Communism versus Liberalism

1. Communism versus Liberalism David Lipka

2. What problems? • What did people historically perceive as a social problem? • What attributes of reality did they want to change? • What arguments did they use?

3. „Communism“ • Common goal • Organic understanding of society • Forgetfulness • Dialectic of restoration and radical innovation • Post-Millenarism • Individuality and property as the cause of suffering (alienation)

4. Religious utopian thinking (RUT) • Brethren of the free spirit • Taborites (-1434) • Thomaso Campanella (1568 – 1639) • Etienne Cabet (1788 – 1856) • Pilgrims – Plymouth colony 1620-1623

5. Secular socialism • Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709 – 1785) • Morelly • Francois Charles Marie Fourier (1772 – 1837)

6. Karl Marx (1818-1883) • Considered all his predecessors „utopian thinkers“ • Science means silence about the specification of communism • Elimination of private property as the source of alienation

7. Scientific socialism • „…the positive transcendence of private property, or human self-estrangement, and therefore the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man... the complete return of man to himself as a social being..." • Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

8. What will it look like? • People freed from division of labor and exchange • People freed from necessity of labor • Superabundance of good • Elimination of all institutions

9. Communist Manifesto • Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. • A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. • Abolition of all right of inheritance. • Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. • Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. • Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. • Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. • Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. • Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. • Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production

10. Social dynamics • It is up to mankind to establish communism according to the laws of history. • Man is generally good but fettered by wrong institutions - revolution will unleash the true potential…

11. Crude communism • Dictatorship of the proletariat: • Coercion • enforced egalitarianism • confiscating and destroying wealth • gradual improvement of material conditions

12. Communism x socialism • Elimination of private property in lands and the means of production • Centralized management of production and distribution of resources • Abolition of commodity production and money relations • Centralized distribution of consumption goods “to everybody according to his needs/work” • Final stage: no institutions

13. „Liberalism“ • Individual as a starting point • Society as an outcome of voluntary agreement • History determined by ideas (progress) • What is freedom? • Absence of coercion • Autonomy • Ability to act

14. Classical: • Liberty (freedom) = property • Modern: • Liberties (positive)  distribution of property

15. Classical liberalism • Natural law X natural rights • Society – function of individuals • Natural rights • Self-ownership • Just acquisition • Just transfer

16. Modern liberalism • Rawls: justice as fairness • Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with a similar scheme for all. • Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

17. Communism x Liberalism

18. „To every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature, not be invaded or usurped by any: for everyone as he is himself, so he hath a self-propriety... No man hath power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man's; I may be but an individual, enjoy myself and my self-propriety, and may write myself no more than myself, or presume any further; if I do, I am an encroacher and an invader upon another man's right.“ • “Every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.“

19. “We hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”

20. ”The Great and Chief end therefore of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of property.”

21. "The Brethren of the Free Spirit, who claimed to be in a state of grace without benefit of priest or sacrament, spread not only doctrinal but civil disorder... Because the Free Spirit believed God to be in themselves, not in the Church, and considered themselves in a state of perfection without sin, they felt free to do all things commonly prohibited to ordinary man. Sex and property headed the list. They practiced free love and adultery and were accused of indulging in group sex in their communal residences. They encouraged nudity to demonstrate absence of sin and shame. As 'holy beggars', the Brethren claimed the right to use and take whatever they pleased, whether a market woman's chickens or a meal in a tavern without paying. This included the right, because of God's immanence, to kill anyone who forcibly attempted to interfere" (Barbara Tuchman: A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous Fourteenth Century 1979)

22. „It would be better that the whole world should be destroyed and perish utterly than that a `free man' should refrain from one act to which his nature moves him. . . . The truly free man is king and lord of all creatures. All things belong to him, and he has the right to use whatever pleases him. If anyone tries to prevent him, the free man may kill him and take his goods.“ Johann Hartman, Cited In Norman Cohn: The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages

23. „G.M.: Under such circumstances no one will be willing to labor, while he expects others to work, on the fruit of whose labors he can live, as Aristotle argues against Plato. Capt.: I do not know how to deal with that argument, but I declare to you that they burn with so great a love for their fatherland, as I could scarcely have believed possible“

24. „G.M.: Tell me about their children. Capt.:When their women have brought forth children, they suckle and rear them in temples set apart for all. They give milk for two years or more as the physician orders. After that time the weaned child is given into the charge of the mistresses, if it is a female, and to the masters, if it is a male. And then with other young children they are pleasantly instructed in the alphabet, and in the knowledge of the pictures, and in running, walking, and wrestling; also in the historical drawings, and in languages; and they are adorned with a suitable garment of different colors. After their sixth year they are taught natural science, and then the mechanical sciences. The men who are weak in intellect are sent to farms, and when they have become more proficient some of them are received into the State. And those of the same age and born under the same constellation are especially like one another in strength and in appearance, and hence arises much lasting concord in the State, these men honoring one another with mutual love and help. Names are given to them by Metaphysicus, and that not by chance, but designedly, and according to each one's peculiarity, as was the custom among the ancient Romans.“

25. „Love [one of the free princes] is foremost in attending to the charge of the race. He sees that men and women are so joined together, that they bring forth the best offspring. Indeed, they laugh at us who exhibit a studious care for our breed of horses and dogs, but neglect the breeding of human beings. The statues and pictures of the heroes, however, are there, and the splendid women set apart to become mothers often look at them. Prayers are made from the State to the four horizontal corners of the world -- in the morning to the rising sun, then to the setting sun, then to the south, and lastly to the north; and in the contrary order in the evening, first to the setting sun, to the rising sun, to the north, and at length to the south.“

26. Part IV 1. „LOIX FONDAMENTALES ET SACRÉES“ I. Nothing in society will belong to anyone, either as a personal possession or as capital goods, except the things for which the person has immediate use, for either his needs, his pleasures, or his daily work. II. Every citizen will be a public man, sustained by, supported by, and occupied at the public expense. III. Every citizen will make his particular contribution to the activities of the community according to his capacity, his talent and his age; it is on this basis that his duties will be determined, in conformity with the distributive laws.

27. MONDOR'S DAY IN THE SUMMER Time Sleep from 10:30 at night to 3:00 in the morning 3:30 Rising, preparations 4:00 Morning court, review of the night's adventures 4:30 Breakfast, followed by the industrial parade 5:30 Session with the group of hunters 7:00 Session with the group of fishermen 8:00 Lunch, newspapers 9:00 Session with a group of horticulturalists, under a tent 10:00 Mass 10:30 Session with the group of pheasant breeders 11:30 Session at the library 1:00 DINNER 2:30 Session with the greenhouse group 4:00 Session with the group of exotic plant growers 5:00 Session with the fish-tank group 6:00 Snack, in the fields 6:30 Session with the sheep-raising group 8:00 Session at the Exchange [where tasks for the next day are planned and allocated] 9:00 Supper, fifth meal 9:30 Art exhibition, concert, dance, theater, receptions 10:30 Bed

28. „[As soon as the division] of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him… He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.“ Karl Marx, The German Ideology, part I

29. “The new rate of industrial growth will produce enough goods needed to satisfy all the demands of society... Society will achieve an output sufficient for the needs of all members.” Engels, Principles of Communism

30. “man will realize his natural tendency to arrange things according to the laws of beauty” Economic and Philosophical manuscript (1844)

31. „[c]apitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation.“ Karl Marx, Capital

32. “...a new type of man will arise... a superman... an exalted man.” Karl Kautsky “Communist man will be enclosed, will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonised, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above the ridge new peaks will rise.“ Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution