The Basics of Communism

Introduction

For most people, communism is seen as a utopian fantasy for college kids and art students to believe in until they grow up and follow something more rational. The tragedy of the Soviet Union and Communist China and the tens of millions of dead that resulted from them are proof that communism is a fundamentally unworkable and even evil system. The fact it has failed every single time shows that it is a doomed ideology. We have all heard the lines repeated over and over. "It looks great on paper, but it goes against human nature. People are greedy. It leads to dictators taking over." And so on.

But many people have not interacted with communism on even a surface level. Very few have read the communist manifesto. Fewer have read anything else written by Karl Marx. Only a slim number have read and studied enough to realize how poor of an example the communist manifesto sets. This work seeks to explain the basic ideas of communism in a way that is understandable and gets directly to the point. Given how many of the original texts by communists are quite dense, being written mostly in the 1800s, there will be no quotations. The general concepts are condensed, and this is meant to be a brief overview of many essential concepts of communist thought.

I. Historical Materialism

The driving force behind history is economics and actual material conditions, it is not the actions of great men and ideas. The French Revolution did not happen because enlightenment ideals of equality and liberty were just that strong. The French Revolution happened because of two reasons: the people were ready to revolt due to famine and economic crisis, and the capitalist class was coming to a point where it was becoming constrained by the current system. This second point changed the situation from civil war to revolution.

When the structure of a government does not fit the conditions, the government is thrown out either gradually or forcefully. When Rome fell, feudalism emerged because the Roman army did not exist anymore to protect large estates. When the absolutist Tsar could no longer manage the situation in Russia, he was replaced with a constitutional government in 1905. When Italy was in crisis and at risk of a revolution, the fascists took power and suppressed workers. If the economic situation requires a different form of government, it will come.

All of society, meanwhile, is influenced by the ruling class. The ideas of the ruling class, and thereby of the stage of social and economic development, become the dominant ideas of society. Ideas like honor make zero sense to a modern person, while ideas like the natural equality of man would make zero sense to someone in the year 1200. Concepts of what is "natural" and "right" only exist within their social contexts.

Other parts of society are similarly influenced by the economic structure of society. For example, under feudalism, the nobles were subservient to the king, who had the right to declare war, levy taxes, and so on. Meanwhile, the church saw all bishops ultimately subservient to the pope who had the right to call for a crusade, gather tithes, and so on. The structure of the church mirrored that of the economic structure of society. Similarly, under capitalism, ideals of individualism and equality became core tenets of protestantism.

As another example, science. Is it any wonder that there was such an interest in astronomy during the times when navigation by sea was becoming a major part of commerce? Or that huge leaps were made in the science of sanitation and medicine during times when people began being crowded in large cities? These innovations are made in response to material needs. They do not occur in isolation.

Each system builds upon the last, in a process of historical development. Ancient slavery concentrated large groups of people upon estates. These estates would later develop into the feudal fiefdoms and the slaves into serfs. The serfs would flee into the cities, forming the uneducated and unskilled workforce that would become the modern proletarian class that the urban capitalists would use to run factories. History and society is constantly developing, changing, and evolving in response to changes in material conditions.

Changes in society come from contradictions in systems. Either internal conflicts, or conflicts with the material conditions of society. For example, a worker seeks high wages and a capitalist seeks high profit, but these two are mutually exclusive. This creates conflict. Capitalists also seek to produce, but cannot know accurately whether their business wil succeed or fail, they can only estimate that there would be a good chance of it succeeding based on surveys and such. There is no rational economic plan, only a system of repeated trial and error until a company finds a market. This is a contradiction, a struggle between the system of capitalism and the actual conditions of the world.

The core of capitalism is the exploitation of wage labor, which allows the capitalists to expand the productive forces (mines, factories, railroads, etc.), creating greater centralization and specialization. This lays the foundation for communism. Under feudalism, a peasant produces solely for himself. He makes his own soap, his own candles, his own food, and he may sell the excess in towns. Under capitalism, a worker produces goods he himself does not consume and does not have ownership of. A worker in a candle factory must go to the store and buy candles with his wages, he cannot simply take them from work. Already here, we see the socialization of production. Workers produce for society as a whole, no man could survive in isolation off of candles alone, but because everyone else is also working a specialized job, the economy can form a cohesive whole.

Material analysis is a far more scientific lens than that of ideas. The ideal unemployment for a capitalist society is said to be somewhere around 3%. This helps ensure competition for jobs, so wages don't increase too much, and allows free workers in case of an economic expansion somewhere. With this in mind, welfare programs are shown to be not a humanitarian drive, but a way of sustaining this unemployed reserve of labor for use by the capitalists as needed. Material analysis is the rag that cleans the window and allows us to see things clearly.

II. The Class Struggle

Through the history of society, there have been various struggles between classes. In ancient times, it was between slaves and slaveowners, freedmen, artisans, peasants, priests, and so on. In feudal times, it was the competition between the peasantry, the clergy, the merchants, and the nobility. In capitalism, the merchants and the industrialists have won out, and class society has been reduced to merely the capitalist class and the working class.

The ruling class is the class who gains its subsistence not from work but through ownership. A slaveowner does not work, but gains his fortune through owning those who do work. A feudal lord gains his wealth through owning the land from which the serfs must pay tithe. A capitalist expands his hoard by owning the factories and warehouses in which the workers must labor.

Capitalism has subsumed all other classes. The priests have been pushed to the working class or are running churches as businesses. Gone are the days of tithes funding monasteries and convents in the countryside. The nobility is a thing of the past, now all men are created equal and none have special privilege by birthright -- besides those born into a rich family, of course.

The middle class is maintained, those who are afforded a comfortable life by capitalism. They are capitalism's staunchest defenders. But through time, the middle class shrinks, only to swell up again when capitalism needs allies, such as during the Cold War. Now that the Cold War is over, the middle class is left to rot again. The number of capitalists shrinks as well. Those who cannot compete with the larger and larger firms are pushed into the middle or working class.

The interest of the working class is for their ownership of the means of production, for the full value of their labor, and for actual equality. The interests of the capitalist class are for their ownership of the means of production, for the continued exploitation of labor, and for false equality. The interests of the working and ruling class do not overlap anywhere.

All of history has been various classes struggling for power, privilege, and dominance. With the only class not in power being the working class, the final revolution will not merely put a different sect of the ruling class in power, but will abolish class society as a whole. The workers must realize this, and they must act themselves. Nobody but the workers can liberate the working class. This is their historical mission, self-abolition of the proletariat.

III. Capitalist Democracy

One of the biggest lies ever told is that we live in a democratic society. The truth of the matter is that democracy is simply the expression of capitalist class domination. A dictatorship or a monarchy is generally too free to execute its will for the capitalists to be comfortable. At any moment, a king could decree that all debts are forgiven or interest cannot be raised above five per-cent. This would be bad for business.

To prevent a strong government from interfering with business, capitalism requires a limited government. This is expressed in ideas like "sensible government" and "personal liberty" and so on, but the underlying cause is the general class interest of the capitalists. The government must not interfere. The economy must run. Of course, limited intervention is fine! But not too much.

This can be seen, for example, with the founding fathers. They were merchants and slaveowners. This is not a moral indictment of them, but simply explaining that they had a vested interest in keeping the government small. They knew that a large government could interfere with their profits. And so, they instituted measures such as three branches of government, checks and balances, and a bicameral legislature. Measures to make sure the government stays small and inert, unable to interfere with business in any meaningful way.

Nowadays, people are often under the idea that we can just elect the "right candidate" and fix everything. Besides the fact that we would need several hundred of the "right candidate" in every office, no genuine communist can become elected. To be elected in office requires having a well known name, having enough money for a campaign, being able to fly around giving speeches and going to rallies, and so on. Nothing that a working-class person can achieve. Things that require corporate backing, personal connections, or a personal fortune passed down from relatives. While it is technically possible for a random joe to be president, it is never going to happen, let's be real. It's theoretically possible, but theory and practice are not the same thing!

So what is democracy? Democracy is the way for the various interests of the ruling class of capitalists -- oil, tech, manufacturing, etc. -- to express themselves through various candidates. Once moderate, sensible candidates are found, they are funded and backed and supported across campaigns and primaries. Eventually, they are presented before the people, two candidates who may differ on some issues but are identical on the fundamentals: maintain American power overseas, ensure the economy runs smoothly, ensure the people stay in line. The people then choose which of these two they would prefer, essentially granting a veneer of legitimacy to the public. The illusion of choice.

IV. The Labor Theory of Value

a. Use and Exchange Value

Exchange is the basis of markets. A farmer has grain and a blacksmith has nails. These items are both necessary, they both have use, but they are fundamentally not comparable. The qualities that make grain useful are completely distinct from that which makes nails useful. Nails cannot be eaten and you cannot construct things with grain, but both are absolutely needed! So how must they be compared, what does grain have in common with nails, how can you decide how many pounds of grain is worth how many pounds of nails?

The only thing that grain and nails have in common is that they are items presented for exchange, they have been created or gathered by their owners. In essence, labor has been expended on them. If it takes me five hours to make a bag of nails and one hour to make a bag of grain, then these two can be easily compared and exchanged along these lines: one bag of nails for five bags of grain. There is an exchange value present.

Issues arise when someone has enough nails or someone has enough grain. When these items lack a use-value for one party, the exchange cannot happen. Instead, there has to be a third, universal item that all desire as a means of exchange. Money! In tribal times it was often cattle, as they were easily transported and universally desired. However, with civilization, the focus shifted to gold. Gold can be divided into smaller pieces unlike other goods such as a cow that lose their use-value when divided -- you can't milk a steak. Gold is durable and so also acts as a store of value, unlike something like a cow that gets old over time and dies. Gold is also scarce, so a bit of gold embodies quite a lot of labor time.

b. Supply and Demand

It has often been said that value comes from scarcity. This is somewhat true, in a roundabout way. Scarce items such as gold and diamonds have a high exchange-value because they require far more labor-time to procure them as compared to other types of goods. I can find grass anywhere, but I can't walk around the street and find diamonds. Because they are rare, they require more work to acquire, and so have a higher exchange-value.

This is the fundamental working underlying supply and demand. People demand goods at a certain price, but why! Because in their mind, this item only embodies a certain amount of labor. Many people often will see an item for, say, twenty dollars, and compare it to their wages, thinking "Is this worth an hour of work?" or "Is this worth two hours of work?" and so on. They are able to see their labor-time expressed in money, but in the end are comparing their labor-time to the item's perceived value, an approximation of how much labor is embodied in the object.

Similarly, supply works the same. A certain amount of goods can be supplied at a certain price or another. Why does better production result in higher supply and lower prices? Because the same amount of goods can be furnished for less labor-time! It is not that the Labor Theory of Value contradicts that of supply-and-demand, but rather it explains the underlying mechanism of it.

c. Cost of Production

The exchange-value of an item is directly rooted in how much labor-time is required to reproduce this item. A diamond is valuable because it requires much labor-time, while firewood requires far less labor-time and so is far lower in value. This applies to all items to be bought and sold. Many items are made of other items. A table requiring one hour of work but two hours of inputs (depreciation on tools, raw materials, electricity, etc.) will have embodied in it three hours of labor.

The price of any item, through the workings of supply and demand, will generally sink to the value of the labor required to produce this item. This raises the obvious question, where does profit come from, if the item is sold at its value? The workers have received their wages, have they not? Yes, but the value of the wages is not the value of the labor!

Workers do not receive the full value of their labor. They receive the full value of their labor-power, their ability to labor, and not the value of the labor itself. A person can create enough value for a day's living (food, clothing, shelter, etc.) in perhaps six hours, yet there are more than six hours in a day. One day's living is reproduced in less than one day.

Capitalists figure how much a worker generally needs to survive (rent, food, clothing, etc.), be replaced (training, education), and for the working class to perpetuate (cost of raising children). According to this, the marginal value of each day's survival is calculated. Of course, this is not a conscious process, but an unconscious market reflex, and is only true on average, not necessarily for individual workers.

Next, the wages are set to where the worker must work more than what is required to earn his day of living. If it requires a hundred dollars to sustain a day's living, and a worker creates twenty five dollars of value an hour, a boss will employ him for perhaps ten dollars an hour. The worker will then have to work ten hours to earn his day's living, while the boss is able to pocket the one hundred and fifty dollars of "surplus value".

This is why measures such as subsidized housing and free healthcare will not result in better lives for people. Perhaps in the short term, yes. But in the long term, wages will decline back to their minimum.

V. The Fall in the Rate of Profit

When there is money to be made, there is an incentive for a business to be started. This is the basic underlying economic law of capitalist production, and why capitalism results in such rapid expansion of production. Profits can be made, and so they are made.

But of course, there is not just one capitalist. When there is a sudden increase in the demand for, say, canned fish, multiple companies will all attempt to set up canneries. They enter into competition with one another, and through competition the rate of profit falls.

Say a company is able to sell their canned fish at one dollar per can, that is the value of the fish. One of the companies creates a new machine that can automatically gut a fish and saves ten cents per can. This allows the company to pay less in wages and so they have a higher profit margin, but more importantly, it is able to attract more customers by selling its canned fish for ninety-five cents rather than one dollar. This then forces the other companies to adopt the new production method, and sell theirs for perhaps ninety-four cents, and so on until the price approximates the true value of the item, of ninety cents.

Moreover, because machinery transfers value rather than creating it, as an input, there is more of a cost to enter the business. Smaller competitors are forced out of business. But as well as this, though there was a period of higher profits as compared to the other companies, the other companies adopt the same measure and so now they are all actually making less in profit than before. If before the product was worth one dollar, fifty cents of labor and fifty cents of inputs, now it is worth ninety cents, perhaps thirty cents of labor and sixty cents of inputs. There is less profit, as the cost to reproduce the labor remains the same, but the cost of the machinery is a new input requiring additional investment yet not generating new value.

The lower profit margins will result in lower profits overall, unless the company is able to continue growing. This is why capitalism always seeks new markets, so that production can expand and profits will be sustained. New factories must be built, new consumers must be found, new cities established. However, this results in saturated markets, where there is more productive capacity than market demand. This is called overaccumulation. As a result, factories shut down and people go out of work. These unemployed workers are then less willing to spend, and a chain reaction can occur of overaccumulation. Goods exist, but simply go unsold in stores. The factories can run, but it is unprofitable to run them.

There are many ways out of an economic crash. For one, the failed companies may go bankrupt and so can be bought up for cheap by investors. This is only possible in places with high capital reserves. Maybe economic stimulus is given, a kickstart to the economy financed through debt or printing money. Or, as is usually the case, war. War is highly destructive. It kills many people, the excess population that capitalism has no need for, and it destroys much of the productive forces such as factories and railroads. This opens up new opportunities to develop and invest for companies, helping to start the economy again. Moreover, the war demands for materiel and ordinance helps funnel productive capacity away from saturated markets and towards an outlet where the products are meant to be destroyed rather than sold and so do not accumulate. The primary focus of war has become not the looting but the destruction itself, as economic stimulus.

VI. State-Capitalism

The fundamental aspect of capitalism is not the capitalist. Without the individual capitalist, capitalism can work just fine. The core of the system is wage-labor, commodity production, surplus value extraction. There is no reason why this cannot exist under a state. Where there is wage-labor and commodity production, there is capitalism.

The Soviet Union, for example, paid its workers a wage negotiated between the trade union and the national economic council. It all occurs within the confines of state halls, but it is still by all means capitalist! The capitalist relations exist. They argue that the surplus-value is being used to expand social programs, and to expand the productive forces, so it is not exploitative. But is this not exactly what capitalists do through taxes and their regular business operations? Nothing about this is fundamentally non-capitalist!

As previously described, as technology improves, companies tend to grow larger. When there is a high cost of entering a market, small producers simply cannot compete. This results in a link between banking and industry, where banks are the only ones able to offer loans and enough capital to help start up certain industries. Or multiple companies join together for joint projects such as railroads and canals that all can use. The state being directly involved in industry is just another natural step, as the state has the finance to support many of these industrial projects. The state capitalism of the Soviet Union, for example, was by no means communist nor socialist. It is merely a more advanced form of capitalism.

Many so-called communist parties in various western countries have, in their programmes, calls for subsidized housing, fixed rents, nationalization of industries and banks, higher wages, and so on. In other words, they seek to merely put capitalism in state hands rather than replace it. They echo the Soviet Union's policies without understanding the reasons why these policies were enacted, and that the Soviet Union was by no means communist!

VII. Workers' Dictatorship

There is a term thrown around often. Dictatorship of the Proletariat. For many, it is frightening. Dictatorship has become a scary word. But this is not the case. For example, we live currently under the dictatorship of the capitalists. Dictatorship is merely referring to who has power in society, who is the ruling class. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers' dictatorship, is merely expressing that the workers themselves will be the ruling class.

Through history, the state has been a tool of class oppression. It is a tool of the ruling class to protect its own interests and keep order, acting as an outside force apart from class struggle. For the workers, the state will also be used as a tool of class oppression, but the class it will oppress is the capitalist class. The goal of the workers' dictatorship is the liquidation of the capitalists through seizure of property or other means, and thereby the abolition of the working class as a concept; there is no working class if there is no ruling class, there are only people.

The workers' dictatorship must occur after a revolution, it cannot be enacted through legislation. During this brief period of time, the workers must enact several changes to the underlying foundations of society. Abolishing money, abolishing private ownership of factories and warehouses, abolishing the bureaucratic apparatus, replacing standing armies and police forces -- instruments of class oppression -- with armed citizens' militias to keep order and repress the capitalists and reactionaries violently.

A revolution must enact these sorts of changes quickly, or else reaction will creep in and counterrevolution will prevail. A revolution can only buy time for lasting changes to be made, perhaps a couple of years. The fundamental laws of economic motion for the current society will compel the revolution back into capitalism unless these fundamental laws are changed.

A revolution cannot come from above. Any attempt at revolution from above is merely a reshuffling of the ruling class. The American revolution shifted the power from the British monarchy to the American landowners. The French revolution shifted power from the nobility and clergy to the businessmen and state. A revolution that comes from below seeks to destroy what is above, and only that can liberate the working class truly.

VIII. Labor Vouchers

A society's form is determined by the underlying laws of production. So what does this mean practically? If a communist revolution occurs, but it maintains things such as money and wage-labor, the society will drift back into capitalism, either state or liberal. The underlying relations of production have not changed and so the society itself cannot.

What is the solution to this? The underlying laws of production must change, obviously. The most important way is the concept of Labor Vouchers and the General Social Fund. One hour of work gains one "hour" of labor credits, labor vouchers, however it is called, it does not change the thing itself. These vouchers can be redeemed but never transferred. They are a representation of how much an individual has put into society, the general social fund (GSF), through labor and thereby how much that worker is entitled to withdraw.

The socially-average labor time (SALT) for any item becomes its price. Say a table takes one hour to make at factory A and two hours to make at factory B, both factories spend 200 hours of labor. The total amount of tables, 300, are expressed in 400 hours of labor. Therefore, the SALT for each table is roughly 1.3 hours. Anyone could go to a store and redeem 1.3 "hours" of labor vouchers in exchange for a table from either factory. These vouchers do not transfer to the store, but are simply destroyed in the same way going to a theater does not transfer the ticket to the company but merely consumes it. When the worker works for ten hours at work, ten hours are added to the GSF and the worker receives ten hours of labor vouchers. When the worker redeems his ten hours of vouchers, those ten hours are removed from the GSF.

A company requires raw materials and inputs. These are reported and tabulated by the mere interaction with other companies who supply these inputs. Accounting is important here. The inputs' SALT is deducted from the GSF -- say four hours worth of materials -- and the finished product is readded to the GSF when it is shipped out -- say six hours of finished goods. The workers would receive those two hours of vouchers, and so when they redeem them, it would even out.

Services are slightly different. Say a service, a carwash, requires two hours of materials and two hours of labor. The purchaser would spend four hours of vouchers, and the person performing the carwash would be given two hours of vouchers for his work. Once again, the GSF evens out when the end-product is consumed.

Deductions must be made. For example, the maintenance of roads and parks, the construction of seawalls and dams, relief for the crippled and so on, these are not something that can be individually billed and consumed, but are costs generally shared by society. So, each of these projects, parks for example, would submit a budget for the period -- year, quarter, whatever -- and would earmark that "value" of goods in the GSF, say, 1,000 hours of work. Then, given the normal rate of hours worked by all members of society combined during that period, say 1,000,000 hours, a small deduction would be made from each worker's income of vouchers for these general social goods. In this case it would be 1,000/1,000,000, so a one per-cent deduction from each worker's income. This would be a constant rate until the end of the period, being adjusted periodically in accordance to differences between projected and actual budgets and so on until the GSF is once again evened out. Even without money, there will be taxation.

The system is not centrally planned, but it is centralized. For example, there is nobody determining how much each company is allowed to take from the GSF. But as all transactions flow through the GSF, discrepancies or excessive unproductive withdrawls can be found and investigated -- describing the actual process of this would be speculative. As well as this, the general production statistics are also centralized but not centrally planned. All production by, say, table factories flows through the central GSF account and so the statistics on the SALT can be compiled, but companies are not centrally directed from above on how many tables to produce.

The market does not exist, but demand is still considered and is the primary drive of production, rather than profit maximizing, as profit will no longer exist. A factory for tables would not produce tables endlessly, but instead would produce to fulfill orders and keep some inventory, as is the case in modern capitalist production. Much of this tracking could likely be streamlined or automated, given how many inventory systems in modern stores are already tracked by computers. Moreover, there is a dual-check for each company, in that a company can claim to have shipped ten tables, but if their freighter only claims to have received five, there is a visible discrepancy to be investigated.

This system is much different from our current system, as the central focus becomes that of the GSF. All goods are produced for common use. A worker who works forty hours for society is entitled to forty hours of goods from society, public or individual. There are no idlers. There is no circulation of goods, goods are not privately owned. Goods are individually consumed, but the concept of private ownership and disposal of goods is gone. Goods are communally owned and disposed of.

IX. The Failure of the Soviet Union

The goal of the Soviet Union was never to establish communism. As has been described, communism is only possible in a place with well-developed capitalist relations of production. Socialized workplaces, proletarianization, and so on. The goal of the Soviet Union was to spread the revolution west, to Germany and France, where the conditions for communism were indeed present.

There is a little known fact that just a year after the Russian revolution of 1917, there was a German revolution, in 1918. It failed, but it was a clear indicator that there was indeed support for communism in Germany. For various reasons, including strong nationalist sentiment, the German revolution was unable to succeed, failing in 1919. The last hope for communism spreading and taking hold was for the Bolsheviks in Russia to reach Germany directly. Instead, in 1920, they were stopped at Warsaw by the Polish army.

The Bolsheviks, when they seized power, had made various compromises and concessions to the peasantry, to the businessmen, to the nationalists. All these were made to buy time for the army to get west. They could all be dealt with later, the only thing that mattered was reaching Germany. When the Russian army was crushed in Poland and had to retreat and entrench itself in Russia, all of the concessions and compromises remained and could not be easily reneged on. Instead of achieving its goal, the Bolsheviks had to suffer a slow death to reaction and counterrevolution, the necessity of its material conditions could no longer be resisted. Programs such as the NEP reestablished markets in a limited scope in Russia, and the system of wage-labor continued in Russia unabated. Capitalism became dominant, as was necessary, but under state management.

The question is why the Bolsheviks won and seized power in the first place. The simple answer is that they were the most authoritarian. Not that authoritarianism always wins out, but that it is what was historically necessary for Russia. The capitalist nations like France and England had a century and a half head-start on Russia. They could allow industrial capitalism to grow naturally, build up the productive forces over time -- though still with many acts of violence, such as the Reign of Terror, the Highland Clearances, and so on. Russia, who now had to compete with these mature and developed capitalist nations, had no luxury. Instead, Russia had to modernize aggressively. A moderate, laissez-faire liberal government could not do this. Instead, Russia required an authoritarian government who could bring Russia into the modern day and into equal competition and standing to the rest of the capitalist nations. The Bolsheviks won because it is what Russia needed to survive.

There is also the matter of the deaths of the tens of millions. Many sources claim that 50 million people died under Stalin and so on. This is utter nonsense. The population of the USSR in 1920 was about 140 million. In 1939 it was 170 million. 50 million would be over a quarter of the entire country, while the population would have grown by 80 million to counteract this -- a 50% increase! In 1941, the start of the German Invasion, the population was 198 million. By 1945, the end of the war, it was 170 million. So of the "50 million deaths", many were due to the war. It has been said that one of the sources claiming 50 million had a very strange way of calculating this number. For example, a man had on average, say, three children. If he died from some way or another, they would record four deaths. One for the man, and for the three kids who did not get a chance to be born. This is a truly remarkable method! Stalin absolutely killed people. Millions of people. But tens of millions? Hardly.

There is also discussed the famines of Russia. There were two major ones. The first happened in 1920, the second in 1932. The second is contested as to its cause. It occurred largely in Ukraine, which had fought against Russia a decade prior for independence, perhaps the famine was allowed to occur as retribution and punishment. On the other hand, it could very well be bureaucratic incompetence. It is likely the first reason. The first famine, the 1920 one, however, was not the fault of the Bolsheviks. It was legitimately unavoidable. A series of bad harvests combined with a civil war is going to cause a famine in a peasant nation, regardless of who is in power. That's just the reality of the situation.

X. Nationalism

Many often speak of nationalism in hushed tones, as if it is something to be feared. In the 1800s, nationalism was a liberating force. It was progressive, it sought to dismantle empires and allow peoples to govern themselves -- it increased the ability of these groups to centralize and for capital to accumulate, for capitalism to develop.

We do not live in the 1800s anymore. Capitalism has reached everywhere. If a country rich in oil is dominated by another country, its ruling class will often fight for more autonomy through means such as nationalization of industry and strong governments. Many socialists support this, mistakenly believing it is fighting capitalism. In fact, it is a reactionary sentiment that is actually decreasing the socialization of the economy by increasing the power of small businesses and local autonomy rather than centralization. Moreover, there is no 'resistance' against capitalism. China, Russia, and America are all three capitalist nations, and the conflicts between them are not "Capitalism" vs "Socialism", but merely inter-imperialist conflicts over resources and control.

There is also the argument that countries that liberate themselves will develop their productive forces moreso than under foreign capitalism. This is also sorely mistaken. Capitalism is global. A country rich in minerals is going to export minerals, no matter how much self-liberation they do. If some country is rich in cobalt, they can build all the shoe factories they want, they are still going to be a heavily mining-based economy. That's the nature of the global economy. It does not matter who runs the nation, the people on top in one country do not control the global economy. The economy of a nation is not determined by its people, it is managed by the material conditions and economic laws of that region.

Nationalism has also historically been the tool of capitalism. When socialist thought, fundamentally internationalist, emerges and becomes popular, capitalism turns to nationalist appeals and rhetoric. Ideas of country, of duty, of national heritage, of racial power. These are nonsensical ideas created to divide the working class. The classic example is Bacon's Rebellion, a combined poor-white and black-slave rebellion against the ruling class of Virginia. It resulted in the crushing of the rebels and the institution of racial codes, to divide the workers and stop them from finding solidarity with each other's struggle.

However, given the effects of capitalism and the global market, nationalism is fading somewhat. You can go anywhere in the world and find a McDonald's. People in India dress roughly the same as those in Tanzania. Mass produced uniform goods have eroded local cultural identities. The international market has also made common languages, where English is spoken by nearly one in five people and is the international maritime language. All that remains is cultural heritage and values, but international film and music and media is also helping to remove this, with much cultural heritage reduced to merely "the stories our parents told us". Capitalism's greatest defense, nationalism, is being eroded by its own homogenizing impulses and drives to create uniform markets.

XI. Religion

One great criticism of communism is its stance towards religion. It is often repeated that the Soviets killed millions of Christians, and that communism is anti-religion. This is not true. The generally accepted belief amongst communists is that many people are religious because of their material conditions. They are miserable, they are poor, and so they turn to relief in religious ideas. If their material conditions are improved, they will naturally drift from religion. It is not that the communists are anti-religion, but that they see religion as a byproduct of poor conditions.

The biggest reason communists have fought religion is because it is a tool used by the ruling class. The church in most places is an instrument that the ruling class uses to force people to obey and to maintain their own power. The kings would appeal to divine right, the capitalists appeal to God's will and 'peaceful means'. Religion is not the issue, but it is the utilization of religion as a tool of class oppression that is to be combatted. A communist can be religious, but must not allow the ruling class to pervert religion to defend its own fundamentally material interests.

Moreover, many of the proto-socialist movements were intensely religious. Thomas Muntzer was a deeply religious man who led a peasant revolt over years numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Gerrard Winstanley directly spoke of abolishing money and private property as God's will. There are many appeals to the historical "Community of Goods" in early Christian Jerusalem. There is by no means an incompatibility of communism and religion, as there is not necessarily an incompatibility of capitalism and religion. Religion deals with the metaphysical, and political-economy deals with the physical. They are two different realms.

XII. Fascism

To a communist, fascism and democracy are quite similar. Fascism is not seen as a unique evil that must be fought at all costs. Fascism is a ruling class' response to a crisis. When the traditional systems of government are unable to handle a crisis, the capitalists often back a dictator to hold the ruling class together and to weather the storm. This is why fascism often occurred during economic struggles such as during the great depression.

The biggest moral outrages against fascism are the lack of democracy, the open use of violence against people, and the denial of human rights. For a communist, this is quite nonsensical. Democracy does not and can not exist under capitalism, democracy is an illusion of the ruling class. The use of violence against the workers, this is as well by no means new, but under fascism it is simply more overt and more easily recognized by people. The human rights that are violated are known to be false promises, and fascism shows how easily capitalism discards these promises when it is convenient for its purposes.

Fascism is the opposite side of the coin of capitalism. Fascism's primary characteristic is the unification of the capitalist class, and the reconciliation of the working class to the capitalist class. For example, most fascist nations had a national union where all workers must join, and they may air issues with their boss through this method. The class conflict in society is managed rather than left to run on its own, to prevent a revolution. However, those who seek to act outside of the state are mercilessly punished, being imprisoned or tortured or executed. Fascism combines temporary concessions, appeals to the middle-class, and strong, violent state power to prevent a revolution and maintain the rule of the capitalist class.

Fascism is a product of certain material conditions, and the appeals to defend democracy against fascism are appeals to defend the very system that gives rise to the conditions for fascism in the first place. The solution to fascism is not to fight it in the name of democratic capitalism, but to fight it in the name of workers' liberation, a united front from below, rather than with alliances between various bodies of the capitalists and liberals.