Chapter IV
THE ABOLITION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY
I. PROPERTY
According to Wikipedia, property or private property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of persons. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property has the right to consume, sell, rent, mortgage, transfer, exchange or destroy his or her property, and/or to exclude others from doing these things. Important widely-recognized types of property include real property (land), personal property (physical possessions belonging to a person), private property (property owned by legal persons or business entities), public property (state owned or publicly owned and available possessions) and intellectual property (exclusive rights over artistic creations, inventions, etc.), although the latter is not always as widely recognized or enforced. A title, or a right of ownership, is associated with property that establishes the relation between the goods/services and other persons, assuring the owner the right to dispense with the property in a manner he or she sees fit. Some philosophers assert that property rights arise from social convention. Others find origins for them in morality or natural law....
Personal property, roughly speaking, is private property that is
moveable, as opposed to real property or real estate. In the common law systems
personal property may also be called chattels or personality. In the civil law
systems personal property is often called movable property or movables - any
property that can be moved from one location to another. This term is in
distinction with immovable property or immovables, such as land and buildings.
Movable property on land, that which was not automatically sold with the land,
included many kinds of livestock; in fact the word cattle is derived from
Middle English chatel, which was once synonymous with general movable personal
property.
Personal
property may be classified in a variety of ways. Tangible personal property
refers to any type of property that can generally be moved (i.e., it is not
attached to real property or land), touched or felt. These generally include
items such as furniture, clothing, jewelry, art, writings, or household goods.
In some cases, there can be formal title documents that show the ownership and
transfer rights of that property after a person's death (for example, motor
vehicles, boats, etc.) In many cases, however, tangible personal property will
not be "titled" in an owner's name and is presumed to be whatever
property he or she was in possession of at the time of his or her death.
Marx
distinguished private property from personal property. Marx did not oppose to
personal property which is "Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned"
(1), by members of the proletariat. But in fact, communists did not follow
strictly the Marx's theory .
II. SOCIALISM BEFORE MARX
The
roots of modern Communist reach back very far. Many thinkers in the ancient
time considered that war, poverty and inequality in society were caused by the
passion of private property. To resolve this problem, they decided to abolish
private property.
1. Socrates (469 BC–399 BC)
He
was a Classical Greek philosopher, one of the founders of Western philosophy .
Plato, his student, always cited his teacher's ideas in his works entitled Laws
and Republic.
Socrates
dreamed of an equal society in which everybody have the same joy or sorrow,
every thing is common, not private (2).
2. Plato (428/427 BC)
He
was a Classical Greek philosopher, writer of philosophical dialogues. Along
with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the
foundations of natural philosophy, science, and Western philosophy.
Like
his mentor, he looked for a classless state in which all citizen are friends,
property is banish from life, women, children are in common. He said:
The first and highest form of the state and of the government and of the law is that in which there prevails most widely the ancient saying, that "Friends have all things in common." Whether there is anywhere now, or will ever be, this communion of women and children and of property, in which the private and individual is altogether banished from life, and things which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become common, and in some way see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise and blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasions, and whatever laws there are unite the city to the utmost-whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting upon any other principle, will ever constitute a state which will be truer or better or more exalted in virtue .(3)
3. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809 – 1865)
He
was a French politician, philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the
French Parliament . His best-known assertion is that Property is Theft!,
contained in his first major work, What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the
Principle of Right and Government (Qu'est-ce que la propriété? Recherche
sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement), published in 1840.
III. ANTI-COMMUNISM BEFORE MARX
1. Aristote (469 BC–399 BC)
Socrates and Plato were his mentors. He did not agree with his mentors about the common property. He criticized the communism because of many reasons:
+Life in Communism is absurd:
But,
even supposing that it were best for the community to have the
greatest degree of unity, this unity is by no means proved to follow from the fact 'of all men saying "mine" and "not
mine" at the same instant of time,' which, according to
Socrates, is the sign of perfect unity in a state. For the word
'all' is ambiguous. If the meaning be that every individual says
'mine' and 'not mine' at the same time, then perhaps the result
at which Socrates aims may be in some degree accomplished; each man
will call the same person his own son and the same person his wife, and
so of his property and of all that falls to his lot. This, however, is
not the way in which people would speak who had their had their wives and children in common; they would say 'all' but not 'each.' In
like manner their property would be described as belonging to
them, not severally but collectively. There is an obvious
fallacy in the term 'all': like some other words, 'both,' 'odd,'
'even,' it is ambiguous, and even in abstract argument becomes a
source of logical puzzles. That all persons call the same thing
mine in the sense in which each does so may be a fine thing, but
it is impracticable; or if the words are taken in the other sense, such
a unity in no way conduces to harmony (4)
+Life in Communism is life of animals:
Nor
is there any way of preventing brothers and children and
fathers and mothers from sometimes recognizing one another; for
children are born like their parents, and they will necessarily be
finding indications of their relationship to one another. Geographers declare such to be the fact; they say that in part of Upper Libya,
where the women are common, nevertheless the children who are
born are assigned to their respective fathers on the ground of
their likeness. And some women, like the females of other
animals- for example, mares and cows- have a strong tendency to
produce offspring resembling their parents, as was the case
with the Pharsalian mare called Honest.[. . .]
+Life
of Communism would cause assaults and homicides, quarrels and slanders,
Other evils, against which it is not easy for the authors of
such a community to guard, will be assaults and homicides,
voluntary as well as involuntary, quarrels and slanders, all
which are most unholy acts when committed against fathers and
mothers and near relations, but not equally unholy when there
is no relationship. Moreover, they are much more likely to
occur if the relationship is unknown, and, when they have occurred, the customary expiations of them cannot be made. Again, how
strange it is that Socrates, after having made the children common, should
hinder lovers from carnal intercourse only, but should permit
love and familiarities between father and son or between
brother and brother, than which nothing can be more unseemly,
since even without them love of this sort is improper. How
strange, too, to forbid intercourse for no other reason than the violence of the pleasure, as though the relationship of father and son or
of brothers with one another made no difference. (5)
Aristotle
is an open minded philosopher. He emphasized " a democratical education
for the sons of the poor with the sons of the rich" (6)
According
to Saint Augustine, a propertyless world was possible only in paradise - that
"Golden Age " which mankind had lost because of original sin ( 7)
3. James Harrington (1600s)
He
said that the worst possible situation is one in which the commoners have half
a nation's property, with crown and nobility holding the other half—a
circumstance fraught with instability and violence. A much better situation (a
stable republic) will exist once the commoners own most property, he
suggested.(Wikipedia)
IV. Vietnamese Philosophy
From the ancient time, Vietnamese literature emphasized on humanity:
Love
people as we love ourselves (Thương
người như thể thương thân)
Vietnamese
patriots love their country and their people:
Oh
gourd, love the pumpkin, Though of different species, you share the same
trellis(Bầu ơi,
thương lấy bí cùng /Tuy rằng khác giống, nhưng chung một giàn)
Vietnamese
people love their nation, their community , their family and freedom but they
dislike the communism:
-Each person lives in his house while alive, but in a grave after death.
(Sống
mỗi người mỗi nhà, chết mỗi người một mồ).
-No
children cries for their common fathers
(Cha
chung không ai khóc.)
-If a pagoda has too much monks, nobody closes the gate.
(Lắm
sãi không ai đóng cửa chùa.)
-
If there are many monks in a funeral, the corpse would be decayed.
And
many fathers in a family, the marriage of their daughter would be delayed
(Lắm
thầy thối ma, lắm cha con khó lấy chồng)
V. KARL MARX & F. ENGELS
Marx
and Engels presented their theory of Communism, but the most prominent ideas
are the "class struggle " and "abolition of property".
But the true aim of communism is "abolition of property". In
the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels said:
"The
theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of
private property."
VI. WHY DID MARX AND ENGELS INTEND TO ABOLISH PRIVATE PROPERTY?
Marx and Engels raised the hatefulness in the heart of the workers and people in the name of justice and equality of society. In their works such as Das Kapital, Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels accused the capitalists of exploitation.
In Das Kapital, Marx and Engels said:Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.(9).
In Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote:
The
bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the
population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated
population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property
in a few hands....
The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour....
For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule...
In Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels' tactic is to cause the war between the bourgeois and the proletarians to make profits for the communist party with the idea of " class struggle".
The
proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except
by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every
other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure
and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and
insurances of, individual property.
The proletariat is served as a screen or a tool for the ambition of power and money of the communists . Marx and Engels proclaimed the role of master of the Communists, and the relation between the Communism and the proletariat:
The
Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and
resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section
which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have
over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding
the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the
proletarian movement.
The
immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian
parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois
supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat (Communist Manifesto)
Marx and Engels draw a beautiful picture of the communist paradise:
When,
in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all
production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the
whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political
power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for
oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie
is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if,
by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such,
sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with
these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class
antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own
supremacy as a class.
In
place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we
shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of all.
(Communist Manifesto)
VII. HOW THEY ABOLISH PROPERTY?
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx pointed out some measures to destroy the capitalists:
These
measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in
most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
(1).
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public
purposes.
(2).
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
(3).
Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
(4).
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
(5).
Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank
with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
(6).
Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the
State.
(7).
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.
(8).
Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially
for agriculture.
(9).
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of
all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of
the populace over the country.
(10).
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s
factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial
production, &c, &c.
But who are the capitalists, the rich people? In fact, the Kulaks in USSR, the bourgeois, and the landlords in China, and Vienam were only the poor peasants but the communists imprisoned and killed them in order to despoil their property and threaten every people.
VIII. CRITIQUE OF THE ABOLITION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY
1.Abolition of private property is a kind of stealing, and
robbing
+A lot of religions advise their followers doing the good, and forbid them to steal, and to rob. The Ten Commandments shown in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21 stated that the Israelites were not to steal. These texts were a blanket early protection of private property.
2. Private property is human rights
+ Excepted the communist countries, stealing and robbing is offending against the law Property rights are protected in the current laws of states usually found in the form of a constitution or a bill of rights. The United States Constitution provides explicitly for the protection of private property in the Fifth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment: The Fifth Amendment states: Nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. The Fourteenth Amendment states: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Protection is also found in the United Nations's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17, and in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Article XVII, and in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Protocol 1.
Excepted the communists, many thinkers respected the property right. By the influence of Cicero, Thomas Hobbes (1600s) emphasized on "giving to every man his own. Charles Comte, in Traité de la propriété (1834), attempted to justify the legitimacy of private property. According to Adam Smith, property rights encourage the property holders to develop the property, generate wealth, and efficiently allocate resources based on the operation of the market.
3. Property right is the instinct of human kind
Evolutionary theory and empirical studies suggest that many animals, including humans, have a genetic predisposition to acquire and retain property. This is hardly surprising because survival is closely bound up with the acquisition of things: food, shelter, tools and territory. But the root of these general urges may also run to quite specific and detailed rules about property acquisition, retention and disposition.
Animals
are known for doing certain activities without being taught or trained. These
are called their natural instincts, and they include many activities that just
simply come naturally to the animals.So do the human beings.The first instinct
an animal or baby get when it is born is the instinct of suckling. An animal or
a baby has a natural desire to be suckled by its mother. They need to have
their mother's nipples to suck on and get the natural milk that she provides.
While suckling, the baby always raise their hands to seize her mother 's
breasts. The second instinct an animal or a baby obtains is the one to
eat. The animals live in group , they fight the other occupying their
land, their food, and they protect their children, Land, food, children and
wives are their property.
4. Nobody can build a classless society and abolish private property even the communists.
In Communist Manifesto, Marx
dreamed of a society without individual exploitation, and national
exploitation. Marx wanted to abolish the borders of the
classes and the borders of the nations.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put
an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end
to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes,
the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
Despite Marx criticized Utopia, Marx's theory is
also a Utopian plan. Richard
Pipes, former director of Harvard’s Russian Research Center, asserts in his
book, Communism: A History, that “The Socialist
utopia is an imaginary horizon, forever retreating the closer one approaches
it.”(8)
Boris
Yeltsin said: Let's not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just
pie in the sky.(9)
5. The oppressor and oppressed always exist
in parallel in all society.
We cannot build an equal society or
classless state. In Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote:" In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere
a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation
of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves;
in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen,
apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate
gradations....Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great
hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie
and proletariat."
How
we can divide all of classes into two great classes ? How about the
middle class? This simplification is not correct because Marx also mention
"the middle class -- the small
tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen
and peasants--" (Communist Manifesto).
Supposing
that society has two classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat, or oppressor and
oppressed, although the proletariat wins, two classes still survive and
stand in constant opposition to one another. We never had a classless state
because when the proletariat wins, the workers become the ruling class
and the bourgeoisie becomes the oppressed class. It is the continuous changes
in history. Although those individuals replace the others, the oppressor
and the oppressed will survive forever.
6. What Marx wrote and what his disciplines did are different.
In
Marxian economics and socialist politics, there is distinction between
"private property" and "personal property". The former is
defined as the means of production in reference to private ownership over an
economic enterprise based on socialized production and wage labor; the latter
is defined as consumer goods or goods produced by an individual (10)
In
Communist Manifesto, Marx also emphacised:
"The distinguishing feature of communism is not the
abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property."
In
fact, communists seized everything and
evicted the bourgeois and their family, and forced peasants bring their oxes,
hens, ploughs into the collective farms.
They
labeled bourgeois and landlords to the poor people in order to seize their
property and frighten them.
7. What do the communists do after they seize the private property
of their people?
(1).
They destroyed country.
After
the revolution, the communists seized the power, killed or imprisoned the
capitalists, and seized their property and change it into the common
property. . They etablished a dictatorship and a command economy.
Many
bourgeois are the good administrators and businessmen. On the contrary, Lenin,
Stalin, and Mao Tse tung were not the economists but they released many great
economic plans and killed many million people in the collective farms.
In
1921 famine erupted in the Volga Region. It was caused by a number of reasons, but the serious reason is “prodrazvyorstka.” In many regions peasants staged riots, killing the
representatives of the Bolshevik authority. Up to 40 million people were
starving. There were reports of cannibalism. The number of orphans and child
crime grew drastically. The Soviet government had to turn to foreigners for
humanitarian aid. The
Famine largely stopped in 1922, in some regions in 1923. The total death toll
was at least 5 million people.
Chief
changes in the lives of rural Chinese included the introduction of a mandatory
process of agricultural collectivization, which was introduced incrementally.
Private farming was prohibited, and those engaged in it were labeled as counter
revolutionaries and persecuted. Restrictions on rural people were enforced
through public struggle sessions, and social pressure, although people also
experienced forced labor. Rural industrialization, officially a priority of the
campaign, saw "its development … aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap
Forward."
The
Great Leap ended in catastrophe, resulting in tens of millions of excess
deaths. Estimates of the death toll range from 18 million to 45 million with
estimates by demographic specialists ranging from 18 million to
32.5 million.
South
Korea is better than North Korea, West Germany is better than East Germany.
Thus, we can conclude that the Marxist economy is not as good as the
capitalist economy and the communist leaders are the economic killers.
(2).They robbed the public property and became the New class.
The
leader or a group of communist hold the national assets, they become the
lords of the country. Communists seize the banks, robbed people of land and
houses, Communists become the red capitalists. The communists seized the
political and economic power so they spend freely the common
property. The communists now build a " new class", live in a
luxurious live.
Communism
as practiced by Lenin, Stalin and Chairman Mao is an entirely different
proposition. This kind of communism sets up an authoritarian government, with
the best goods and services going to those in government.
Djilas
showed that, in spite lip service to “democracy” and a “classless society,” the
Communist Party became “a new ruling and exploiting class…unable to act
differently from any ruling class that preceded them.” The Communist Party’s
“political bureaucracy” had “all the characteristics of the earlier ones as
well as some new characteristics of its own.” Like other classes, the new class
came to power by “destroying the political, social, and other orders they met
in their way.” Unlike other classes, which arose gradually as the result of
economic and social forces, the new class promoted revolution in order “to
establish its power over society” while justifying its power from “an
idealistic point of view.”
Djilas said: "
It is the bureaucracy which formally uses,
administers, and controls both nationalized
and socialized property, as well as the entire life of society. The
role of bureaucracy in society, i.e., monopolistic administration and control
of national income and national goods, consign to it a special privileged
position. Social relations resemble state capitalism. The more so, because the
carrying out of industrialization is effected not only with the help of
capitalists but with the help of the state machine. In fact, this privileged
class performs that function, using the state machine as a cover and as an
instrument. Ownership is nothing other than the right to profit and control. If
one defines class benefits by this right, the Communist states have seen, in
the finalanalysis, the origin of a new form of ownership or of a new ruling or
exploiting class. (11)
The New Class is a phenomena in the Communist
world. It appeared first in Soviet Union.
The nomenklatura system arose early in Soviet history. Vladimir
Lenin wrote that appointments were to take the following criteria into account:
reliability, political attitude, qualifications, and administrative ability.
Joseph Stalin, who was the first general secretary of the party, also was known
as "Comrade File Cabinet" (Tovarishch Kartotekov) for his assiduous
attention to the details of the party's appointments. Seeking to make
appointments in a more systematic fashion, Stalin built the party's patronage
system and used it to distribute his clients throughout the party bureaucracy.
Under Stalin's direction in 1922, the party created departments of
the Central Committee and other organs at lower levels that were responsible
for the registration and appointment of party officials. Known as uchraspredy,
these organs supervised appointments to important party posts. According to
American sovietologist Seweryn Bialer, after Leonid Brezhnev's accession to
power in October 1964, the party considerably expanded its appointment
authority. However, in the late 1980s some official statements indicated that
the party intended to reduce its appointment authority, particularly in the area
of economic management, in line with Mikhail Gorbachev's reform efforts.
At the all-union level, the Party Building and Cadre Work
Department supervised party nomenklatura appointments. This department
maintained records on party members throughout the country, made appointments
to positions on the all-union level, and approved nomenklatura appointments on
the lower levels of the hierarchy. The head of this department sometimes was a
member of the Secretariat and was often a protégé of the general secretary.
Every party committee and party organizational department, from the
all-union level in Moscow to the district and city levels, prepared two lists
according to their needs. The basic (osnovnoi) list detailed positions in the
political, administrative, economic, military, cultural, and educational
bureaucracies that the committee and its department had responsibility for
filling. The registered (uchetnyi) list enumerated the persons suitable for
these positions.
An official in the party or government bureaucracy could not
advance in the nomenklatura without the assistance of a patron. In return for
this assistance in promoting his career, the client carried out the policies of
the patron. Patron–client relations thus help to explain the ability of party
leaders to generate widespread support for their policies. The presence of
patron–client relations between party officials and officials in other
bureaucracies also helped to account for the large-scale control the party
exercised over the Soviet society. All of the 2 million members of the
nomenklatura system understood that they held their positions only as a result
of a favor bestowed on them by a superior official in the party and that they
could easily be replaced if they manifested disloyalty to their patron.
Self-interest dictated that members of the nomenklatura submit to the control
of their patrons in the party.
Clients sometimes could attempt to supplant their patron. For
example, Nikita Khrushchev, one of Lazar M. Kaganovich's former protégés,
helped to oust the latter in 1957. Seven years later, Leonid Brezhnev, a client
of Khrushchev, helped to remove his boss from power. The power of the general
secretary was consolidated to the extent that he placed his clients in
positions of power and influence. The ideal for the general secretary, writes
Soviet émigré observer Michael Voslensky, "is to be overlord of vassals
selected by oneself."
Several factors explain the entrenchment of patron–client
relations. Firstly, in a centralized government system, promotion in the
bureaucratic-political hierarchy was the only path to power. Secondly, the most
important criterion for promotion in this hierarchy was approval from one's
supervisors, who evaluated their subordinates on the basis of political
criteria and their ability to contribute to the fulfillment of the economic
plan. Thirdly, political rivalries were present at all levels of the party and
state bureaucracies but were especially prevalent at the top. Power and influence
decided the outcomes of these struggles, and the number and positions of one's
clients were critical components of that power and influence. Fourthly, because
fulfillment of the economic plan was decisive, systemic pressures led officials
to conspire together and use their ties to achieve that goal.
The faction led by Brezhnev provides a good case study of
patron–client relations in the Soviet system. Many members of the Brezhnev
faction came from Dnipropetrovsk, where Brezhnev had served as first secretary
of the provincial party organization. Andrei P. Kirilenko, a Politburo member
and Central Committee secretary under Brezhnev, was first secretary of the
regional committee of Dnipropetrovsk. Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, named as first
secretary of the Ukrainian apparatus under Brezhnev, succeeded Kirilenko in
that position. Nikolai Alexandrovich Tikhonov, appointed by Brezhnev as first
deputy chairman of the Soviet Union's Council of Ministers, graduated from the
Dnipropetrovsk College of Metallurgy, and presided over the economic council of
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Finally, Nikolai A. Shchelokov, minister of internal
affairs under Brezhnev, was a former chairman of the Dnipropetrovsk soviet.
Patron–client relations had implications for policy making in the
party and government bureaucracies. Promotion of trusted subordinates into
influential positions facilitated policy formation and policy execution. A
network of clients helped to ensure that a patron's policies could be carried
out. In addition, patrons relied on their clients to provide an accurate flow
of information on events throughout the country. This information assisted
policymakers in ensuring that their programs were being implemented.(Wikipedia-Nomenklatura)
According
to the journal of the Hungarian Writers Union Irodalmi Újság (Literary
Gazette) of 24 August 1956, the Communist ruling clique in Hungary was
‘more aristocratic than the Habsburgs’ (the Austrian dynasty).
They
do not shop with the workers, but have special well-stocked stores for
themselves, and even on holiday at Lake Balaton they bathe behind barbed wire
fences with police guards to keep the workers away.
On
24 November, that is, after the defeat of the insurrection, the party daily Népszabadság,
in an effort to placate the workers, still stubbornly fighting its rearguard
action of strikes and go-slow tactics, admitted that:
...
one of the main reasons for the insurrection was the luxurious life of the
party officials... [and that] it must be acknowledged that a new aristocracy
was born in the ranks of the Communist movement, the bureaucrats. These
aristocrats of the regime travelled in sumptuous cars while the workers were
packed together in overcrowded trams. They had at their disposal secret shops,
where they could buy goods not available in the ordinary shops. They surrounded
themselves with guards, secretaries, and became unapproachable to the workers.
These aristocrats spent their holidays in luxury spots, isolated from the
common herd, and their children had become true brats of rich people, insolent
and conceited.
It
was the extreme contrast between the luxurious life of the privileged class and
the miserable existence of the mass of the working people, even more than their
own personal frustration, that induced in the Communist intellectuals a mood of
rebellion. They suffered from the knowledge that their talents were being
prostituted in the interests of the slaveholders, and the more sensitive and
courageous among them could not remain silent. Of course, disillusionment in
the regime did not come suddenly. Doubts arose, were pushed into the
background, returned, were again banished, finally came back more strongly than
ever, and as the situation progressively deteriorated, the doubts became
certainty. But some, of course, were only driven beyond doubt by the revolution
itself. The case of the former Stalinist writer, and Stalin prize winner, Gyula
Háy, is here worth noting as an example of the process of awakening among the
sincere Communists. In discussion with a Swiss journalist, François Bondy, he
said at the beginning of November 1956 (12)
When
the communists assumed power across Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII,
their stated intention was to create a new, more democratic and egalitarian
society. However, a gulf quickly became evident between the political elite and
the masses. In the 1950s Yugoslav partisan and communist leader turned
dissident Milovan Đilas openly condemned the emergence of what he described as
a ‘New Class’ in communist Eastern Europe, comprised of the privileged
political elite. In post-war Eastern Europe, it was soon widely recognized that
membership of the communist party didn’t just give you political standing, but
also provided access to numerous socio-economic advantages. Possession of a
party card opened the door to numerous ‘perks’, including the allocation of a
superior standard of accommodation, access to special shops (containing
domestically produced goods in short supply and imported luxury items from the
West) and holidays in special health resorts. Little wonder then, that many
people have subsequently justified their decision to join the East European
communist parties, as motivated not by any genuine ideological or
political commitment, but simply to ‘get along in life’. The higher up the
power structure you climbed, the more levels of privilege reached ridiculous
proportions. While official salary levels among the nomenklatura
(communist-era bureaucrats) remained relatively low in monetary terms, in
practice communist officials could supplement their basic income through
corruption, bribery and blat, and they also enjoyed a range of other
‘perks’.
China’s
prime minister was a schoolteacher in northern China. His father was ordered to
tend pigs in one of Mao’s political campaigns. And during childhood, “my family
was extremely poor,” the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said in a speech last
year. But now 90, the prime minister’s mother, Yang Zhiyun, not only left
poverty behind, she became outright rich, at least on paper, according to
corporate and regulatory records. Just one investment in her name, in a large
Chinese financial services company, had a value of $120 million five years ago,
the records show.
Ho Chi Minh and his Communist groups have
ruined the country in every aspect and harmed the people to a horrible destiny:
They brought the country into slavery. They are ceding territory and sea to
their master-country. They brought only unhappiness, starvation, misery and
eternal poverty to the people. Only the groups of Communist Leaders enjoy their
luxurious life while the people of Vietnam continue to suffer.
IX. FORCED LABOR AND THE
COLLECTIVIZATION
In the Communist Manifesto,
Marx pointed out some measures to destroy the capitalism, but the important
measure is " Equal liability of all to work.
Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture".
Indeed, abolish private property leads to forced labor. When communists seize all manufactures, compagnies, shops, land and
prohibit individual business, all
people in the country become the slaves of the communists..
1.
LOSS OF PRIVATE PROPERTY MEANS LOSS OF WEALTH
Working
in the collective farms is living in the prisons. The prisoners would be
hungry, cold, and maltreated. In the Soviet Union, in a kolkhoz, a
member, called kolkhoznik (колхо́зник, feminine колхо́зница),
was paid a share of the farm’s product and profit according to the number of
workdays, while a sovkhoz employed salaried workers. In practice, many Kolkhoz
did not pay their "members" much at all. In 1946, 30 percent of
Kolkhoz paid no cash for labor at all, 10.6 paid no grain, and 73.2 percent
paid 500 grams of grain or less per day worked. In addition the kolkhoz
was required to sell their crop to the State which fixed prices for the grain.
These were set very low and the difference between what the State paid the farm
and what the State charged consumers represented a major source of income for
the Soviet government. In 1948 the Soviet government charged wholesalers 335
rubles for 100 kilograms of rye, but paid the kolkhoz roughly 8 rubles. Nor did
such prices change much to keep up with inflation. Prices paid by the Soviet
government hardly changed at all between 1929 and 1953 meaning that the State
did not pay one half or even one third of the cost of production.
Members
of kolkhoz were allowed to hold a small area of private land and some animals.
The size of the private plot varied over the Soviet period but was usually
about 1 acre (0.40 ha). Before the Russian Revolution of 1917 a peasant
with less than 13.5 acres (5.5 ha) was considered too poor to maintain a
family. However, the productivity of such plots is reflected in the fact that
in 1938 3.9 percent of total sown land was in the form of private plots, but in
1937 those plots produced 21.5 percent of gross agriculture output.
Members
of the kolkhoz were required to do a minimum number of days work per year on
both the kolkhoz and on other government work such as road building. In one kolkhoz
the requirements were a minimum of 130 days a year for each able-bodied adult
and 50 days per boy aged between 12 and 16. That was distributed around the
year according to the agricultural cycle If kolkhoz members did not perform the
required minimum of work, the penalties could involve confiscation of the
farmer's private plot, a trial in front of a People's Court that could result
in three to eight months of hard labour on the kolkhoz or up to one year in a
corrective labor camp.(WIKIPEDIA. Kolkhoz)
In
Vietnam, the farmers were divided into many classes. The farmer of first class
was paid at the end of the harvest time 400gr of rice ( 1 kilo of paddy) per
day when he needed 1kg of rice per day. He also needed meat, fish, vegetable
and cloth. How did they live with 400gr of rice per day?
There
are many Vietnamese new folklore about the Communists' exploit:
-Một
người làm việc bằng ba,
Để
cho cán bộ xây nhà sắm xe.
A person works as hard as three persons,
In order to build a house or buy a car for the cadre.
-Thằng
làm thì đói,
thằng
nói thì no,
thằng
bò thì sướng.
Who works hard will be hungry
Who speaks well will be in comfort
Who crawls will be happy
Marx
accused capitalists of their exploit, but in reality, communists exploit more
than the capitalists.
Capitalists
exploited the workers, but they did not caused the death of thousand people.
But under the banner of equality, freedom, and happiness, communists killed
about hundred million people in the world of communism. As a result, we can say
that having private property, we will have wealth. Without property we will
have no food, no money and no happiness, we are the prisoners.
2. LOSS OF PRIVATE PROPERTY MEANS LOSS OF FREEDOM
Private property has a relationship with freedom. The peasants, the workers in
the collective farms and collective workshops are the slaves too. On the
other hand, the communists have a lot of freedom, freedom to take the public
property for them and live in a luxurious life.
In
German Ideology, Marx wrote:"
He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, 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, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever
becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social
activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective
power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations,
bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical
development up till now." (Private Property and Communism)
On the theoretical aspects,
Marx was wrong. How a peasant or a worker has freedom when they are forced to
work in a collective farm or a collective workshop?
In
reality, collective farm and workshop are the prisons. In Soviet Union and in
Vietnam, nobody can leave the collective farm or collective work shop without
permission.
"In both the kolkhoz and sovkhoz, a system of internal
passports prevented movement from rural areas to urban areas. Until 1969 all
children born on a collective farm were forced by law to work there as adults
unless they were specifically given permission to leave In effect, farmers
became tied to their sovkhoz or kolkhoz in what may be described as a system of
"neo-serfdom", in which the Communist bureaucracy replaced the
former landowners". (Wikipedia,
Kolkhoz)
Marx believed that the communist
society is better then capitalist society. On the other hand, Marx praised the
Capitalism. In Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote:"
"The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has
created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all
preceding generations together".
In fact the communist society ìs a society of failure.
Communism in East Europe, Soviet Union collapsed totally. China and
Vietnam still conserve the communist flag but they follow the capitalist
economy.
Why the communist economy failed?
There were many ideas protesting the abolition of private
property. In Communist Manifesto, Marx repeated what the anti-communists said:
"It has been objected that upon the abolition of
private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us." And Marx replied:"According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to
the dogs through sheer idleness; for those who acquire anything, do not work.
The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: There
can no longer be any wage labor when there is no longer any capital".
Writing this sentence, Marx
aimed to accuse the bourgeois of their laziness. Many people by their prejudge
think that the bourgeois are the lazy persons but in fact the bourgeois are the
studious persons, they work hard so they become rich. On the contrary, many
people are poor because they want to play than to work. Moreover, they
are addicted to cocaine, or gambling or drinking.
Why the communist economy failed?
In the capitalist and the monarchical society, people have
freedom in working. A man can become accomplished
in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus
makes it possible for him to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt
in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise
after dinner.
They work hard because he has freedom, and he has motivation to
work. He works hard and happily for his purposes: to buy a coast, to buy a car,
to build a house. He works hard for his future, and for his son, and his
daughter s' future. But in communist's hell, the workers do not have enough food, how can he dream of a
car, a house?
In a word, we can
conclude that:
1- Marx and his comrades are the imaginary or
deceitful persons.
2-
Nobody can build a classless state because the oppressor and oppressed always
exist in parallel in all society.
3-Nobody
can abolish private property because the public private will be seized or
robbed by one man, one family or one group.
4-Abolition
of private property will make country and people poor and miserable.
The
communist's dream cost hundred million people 's lives.
__
(1).Communist Manifesto)
Plato, The Republic.Book V. Translated by Benjamin
Jowett . http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.6.v.html
(4
Aristotle. Politics. Part III...http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.2.two.html
(6).http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.4.four.html.
Part IX.(8). Pipes, Richard. Communism: A
History. (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 84.
(7).
Richard Pipies. Communisim. A History. (New York: The Modern Library,
2000)- 4.
(10). Capital, Volume 1, by
Marx, Karl. From "Chapter 32: Historical Tendency of Capitalist
Accumulation": "Self-earned private property, that is based, so to
say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent laboring-individual
with the conditions of his labor, is supplanted by capitalistic private
property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labor of others,
i.e., on wage-labor. As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently
decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are
turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the
capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further
socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means
of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of
production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes
a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer
working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers."
(11). Milovan Djilas, The New
Class (New York: Praeger, 1957), p. 35.
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