Communism & Nationalism Communism Is a Society Essay

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Communism & Nationalism

Communism

Communism is a society without money (For Communism) 1, without a state, without property and without social classes. People come together to carry out a project or to respond to some need of the human community but without the possibility of their collective activity taking the form of an enterprise that involves wages and the exchange of its products. The circulation of goods is not accomplished by means of exchange:

quite the contrary, the by-word for this society is "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.

With communism the government of people (For Communism) 1 gives way to the administration of things. Contrary to the illusion produced by the present society the state and its institutions are not the inevitable result of the growth and complexities of societies, but the opposite, the result of the frantic socialization of the species without community.

The necessity for distinct organs of administration, repression and assistance has its cause in the maintenance of class society. The state is the defender of the dominant class which is increasingly integrated into it. It is forced to alleviate destitution which is increased by a social life where man becomes a predator for man.

With communism the oppositional but complementary relationship (For

Communism) 1 between the political and economic spheres disappears, i.e. between the citizen supposedly governing society in freedom and equality, and the producer as a slave

Communism & Nationalism 2

to material necessity, hierarchy and the despotism of the factory. Communist theory and struggle are a critique of economy and politics.

Origins of Communism

The origins of communism took place in Russia, a country a centuries-old tradition for despotism, servility, and brutality. Some of the profound aspects of czarism that Communism drew and took strength from entailed:

1) Monarchy

The histories of most of the nations of Europe are marked by multi-polar and limited centers of power. King, church, and nobles usually had to share power to a significant extent.

2) Serfdom & Official Brutality

While the other nations of Europe were slowly wiping serfdom, Catherine the Great was propagating it in Russia. Serfdom existed in Russia till 1839 and was not officially abolished until 1861. Nor was this a slight institution; servile labor was the norm, not the exception. In Russia, serfs' treatment was especially harsh.

3) Communist Revolutions

The history of Communism as a practical movement begins with a single man,

Vladimir Ilich Lenin. The Russian Marxist movement preceded Lenin by two decades, but it was Lenin who split off a militant faction from the rest of the Russian Social

Democratic. Lenin accepted most of Marx's thought without alteration. He prided himself upon his Marxist orthodoxy, attacking any new idea that struck him as heretical.

Communism & Nationalism 3

Communism: Post World War 1 and 2 Revolutions

Lenin was a master of the political 'bait and switch'. "Peace, Land, and Bread"

what he promised, but he only kept his promises when he found it convenient. While Lenin delivered brave speeches against imperialism, he was directing and encouraging

Communist revolutions throughout Europe. All of these attempts to repeat Lenin's success story failed, but they reveal that the Bolsheviks' boasts of a Soviet Europe were not fantasy. It would take another world war before Communist imperialism would win major victories, but serious plans for worldwide revolution directed from Moscow were in existence by 1918.

After world war2, Soviet Russia had intentions of well defined expansionist postwar program and she went for increasing ruthlessness to snatch the great part of Europe. Within a few years she had in her control almost one third of the continent.

Countries which had been an integral part of the weak political and economic fabric of the Europe before war were now forcibly included into the growing Soviet empire.

All this was achieved by Russia through aggression, subverting the ideologies of the eastern European countries, concessions and ruthless assumption of the helm by local Communist parties, assisted and directed by Moscow.

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In less than five years or so,

East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Albania and others had been transformed into Russian colonies. If this had been all, it would have been a bad enough policy, but Soviet Russia intended to promote a similar program in Asia as well.

Communism & Nationalism 4

Decline of Communism

All Communist governments have practiced (comfaq.htm#part3)2 widespread killing of non-combatants. The extermination of the bourgeoisie and wealthy "as a class"

has been most loudly proclaimed, although in actual fact peasants have been by far the majority of the victims. In addition, Communist governments have ordered the genocide of numerous ethnic minorities deemed disloyal or anti- Communist. Finally, Communist

governments have frequently killed large numbers of rival Communists. In most cases, the official reasons given for mass killings have been economic or political rather than racial, but punishment has rarely been inflicted for individual infractions of the law. Rather,

Communist governments would judge "enemies of the people" to be common in one's class, family, or ethnicity, and respond with blanket repression of the entire suspect group.

Unnatural deaths ordered by Communist regimes (comfaq.htm#part3)2 fall into three fairly distinct categories: deaths due to extreme hardship conditions in slave labor camps; deaths due to man-made famine, usually closely connected to forced collectivization of agriculture; and lastly, straightforward executions.

Communism is in serious (comfaq.htm#part16)3decline today, but history has a way of repeating itself. For this reason alone, it is important for the future of the world that the basic facts about Communist regimes become common knowledge. While admirers of Hitler's Germany still exist, the public knows enough about the Holocaust to make a revival of Nazism far less likely than it otherwise would be. Greater awareness of the crimes of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao could similarly inoculate the world against any

Communism & Nationalism 5

future Communist revival.

Communism deprived its people of both (comfaq.htm#part16)3personal and economic freedom. It thereby provided a third controlled experiment - a moral experiment testing the value of freedom. Imagine a society with any conceivable properties, but utterly lacking in "bourgeois" freedom. It would remain a profoundly evil society. The experience of Communism makes it possible to conduct this thought experiment without taxing the imagination.

Nationalism

The central characteristic of nationalism (world nationalism) 4, which I will not argue further here, is its denial of sovereignty to entities other than nations or peoples. In practice, within all historical nation states, this abstract denial of sovereignty is visible as internal pressure for cultural, social, political and economic unity. This is replicated in the politics of normative globalists: none of them explain how to get away from the World

Government, if you oppose it.

Formally the equivalence can be so stated...

Nationalism has as a central political (world nationalism) 4 demand the establishment of a state on a territory, exclusive of other states on that territory, populated by a group formed by involuntary membership of an inclusive category, usually 'descendants of past inhabitants of the territory'.

Normative globalism seeks a state with planetary territory (world nationalism) 4, and a monopoly of that territory, paralleling the monopoly claim of nationalism itself. All Communism & Nationalism 6

humans would belong to that state (as citizens) by reason of being human and/or inhabiting the planet, without any choice in the matter. In its central claim normative globalism is equivalent to nationalism: it is semantically correct to describe it as a form of nationalism.

In this usage 'normative globalism' as movement or ideology (world nationalism) 4

seeks some form of planetary political unit with global authority, executive, legislative, and/or judicial. It includes all forms of global federalism or confederalism, planetary

Bundesstaat or Staatenbund. It includes proposals for global taxation, which will require such authority. It does not include political demands for increased….....

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