I often hear that the basic difference between communism and socialism is that the latter seeks to establish itself non-violently as opposed to communism Is this the only difference between the two?
OK so i want help with my homework…thanks to those who helped with the Reagan and cold war question.
A major difference is, while you can defeated Socialist governments at the next election, you can’t vote out Communist governments.
You need to deal with two different lines here:
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In Marx, communism involves no government. The socialist state (which owns property) “withers away” as conciousness changes. There have been no societies where this has happened.
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Cold War-era socialist dictatorships were ruled by Communist Parties. This did not make them communist societies in the “true” sense, but you can distinguish between those political movements - which were revolutionary and coercive - and the democratic socialists in Europe, the UK, Australia - which were reformist. Labo(u)r parties in those countries typically believed - until their experience in government - that public ownership of big parts of the economy was a way to bring about a better society.
So you need to be careful not confuse the idea of communist v. socialist societies with revoltionary v. reformist political movements.
Oversimplification. Socialism is a school of thought that began in the mid XIXth century, as a reaction to the modern industrial society.
The situation at that time, to sum it up, sucked unless you were rich. There was virtually no legal protection for factory workers: they had to work 14 or more hours a day, with no minimum wages, no kind of social security, no safety regulation, etc. If a worker died, they would just clean up and hire another one.
Since after the agricultural and industrial revolutions there werent many job openings other than as factory workers, people began to crowd into cities. Eventually, every major city in europe was swarmed with thousands of people living in absolute misery. Their children had no access to any sort of education, and were so doomed to grow up to become factory workers too.
This social situation generated socialism. Most early socialists were highly idealistic upper-class men with noble but ridiculous ideas. But they did go a long way towards improving the conditions of factory workers: Unions were created, a minimum wage was set, maximum hours were agreed on, etc.
There are three particularly important currents of socialism, which are still alive and well today:
Anarchism: Anarchism was a philosophy, whose main proponent was a Russian called Bakunin. Basically, the anarchists believed that any form of authority was an imposition upon freedom, and should therefore be eliminated. So, they were against it. Just like that, they wanted a world in which no one would tell anyone what to do: No State, no laws, no government, no church, and in some extreme cases, not even family. Of course, changing the status quo would be impossible through “legal” (artificially restricted) means, so most anarchists ended up resorting to terrorism. For some reason beyond my understanding, anarchism enjoyed a fairly strong following, and there are still some anarchist movements in my country.
Then, there is Marxism, what is commonly called “communism”. Karl Marx developed a complex (although IMO narrow-sighted and biased) philosophy, which I wont attempt to explain fully. What he said was, roughly, that every society can be divided in an infrastructure and superstructure.
The infrastructure is the economy: the means of productions, the forces of production, and the relations established between them.
The superstructure is built upon the infrastructure, and includes the culture, the laws, the religion, the government, etc.
To give you an easily understable example: In a society of fishermen, the main resource will be fish, and the most important social class will be the people able to fish a lot (the owners of fishing ships). The real political power will be in their hands: they provide the money, so they make the choices. If someone attempts to pass a law to give away fish to the poor… well, it wont pass. changing the governor wont help, the fishing-ship owners will still have the power.
So, the only way to change that community would be attacking its infrastructure: if all the fish died, the dominant class would no longer be dominant. Or, more Marxist, if all the fishermen mutineed and took the ships, THEY would have the power now.
So, basically, that is what Marx wanted. a revolution in which factory workers took the factories, started working for their own benefit, and forcibly built a perfect society in which everything was fairly distributed. Well, I dont know what Marx smoked, but anyone with half a brain can see that it failed to work time after time…
However, there is a third current, based on marxism, which actually makes sense. A man named Bernstein, years after Marx, decided to revise Marxs ideas, and came up with a “lighter” form of socialism. Revisionist socialism, as it was called, had basically the same objective as Marxism, but it proposed more gradual and less violent means: it wasnt wholly against democracy. This less radical form of socialism and others like it have proven to be fairly successful in several European countries, like Denmark or Italy.
So, I hope that made at least some sense, and yes, I know its long, but you asked for it 
… In reality, its just a brief summary, so you d be well advised to read it up in a real book…
Its important to point out that Marx creted neither Socialism nor Communism, and that both have moved beyond him in a great many ways. However, he was a sort of prophet to those political groups.
I would also point out that Communism had its “day-in-the-sun” in the US during the middle of the 19th century. It took the form of communal living and was tried by a number of groups. Some did it for religious reasons like the Shakers and Zoarites, and others did it for purely egalitarian reasons such as the Oneida Commune. The Shakers and Zoarites basically disappeared and the Oneida Commune grew into Oneida Community Silverware, which is still in business today (although the commune no longer exists).
Communes usually fall apart when they hit a critical mass of people. The concept of communal living sounds great on paper but people will usually gravitate toward equal compensation for equal amounts of labor. If everyone is compensated according to their needs, and not their labor, it becomes demoralizing for those doing the most work. That is probably why countries run by Communists eventually fail. There is no reason for anyone to excel at what they do because they will not be compensated for it.
You can type in “egalitarian communities” to see remnants of it today.
Communalism is not the same thing as communism. Communalism is voluntary, for one thing. If it seeks to spread across the world, it seeks to do so by putting up an irresistable example that the world will choose to follow. Communism is compulsory. It presumes a violent revolution.
It is true that socialism is older than Marxism. It is also true that there are forms of socialism that are neither Bakunist nor Marxist/Post-Marxist. One example of this alternative form of socialism is that espoused by at least some of the UK’s Labour party.
I agree that Communalism and communism are different but they are of the same Marxist cloth of common ownership. More appropriate to compare it to Socialism.
Are you claiming that the Christian community of New Harmony, which was formed decades before Marx lived, was Marxist? That’s more than a little daft.
Marx did not invent common ownership of property. Look to the New Testament.
Not all forms presume violent revolution. Some strive to change the system from within. This is really just a problem with oversimplification, with projecting what happened in the real world with the original idea, and with projecting the thoughts of the loudest on the entire movement.
Communism is the theory propounded by Karl Marx. It presupposes and requires violent overthrow of capitalists and the burgeoisie. It’s part and parcel of Communist dogma.
Go re-read Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto. Then read the works of Lenin and Mao.
Comunis is not the same as marxism, and certainly not the same as marxism.
I would say communism is utopian socialism. It could be semi-anarchist utopianism, or totalitarian utopianism at the other end of the scale, just as long as it’s revolutionary.
Both communism and socialism are too vague and broad concepts for a dividing line to be made, but comunism tends to signify a radicalism (little r.)
Gah! That shold read "Communism is not the same as marxism, and certainly not the same as leninism.
Oh, and communism is a subset (or several opposing subsets, really) of socialism, not a competing ideology.
Is everything clear now?
The back of our family bible has a Catholic Encyclopedia, and it mentions communism. It also defines voluntary communism, such as practiced in monasteries and convents. Where everyone pitches in, contributes to the good of the group.
That sort of thing.
The best way to get answers here, Minega, is to go straight to the source(s). There are several self-identified communist or socialist organizations, with websites, now active in the U.S. They are all very small organizations and their unfortunate tendency to splitting and factionalism makes them even smaller. I recently read a book called “Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America,” by Micah Sifry, which is a pretty good history of third-party movements just in the past ten years, and it was notable that he managed to do the job without more than passing mention of any such activity by socialist parties, unless you count the New Party, or the Working Families Party of New York, partist which have left-progressive politics but never use the “s-word” in their literature.
The website www.politics1.com provides a pretty thorough list of third-party organizations currently active in America. Of those, the following are self-identified as socialist or communist, or can be considered socialist or leftist in some sense:
The Communist Party USA (www.cpusa.org): Founded here just after the Russian Revolution, out of a radical faction of the Socialist Party. These are the Orthodox Communists: Traditional Marxist-Leninist – and Stalinist, too, in Stalin’s day and for some time after. This party used to follow the lead of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and, yes, took their money and spied for them, though there was little spying they could effectively do.
The Democratic Socialists of America (www.dsausa.org): Descended from a faction which split from the Socialist Party USA in the 1960, led by the late Michael Harrington, who founded the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which evolved into the DSA. The DSA fields no candidates for office, believing they can better serve the democratic-socialist cause as an educational organization. The DSA is America’s full member of the Socialist International, one of two (the other is the Social Democrats, USA, q.v.) The DSA boasts a lot of big-name members, such as Barbara Ehrenreich.
The Freedom Socialist Party (www.socialism.com): A dissident Trotskyist group that broke away from the Socialist Workers Party in 1966.
The Green Party of the United States (www.gp.org) and the Greens/Green Party USA (www.greenparty.org): The Greens are not exactly Reds, they’re something new and different, but socialist thinking definitely plays a role in their ideology. Note there are two organizations. The Greens/Green Party USA is the smaller and is much more Marxist in its orientation.
The Labor Party (www.thelaborparty.org): Founded just in the past few years by the late labor leader Tony Mazzochi. It has yet to field any candidates for public office, concentrating its efforts on winning the support of organized labor, with not much success to date. Its literature is not very socialist in tone, certainly not ideological in any way, but it is an attempt to build a labor-based political movement that will fight for the interests of working people as a class, against the interests of the rich as a class, and if that’s not socialism, what is?
The New Party (www.newparty.org): (I used to be an enthusiastic member of this one.) Founded in 1992 as an attempt to build a real political presence in America to the left of the Democrats. As noted above, it never called itself socialist but its politics were definitely left-progressive. I speak of the New Party in the past tense because it went inactive, more or less, on the national level after losing a Supreme Court case, Timmons v. Twin Cities New Party, which, had they won, would have guaranteed third parties the right to cross-endorse major-party candidates, a strategy known as “ballot fusion.” The New Party spawned state organizations which are still active and, on a local and state level, somewhat successful, including the Working Families Party in New York (www.workingfamiliesparty.org).
The New Union Party (www1.minn.net/nup): A radical but non-violent “DeLeonist” party, founded in 1980 by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party.
The Peace and Freedom Party (www.peaceandfreedom.org): Centered in San Francisco with no apparent presence outside California. Founded in 1967 as an anti-war party. “[C]ommitted to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism and radical equality.” This is where Abbie Hoffman probably would have ended up if he had been more of a joiner.
The Progressive Labor Party (www.plp.org): A militant, Stalinist-style communist party, based in New York. Dedicated to armed revolution.
The Revolutionary Communist Party USA (www.rwor.org/rcp-e.htm): A Maoist party, dedicated to armed revolution.
The Socialist Party USA (www.sp-usa.org): Founded in 1900 by more moderate members of the older Socialist Labor Party (see below) This is the party that ran Eugene Debs for president so many times. A non-revolutionary, democratic-socialist party – but still plenty radical compared with, say, the New Party or the Labor Party.
Socialist Action (www.socialistaction.org): A Trotskyist organization founded by expelled members of the Socialist Workers Party.
The Social Democrats, USA (www.socialdemocrats.org): Split from the Socialist Party in the 1960s, mainly over the Vietnam War: Michael Harrington’s faction (which eventually became the Democratic Socialists of America) was against it, while the more conservative Social Democrats were for it. The split still holds, apparently: According to its website, the SD-USA supports the Iraq war, which every other socialist organization in America is against.
The Socialist Equality Party (www.wsws.org/sections/category/icfi/sepuscat.shtml): A Trotskyist party, founded (yet again) by dissidents from the Socialist Workers Party after the SWP started to drift away from Trotskyism. It claimst to be affiliated with something called the “International Committee of the Fourth International.”
The Socialist Labor Party (www.slp.org): Founded in 1877, which makes it the oldest existing socialist party in America. A militant democratic-socialist party, committed to “Marxism-DeLeonism”. Gave rise to the Socialist Party, q.v. Now mostly a local affair in New Jersey.
The Socialist Workers Party (www.themilitant.com): Originally a Trotskyist organization, founded in 1938 when the Communist Party USA, on orders from Stalin, expelled its Trotskyists. Since the 1980s the SWP has drifted away from Trotskyism and towards the authoritarian politics of Fidel Castro; as a result, several SWP members have bolted and formed their own more purely Trotskyist parties.
The Workers Party USA (www.workersparty.org): A hardcore Marxist-Leninist Party founded by Michael Thorburn in 1992.
The Workers World Party (www.workers.org): A Maoist party, formed in 1959 by a pro-Chinese faction of the Socialist Workers Party.
The World Socialist Party of the USA (www.worldsocialism.org/usa/): Non-violent utopian Marxists.
The above is probably way more than you wanted to know about this subject. But if you still have any curiosity left, I highly recommend “It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States,” by Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Wolf Marks. The authors attempt to answer the very important question: Why is the U.S. the ONLY modern industrialized state where no communist, socialist, democratic-socialist or social-democratic party has ever emerged as a major political force? (The Socialist Party and the Communist Party were much bigger once than they are now, but they were never big enough to have hope of becoming a major presence to rank with the Republicans and Democrats.) I won’t go into their answers here but it’s a very fascinating analysis. Curiously, however, the authors stop with the 1940s; apparently, in their view, the political upheavals of the 1960s and '70s do not even merit discussion as failed attempts to build socialism in America.
At present, socialism, in one form or another, is a potent political force in practically every other country on earth. (Even Canada and Australia.) But here in the most important (i.e., powerful) country on earth, and the leader and center of world capitalism, it isn’t, and doesn’t appear likely to be. Workers of the world, deal with it!
You see, I did more than that. I actually read Marx in the original language, and quite a bit more than Das Kapital, and many more works on the issue. Unlike you, I actually know that there was plenty of infighting among early communist meetings and that Marx was far from unquestioningly supported -and that Marx gasp actually did not hold the same opinions all over his life. Communism is not ‘the theory propounded by Karl Marx’ but one of which he was one of the first and greatest thinkers, and one not to fall into obscurity (of which many are only obscure to people who never had any contact with real socialist movements -please elaborate on what you know about Eduard Bernstein) I assume you are also ignorant about the comments Marx and Engels made on the necessity of compromises.
check out Fabian Socialists, these included people like H.G. Wells. George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes.
They tried to work within the system politically thinking they could subvert it and make it better. The trouble with violence is that it usually has unpredictable side effects and the people eager to use it you don’t want in power anyway. I assume for them Communism is just a “good” excuse.
And Marx said he was not a Marxist because of all of the nitwits distorting his ideas for their ends.
Dal Timgar
Well, if you have indeed read all that stuff, you are obviously much more knowledgeable in the matter than myself. So, I have to ask:
Isnt one of Marxisms basic principles that the revolution of the proletariat must be violent (or, at the very least, non-democratic)? I thought that Marx believed participating in politics was pointless, since it meant playing by the rules of the dominant class…