1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Communism

​COMMUNISM, the name loosely given to schemes of social organizations depending on the abolition of private property and its absorption into the property of a community as such. It is a form of what is now generally called socialism (q.v.), the terminology of which has varied a good deal according to time and place; but the expression “communism” may be conveniently used, as opposed to “socialism” in its wider political sense, or to the political and municipal varieties known as “collectivism,” “state socialism,” &c., in order to indicate more particularly the historical schemes propounded or put into practice for establishing certain ideally arranged communities composed of individuals living and working on the basis of holding their property in common. It has nothing, of course, to do with the Paris Commune, overthrown in May 1871, which was a political and not an economic movement. Communistic schemes have been advocated in almost every age and country, and have to be distinguished from mere anarchism or from the selfish desire to transfer other people’s property into one’s own pockets. The opinion that a communist is merely a man who has no property to lose, and therefore advocates a redistribution of wealth, is contrary to the established facts as to those who have historically supported the theory of communism. The Corn-law Rhymer’s lines on this subject are amusing, but only apply to the baser sort:—

This is the communist of hostile criticism—a criticism, no doubt, ultimately based on certain fundamental facts in human nature, which have usually wrecked communistic schemes of a purely altruistic type in conception. But the great communists, like Plato, More, Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, were the very reverse of selfish or idle in their aims; and communism as a force in the historical evolution of economic and social opinion must be regarded on its ideal side, and not merely in its lapses, however natural the latter may be in operation, owing to the defects of human character. As a theory it has inspired not only some of the finest characters in history, but also much of the gradual evolution of economic organization—especially in the case of co-operation (q.v.); and its opportunities have naturally varied according to the state of social organization in particular countries. The communism of the early Christians, for instance, was rather a voluntary sharing of private property than any abnegation of property as such. The Essenes and the Therapeutae, however, in Palestine, had a stricter form of communism, and the former required the surrender of individual property; and in the middle ages various religious sects, followed by the monastic orders, were based on the communistic principle.

Communistic schemes have found advocates in almost every age and in many different countries. The one thing that is shared by all communists, whether speculative or practical, is deep dissatisfaction with the economic conditions by which they are surrounded. In Plato’s Republic the dissatisfaction is not limited to merely economic conditions. In his examination of the body politic there is hardly any part which he can pronounce to be healthy. He would alter the life of the citizens of his state from the very moment of birth. Children are to be taken away from their parents and nurtured under the supervision of the state. The old nursery tales, “the blasphemous nonsense with which mothers fool the manhood out of their children,” are to be suppressed. Dramatic and imitative poetry are not to be allowed. Education, marriage, the number of births, the occupations of the citizens are to be controlled by the guardians or heads of the state. The most perfect equality of conditions and careers is to be preserved; the women are to have similar training with the men, no careers and no ambition are to be forbidden to them; the inequalities and rivalries between rich and poor are to cease, because all will be provided for by the state. Other cities are divided against themselves. “Any ordinary city, however small, is in fact two cities, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich, at war with one another” (Republic, bk. iv. p. 249, Jowett’s translation). But this ideal state is to be a perfect unit; although the citizens are divided into classes according to their capacity and ability, there is none of the exclusiveness of birth, and no inequality is to break the accord which binds all the citizens, both male and female, together into one harmonious whole. The marvellous comprehensiveness of the scheme for the government of this ideal state makes it belong as much to the modern as to the ancient world. Many of the social problems to which Plato draws attention are yet unsolved, and some are in process of solution in the direction indicated by him. He is not appalled by the immensity of the task which he has sketched out for himself and his followers. He admits that there are difficulties to be overcome, but he says in a sort of parenthesis, “Nothing great is easy.” He refuses to be satisfied with half measures and patchwork reforms. “Enough, my friend! but what is enough while anything remains wanting?” These sentences indicate the spirit in which philosophical as distinguished from practical communists from the time of Plato till to-day have undertaken to reconstruct human society.

​Sir Thomas More’s Utopia has very many of the characteristicsof The Republic. There is in it the same wonderful power ofshaking off the prejudices of the place and time in which it waswritten. The government of Utopia is described as founded onpopular election; community of goods prevailed, the magistratesdistributed the instruments of production among the inhabitants,and the wealth resulting from their industry was shared by all.The use of money and all outward ostentation of wealth wereforbidden. All meals were taken in common, and they wererendered attractive by the accompaniment of sweet strains ofmusic, while the air was filled by the scent of the most delicateperfumes. More’s ideal state differs in one important respectfrom Plato’s. There was no community of wives in Utopia.The sacredness of the family relation and fidelity to the marriagecontract were recognized by More as indispensable to the well-beingof modern society. Plato, notwithstanding all the extraordinaryoriginality with which he advocated the emancipation ofwomen, was not able to free himself from the theory and practiceof regarding the wife as part and parcel of the property of herhusband. The fact, therefore, that he advocated community ofproperty led him also to advocate community of wives. Hespeaks of “the possession and use of women and children,” andproceeds to show how this possession and use must be regulatedin his ideal state. Monogamy was to him mere exclusive possessionon the part of one man of a piece of property which oughtto be for the benefit of the public. The circumstance that hecould not think of wives otherwise than as the property of theirhusbands only makes it the more remarkable that he claimedfor women absolute equality of training and careers. The circumstancethat communists have so frequently wrecked their projectsby attacking marriage and advocating promiscuous intercoursebetween the sexes may probably be traced to the notionwhich regards a wife as being a mere item among the goods andchattels of her husband. It is not difficult to find evidence ofthe survival of this ancient habit of mind. “I will be master ofwhat is mine own,” says Petruchio. “She is my goods, mychattels.”

The Perfectionists of Oneida, on the other hand, held thatthere was “no intrinsic difference between property in personsand property in things; and that the same spirit which abolishedexclusiveness in regard to money would abolish, if circumstancesallowed full scope to it, exclusiveness in regard to women andchildren” (Nordhoff’s Communistic Societies of the United States).It is this notion of a wife as property that is responsible for thewild opinions communists have often held in favour of a communityof wives and the break-up of family relations. If theycould shake off this notion and take hold of the conception ofmarriage as a contract, there is no reason why their views on thecommunity of property should lead them to think that thiscontract should not include mutual fidelity and remain in forceduring the life of the contracting parties. It was probably notthis conception of the marriage relation so much as the influenceof Christianity which led More to discountenance community ofwives in Utopia. It is strange that the same influence did notmake him include the absence of slavery as one of the characteristicsof his ideal state. On the contrary, however, we find inUtopia the anomaly of slavery existing side by side with institutionswhich otherwise embody the most absolute personal,political and religious freedom. The presence of slaves in Utopiais made use of to get rid of one of the practical difficulties ofcommunism, viz. the performance of disagreeable work. In asociety where one man is as good as another, and the means ofsubsistence are guaranteed to all alike, it is easy to imagine thatit would be difficult to ensure the performance of the morelaborious, dangerous and offensive kinds of labour. In Utopia,therefore, we are expressly told that “all the uneasy and sordidservices” are performed by slaves. The institution of slaverywas also made supplementary to the criminal system of Utopia,as the slaves were for the most part men who had been convictedof crime; slavery for life was made a substitute for capitalpunishment.

In many respects, however, More’s views on the labour questionwere vastly in advance of his own time. He repeats the indignantprotest of the Republic that existing society is a warfare betweenrich and poor. “The rich,” he says, “desire every means bywhich they may in the first place secure to themselves what theyhave amassed by wrong, and then take to their own use andprofit, at the lowest possible price, the work and labour of thepoor. And so soon as the rich decide on adopting these devicesin the name of the public, then they become law.” One mightimagine these words had been quoted from the programme ofThe International (q.v.), so completely is their tone in sympathywith the hardships of the poor in all ages. More shared to the fullthe keen sympathy with the hopeless misery of the poor whichhas been the strong motive power of nearly all speculativecommunism. The life of the poor as he saw it was so wretchedthat he said, “Even a beast’s life seems enviable!” Besidescommunity of goods and equality of conditions, More advocatedother means of ameliorating the condition of the people.Although the hours of labour were limited to six a day there wasno scarcity, for in Utopia every one worked; there was no idleclass, no idle individual even. The importance of this from aneconomic point of view is insisted on by More in a passageremarkable for the importance which he attaches to the industrialcondition of women. “And this you will easily apprehend,” hesays, “if you consider how great a part of all other nations isquite idle. First, women generally do little, who are the half ofmankind.” Translated into modern language his proposalscomprise universal compulsory education, a reduction of the hoursof labour to six a day, the most modern principles of sanitaryreform, a complete revision of criminal legislation, and the mostabsolute religious toleration. The romantic form which SirThomas More gave to his dream of a new social order found manyimitators. The Utopia may be regarded as the prototype ofCampanella’s City of the Sun, Harrington’s Oceana, Bacon’s NovaAtlantis, Defoe’s Essay on Projects, Fénelon’s Voyage dans l’Îledes Plaisirs, and other works of minor importance.

All communists have made a great point of the importance ofuniversal education. All ideal communes have been provided bytheir authors with a perfect machinery for securing the educationof every child. One of the first things done in every attempt tocarry communistic theories into practice has been to establish agood school and guarantee education to every child. The firstimpulse to national education in the 19th century probablysprang from the very marked success of Robert Owen’s schools inconnexion with the cotton mills at New Lanark. Compulsoryeducation, free trade, and law reform, the various movementsconnected with the improvement of the condition of women, havefound their earliest advocates among theoretical and practicalcommunists. The communists denounce the evils of the presentstate of society; the hopeless poverty of the poor, side by sidewith the self-regarding luxury of the rich, seems to them to cryaloud to Heaven for the creation of a new social organization.They proclaim the necessity of sweeping away the institution ofprivate property, and insist that this great revolution, accompaniedby universal education, free trade, a perfect administrationof justice, and a due limitation of the numbers of thecommunity, would put an end to half the self-made distress ofhumanity.

The various communistic experiments in America are the mostinteresting in modern times, opportunities being naturallygreater there for such deviations from the normal forms ofregulations as compared with the closely organized states ofEurope, and particularly in the means of obtaining land cheaplyfor social settlements with peculiar views. They have been classifiedby Morris Hillquit (History of Socialism in the United States,1903) as (1) sectarian, (2) Owenite, (3) Fourieristic, (4) Icarian.

1. The oldest of the sectarian group was the society of theShakers (q.v.), whose first settlement at Watervliet was foundedin 1776. The Harmony Society or Rappist Community wasintroduced into Pennsylvania by George Rapp (1770–1847) fromWürttemberg in 1804, and in 1815 they moved to a settlement(New Harmony) in Indiana, returning to Pennsylvania again in1824, and founding the village of Economy, from which they were ​also known as Economites. Emigrants from Württemberg alsofounded the community of Zoar in Ohio in 1817, being incorporatedin 1832 as the Society of Separatists of Zoar; it was dissolvedin 1898. The Amana (q.v.) community, the strongest of allAmerican communistic societies, originated in Germany in theearly part of the 18th century as “the True Inspiration Society,”and some 600 members removed to America in 1842–1844. TheBethel (Missouri) and Aurora (Oregon) sister communities werefounded by Dr Keil (1812–1877) in 1844 and 1856 respectively,and were dissolved in 1880 and 1881. The Oneida Community(q.v.), created by John Humphrey Noyes (1811–1886), the authorof a famous History of American Socialisms (1870), was establishedin 1848 as a settlement for the Society of Perfectionists. All thesebodies had a religious basis, and were formed with the object ofenjoying the free exercise of their beliefs, and though communisticin character they had no political or strictly economic doctrineto propagate.

2. The Owenite communities rose under the influence ofRobert Owen’s work at New Lanark, and his propaganda inAmerica from 1824 onwards, the principal being New Harmony(acquired from the Rappists in 1825); Yellow Springs, nearCincinnati, 1824; Nashoba, Tennessee, 1825; Haverstraw, NewYork, 1826; its short-lived successors, Coxsackie, New York,and the Kendal Community, Canton, Ohio, 1826. All these hadmore or less short existences, and were founded on Owen’stheories of labour and economics.

3. The Fourierist communities similarly were due to theUtopian teachings of the Frenchman Charles Fourier (q.v.),introduced into America by his disciple Albert Brisbane (1809–1890),author of The Social Destiny of Man (1840), who wasefficiently helped by Horace Greeley, George Ripley and others.The North American Phalanx, in New Jersey, was started in1843 and lasted till 1855. Brook Farm (q.v.) was started as aFourierist Phalanx in 1844, after three years’ independent career,and became the centre of Fourierist propaganda, lasting till 1847.The Wisconsin Phalanx, or Ceresco, was organized in 1844, andlasted till 1850. In Pennsylvania seven communities wereestablished between 1843 and 1845, the chief of which were theSylvania Association, the Peace Union Settlement, the SocialReform Unity, and the Leraysville Phalanx. In New Yorkstate the chief were the Clarkson Phalanx, the Sodus BayPhalanx, the Bloomfield Association, and the Ontario Union.In Ohio the principal were the Trumbull Phalanx, the OhioPhalanx, the Clermont Phalanx, the Integral Phalanx, and theColumbian Phalanx; and of the remainder the AlphadelphiaPhalanx, in Michigan, was the best-known. It is pointed out byMorris Hillquit that while only two Fourierist Phalanxes wereestablished in France, over forty were started in the United States.

4. The Icarian communities were due to the communisticteachings of another Frenchman, Étienne Cabet (q.v.) (1788–1856), the name being derived from his social romance, Voyage en Icarie (1840), sketching the advantages of an imaginary countrycalled Icaria, with a co-operative system, and criticizing theexisting social organization. It was his idea, in fact, of a Utopia.Robert Owen advised him to establish his followers, alreadynumerous, in Texas, and thither about 1500 went in 1848. Butdisappointment resulted, and their numbers dwindled to lessthan 500 in 1849; some 280 went to Nauvoo, Illinois; after aschism in 1856 some formed a new colony (1858) at Cheltenham,near St Louis; others went to Iowa, others to California. Thelast branch was dissolved in 1895.