Communism: A History (Modern Library Chronicles, 7) - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Richard Pipes, Baird Professor of History, Emeritus, at Harvard University, is the author of numerous books and essays, including The Russian Revolution, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, and Property and Freedom. In 1981-82 he served as President Reagan's National Security Council adviser on Soviet and East European affairs, and in 1992 he was an expert witness in the Russian Constitutional Court's trial against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chesham, New Hampshire.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

our greatest historians, a magnificent reckoning with the modern world's most fateful idea.

With astonishing authority and clarity, Richard Pipes has fused a lifetime's scholarship into a single focused history of Communism, from its hopeful birth as a theory to its miserable death as a practice.

At its heart, the book is a history of the Soviet Union, the most comprehensive reorganization of human society ever attempted by a nation-state. Drawing on much new information, Richard Pipes explains the countryís evolution from the 1917 revolution to the Great Terror and World War II, global expansion and the Cold War chess match with the United States, and the regime's decline and ultimate collapse. There is no more dramatic story in modern history, nor one more crucial to master, than that of how the writing and agitation of two mid-nineteenth-century European thinkers named Marx and Engels led to a great and terrible world religion that brought down a mighty empire, consu

Aus dem Klappentext

our greatest historians, a magnificent reckoning with the modern world's most fateful idea.<br><br>With astonishing authority and clarity, Richard Pipes has fused a lifetime's scholarship into a single focused history of Communism, from its hopeful birth as a theory to its miserable death as a practice. <br><br>At its heart, the book is a history of the Soviet Union, the most comprehensive reorganization of human society ever attempted by a nation-state. Drawing on much new information, Richard Pipes explains the countryís evolution from the 1917 revolution to the Great Terror and World War II, global expansion and the Cold War chess match with the United States, and the regime's decline and ultimate collapse. There is no more dramatic story in modern history, nor one more crucial to master, than that of how the writing and agitation of two mid-nineteenth-century European thinkers named Marx and Engels led to a great and terrible world religion that brought down a mighty empire, consu

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Excerpt

1. Communist Theory and Program

The idea of a classless, fully egalitarian society first emerged in classicalGreece. Ancient Greece happened to have been the first country in the world torecognize private property in land and to treat land as a commodity, and henceit was the first to confront the social inequalities that result from ownership.Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer (seventh century b.c.), in the poem Works andDays extolled a mythical “Golden Age” when people were not driven bythe “shameful lust for gain,” when there was an abundance of goodsfor all to share and mankind lived in perpetual peace. The theme of the GoldenAge resounded in the writings of the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid; Ovid spoke ofthe time when the world knew nothing of “boundary posts and fences.”

The ideal acquired its earliest theoretical formulation in the writings ofPlato. In the Republic, speaking through Socrates, Plato saw the root of discordand wars in belongings:

Such differences commonly originate in a disagreement about the use of the terms“mine” and “not mine,” “his” and “nothis.” . . . And is not that the best-ordered State in which the greatestnumber of persons apply the terms “mine” and “not mine”in the same way to the same thing?

In The Laws, Plato envisioned not only a society in which people shared allworldly possessions, as well as their wives and children, but one in which theprivate and individual is altogether banished from life, and things which are bynature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become common, and in someway see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise and blame andfeel joy and sorrow on the same occasions.

Aristotle, Plato’s pupil, questioned whether such a communist utopia wouldbring about social peace, on the grounds that people who hold things in commonare more prone to quarrel than those who hold them in private ownership.Furthermore, he argued, the root of social discord lies not in materialbelongings but in the yearning for them: “it is not possession but thedesires of mankind which require to be equalized.”

There exists a widespread but false notion that socialism and communism aremerely up-to-date, secular versions of Christianity. As the nineteenth-centuryRussian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev has pointed out, the difference is thatwhereas Jesus urged his followers to give up their own possessions, thesocialists and communists want to give away the possessions of others. Moreover,Jesus never insisted on penury; he merely counseled it as easing the way tosalvation. Saint Paul’s well-known saying about money is usuallymisquoted: he said not that “money is the root of all evil” but that“love of money” is—in other words, greed. Saint Augustineasked rhetorically, “Is gold not good?” and answered, “Yes, itis good. But the evil use good gold for evil, and the good use good gold forgood.”

The fathers of the church and later Catholic theologians took a pragmatic viewof ownership. According to Saint Augustine, a propertyless world was possibleonly in paradise—that “Golden Age” which mankind had lostbecause of original sin. Given human imperfection, property is moral if usedwisely and employed for charitable purposes. The Catholic Church not only didnot preach poverty but disowned and sometimes persecuted those who did. Thefounders of Protestantism, notably Calvin, viewed wealth as a positive good anda sign of divine grace.

But the notion of the Golden Age never disappeared from European consciousness.The early maritime explorers ventured on their journeys inspired not merely bythe quest for Eldorado and other mythical places in which gold was reputed to beas plentiful as dust but also by the desire to find the islands of terrestrialparadise, legends of which circu- lated in medieval Europe. And when they firstlanded in the Americas and saw naked Indians, they were convinced they had foundthem: for was not lack of shame the very mark of life before the Fall? If thenatives, indeed, lived in paradise this meant also that they knew nothing ofproperty. Columbus on his return reported that the aborigines were“guileless” and “never refuse[d] anything which they possess,if it be asked of them; on the contrary, they invite anyone to share it.”He was uncertain whether or not they knew private property, but noted, “Inthat which one had, all took a share, especially of eatable things.”

These naive first impressions soon yielded to more realistic appraisals ofAmerican Indians, but not before giving rise to a utopian literature that hasever since become a permanent feature of Western thought.* Thomas More’sarchetypal Utopia, described in the book of that name he published in 1516, was,some scholars believe, inspired by the travel accounts of Columbus and otherearly explorers. Far from the happy place that the modern usage of the adjectiveutopian conveys, it was an austere and regimented community where

* Because the vision of a propertyless society is central to virtually allutopias, it could emerge only in societies in which private property wasprevalent: this, until recent times, meant, in effect, Europe and regionspopulated by Europeans. all citizens dressed alike and lived in identicalhouses, where no one could travel without permission, and where privatediscussion of public affairs carried the death penalty. Money was abolished;gold and silver served to make chamber pots. The common theme of subsequentutopias was, as in More’s, both the absence of private wealth and thecoercion of individuals by the community at large: utopia both in theory andpractice signifies the individual’s subservience to authority, whichcompels him to do what he is disinclined to do of his own free will.

It needs to be stated at this point that the ideal of a propertyless Golden Ageis a myth—the fruit of longing rather than memory—becausehistorians, archaeologists, and anthropologists concur that there never was atime or place when all productive assets were collectively owned. All livingcreatures, from the most primitive to the most advanced, in order to survivemust enjoy assured access to food and, to secure such access, claim ownership ofterritory. During the aeons before humans settled down to pursue agriculture,when they lived primarily by hunting and gathering, kinship groups assertedexclusive access to their area, expelling or killing trespassers. Propertyclaims intensified after transition to agriculture some ten thousand years ago,because cultivation of the soil is arduous work and its fruits take time tomature.

In the oldest civilizations, dating back five thousand years—pharaonicEgypt and Mesopotamia—agricultural land belonged to palaces and temples.Ancient Israel is the first country where we possess firm evidence of privateland ownership. The Lord in the Hebrew Bible casts a curse on anyone who tamperswith boundary stones (“Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor’slandmark,” Deuteronomy 27:17), and several biblical books tell of familiesas well as individuals holding land and pasture in private possession. But landownership in ancient Israel was hedged by many religious and clan restrictions.It is in classical Greece that from the earliest times agricultural land wasprivately held. In other words, there is no evidence that at any time, even inthe most remote past, there existed societies that knew no “boundary postsand fences” or ignored “mine” and “thine.”

A critical contribution to socialist and communist theory was the conception ofhuman nature formulated by thinkers of the Enlightenment. Traditionally, humanbeings were believed...