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Question: Why was communism criticized?

Asked by Garfinkel (48 points) on Aug 8, 2009  under Society and Culture 1 answers

Why was communism criticized?


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Nadeem (120 points)

on Aug 8, 2009

Communism has been subjected to bitter criticism by various writers on the following basis:




  1. The labor theory of value, on which it based the doctrine of surplus value, is an inadequate explanation; other factors, such as the relation of supply to demand and the existence of competition or monopoly must be taken into consideration.


  2. Ideas and ideals formulated by versatile reformers about the flawless type of society, have always appeared before the actual transformation took place.


  3. The acceptance of materialistic conception of history, would mean the unending subjection of men to the bonds of economic conditions, without any cognition, sense of faculty of his own.


  4. It greatly minimizes the importance of accidents, great personages, religion and geography which have all played their significant roles in reshaping, recasting, reforming and recreating the social order of the day.


  5. Karl supposes that different classes in the state; the laborers and the capitalist were fully conscious of their class entity which is not true. This consciousness was never known to have existed, during the period of the ancient Greek and Roman civilization; slave did not think themselves as slaves but a class by themselves; and the masters did not think themselves as a class owing to slaves.


  6. Moreover, the idea of a class war, denying as it does the possibility of a common civic consciousness, is unduly pessimistic.


  7. A social revolution of the kind predicted by Marx is not inevitable. Recent economic history shows that social thought and foresight have brought a gradual betterment of the workers. Moreover the first socialist revolution did not come due to the concentration of wealth in the capitalist system of the west but out of the pre-capitalist system in Russia.


  8. The dictatorship of the proletariat envisaged during the transition period is clearly undesirable, because we have no assurance that the interests of the dictators will always coincide with the interest of community.


  9. Communists constantly emphasizes the evils of the concentration of wealth, but they totally ignore the concentration of absolute power. Even if the first dictators are of milder attitude, we have no certainty that their successors will follow the policies of high-mindedness.


  10. Dictatorship is incapable of voluntary abdication, the state will not vanish. After the withering sway of the state, one cannot imagine the incredible violence and chaos in the society on the persistent cry of ‘mine and thine’ and theory of survival of the fittest will again revive an age of barbarism.

  11. The communist goal is not possible of realization, for it demands a revolution in human nature. A social ideal which assumes such basic change in nature and habits is by the very essence incapable of any achievement.

  12. The passionate advocates of communism lay emphasis on equality and justice, but we fail to understand as to how these are to be attained and maintained between different types of producers, between the skilled and the unskilled, between the strong and the weak and between the industrious and the lazy? The communists may ultimately have to choose between efficiency and equality.


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