Communism

In their Communist Manifesto of 1848, two famous philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels applied the term communism to a final stage of socialism in which all class differences would disappear and humankind would live in harmony. Marx and Engels claimed to have discovered a scientific approach to socialism based on the laws of history. They declared that the course of history was determined by the clash of opposing forces rooted in the economic system and the ownership of property. Just as the feudal system had given way to capitalism, so in time capitalism would give way to socialism. The class struggle of the future would be between the bourgeoisie, who were the capitalist employers, and the proletariat, who were the workers. The struggle would end, according to Marx, in the socialist revolution and the attainment of full communism. Socialism, of which Marxism-Leninism is a takeoff, originated in the west. Designed in France and Germany, it was brought into Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century and promptly attracted support among the country's educated, public-minded elite, who at that time was called intelligentsia. After Revolution broke out over Europe in 1848 the modern working class appeared on the scene as a major historical force. However, Russia remained out of the changes that Europe was experiencing. As a socialist movement and inclination, the Russian Social-Democratic Party continued the traditions of all the Russian Revolutions of the past, with the goal of conquering political freedom. As early as 1894, when he was twenty-four, Lenin had become a revolutionary agitator and a convinced Marxist. He exhibited his new faith and his polemical talents in a diatribe of that year against the peasant-oriented socialism of the Populists led by N.K. Mikhiaiovsky. While Marxism had been winning adherents among the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia for more than a decade previously, a claimed Marxist party was bit unorganized until 1898. In that year a congress of nine men met at Minsk to proclaim the establishment of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. The Manifesto issued in the name of the congress after the police broke it up was drawn up by the economist Peter Struve, a member of the moderate Legal Marxist group who soon afterward left the Marxist movement altogether. The manifesto is indicative of the way Marxism was applied to Russian conditions, and of the special role for the proletariat. The first true congress of the Russian Social Democratic workers Party was the Second Congress. It convened in Brussels in the summer of 1903, but was forced by the interference of the Belgian authorities to move to London, where the proceedings were concluded. The Second Congress was the occasion for bitter wrangling among the representatives of various Russian Marxist Factions, and ended in a deep split that was mainly caused by Lenin -- his personality, his drive for power in the movement, and his hard philosophy of the disciplined party organization. At the close of the congress Lenin commanded a temporary majority for his faction and seized upon the label Bolshevik (Russian for Majority), while his opponents who inclined to the soft or more democratic position became known as the Mensheviks or minority. Though born only in 1879, Trotsky had gained a leading place among the Russian Social-Democrats by the time of the Second party Congress in 1903. He represented ultra-radical sentiment that could not reconcile itself to Lenin's stress on the party organization. Trotsky stayed with the Menshevik faction until he joined Lenin in 1917. From that point on, he accommodated himself in large measure to Lenin's philosophy of party dictatorship, but his reservations came to the surface again in the years after his fall from power. In the months after the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Party Lenin lost his majority and began organizing a rebellious group of Bolsheviks. This was to be in opposition of the new majority of the congress, the Menshiviks, led by Trotsky. Twenty-two Bolsheviks, including Lenin, met in Geneva in August of 1904 to promote the idea of the highly disciplined party and to urge the reorganization of the whole Social-Democratic movement on Leninist lines. The differences between Lenin and the Bogdanov group of revolutionary romantics came to its peak in 1909. Lenin denounced the otzovists, also known as the recallists, who wanted to recall the Bolshevik deputies in the Duma, and the ultimatists who demanded that the deputies take a more radical stand -- both for their philosophical vagaries which he rejected as idealism, and for the utopian purism of their refusal to take tactical advantage of the Duma. The real issue was Lenin's control of the faction and the enforcement of his brand of Marxist orthodoxy. Lenin demonstrated his grip of the Bolshevik faction at a meeting in Paris of the editors of the Bolsheviks factional paper, which had become the headquarters of the faction. Bogdanov and his followers were expelled from the Bolshevik faction, though they remained within the Social-Democratic fold. On March 8 of 1917 a severe food shortage cause riots in Petrograd. The crowds demanded food and the step down of Tsar. When the troops were called in to disperse the crowds, they refused to fire their weapons and joined in the rioting. The army generals reported that it would be pointless to send in any more troops, because they would only join in with the other rioters. The frustrated tsar responded by stepping down from power, ending the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty. With the Tsar out of power, a new provisional government took over made up of middle-class Duma representatives. Also rising to power was a rival government called the Petrograd Soviet of workers and Soldiers Deputies consisting of workers and peasants of socialist and revolutionary groups. Other soviets formed in towns and villages all across the country. All of the soviets worked to push a three-point program, which called for an immediate peace, the transfer of land to peasants, and control of factories to workers. But the provisional government stood in conflict with the other smaller governments and the hardships of war hit the country. The provisional government was so busy fighting the war that they neglected the social problems it faced, losing much needed support. The Bolsheviks in Russia were confused and divided about how to regard the Provisional Government, but most of them, including Stalin, were inclined to accept it for the time being on condition that it works for an end to the war. When Lenin reached Russia in April after his famous sealed car trip across Germany, he quickly denounced his Bolshevik colleagues for failing to take a sufficiently revolutionary stand. In August of 1917, while Lenin was in hiding and the party had been basically outlawed by the Provisional Government, the