Pre-Marxist communism

While Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined communism as a political movement, there were already similar ideas in the past which one could call communist experiments.[1] Marx himself saw primitive communism as the original hunter-gatherer state of humankind. For Marx, only after humanity was capable of producing surplus did private property develop.

Classical period

The idea of a classless and stateless society based on communal ownership of property and wealth also stretches far back in Western thought long before The Communist Manifesto. There are scholars who have traced communist ideas back to ancient times, particularly in the work of Pythagoras and Plato.[2] Followers of Pythagoras, for instance, lived in one building and held their property in common because the philosopher taught the absolute equality of property with all worldly possessions being brought into a common store.[3]

It is argued that Plato's Republic described in great detail a communist-dominated society wherein power is delegated in the hands of intelligent philosopher or military guardian class and rejected the concept of family and private property.[4] In a social order divided into warrior-kings and the Homeric demos of craftsmen and peasants, Plato conceived an ideal Greek city-state without any form of capitalism and commercialism with business enterprise, political plurality, and working-class unrest considered as evils that must be abolished.[5] While Plato's vision cannot be considered a precursor of communist thinking, his utopian speculations that are shared by other utopian thinkers later on.[6]

Religious communism

Further information: Religious communism

There are those who view that the early Christian Church, such as that one described in the Acts of the Apostles (see Christian communism), was an early form of communism. The view is that communism was just Christianity in practice and Jesus Christ as the first communist.[7] This link was highlighted in one of Marx's early writings which stated: "As Christ is the intermediary unto whom man unburdens all his divinity, all his religious bonds, so the state is the mediator unto which he transfers all his Godlessness, all his human liberty".[7] Furthermore, the Marxist ethos that aims for unity reflects the Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people.[8] Pre-Marxist communism was also present in the attempts to establish communistic societies such as those made by the Essenes and by the Judean desert sect.[9][10][11]

Furthermore, Thomas Müntzer led a large Anabaptist communist movement during the German Peasants' War.

Medieval period

Peter Kropotkin argued that the elements of mutual aid and mutual defense expressed in the medieval commune and its guild system were the same sentiments of collective self-defense apparent in modern communism and socialism.[12]

Early modern period

In the 16th century, English writer Sir Thomas More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property in his treatise Utopia, whose leaders administered it through the application of reason.[13]

Several groupings in the English Civil War supported this idea, but especially the Diggers, who espoused clear communistic yet agrarian ideals.[14][15][16] Oliver Cromwell and the Grandees' attitude to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.[17] Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Enlightenment era of the 18th century through such thinkers as the deeply religious Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Raised a Calvinist, Rousseau was influenced by the Jansenist movement within the Roman Catholic Church. The Jansenist movement originated from the most orthodox Roman Catholic bishops who tried to reform the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century to stop secularization and Protestantism. One of the main Jansenist aims was democratizing to stop the aristocratic corruption at the top of the Church hierarchy.[18] Utopian socialist writers such as Robert Owen are also sometimes regarded as communists.

Age of Revolution

Maximilien Robespierre and his Reign of Terror, aimed at exterminating the nobility and conservatives, was admired among some communists.[19] In his turn, Robespierre was a great admirer of Rousseau.[20]

Francois Babeuf has both been described as an anarchist and communist by later scholars to describe his ideas.[21] The word "communism" was first used in English by Goodwyn Barmby in a conversation with those he described as the "disciples of Babeuf".[22] He has been called "The First Revolutionary Communist."[23]

The Shakers of the 18th century under Joseph Meacham developed and practiced their own form of communalism, as a sort of religious communism, where property had been made a "consecrated whole" in each Shaker community.[24]

The participants of the Taiping Rebellion, who founded the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, are viewed by the Communist Party of China as proto-communists.[25]

The Communards and the Paris Commune are often seen as proto-communists, and had significant influence on the ideas of Karl Marx, who described it as an example of the "dictatorship of the proletariat".[26]

Non-European communism

Further information: Primitive communism

Lewis Henry Morgan's descriptions of "communism in living" as practised by the Iroquois Nation of North America.[27] This was a primary inspiration for Marx and Engel's description of primitive communism, and has led to some believing that early communist-like societies also existed outside of Europe, in Native American society and other pre-Colonized societies in the Western hemisphere.

Primitive communism meaning societies that practiced economic cooperation among the members of their tribes,[28] where almost every member of a tribe had his or her own contribution to society and land and natural resources would often be shared peacefully among the tribe. Some such tribes in North America and South America still existed well into the 20th century.

The Chachapoya culture indicated a egalitarian non-hierarchical society through a lack of archaeological evidence and a lack of power expressing architecture that would be expected for societal leaders such as royalty or aristocracy.[29]

Karl Marx and the contemporary age

Marx saw communism as the original state of mankind from which it rose through classical society and then feudalism to its current state of capitalism. He proposed that the next step in social evolution would be a return to communism.

In its contemporary form, communism grew out of the workers' movement of 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for creating a class of poor, urban factory workers who toiled under harsh conditions and for widening the gulf between rich and poor.

References

1. Perkins, Anne (2014). Trailblazers in Politics. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. p. 88. ISBN 9781477781449.
2. Edwin L. Minar, Jr. (1944). "Pythagorean Communism". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. 75: 34–46. doi:10.2307/283308. JSTOR 283308.
3. Voltaire (2017-06-28). VOLTAIRE: 60+ Works in One Volume - Philosophical Writings, Novels, Historical Works, Poetry, Plays & Letters: Candide, A Philosophical Dictionary, A Treatise on Toleration, Plato's Dream, The Princess of Babylon, Zadig, The Huron, Socrates, The Sage and the Atheist, Dialogues, Oedipus, Caesar…. Musaicum Books. ISBN 9788075835987.
4. Ensign, Russell; Patsouras, Louis (1993). Challenging Social Injustice: Essays on Socialism and the Devaluation of the Human Spirit. The Edwin Mellen Press. p. 2. ISBN 0773493697.
5. Hardwick, Lorna; Harrison, Stephen (2013). Classics in the Modern World: A Democratic Turn?. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 68–69. ISBN 9780199673926.
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7. Houlden, Leslie; Minard, Antone (2015). Jesus in History, Legend, Scripture, and Tradition: A World Encyclopedia: A World Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. p. 357. ISBN 9781610698047.
8. Halfin, Igal (2000). From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 46. ISBN 0822957043.
9. "Essenes". Retrieved 12 December 2019.
10. Kaufmann Kohler. "ESSENES".
11. Yosef Gorni; Iaácov Oved; Idit Paz (1987). Communal Life: An International Perspective.
12. Kropotkin, Peter (1902). Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.
13. J. C. Davis (28 July 1983). Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516–1700. Cambridge University Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-521-27551-4.
14. Campbell, Heather M, ed. (2009). The Britannica Guide to Political Science and Social Movements That Changed the Modern World. The Rosen Publishing Group. pp. 127–129. ISBN 978-1-61530-062-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
15. E.g. "That we may work in righteousness, and lay the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor, That every one that is born in the Land, may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the Creation. Not Inclosing any part into any particular hand, but all as one man, working together, and feeding together as Sons of one Father, members of one Family; not one Lording over another, but all looking upon each other, as equals in the Creation;" in The True Levellers Standard A D V A N C E D: or, The State of Community opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men
16. Peter Stearns; Cissie Fairchilds; Adele Lindenmeyr; Mary Jo Maynes; Roy Porter; Pamela radcliff; Guido Ruggiero, eds. (2001). Encyclopedia of European Social History: From 1350 to 2000 - Volume 3. Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 290. ISBN 0-684-80577-4.
17. Eduard Bernstein (1930). Cromwell and Communism. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
18. Daniel Roche (1993). La France des Lumières.
19. Jordan, David P. (2013). Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre. New York City: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-147-672-571-0.
20. Hampson, Norman (1974). The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre. Duckworth. ISBN 978-0715607411.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
21. Patrice Higonnet (1979). "PBabeuf: Communist or Proto-Communist?". The Journal of Modern History. 51 (4): 773–781. doi:10.1086/241990. JSTOR 1877166.
22. Harper, Douglas. "communist". Online Etymology Dictionary.
23. R.B.Rose (1978). Gracchus Babeuf: The First Revolutionary Communist.
24. Stephen Stein (1994). The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers. pp. 42–44.
25. Daniel Little, Marx and the Taipings (2009)
26. Jacques Rougerie (2004). Paris libre - 1871. pp. 264–270.
27. Morgan, L. H. 1881. Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
28. Carl Ratner (2012). Cooperation, Community, and Co-Ops in a Global Era. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 40. ISBN 9781461458258.
29. Dr Jago Cooper (Presenter) (2013). Lost Kingdoms of South America - People of the Clouds (video). Peru: BBC. Event occurs at 39 minutes.