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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1997)
PAGE 10 74 YEARS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD BY MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER M. BISHOFS Nothing ages so quickly as yesterday's vision of the future -RICHARD CORLISS You Russians and we Americans! Our countries so distant, so unlike at first glance — such a difference in social and political conditions. . . and yet in certain features, and vastest ones, so resembling each other. -WALT WHITMAN Under Communism man oppresses man Under Capitalism, just the other way around. -A JOKE Five years ago, one year short of its platinum anniver sary, Bolshevik communism disintegrated into ruin and chaos Once hoped to be the essential revolution of the masses against the long history of repression, Bolshevism quickly developed into a monstrously cruel and eventually stagnant system that simply fell apart from the mendacious inertia of its own history The final suicide of the reigning Communist Part was an unsuc cessful putsch in the summer of 1991: by Christmas the regime was dead. History, Karl Marx paraphrased Hegel, recurs twice: "Once as tragedy, and again as farce." The vast empire of Russian "republics" and east Euro pean satellites collapsed into bitter splinters of ancient hatreds, as around the world communism was simultaneously rejected as a successor to colonialism and as the structure and ideology of newly enfranchised governments. Instead of seizing the future and proclaiming a "New Man" through world revolution, commu nism swiftly diminished as a relic of the past, swept, it might be said, into the dustbin of history, the god that both failed and died. Although Marx, the principle architect of 20th century communism, envisioned a "higher form of society" based on a high-tech industrial system "in vtfiich the full and free develop ment of every individual forms the ruling order," the colossally monstrous Bolshevik attempt to rapidly transform a backward Russia, vtfiich had ended serfdom only half a century before (in 1861), into a 20th century industrial giant cost the lives of millions and the uprooting and virtual enslavement of millions more. Despite forced industrialization and expansion of Soviet society through civil and w>rld war. the communist system ultimately collapsed, in no small measure from its failure to keep up with the West in the post-industrial age of computerization and communications technology The stifling conformity of cent ralized decision making precipitated the deadening stagnation that led to the breakdown of the communist system. The system that collapsed in despair was bom in great hope. It reflected not only antipathy to authoritarian rule but the excesses of industrial democracy. Socialism was conceived as an antithesis to the pervasive inequities of 19th century "Robber Baron" capitalism. The warking classes were virtual slaves of the bourgeoisie, by which is meant the "class of modem capital ists vtfio are the owners of social production and employers of wage labor," according to Friedrich Engels, who was Marx's comrade and collaborator for more than forty years. Marx and Engles said in their famous Communist Mani festo (1848) that wage slaves "are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine...and above all. by the individual bourgeois manu facturer himself." Marx believed that the central contradiction of capitalism was that instead of benefiting from the product of their labor, workers are made destitute and miserable. 'The modem laborer. . .instead of rising with the progress of industry sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class," Marx wrote, asserting that the bourgeoisie is unfit to rule society because of its incompetence to prevent its working slave from sinking into "such a state that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him." The conflicts between the beneficiaries of production and its producers — the 'conspiracy' of impoverishing the pro ducers by preventing them from enjoying the product of their labor — made Marx and Engels popular radical scholars of their era among trade unions and revolutionaries who desired for one reason or another to abolish prevailing systems of governments and economies. (Ignored in the furor between European capital ists and socialists/communists was the fervent desire for free dom from European colonialism by Asians and Africans, wXiich later made them ripe for Marxist exploitation.) Intellectual invention has probably never been as com pelling or enjoyed such vast rewards as the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. However, as in previous historical upheav als, the very many were ultimately forced to heft the burden. Though initially the breakthrough of industrial technology appeared to advance the fortunes of all, a thralldom rapidly developed among the working classes comparable to medieval serfdom, and working conditions were as dangerous to their lives as noblesse oblige was to their ancestors. Marx thought communism could break the stranglehold wealthy entrepreneurs applied to those who produced the wealth for not only meager wages but with little chance of acquiring political equity He thought he could fashion a system of government that would once and for all time correct the imbalance of a few ruling and acquiring the wealth and privileges of civilization at the expense of the multitudes Downtown D ebbie T homsen A M on -F ri 8 am -4 pm (503)325-4950 Engels summed up the fundamental proposition of the Communist Manifesto in a preface to the 1888 English edition, crediting most of it to his friend Marx who died five years earlier: That proposition is: That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which it is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that conse quently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles form a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class — the proletariat — cannot obtain its emanci pation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class — the bourgeoisie — without at the same time, and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles. The Manifesto itself sums up communist theory in a single sentence: "Abolition of private property" — and claims that "political power is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another." Socialism is defined as a theory of ownership and oper ation of a society's means of production by the community as a whole, sharing equally the work and rewards of production and distribution. Communism claims to be the final stage of social ism in which all functions of society are controlled by a central ized state which is the aggregate of the community. Capitalism in contrast is an economic system in which all or most means of production and distribution within a society are privately owned and operated for profits, originally under fully competitive condit ions but its later phases are characterized by concentration of wealth and growth of large corporations with pervasive influence on government. There is a tendency to confuse capitalism vwth democracy; it evolves instead into a plutocracy which is the rule of society by the wealthy Democracy is somewhat similar to socialism in that it attempts government be run by its citizens either directly or through elected representatives. However, a democratic government is able to tolerate class distinctions whereas socialism/communism prefers to render its citizenry into a common classless mush 'To be a capitalist," Marx and Engels wrote, "is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of... all members of society, can it be set in motion. Capital is there fore not a personal, it is a social power ” Communism, Marx wrote,"deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society: all it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation." 332 1 O th • A storia , O regon 9 7103 NORTH COAST TIMES EAGLE A JOURNAL OF ART & OPINION PUBLISHED IN ASTORIA, OREGON, 955 24TH ST. 97103 MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER EDITOR & PUBLISHER GRAND REOPENINC IN CANNON BEACH
