A simple 9-minute read on the ‘roots’ of Communism and Capitalism
By: Ioannis Dedes
Tags: Economics, Society, Communism, Politics, Capitalism

Communism and the USSR

Communism is considered the ideology opposing the principles of capitalism, aiming at replacing private property and companies ownership with public ownership and a society in which all profit, factors of production and natural resources are managed by the state. Communism derives from socialism, which was based on Karl Marx’s revolutionary ideas at the middle of the 19th century and proposed a system which respected the workers’ status and advocated collectivism, the provision of goods and services by groups of people.

The industrial revolution didn’t have positive implications for everyone and led to the establishment of communism, an ideology strongly contradicting capitalism. The maltreated and abused workers of the revolution grew increasingly poor. The problem with capitalism, at such a moment of intensive and beneficial production, underlined the ability of owners and companies to use the struggles of workers and acquire the wealth at their expense. The respect that would be shown to labour through the end of slavery and the introduction of wages, proposed by Smith and mentioned above, was completely violated and the working class (or proletariat) was ‘used’ for profit. At this point, one of the most influential figures in history made an appearance by the name of Karl Heinrich Marx. He was part of the German revolutionary socialists known as the Communist League and on February 21st, 1848, he published The Communist Manifesto, along with his partner Friedrich Engels. After extensively studying the theory of Capitalism and seeing that countries in Europe were developing at the expense of the working class, he claimed that the fact that growth was dependent on the workforce and wealth owners disrespected the proletariat would provoke the overthrow of the ruling class (the bourgeoisie).

Regardless of the ‘roar’ that Marx’s manifesto had on this new system, his work against capitalism didn’t end in 1948. The two decades that followed contributed to the skepticism of people about capitalism. Works such as Frederic La Play’s “The European Workers” or Henry Mayhew’s “London Labour and the London Poor” would advocate a form of class revolution or cooperative societies. Marx’s second historical work was published in 1867, in Germany, entitled “Capital. A Critique of Political Economy” (German: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie). It was the first volume of an anti-capitalistic theoretical text in which he chose to present this economic system in contrast to classical economists such as Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say. Both the second and third part were completed and published by Engels, after Marx’s death, in 1885 and 1894 respectively. Marx’s views had sparked the interest of many workers in Europe, with the first socialistic parties being formed around the 1870s in Great Britain and France. Switzerland, Denmark and the Austro-Hungarian Empire followed.

What one needs to understand here is that socialism and communism can be considered interrelated in various ways. One could argue that communism is a more violent way of imposing this ideology of collectivism and public ownership. It’s frequently associated with a violent revolution in which all workers rise up against all other classes and establish this ‘collective state’ whereas socialism can be a more flexible theory, changing and reforming the society through democratic processes. Others have claimed that communism derived from the socialist theory of Karl Marx and was extended to the last stage of this ideology. In other words, in order for a capitalistic society to become communist, socialism can be considered obligatory, since it’s not as extreme as the former. Lastly, the difference of the two systems is still arguable and that’s because Marx never gave a clear explanation of the two left systems’ distinctions.

Previously, the way through which Marx urged the formation of the first socialist parties in Europe was explored but the situation in the Eastern world was different. The Soviet Union’s connection with this ideology came in a different way from the American attachment to capitalism. As cited in the previous section, the United States was gradually introduced in this system and embraced it more and more since the beginning of the 19th century. The situation of the Soviet Union was different on the grounds that at the time of Marx’s manifesto, the Russian Empire was under constitutional monarchy by the autocracy of the Romanov family. They first came to power in 1613 and had established the throne for more than 200 years. In 1848, Nicholas I had the throne and until the end of the century Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II would come to power, in that respective order. The ambitions of a communist revolution against this long standing autocracy seemed impossible, until Vladimir Lenin, who had publicly claimed himself as a Marxist, returned from exile in Siberia to London, where he established the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP) in 1903. However, the people in the Russian Empire would have to wait until 1917, when the Romanov family was dethroned and Lenin’s Bolshevik Party came into power.

To sum up, communism and its connection to the Russian Empire didn’t happen the same smooth and gradual way capitalism in the United States occurred and this can be caused by the fact that socialism and communism were ideologies arising after the establishment of capitalism, in order to contradict the latter. There are various interpretations of the relation between socialism and communism, with the most common indicating that communism is on the extreme left and can be considered more violent than socialism. Despite the impact that Marx had throughout the second half of the 19th century, the first communist state was established 69 years after his manifesto, by Vladimir Lenin in the Russian Empire.