The Communist Manifesto
by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (1848)

"This proposition...is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology"
--Preface to the English Edition of 1888 by Frederick Engels.

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Marxism has been the greatest fantasy of the [twentieth] century.--Kolakowski, Main Currents, vol. III, p. 523.

The most encouraging thing about the [Communist] Soviet regime was its failure. If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to the extent to which human beings could be terrorized and enslaved. --Malcolm Muggeridge, quoted by Kitty Muggeridge in Beatrice Webb (New York, 1968). p. 243.

Communism, A History

We are now in a position to address the question [posed in the Preface]: whether the failure of communism "was due to human error or to flaws inherent in its very nature." The record of history strongly suggests the latter to be the case. Communism was not a good idea that went wrong; it was a bad idea.

From the day the 'Bolsheviks' seized power in Russia in 1917, there have been dozens of attempts made in every part of the world to install societies based on Communist principles. Moscow generously supported them with money, weapons, and guidance. Virtually all failed. In the end, Communism collapsed in Russia, too, and today survives in only a few countries--China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba--and even there it is in the process of erosion: the Communists hold on to power but at the price of making far-reaching concessions to capitalism. Given this dismal record, it is reasonable to assume that there is something flawed either with the premises of Communism or its program or both...

Marxism, the theoretical foundation of Communism, carried within it the seeds of its own destruction, such as Marx and Engels had wrongly attributed to capitalism. It rested on a faulty philosophy of history as well as an unrealistic psychological doctrine.

Marxism's basic contention that private property, which it strives to abolish, is a transient historical phenomenon--an interlude between primitive and advanced Communism--is plainly false. All evidence indicates that land, the main source of wealth in premodern times, unless monopolized by monarchs, had always belonged to tribes, families, or individuals. Livestock as well as commerce and the capital to which it gives rise were always and everywhere in private hands. From which it follows that private property is not a transcient phenomenon but a permanent feature of social life, and, as such, indestructible.

No less flawed is Marxism's notion that human nature is infinitely malleable, and hence that a combination of coercion and education can produce beings purged of acquisitiveness and willing to dissolve in society at large...Even if the immense pressures exerted by Communist regimes to this end were to succeed, their success would at best be ephemeral: as animal trainers have discovered, after being subjected to intensive drilling to perform tricks, animals, freed from training, after a while forget what they have learned and revert to their instinctive behavior. Furthermore, given that acquired characteristics are not heritable, each new generation will bring into the world non-Communist attitudes, among which acquisitiveness is certainly not the least powerful. Communism ultimately was defeated by its inability to refashion human nature. Mussolini, who even after turning Fascist viewed Communism with some sympathy, concluded as much in 1920:

Lenin is an artist who worked on humans as other artists work on marble or metal. But human beings are harder than granite and less malleable than iron. No masterwork has emerged. The artist has failed. The task has proven beyond his powers. --Benito Mussolini, Opera omnia, Vol. XV (Florence, 1954), P 93.

Such realities have forced Communist regimes to resort to violence as a routine means of governance. To compel people to give up what they own and to surrender their private interests to the state requires that public authority dispose of boundless authority. This is what Lenin meant when he defined the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as "power that is limited by nothing, by no laws, that is restrained by absolutely no rules, that rests directly on coercion."

Experience indicates that such a regime is, indeed, feasible: it has been imposed on Russia and its dependencies, on China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Cambodia, as well as on a variety of countries in Africa and Latin America. But its price is not only enormous human suffering, it is also the destruction of the very objective for which such regimes are established, namely equality...

In the Soviet Union, within a few years of the 'Bolshevik' coup d'etat, the regime began to offer unique rewards to its leading cadres, which in time evolved into the nomenklatura, a hereditary privileged class. This spelled the end of the ideal of equality. Thus to enforce the equality of possessions it is necessary to institutionalize inequality of rights. The contradiction between ends and means is built into Communism and into every country where the state owns all the productive wealth.

True, periodic attempts have been made to shake off the grip that the Communist officialdom secured on the state and society. Lenin and Stalin tried purges, which under Stalin led to mass murder. Mao launched his "Cultural Revolution" to destroy entrenched party interests. None of these attempts succeeded. In the end, the nomenklatura won out because without them nothing would work.

Attempts to introduce Communism by democratic means also failed. As the experience of Allende's Chile demonstrates, the assault on private property in the presence of a relatively free press, an independent judiciary, and an elected legislature cannot succeed because the opposition, which under a "dictatorship of the proletariat" is ruthlessly crushed, here has the opportunity to organize resistance. As its numbers swelled, it easily toppled the revolutionary regime. In Nicaragua, where in 1990 the Communist Sandinistas felt enough confidence in their popularity to submit themselves to a popular vote, the people swept them out of power.

The bureaucratization inherent in Communist regimes was also responsible for the economic failures that either contributed to their downfall or else compelled them to abandon Communism in all but name. The nationalization of productive assets let to the transfer of their management to officials who had neither the competence nor the motivation to operate them efficiently. The inevitable result was declining productivity. Furthermore, the rigidity inherent in centralized management made Communist economies unresponsive to technological innovation, which explains why the Soviet Union, despite its high level of science, missed out on some of the most important technological discoveries of recent times. As Friedrich Hayek has pointed out, only the free market has the ability to sense and respond to shifts in the economy. And only the prospect of enrichment motivates people to exert themselves beyond their immediate needs. Under Communism, effective incentives were lacking: indeed, diligence at work was punished, in that meeting one's productivity quotas resulted in these quotas being raised...

Nor is the inability to provide abundance and enforce equality, its alleged objectives, the only contradiction inherent in Communism. Another is the lack of freedom, which along with equality and abundance was for Marx the ultimate objective of a Communist society. The nationalization of all productive resources turns all citizens into state employees--in other words, dependents of the government. Under such conditions, there are no effective limits to state power. Historical evidence indicates that the liberties of individuals can only be protected when property rights are firmly guaranteed, because these rights constitute the most effective barrier to state encroachments. The recognition by the state of the right of its subjects and citizens to their belongings--with respect shown to this right--is tantamount to acknowledging limits to state power. And inasmuch as property is a legal concept, enforced by courts, it also signifies acknowledgement that the state is bound by law. This means that the goal of Communism, the abolition of property, inevitably leads to the abolition of liberty and legality. The nationalization of productive resources, far from liberating men from enslavement by things, as Marx and Engels had envisioned, converts them into slaves of their rulers and, because of endemic shortages, makes them more materialistic than ever...

These inherent flaws were acknowledged by many Communists, leading to various "revisionisms." To the true believers, however, the failures proved not that the doctrine was wrong but that it had not been applied with sufficient ruthlessness. Confirming Santayana's definition of fanatics as people who redouble their efforts after forgetting their aim, they went on killing sprees of mounting savagery. Thus Communism generated ever greater oceans of blood as it progressed from Lenin to Stalin, and from Stalin to Mao and Pol Pot.

In sum, Communism failed and is bound to fail for at least two reasons: one, that to enforce equality, its principal objective, it is necessary to create a coercive apparatus that demands privileges and thereby negates equality; and two, that ethnic and national loyalties, when in conflict with class allegiances, everywhere and at all times overwhelm them, dissolving Communism in nationalism, which is why socialism so easily combines with "Fascism." In recognition of this reality, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the post-1990 successor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abandoned the slogan calling on proletarians of all countries to unite...In each case, the requirements of ideology were sacrificed, at any rate temporarily, to the supreme needs of the party, which were always and everywhere the same: the maintenance and expansion of unlimited power...

The costs of the experiments in utopia were staggering. They took a huge toll on human lives...Various justifications have been offered for these losses, such as that one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. Apart from the fact that human beings are not eggs, the trouble is that no omelette has emerged from the slaughter.

The survivors, too, paid a price. In their effort to impose total conformity, Communist regimes drove into exile, incarcerated, and silenced those who would not conform--often the ablest and most enterprising. As a result something like reverse evolution was set in motion, with the most dependent and conformist having the best chance of survival. The enterprising, truthful, and public-minded perished. Communist societies thus lost the best and found themselves correspondingly impoverished...

Marx maintained that capitalism suffered from insoluble internal contradictions, which doomed it to destruction. In reality, capitalism, being an empirical system responsive to realities and capable of adjustments, has managed to overcome every one of its crises. Communism, on the other hand, being a rigid doctrine--a pseudoscience converted into a pseudoreligion and embodied in an inflexible political regime--has proven incapable of shedding the misconceptions to which it was beholden and gave up the ghost. If it is ever revived, it will be in defiance of history and with the certainty of yet another costly failure. Such action will border on madness, which has been defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

--Richard Pipes, Communism, A History, (New York, 2001), Pp. 147-160.

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Who Was Marx?

What sort of man could dream of "Utopia," and yet advise, even command his followers to lie, cheat, steal, and commit individual mass murder to achieve it?

Marx was born in 1818 of scholarly Jewish parents in a Germany which was just becoming a nation...His radical ideas, even as a student, caused his ejection from several universities, and he toured the intellectual and political capitals of Europe associating with a varied assortment of revolutionaries and "free thinkers."

His marriage resulted in six children. Marx, however, was so engaged in formulating theories to "uplift" the downtrodden masses that he never bothered to accept a job to support his family. Three of his six children died of starvation in infancy. Two others committed suicide. Only one lived to maturity...

During these years, Marx's ideas and philosophy were accepted only by the radical fringe groups which comprised the "First International," and his friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Engels, a rich man's son, was Marx's chief source of income. When Marx died, his funeral was attended by only six persons.

--John A. Stormer, None Dare Call it Treason...25 Years Later, (Liberty, 1990), P. 41.

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1984

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a colored poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran...

In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the Police Patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered...

The Ministry of Truth--Minitrue, in Newspeak--was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidial structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred meters into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

...Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided: the Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts; the Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war; the Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order; and the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.

The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.

--George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York, 1949) Pp. 3-6.

Quickly, with an occasional crackle of twigs, they threaded their way back to the clearing. When they were once inside the ring of saplings she turned and faced him. They were both breathing fast, but the smile had reappeared round the corners of her mouth. She stood looking at him for an instant, then felt at the zipper of her overalls. And, yes! It was almost as in his dream. Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated. Her body gleamed white in the sun. But for a moment he did not look at her body; his eyes were anchored by the freckled face with its faint, bold smile. He knelt down before her and took her hands in his.

"Have you done this before?"

"Of course. Hundreds of times--well, scores of times, anyway."

"With Party members?"

"Yes, always with Party members."

"With members of the Inner Party?"

"Not with those swine, no. But there's plenty that would if they got half a chance. They're not so holy as they make out."

His heart leapt. Scores of times she had done it; he wished it had been hundreds--thousands. Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope. Who knew? Perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity. If he could have infected the whole lot of them with leprosy or syphilis, how gladly he would have done so! Anything to rot, to weaken, to undermine! He pulled her down so that they were kneeling face to face.

"Listen. The more men you've had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, perfectly."

"I hate purity, I hate goodness. I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones."

"Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the bones."

"You like doing this? I don't mean simply me; I mean the thing in itself?"

"I adore it."

That was above all what he wanted to hear. Not merely the love of one person, but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces. He pressed her down upon the grass, among the fallen bluebells...

--George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York, 1949) Pp. 126-127.

"I think it is fitting that we should begin by drinking a health. To our Leader: To Emmanuel Goldstein."

Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness..."Then there is such a person as Goldstein?"

"Yes, there is such a person, and he is alive. Where, I do not know."

"And the conspiracy--the organization? It is real? It is not simply an invention of the Thought Police?"

"No, it is real. The Brotherhood, we call it. You will never learn much more about the Brotherhood than that it exists and that you belong to it...You will understand that I must start by asking you certain questions. In general terms, what are you prepared to do?"

"Anything that we are capable of," said Winston.

O'Brien...began asking his questions in a low, expressionless voice, as though this were a routine, a sort of catechism, most of whose answers were known to him already.

"You are prepared to give your lives?"

"Yes."

"You are prepared to commit murder?"

"Yes."

"To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people?"

"Yes."

"To betray your country to foreign powers?"

"Yes."

"You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases--to do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?"

"Yes."

"If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child's face--you are prepared to do that?"

"Yes."

"You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the rest of your life as a waiter or a dock worker?"

"Yes."

"You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we order you to do so?"

"Yes."

"You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never see one another again?"

"No!" broke in Julia.

It appeared to Winston that a long time passed before he answered. For a moment he seemed even to have been deprived of the power of speech. His tongue worked soundlessly, forming the opening syllables first of one word, then of the other, over and over again. Until he had said it, he did not know which word he was going to say. "No," he said finally.

"You did well to tell me," said O'Brien. "It is necessary for us to know everything."

--George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York, 1949) Pp. 173-174.

Before he knew what he was doing he had collapsed onto a small stool that stood beside the bed and burst into tears. He was aware of his ugliness, his gracelessness, a bundle of bones in filthy underclothes sitting weeping in the harsh white light; but he could not stop himself. O'Brien laid a hand on his shoulder, almost kindly.

"It will not last forever," he said. "You can escape from it whenever you choose. Everything depends on yourself."

"You did it!" sobbed Winston. "You reduced me to this state."

"No, Winston, you reduced yourself to it. This is what you accepted when you set yourself up against the Party. It was all contained in that first act. Nothing has happened that you did not foresee."

He paused, and then went on:

"We have beaten you, Winston. We have broken you up. You have seen what your body is like. Your mind is in the same state. I do not think there can be much pride left in you. You have been kicked and flogged and insulted, you have screamed with pain, you have rolled on the floor in your own blood and vomit. You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?"

Winston had stopped weeping, though the tears were still oozing out of his eyes. He looked up at O'Brien.

"I have not betrayed Julia," he said.

O'Brien looked down at him thoughtfully. "No," he said, "no; that is perfectly true. You have not betrayed Julia."

The peculiar reverence for O'Brien, which nothing seemed able to destroy, flooded Winston's heart again. How intelligent, he thought, how intelligent! Never did O'Brien fail to understand what was said to him. Anyone else on earth would have answered promptly that he had betrayed Julia. For what was there that they had not screwed out of him under the torture? He had told them everything he knew about her, her habits, her character, her past life; he had confessed in the most trivial detail everything that happened at their meetings, all that he had said to her and she to him, their black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague plottings against the Party--everything. And yet, in the sense in which he intended the word, he had not betrayed her. He had not stopped loving her; his feeling toward her had remained the same. O'Brien had seen what he meant without the need for explanation.

"Tell me," he said, "how soon will they shoot me?"

"It might be a long time," said O'Brien. "You are a difficult case. But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you."

--George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York, 1949) Pp. 276-277.

The trumpet call had let loose an enormous volume of noise. Already an excited voice was gabbling from the telescreen, but even as it started it was almost drowned by a roar of cheering from outside. The news had run round the streets like magic. He could hear just enough of what was issuing from the telescreen to realize that it had all happened as he had foreseen: a vast seaborne armada secretly assembled, a sudden blow in the enemy's rear, the white arrow tearing across the tail of the black. Fragments of triumphant phrases pushed themselves through the din: "Vast strategic maneuver--perfect co-ordination--utter rout--half a million prisoners--complete demoralization--control of the whole of Africa--bring the war within measurable distance of its end--victory--greatest victory in human history--victory, victory, victory!"

Under the table Winston's feet made convulsive movements. He had not stirred from his seat, but in his mind he was running, swiftly running, he was with the crowds outside, cheering himself deaf. He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain! He thought how ten minutes ago--yes, only ten minutes--there had still been equivocation in his heart as he wondered whether the news from the front would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed in him since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment.

The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

--George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York, 1949) Pp. 299-300.

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