but not all) the problems mentioned above.
Gradualist revolution
One person who criticised communism was John Stuart Mill. Usually seen as a liberal, Mill also spoke positively about socialism. He was writing before communism in the Marxist sense had been tried. He said revolutionary communism was irresponsible and too confident in its infallibility in trying to create a whole new system that hadn't been tried and tested, and where its details are unknown. Mill favoured gradualist experimental socialism now, where you try it out here and there, and see how it works before attempting to implement it on a whole-society scale. So, one possibility is pursuing social democratic and democratic or cooperative socialism within capitalism to see how it works, what problems may emerge, and how to resolve them, before you launch into full-scale society-wide socialism.
Things that could be tested could include democratic (rather than top-down) planning. A subordinate role for market information to overcome informational problems in planning for need may be valuable. Incentives issues can be tackled by developing collective consciousness through socialist institutions within capitalist society; and by developing material reward incentives but based on social contribution and altruism rather than power or individualism.
Revolution is a complete change of system. It's the change that makes it a revolution, not the speed. So a revolution can happen gradually through a series of reforms until they add up to make a new society, not necessarily through a sudden break. Reform and revolution needn't be opposed. They can go together. Changes in capitalism can be part of the revolution.
At the same time, communism (and socialism) have put a lot of emphasis on the end, a very ambitious end. The journey can have achievements. Communist or socialist values and institutions can be developed along the way to communism and, even if the complete end isn't reached, there can be gains.
Pluralism
To avoid the repression and totalitarianism attempts at communism involved, socialism needs to be pluralist, setting the framework for society but open to alternative forms within itself to allow freedom, diversity, and the dynamism that comes from that. I've said elsewhere that socialism should be open to green, feminist, and decolonial perspectives and liberal values (if not liberalism in toto). In some ways, socialism can provide solutions to problems that such perspectives raise. But it may also sometimes need to limit itself to allow space for these approaches.
Summary
- Communism is based on collective ownership by the people for social goals for all such as need; rather than private ownership by a select few for their own private gain.
- Communism in practice wasn't communism.
- But it can't be dismissed by socialists as not relevant to socialism; the practice of communism may show flaws in what happens when you try to pursue socialism.
- While communism in practice doesn't show socialism to be redundant; it does show it needs to be assessed for flaws in how it's carried out.
- The lessons from communism in theory and practice include that socialism needs to be democratic, pluralist, and build from within capitalism.
Related blog: For Pluralist Democratic Socialism