How Did the Communist State Arise and What Kind of Challenge Did It Provide to Liberal Capitalism in the West - Research Paper Example

How did the communist arise and what kind of challenge did it provide to liberal capitalism in the West? No single idea in the realm of political science has had the kind of impact on large sections of humanity as that of Communism. Right from its origins in the form of an abstract political philosophy in 1847 till its unexpected disintegration in the late 1980s, Communism had been an antidote to Capitalist ideology with its attendant injustices – economic and social. This essay will discuss the rise of the Communist state and the challenges it posed to the laizez faire capitalist societies of the last two centuries. The question of origins of Communist thought can be traced back to biblical times, when Moses delivered the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples. Marx’s political philosophy attracted as many followers as Moses, but its foundation is secular. Moreover, Karl Marx, having born into a Jewish family, brought to his scientific historical analysis elements of the New Testament, although this might have happened subconsciously. While many historians talk about the “Communist Manifesto” being the first definitive text published on Communism, the translation of the ideas proposed therein into reality involved a lot of struggle. (Shuklian, 1995) The communist faithful had to wait for another seventy years before their aspirations transpired into political reality. It is in the year 1917, when under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, the first communist state was born – the Soviet. It was in St. Petersburg, the original capital of Russia, on October 25, 1917 that “thousands of mutinous soldiers, sailors and peasants stormed the Winter Palace and seized the countrys provisional government, which had taken over when the Czar abdicated. And so the long and frequently bloody history of Communism was born” (Shuklian, 1995). The other recurrent theme in the rise of the Communist state is violence. Although violent revolution was not a prescribed tenet in the communist doctrine, the power wielded by capitalist elite is such that peaceful and gradual ascendancy was out of the question. Interestingly, communist uprisings were not the first organized revolutions. That designation would have to go to the French Revolution. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, many uprisings followed, including that of Hungary and Bavaria (in Germany). Here and elsewhere in the world, the people were enthused and inspired by the changes taking place in Russia. (Hobsbawm, 1996) The Second International was a crucial event for subsequent developments in Russia. Luminaries such as Kautsky, Lenin and Trotsky discussed and debated over the future course of action, which would manifest itself as the October Revolution. In spite of the success of the violent revolutionary approach to the formation of the Russian Communist state, such a model of social change would not be viable elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe. The third world would have been conducive to such forced social change had communist ideology taken hold at grassroots level there. But, political composition of Europe at the time was quite different. The 1920s was a time when many political ideologies were fighting for ascendancy in most nations of Europe. The communist movement did not gain a strong footing until the emergence of Fascism. As author Eric Hobsbawm notes, “With some exceptions— Germany, France, Finland, perhaps Czechoslovakia—communist parties were small, marginal and politically insignificant. The Great Depression benefited the extreme Right and not the Left, and destroyed the one European communist party which had carried the hopes of Moscow—the KPD. Conversely, as soon as the communist movement shifted to the strategy of anti-fascism, European communism began its ascent, which brought all the communist parties of the continent—except the unfortunate German one—to the highest point of their public support and political influence, and, in Eastern Europe, produced a number of regimes dominated by communist parties, some of which were based on home-grown revolutions (Yugoslavia, Albania) or—as the relatively free Czech elections demonstrated—on genuine mass support”. (Hobsbawm, 1996) In other words, the decade following the Russian Revolution saw the communist parties rise to prominence in Europe, replacing the Social Democratic parties as the prime representative of the general public, especially in such countries as France and Italy. There were sound reasons for liberal capitalists to feel threatened by the rise of communism. This came to be termed as the “red scare” by the Western intelligentsia, although it carries with it derogatory connotations. When Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party captured power in 1933, the reality of aggression and threat to democracy became patent. The tussle for power between the Right and Left ends of the political spectrum was at its most intense during the period leading up to the Second World War. “Between 1919 and the end of World War a few governments were overthrown from the Left, and all anti-democratic regime changes, by coup, conquest or by other means, were moves to the Right. Not all the Right-wing parties were fascist, and for that matter, that the differences between fascist movements and regimes were substantial. Communists no doubt benefited and continued to benefit from such confusions”. (Mccauley, 2007) If the consolidated Eastern European states in the shape of USSR are the torch bearer for communism, then the United States of America represented its antithesis. The antagonism between the two emerging powers started right at the birth of the Soviet Union, when the USA refused to acknowledge its legitimacy. The differences between the two blocs were very deep, cutting across political, economic and social lines. The USA, in spite of suffering a catastrophic economic recession and Wall Street collapse the preceding decade, could not abandon its capitalist ideology. The Soviet political organization was oriented toward the people as opposed to business interests. Each bloc saw the other as a huge threat to its very existence. It is at this juncture that a greater threat to both emerged in the form of Hitler’s fascism. It is the threat of fascism under Hitler that coerced an impossible alliance between the Soviet Union and the United States of America prior to the Second World War (Shuklian, 1995). The rapid growth of communism rattled the liberal capitalist West. The concerns of the Western capitalists were not confined to the realm of abstract and applied political philosophy. For them, it was the ‘revolutionary’ element of the rise of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe that caused concern. Incidentally, “it brought Western revolutionaries, hitherto critical of Marxism, which they identified with peaceful moderation, to rediscover it as an ideology of revolution and, in doing so, to bring about the rapid decline of anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism—except, for a while, in Spain” (Mccauley, 2007). In summary, the decades after 1917 till the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union saw the spirit of the Russian Revolution manifested itself across continents, albeit in a smaller scale, and with less bloodshed. But as far as Western Europe is concerned, the end of the Second World War put paid to communist and socialist movements. Though they maintain a token presence, their political significance is negligible. Moreover, in the large parts of Europe— Great Britain, Germany, Scandinavia—Marxist or any other kinds of socialist beliefs were rarely espoused by intellectuals, and “even rarer in the milieu from which most of them came, even the French revolutionary history that formed part of socialist culture was not well known during the second half of the twentieth century” (Mccauley, 2007). If communism challenged the capitalist economic system, then communism in turn was challenged by more liberal democratic societies. It also did not help that after 1945 communist governments across the world curtailed democratic processes both internal to their party and externally to the general public. Some socialists argued that the ends justified the means, although, unfortunately, the desired objectives were not always met. Given the collapse of the enterprise started in Petrograd with the onset of the October Revolution, the unfeasibility of the goals it set itself to achieve by the means considered as appropriate by socialists and under the historic conditions in which it was undertaken, cannot be denied. Outside the USSR and the other states in which communist parties adopted revolutionary methods to attain power gave their citizens little choice in the matter. Moreover, the appeal of this enterprise in Europe was always limited to intellectual elite, though some of them were talented ones. The only period of time when communism may have taken on hegemonic proportions was a relatively brief one between 1943 and 1950s (Mccauley, 2007). Hence, this should be the base-line of any discussion of the history of communist threat and influence in the West. The threat it posed to the liberal democratic West was succinctly captured by the following passage: “The hope and fear of communism was real, and far larger than the actual strength of communist movements warranted. Both the hope and the fear belong equally to the illusion of communism. For, it was the image of a force dedicated to the conquest of the world, nay, poised to cross the frontiers of freedom at any moment, if not deterred by nuclear armaments ready for action within minutes. Once victorious anywhere it inevitably spread—the domino theory. Once established anywhere, it was irreversible by internal forces, for that was the very essence of totalitarianism. Conversely, it was sometimes seriously argued that no communist regime had ever or could ever come to power by democratic vote” (Mccauley, 2007). Hence, it is now easy to understand how communist ideology held sweeping mass appeal, as a result of its espousal of economic equality to go along with political equal rights. It also offered hope for many millions of people who were exploited under the liberal capitalist principles of free individual enterprise and unfettered accumulation of wealth. It is quite another question of those hopes transpired to reality. References: Hobsbawm, E. (1996). History and Illusion. New Left Review, a(220), 116-125. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=98491848 Marx, K. (1959). Capital, the Communist Manifesto and Other Writings (M. Eastman, Ed.). New York: The Modern Library. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=3031507 Mccauley, M. (2007, August). Comrades: A World History of Communism. History Today, 57, 63+. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5023210100 Shuklian, S. (1995). Marx, Dewey and the Instrumentalist Approach to Political Economy. Journal of Economic Issues, 29(3), 781+. Retrieved November 26, 2008, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=500165346 Read More