In view of the importance of Communism at the present time, some acquaintance with the principles which lead men become communists is desirable. It must be said at the outset, that communism is a reaction to capitalism; it is believed by communists that capitalism is the cause of all the present ills that the people face and the only remedy lies in the adoption of communism.
But if we examine its philosophy we find that it is based on self deluding assumptions which can never be realised in actual practice. The most important of these assumptions is the public ownership of the means of production. It is said that under capitalism wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals and the large number of people is exploited by these privileged few.
But in any regime providing free opportunity, a small percentage will rise to the top. This fact will cause no injury to anyone if the way is kept open for all persons to strive toward the top, and for each to go as far as he can. It is the law of progress that a few persons must go to the top in order to show the possibilities and opportunities, so that others might emulate and follow them.
If all the people were to try to march at the same time, then who will guide them? There is every possibility that like goats they may fall in ditches and there will be none to lift them up from their positions.
“Plant a vine, watch it grow, and you will find how human society is carried upward by the individuals who first go upwards.”
Public ownership
It is assumed by the Communists that under Communism alone the proletariat will own the capital and other economic processes of a country; but it appears that communists have either not properly understood the meaning of the term public ownership or they are practising a self-deception or fraud on the minds of the people.
“The ownership of a thing is the right of one or more persons to possess and use it to the exclusion of others”. If this is so, then the terms “public” and “ownership” are contradictory to each other. The Communists have failed to recognise this distinction. If they had realised it, then their argument does not stand; and if it can be shown that the argument is invalid then the whole ideology of communists falls to the ground.
No control by the people
In public ownership only a few individuals at any given time have control of public property and the people as a whole cannot have the control and management of any item of property: they cannot have the possession of it as they can have under capitalism. Under capitalism an individual is free to own and dispose of his property as he likes.
Under communism, the capital assets of a nation are in the absolute control of a handful of individuals over whom the people have no control. This same small group controls all activities of the people and their main object is to maintain their own position and their own power at any cost. At this they are cunning, cruel and relentless.
In spite of their power they are always under fear. They too do not enjoy complete freedom. It is said by one writer “there is no freedom on earth or in any star for those who deny freedom to others.” So under communism people have no control of the nation’s property and they lose what they have. They have to accept without any visible complaint what they receive from these tyrant-capitalists.
Also read: Indian welfarists destroyed right to property by guaranteeing rights to life, liberty
Utopian dream
It is also assumed that the handful of planners in control of a nation’s economic progress can plan and handle those processes to better advantage for the people than the people can, if free to use their own resources, their own genius and to direct their own energies to the supplying of their own and others needs and wants.
This is nothing but an Utopian dream. Even Nature does not concentrate her resources into the possession of any few entities. “Billions of stars and millions of galaxies are in her heavens; on earth, the variety of her creation, in relation to any person’s knowledge is infinite; among human beings aptitudes and capacities are so widely distributed that no one can foretell where talent, extraordinary ability or genius can crop out. In this fact lies the second most cogent practical justification for freedom (The first lies simply in the spirit of the individual man, which no other person has an authority to dominate in the inelienable rights that derive from that fact).”
Men must be free if society is to receive what nature intends that it shall have, and what she is prepared to give. No handful of dictatorial planners can even conceive more than the tiniest fraction of the varied contributions that people if free, could and would make to cultural and economic advancement and to varied utilitarian values in their society. This would be true even if the dictator-planners were persons of extraordinary wisdom, intellectual fertility, character and understanding-Only little men profess to know enough to run everybody’s business.
It is that little man at times definitely psychopathic who having acquired in some way (may we say foul?) a ruling authority becomes the arbitrary planner for a nation’s economic activities. It is that little man, sometimes a madman who in his fear, surrounds himself with a labyrinthine army of secret police, closes all the channels of free information, discussion and education and dissipates much of the energies of his subjects to bulwark himself and his co-conspirators with Cyclopean armament not needed for any honest or constructive purpose.
“It is that little man always behind the promulgation of an ideology that makes the individual only a pawn and helot of a mystical god called the “state,” a promise derived from either a profound ignorance or a licentious lust for power.”
In capitalism we know that all these functions are performed by individual persons in the most economical and efficient manner each “a self aware, self disciplined spirit that can best serve society through the guidance of his own inspiration, ideals, intuition, intelligence, self-knowledge, judgment, will and ambition.”
So competitive and open capitalism is keyed to the facts and as Goethe said “there is no trifling with nature-it defies incompetency, but reveals its secret to the competent, truthful and the pure.”
Classless society
Communism promises to produce a classless society but this is nothing but a dream. When Nature has made human beings as different as they can be and still have enough in common to be identifiable as members of the same species, it is impossible for the Communists to achieve this false promise in practice.
Even in Russia class distinctions are still existing, in spite of the fact that she had enjoyed the fruits of Communist for the last 40 years. In open and competitive capitalism no class exists except the natural groupings of people and none exists with a closed door as we see in Communists countries. So the idea of classless society is nothing but a fraud of communist propaganda.
Also read: Violent class-war doctrines of Marx became the sole saviour of labour: MA Venkata Rao
Dictatorship by proletariat
The other fraud of Communism is the promise to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a bait for the ignorant people; it is not fulfilled and will never be fulfilled. It allows the tyrant capitalists to gain the control of a nation’s capital assets, to use mob psychology and ignorance and lastly cruelty of the mob.
The term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is a self-contradiction. If there are more than one dictator, either the dictators must agree or one of them must disappear. This same phenomenon we find at present in Russia. How can the people become dictators over themselves?
If they were to be the dictators over themselves, how could they learn what dictates they might agree on except by a full, free and secret ballot? And if they disagreed how could they recouncile their disagreement except by the principle of majority rule? In case they would pursue these methods, what they actually would have is democracy and not dictatorship. There is no possibility of adopting these methods by Communists.
Low wages in Communism
In communism workers are promised that they would receive full fruits of their labour and that they would not be exploited by the capitalists. In every economic system workers have to be paid wages to live. The wage is much greater in capitalism than in communism.
The proof of this statement can be verified by comparing the living standards and per capita income of the people in Russia and America. If the workers are to receive a share of profits above their wages, then profits must be made at first, but under communist profits are taboo; they are the evils that the communists want to end.
In capitalism profits are earned by the capitalists as a compensation for the use of the funds invested by them and the services rendered by them for the satisfaction of the needs of their own as well as of the others. The purpose and methods of communism are to deprive everyone of profits, and make everyone completely dependent upon the state or rather upon the few who rule and who call themselves the ‘State.’
This essay is part of a series from the Indian Liberals archive, a project of the Centre for Civil Society. It has been excerpted from the journal “The Indian Libertarian”, published on 1 August 1963. The original version can be accessed here.