1 The Idea of Communism 'A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of communism.' When Karl Marx began his Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848 with these famous words, he - and his co-author, Friedrich Engels - could have had no inkling of the way in which Communism would take off in the twentieth century. It became not merely a spectre but a living reality. And not just in Europe, but for hundreds of millions of people spread across the globe - in places very different from those where Marx expected proletarian revolutions to occur. Communist systems were established in two predominantly peasant societies - the largest country in the world, Imperial Russia, which became the Soviet Union, and in the state with the largest population, China. Why and how Communism spread, what kind of system it became, how it varied over time and across space, and why and how it came to an end in Europe, where it began, are the central themes of this book. Marx's claim was an exaggeration when he made it in the middle of the nineteenth century. By the middle of the twentieth century it had become almost an understatement. That is not to say that the 'Communism' which held sway in so many countries bore much resemblance to anything Marx had envisaged. There was a wide gulf between the original theory and the subsequent practice of Communist rule. Karl Marx sincerely believed that under communism - the future society of his imagination which he saw as an inevitable, and ultimate, stage of human development - people would live more freely than ever before. Yet 'his vision of the universal liberation of humankind' did not include any safeguards for individual liberty. Marx would have hated to be described as a moralist, since he saw himself as a Communist who was elaborating a theory of scientific socialism. Yet many of his formulations were nothing like as 'scientific' as he made out. One of his most rigorous critics on that account, Karl Popper, pays tribute to the moral basis of much of Marx's indictment of nineteenth-century capitalism. As Popper observes, under the slogan of 'equal and free competition for all', child labour in conditions of immense suffering had been 'tolerated, and sometimes even defended, not only by professional economists but also by churchmen'. Accordingly, 'Marx's burning protest against these crimes', says Popper, 'will secure him forever a place among the liberators of mankind.' Those who took power in the twentieth century, both using and misusing Marx's ideas, turned out, however, to be anything but liberators. Marxist theory, as interpreted by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently refashioned by Josif Stalin in Russia and by Mao Zedong in China, became a rationalization for ruthless single-party dictatorship. During most of the twentieth century Communism was the world's domin ant international political movement. People reacted to it in different ways - as a source of hope for a radiant future or as the greatest threat on the face of the earth. By the middle decades of the last century there were Communist governments not only in a string of Soviet satellite states in Europe but also in Latin America and Asia. Communism held sway in what became the 'Second World'. The 'First World' - headed by the United States and its main European allies - was to engage in prolonged struggle with the international Communist movement for influence in the 'Third World'. Even in countries with strong democratic traditions, among them the United States and Great Britain, many intellectuals were drawn for a time to Communism. In France and Italy, in particular, Communist parties became significant political forces - far stronger than they were in Britain and America. The French and Italian parties had substantial popular as well as intellectual support, together with significant parliamentary representatio Excerpted from The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
