Communism: From an unbiased perspective.

I wanted to write an article on the merits and demerits of communism, socialism and capitalism and their applicability for a long time. Eventually, the moment arrived and here I am, writing my thoughts and sequencing them. I categorise myself as a neo-capitalist.

My definition of a neo-capitalist is who provides quality services at appropriate prices.

In reality, I am an anti communist but for scientific reasons. I am a science student before anything else.

In this article, I’ll try to give an unbiased interpretation of the Communism. I’ll start with the definitions and then advantages and limitations respectively.

Communism: /ˈkɒmjʊnɪz(ə)m/ (noun)
A theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs, respectively.

Communism originates from the word commune /ˈkɒmjuːn/ which means a group of people living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities. A commune can rarely be larger than a small village. There are various reasons for this, centred on basic human nature.

Variants of communism have developed throughout history, including anarcho-communism and Marxist schools of thought which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism as well as the political ideologies grouped around both. All of these different ideologies share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, a certain economic system, which has two major social classes, that the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution.

The two classes are:

• The proletariat (the working class), who make up the majority of the population within society and must sell their labour to survive, and
• The bourgeoisie /ˌbʊərʒwɑːˈziː/ (the capitalist class including middle class and upper class), a small minority that derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production.
• The people with communist ideology believe that a social revolution is needed to put the working class in power and in turn, establish common ownership of property, which is the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.

It basically means that all modes of production should be controlled by a bunch of people who will also control the distribution of said products to the “proletariat”. There would be no concentration of wealth among a few individuals and each group of people will receive products as per their requirements which on the other hand is decided by the above mentioned “bunch of people” whom we can call politburo /ˈpɒlɪtbjʊərəʊ/ (noun) the principal policymaking committee of a communist party. This, on paper would remove the power from the bourgeois /ˈbʊəʒwɑː/ (people constituting the “bourgeoisie”) and apparently bring it in the hands of the working class, the proletariat, the people who are actually making the products. So, people thought.

This theory made sense when Russia was reeling under the Tsardom which was basically a form of autocracy. If someone reads the history of Russia, he or she would find that the power and influence was always concentrated in the hands of a few ruling elites and the working class had almost nothing before it became the Soviet Union. There were almost no resources available for the common people to survive. In order to remove the influence of the Tsars, and to provide the working class what was justly theirs, Karl Marx came up with the idea of Communism.

Communism was widely accepted by the working class because the factory and other business owners tried to maximize their profits through cheating and extortion. Low wages, long working hours, unhygienic workplaces were the norm back then. The then governments were more inclined towards the wealthy and hence a sentiment of revolution was ignited among the masses who had nothing left to lose.

• Communism projects a romantic idea: “Power will reside in the hands of the masses” and “The wealth will be available to all the people according to their need.” However, this idea sounds interesting till the point it is applied in real life. Communism had only been applied in small groups and never on a large scale.

So, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks fought a bloody Russian Revolution with this rosy idea in their minds and ushered in the most unnatural concept of communism.

Prior to expressing my opinion as to why Communism is impractical, I’d like to point out that all of the communist countries are/have been either headed by a dictator or are heading towards dictatorship or lie in ruins. E.g. Cuba, North Korea, Moldova, Bosnia-Herzegovina, etc.

The reasons are quite obvious, honestly. They are as follows:

1. Since, it was practically impossible to ask the opinion of each of the millions of families, politburo was conceived which consisted of a certain group of people.
2. Politburo was not selected as per public opinion but only accepted the opinions of the senior party members.
   The father of Marxist theory, Karl Marx himself never experienced poverty but produced a whole theory on it.
3. Similarly, the senior members of the communist party rarely spent time among the actual working class and thus were undoubtedly clueless about the requirements faced by the same.
4. What the communist leaders didn’t realise is, as soon as resources become more widely available to people, it is their natural tendency to hoard. It’s an evolutionary trait which most communists ignore.
5. Hence, the concept of “each person contributes according to their ability but receives according to their needs” becomes null and void, biologically.
6. Humans have always been competitive. They had to be, to survive in nature and from each other. But the sense of competition or working hard comes from the prospects of appropriate rewards. If a person works harder than someone, it is only justified that he is paid more than that someone. The enthusiasm to work hard diminishes if someone witnesses less capable workers getting more benefits just because some unknown people decided so.
7. Diminishing enthusiasm leads to lower quality and quantity of production and therefore a general deterioration of society. Any society requires goods and services to thrive. It’s common knowledge (unknown to communists though).

The above points prove with certainty that communist ideals cannot lead a nation towards development. However, those points have been made under the assumption that corruption is zero. That’s not the case in reality is it?

• Since the decision making power and mode of production remained in the hands of a chosen few (politburo), the system wasn’t much different from the erstwhile Tsardom. There was no space for public opinion, the politburo decided the amount of resources needed by an average person, without any proper survey.
• There was no organization to check the functioning of the politburo and an organization without any accountability becomes corrupt after some time. It’s basic concept of a feedback loop.
• The ruling group didn’t allow dissent, controlled the media to instill a fake confidence in communism which rarely worked.
• The workers, instead of having the comfortable life they dreamt of, still had means only to barely survive whereas the ruling party lived in luxury.
• The difference this time was that in the case of capitalism, there were better paid people who were responsible for overseeing the amount of work but in the case of communism, nobody cared about work.

There’s an old Russian joke: “We pretend to work and the government pretends to pay us.”

I always wondered if there was a situation where Communism was applicable and my curiosity was solved when I was playing the game Metro 2033 on my PlayStation. The game was set in a world surviving after a nuclear war, few soldiers and fighters remained protecting survivors living underground and their diminishing resources. I realised, this was the only situation where Communism can be applied and as soon as the resources are abundant, its utility vanishes.

Unknowingly, even I applied Communist principles in my novel Echoes from The Future. But as soon as the situation improved, the protagonist decentralised all modes of production.