Communism in the Early 20th Century

Understanding Communism in the Early Twentieth Century

Conventional Survey Approach

• Institutional history from above.
• Focus on states adopting or rejecting Marxist-Leninist communism.
• Key milestones:
  • Communist Revolution in Russia (1917).
  • Communist revolutions in China and Korea.
  • Spread of communism through the Cold War.
  • Collapse in 1989.

Historiography of Communism

• Shaped by the Cold War, resulting in polarized views.
• Defense of the "West" against communism.
• Communism seen as a menace.

Hagiographic Tendency

• Writing the lives of saints; in this context, fervent supporters of communism.
• Apologetic histories seeing communism's spread as humanity's destiny.

Communism as a World-Making Project

• Inspired by Nelson Goodman's idea of world-making.
• Humans construct discrete worlds through artistic, political, or philosophical projects.
• No objective "real world," but multiple world visions.

Marx's Vision

• Philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it.

Questions to Explore

1. What kind of world did communists/socialists want?
   • How did they transform everyday life?
   • What were the consequences?
2. How did communists envisage the world at large?
   • What was their international project?
   • Communism was always a transnational project.

Typology

• Categorization of types.

Praxis

• Theory and action combined.

Types of Communist Praxis

1. State Ideology (Soviet Union):
   • Communism as the official basis of the state.
   • Debate over faithfulness to Marxism.
2. Anti-Colonial Revolutionary Mobilization:
   • Inspired groups seeking to overthrow colonialism.
3. Political Parties Around the World:
   • Dealing with the extent of following the Soviet Union.
   • Significant ideological differences among communists (Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, Maoists).

Marx and Engels

• Communist Manifesto (1848).
• Capitalism smashed feudalism and created the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
  • Bourgeoisie: owners of the means of production.
  • Proletariat: the working class.
• Revolution was the answer to capitalism's contradictions.
• Marxism was a super-national identity.
• Working men of all countries, unite.
• Communist revolution was expected to arrive first in advanced industrial countries.

Paris Commune of 1871

• Revolutionary socialists set up a government in Paris for 72 days.
• Seen as a model; Soviets celebrated on day 73 after their revolution.

World War I and Revolutionary Openings

• War accelerates social and political change.
• Socialist movement split between social democratic and revolutionary communist wings.

Key Moments During the War

1. Jean Jaures (France):
   • Feared working-class people would pay the biggest price in the war.
   • Attempted to build a transnational alliance of workers opposed to war.
   • Assassinated on 07/31/1914.
2. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Russia):
   • Leader of the Bolshevik party.
   • Advocated a complete takeover of the state and full revolutionary mobilization.
   • Bolsheviks took power in October 1917.
3. Rosa Luxemburg (Germany):
   • Co-founded the Spartacus League.
   • Criticized the Social Democratic Party (SPD) for supporting the war.
   • Attempted spontaneous uprising inspired by Bolsheviks, captured and executed.

Soviet Union in the 1920s

• Government saw itself as representing a Utopian vision of the future, with faith in technology.
• Abolishing class divisions, smashing feudalism and against imperialism.
• Richard Staats argues that the Soviet government of the 1920s had almost complete power to engage in large scale planning.
• Centralized state planning implemented through five-year plans (from 1928).
• Creating a new Soviet citizen with the ideals of revolution.
• The idea of a proletarian peasant alliance.

Role of Women

• Significant women like Alexandra Kolentai.
• State dictated a new role for women; equality but also revolutionary motherhood.
• Official views on women/family shifted in line with the five-year plans.

Technological or Environmental Determinism

• People can be reshaped by their living environments.
• The city as a social condenser.

Urban Problems in the 1920s

• Housing shortage, anti-urban tradition.

Two Main Schools of Thought

1. Urbanists:
   • Led by Leonid Sabsovic.
   • Wanted smaller cities of 50,000 people.
   • Agricultural industrial cities.
   • Controversial residential complexes with communal living arrangements.
   • Communalizing residential services to liberate women from domestic labor.
2. Disurbanists:
   • Led by Mikhail Okunovich and Nicolae Milutzen.
   • Against excessive concentration of people in cities.
   • Linear city spread across the countryside, connected by railway lines.
   • Modular housing; individual housing that could be added to or moved.

Rise of Joseph Stalin

• Outmaneuvered Trotsky after Lenin's death in 1924; by using his position as the General Secretary of the party.
• Used his position to elevate allies and demote his rivals and build up a significant power base.
• Airbrushing of the record of revolution to consolidate power.

Stalinism

• Discrete period within the history of communism.
• Commonalities with Lenin's rule.
• Repressive features: show trials, gulags, forced collectivization.
• De-Kulakization: Somewhere between 5,400,000 people were killed.

Communism Beyond the Soviet Union

• Global destiny: spreading from country to country.
• Communist Internationals: shaping a global sense of communism.

Key Events

• First International (1872):
  • Differences between anarchists and communists.
  • Mikhail Bakunin challenged Marx's idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
• Indian Communist, M.N. Roy:
  • Countries subject to colonial rule may need alliances with non-Marxist groups.
• Ho Chi Minh:
  • Traveled to Paris in the 1920s where he was introduced to communism.
• Middle East:
  • Communist parties started in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon.
  • Armenian genocide survivors became active members.
  • The Communist Party in Palestine was a rare space in which both, Jewish and Arab residents fighting in the same struggle together.

Popular Front

• Alliance of left-wing anti-fascist parties in response to the rise of fascism in Europe.
• Popular front governments established in France, Chile, and Spain in 1936.
• Triggered the Spanish Civil War.
• George Orwell volunteered on the Republican side.