Communism Essay Research Paper Unless we accept

Communism Essay, Research Paper

Unless we accept the claim that Lenin’s coup that gave

birth to an entirely new state, and indeed to a new era in the

history of mankind, we must recognize in today’s Soviet Union

the old empire of the Russians — the only empire that survived

into the mid 1980s (Luttwak, 1).

In their Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx and

Friedrich Engels applied the term communism to a final stage of

socialism in which all class differences would disappear and

humankind would live in harmony. Marx and Engels claimed to have

discovered a scientific approach to socialism based on the laws

of history. They declared that the course of history was

determined by the clash of opposing forces rooted in the economic

system and the ownership of property. Just as the feudal system

had given way to capitalism, so in time capitalism would give way

to socialism. The class struggle of the future would be between

the bourgeoisie, who were the capitalist employers, and the

proletariat, who were the workers. The struggle would end,

according to Marx, in the socialist revolution and the

attainment of full communism (Groilers Encyclopedia).

Socialism, of which Marxism-Leninism is a takeoff,

originated in the West. Designed in France and Germany, it was

brought into Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century and

promptly attracted support among the country’s educated, public-

minded elite, who at that time were called intelligentsia (Pipes,

21). After Revolution broke out over Europe in 1848 the modern

working class appeared on the scene as a major historical force.

However, Russia remained out of the changes that Europe was

experiencing. As a socialist movement and inclination, the

Russian Social-Democratic Party continued the traditions of all

the Russian Revolutions of the past, with the goal of conquering

political freedom (Daniels 7).

As early as 1894, when he was twenty-four, Lenin had

become a revolutionary agitator and a convinced Marxist. He

exhibited his new faith and his polemical talents in a diatribe

of that year against the peasant-oriented socialism of the

Populists led by N.K. Mikhiaiovsky (Wren, 3).

While Marxism had been winning adherents among the

Russian revolutionary intelligentsia for more than a decade

previously, a claimed Marxist party was bit organized until

1898. In that year a congress of nine men met at Minsk to

proclaim the establishment of the Russian Social Democratic

Workers Party. The Manifesto issued in the name of the congress

after the police broke it up was drawn up by the economist Peter

Struve, a member of the moderate Legal Marxist group who soon

afterward left the Marxist movement altogether. The manifesto is

indicative of the way Marxism was applied to Russian conditions,

and of the special role for the proletariat (Pipes, 11).

The first true congress of the Russian Social Democratic

workers Party was the Second. It convened in Brussels in the

summer of 1903, but was forced by the interference of the

Belgian authorities to move to London, where the proceedings were

concluded. The Second Congress was the occasion for bitter

wrangling among the representatives of various Russian Marxist

Factions, and ended in a deep split that was mainly caused by

Lenin — his personality, his drive for power in the movement,

and his hard philosophy of the disciplined party organization.

At the close of the congress Lenin commanded a temporary

majority for his faction and seized upon the label 0Bolshevik

(Russian for Majority), while his opponents who inclined to the

soft or more democratic position became known as the Mensheviks

or minority (Daniels, 19).

Though born only in 1879, Trotsky had gained a leading

place among the Russian Social-Democrats by the time of the

Second party Congress in 1903. He represented ultra-radical

sentiment that could not reconcile itself to Lenin’s stress on

the party organization. Trotsky stayed with the Menshevik

faction until he joined Lenin in 1917. From that point on, he

accommodated himself in large measure to Lenin’s philosophy of

party dictatorship, but his reservations came to the surface

again in the years after his fall from power (Stoessinger, 13).

In the months after the Second Congress of the Social

Democratic Party Lenin lost his majority and began organizing a

rebellious group of Bolsheviks. This was to be in opposition of

the new majority of the congress, the Menshiviks, led by

Trotsky. Twenty-two Bolsheviks, including Lenin, met in Geneva

in August of 1904 to promote the idea of the highly disciplined

party and to urge the reorganization of the whole Social-

Democratic movement on Leninist lines (Stoessinger, 33).

The differences between Lenin a

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