CHAPTER VII
COMMUNISM AND THE WORLD
I. CAPITALISM AND PROLETARIAT CLASS
Capitalism developed by the Industrial revolution in the 18th century in Europe. The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes that occurred in the period from about 1760 to some time between 1820 and 1840.
This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of water power, the increasing use of steam power and development of machine tools. The transition also included the change from wood and other bio-fuels to coal. The Industrial revolution began in England and within a few decades spread to Western Europe and the United States.
The Industrial Revolution on Continental Europe came a little later than in Great Britain. In many industries, this involved the application of technology developed in Britain in new places. Often the technology was purchased from Britain or British engineers and entrepreneurs moved abroad in search of new opportunities. By 1809 part of the Ruhr Valley in Westphalia was called 'Miniature England' because of its similarities to the industrial areas of England. The German, Russian and Belgian governments all provided state funding to the new industries. In some cases (such as iron), the different availability of resources locally meant that only some aspects of the British technology were adopted.(Wikipedia-Industrial Revolution)
Karl Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848. At that time, the Capitalism was just formed the first time in England. In France, the peasants constitute far more than half of the population ... . Germany is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution (The Communist Manifesto)
but in China
Vietnam, Korea, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat class did not developed
yet.
In Communist Manifesto , Karl Marx celebrated the proletariat class:" Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class..."But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more.
According to Wikipedia, Capitalism
is an economic system based on the private ownership of capital goods
and the means of production, with the creation of goods and services for
profit. Elements central to capitalism include capital accumulation,
competitive markets, and a price system.
There are multiple variants of capitalism,
including laissez-faire, welfare capitalism and state capitalism.
Capitalism is considered to have been applied in a variety of
historical cases, varying in time, geography, politics, and culture.
There is general agreement that capitalism became dominant in the
Western world following the demise of feudalism.
Capitalists
are people who control the means of production. They own a lot of
capital, such as infrastructure and machines. Capitalists hire Workers
for labor. In contrast to the capitalists, workers do not own the means
of production. They usually produce a material object or commodity, the
product which they don't own either. The workers sell their labor in
return for paper things that support the value of their work. In the 20th century defenders of the capitalist system often replaced the terms capitalism and capitalist with phrases such as free enterprise and private enterprise in reaction to the negative connotations sometimes associated with capitalism.
The term capitalism, in its modern sense, comes from the writings of Karl Marx. Before Marx, "capitalism" simply referred to the possession of capital.
Although Karl Marx and Engels considered the proletariat as the revolutionary class, but in fact under Karl Marx and Engels' eyes, they are only the stupid animals, they might be commanded by the cowboys. According to Karl Marx and Engels, in the communist party, there were two sections of members: the communists and the workers. The communists feel that they are higher, smarter than the proletarians.They are the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties, they pushes forward all others (Communist Manifesto I)
Who were the communists? Although in Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Engels dealt with the Capitalism, Proletariat, excepted England, the in most European countries, the capitalism and the proletariat were not yet the entities, they had no forces, they were only the spectre. Some Communist parties in the Europe were established by the intellectuals, the sons of capitalism or feudal system. Later the majority of the founders of the communist parties in Russia, China, Vietnam were the intellectuals, and sons, or daughters of the capitalists or mandarins as Karl Marx, Engels, Georgi Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu, Mao Zedong, Chu Enlai, Tạ Thu Thâu, Phan Văn Hùm, Nguyễn An Ninh, Hồ Chí Minh, Võ Nguyên Giáp, Phạm Văn Đồng..
Communists were the founders and the leaders of the communist party. They were not the proletarians but they led the communist party, and seized the power of a country, they became the ruling class, the new bourgeoisie, when they defeated the bourgeois.
Following Karl Marx, his disciplines push the workers struggle against the capitalists by the deceit and terrorism:
Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.(Communist Manifesto)
Karl Marx and Engels were the famous philosophers of 20th century. Their voice is very expressive, and their works condensed, but they never defined the important words in their works.
Maybe it was their wise tricks, they wanted to throw smoke grenades to cause confusion for the readers. What is capitalism? What is proletariat class? Who are the capitalists? Who are the proletarians? Marx and Engels only said briefly and simply about their names and their situations :
"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.(Communist Manifesto, I)
The communists intended to cause confusion for us, because those names have many meanings and many synonyms. Capitalism means the ruling class, the exploiting class, the rich people, the bourgeois, the owners, the bosses... And the Proletariat class means the working class, the workers, the carpenters, the barbers, the bricklayers, the poor people, the poor peasants, the poor merchants, the thieves, the homeless, the vagabonds...A lot of people think that they are proletarians, they are targets of communists. Therefore they have sympathy with the communists.
Perhaps Engels realized his mistake, in the Communist Manifesto 1888, he noted when he said of the relationship between capitalism and proletariat class :
Perhaps Engels realized his mistake, in the Communist Manifesto 1888, he noted when he said of the relationship between capitalism and proletariat class :
By
bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the
means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat,
the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of
their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.
(ch.1. Note 1 by Engels - 1888 English edition) (COMMUNIST MANIFESTO I ,)
Perhaps Engels thought that was his mistake when he did not define clearly the words capitalism, capitalist, bourgoisie, bourgeois, proletariat class, worker, working class and proletarian. But the Stalinists and Maoists had freedom when they labeled capitalist, bourgeois, landlords to the poor people.
Engels' new definitions were not clear. I think that bourgeois or capitalist is:
-the person who owns capital, an investor of capital in business, especially one having a major financial interest in an important enterprise.
- the owner of new means of social production. The new machines delivered industry wholly into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered entirely worthless the meagre property of the workers (tools, looms, etc.). The result was that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers (Engels. The Principles of Communism)
- Industrialist or businessman working on the large-scale operation
-the owner of the great factories with employers of wage labor.
By this definition, the small manufacturers, the shopkeepers, the artisans, the house builders, the peasants...are not capitalists.
Following the Vietnamese Textbook adapted " The Principles of Communism" by Frederick Engels in 1847 ( Giai cấp công nhân là giai cấp vô sản có trình độ lao động công nghiệp cao , là đứa con của nền đại công nghiệp hiện đại ) [1], we can define that the workers or proletariat class are the proletarians :
- work for the modern capitalists in the modern factories.
- have a lot of skill, acquire high degree of technique.
- live entirely from the sale of its labor and do not draw profit from any kind of capital.
Communists have freedom when they said of capitalists, workers, proletariat class, and they also have freedom when they accused some people of bourgeois or landlord. Karl Marx, Engels always said of landlord in their works, but they did not define the word " land lord".
In the imagination of Vietnamese people, landlords ( điền chủ) are the owners of the thousand hectare fields. But in the reality, landlords sometimes are the poor peasants who have about two acres.
How Chinese Communists concluded that the numbers of poor peasants equal the numbers of landlords?“ How they set the ratio at 5.68 percent of the population as landowners ? [ 2 ]
According to Nguyễn Minh Cần, more than 172,000 people died during the North Vietnam campaign after
being classified as landowners and wealthy farmers, official records of
the time show. .“I am talking about the number of wrongly tried victims that were
seriously depressed and furious to the extent that they had to commit
suicide. This number was in fact not small. In my opinion this
consequence was very serious. It has given a terrible fright to the
people,” Cần added.
[3]Perhaps Engels thought that was his mistake when he did not define clearly the words capitalism, capitalist, bourgoisie, bourgeois, proletariat class, worker, working class and proletarian. But the Stalinists and Maoists had freedom when they labeled capitalist, bourgeois, landlords to the poor people.
Engels' new definitions were not clear. I think that bourgeois or capitalist is:
-the person who owns capital, an investor of capital in business, especially one having a major financial interest in an important enterprise.
- the owner of new means of social production. The new machines delivered industry wholly into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered entirely worthless the meagre property of the workers (tools, looms, etc.). The result was that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers (Engels. The Principles of Communism)
- Industrialist or businessman working on the large-scale operation
-the owner of the great factories with employers of wage labor.
By this definition, the small manufacturers, the shopkeepers, the artisans, the house builders, the peasants...are not capitalists.
Following the Vietnamese Textbook adapted " The Principles of Communism" by Frederick Engels in 1847 ( Giai cấp công nhân là giai cấp vô sản có trình độ lao động công nghiệp cao , là đứa con của nền đại công nghiệp hiện đại ) [1], we can define that the workers or proletariat class are the proletarians :
- work for the modern capitalists in the modern factories.
- have a lot of skill, acquire high degree of technique.
- live entirely from the sale of its labor and do not draw profit from any kind of capital.
Thus, Hồ Chí Minh, a help cook; Võ Chí Công, a house painter; Đỗ Mười, a castrator were the communists but they were not the workers, the proletarians. Trần Quốc Hoàn did not belong to the proletariat class but the "dangerous class".
Communists have freedom when they said of capitalists, workers, proletariat class, and they also have freedom when they accused some people of bourgeois or landlord. Karl Marx, Engels always said of landlord in their works, but they did not define the word " land lord".
In the imagination of Vietnamese people, landlords ( điền chủ) are the owners of the thousand hectare fields. But in the reality, landlords sometimes are the poor peasants who have about two acres.
How Chinese Communists concluded that the numbers of poor peasants equal the numbers of landlords?“ How they set the ratio at 5.68 percent of the population as landowners ? [ 2 ]
R.J. Rummel, in his book Statistics of Democide, estimates the death toll from all causes from 1945-56:the probable democide for this four year period then totals 283,000 North Vietnamese. There was also those who died in prison or at forced labor from 1945 to 1956. One estimate of 500,000 dead from President Nixon [4]
According to Hoàng Văn Chí, the average of the property of each landlord was 7000 m2 of land, half of a animal, 6 tools, 500 kg food, 6,500 đồng ( two or five dollars) [5]. And after the land reform, each family of peasant of all kinds has about 800m2 of land. But some months later, communists confiscated all land to establish the collective farms. So everybody became the slaves of the communists.
We can conclude that communists spread propagate, blow up proletariat, and take advantage of the proletariat, but in fact, communists did not care about the workers, the proletariat. People including the workers are slaves and victims of the communist party. Following Abraham Lincoln, we can say: Communists can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but they cannot fool all of the people all the time.
Communists won in the colonies because of people's patriotism, not by proletarians 'class struggle. Communism failed in East Europe and in Soviet Union. In China, Vietnam and North Korea, people and communists still face each other -- , but one day victory will belong to the people.
II. COMMUNISM AND PEOPLE
Karl Marx was an optimist. Marx was very proud of his philosophy, he disdained all philosophies and philosophers in the world. He thought his philosophy was the most positive and practical: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." [6]...
He also was proud of the proletariat :" the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class..(Communist Manifesto).
He was also a dreamer. He dreamed of the victory of his communist party:" We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy (COMMUNIST MANIFESTO * PART II).
What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
(COMMUNIST MANIFESTO * PART I ,II)
1. COMMUNISM AND THE WORLDKarl Marx had a great dream, a dream to occupy all the world.
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.(Communist Manifesto)
Every people want to live in peace. Every religion teaches humanity and love, when Marx and Engels wanted to spread the hostility and war in all the world. If communists won, the human kind would be miserable. If communists did not win, the war still continue.
He also dreamed of a paradise in this world. Karl Marx thought that after the communists overthrew some governments, seized the property of the capitalists and the petty bourgeois, killed and imprisoned a number of people, it is the time
they 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.(Communist Manifesto )
Marx was wrong. Despite humankind or animal living alone or in group, struggling to protect themselves is their instinct. They have to fight the invaders to protect themselves, their family, their food and their land. Their friends, their family, their food and their land are their property. Nobody can seize their property and their freedom.
Nobody refuses their duty to protect their land, their country. Therefore nobody can abolish the borders of the countries. In the reality, the colonialists and imperialists occupied the small countries. Communism is also a kind of imperialism. Communists do not love the people of the small countries. Stalin occupied the small countries in the East Europe to build the Soviet Union. Communist Chinese occupied Tibet, invaded Vietnamese borders and islands. So the hostility of one nation to another never come to an end.
2. COMMUNISM AND THE NATION
Communism is an internationalism not a nationalism. Marx said:"The workers have no country".
And Lenin said:" I don’t care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it. All this is only the road to a World Revolution. [7]
Karl Marx described a future society, a communist paradise: "National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing". ... 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.... 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. (Communist Manifesto)
A number of people believed in an absolute freedom of communism, and imagined of the anarchy in the communist countries. Lenin said:“we do not at all differ with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as aim" [8].
Summing up his historical analysis, Engels says: “The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it 'the reality of the ethical idea', 'the image and reality of reason', as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of 'order'; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state." [9]
Lenin said:"
This expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with regard to the historical role and the meaning of the state. The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.
It is on this most important and fundamental point that the distortion of Marxism, proceeding along two main lines, begins.
On the one hand, the bourgeois, and particularly the petty-bourgeois, ideologists, compelled under the weight of indisputable historical facts to admit that the state only exists where there are class antagonisms and a class struggle, “correct” Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state is an organ for the reconciliation of classes. According to Marx, the state could neither have arisen nor maintained itself had it been possible to reconcile classes.[10]
Lenin said " Any cook should be able to run the country."[11]. In many communist countries, the General Secretary was a dictator, a tyrant, who governed the country until death. How a cook could be a General Secretary or a Chairman? In the communist country, only the communists have the right to vote and the right to candidate, how a non-party citizen could be a General Secretary or a Chairman?
Somebody thinks that Marx dreamed of a classless state. Marx believed communism would have no government at all; that the means of production would be administered by all and no one would be exploited. It is wrong because the world has many countries, and each country has many social classes. Nobody can level the earth surface, and nobody can level the world and a country. Marx was imaginary. Society always has many classes. After the war, although a number of people died, the world always remains many classes. When two main classes fight together, one class will be lost and becomes the ruled class, when the other class will be the ruling class. If one class will be destroyed completely, the ruling class and the middle class will compose a new society.
Many people or many groups of different people can make the societies. Adam Smith wrote that a society "may subsist among different men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its utility without any mutual love or affection, if only they refrain from doing injury to each other" [12].
Sociologist Gerhard Lenski differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication, and economy: (1) hunters and gatherers, (2) simple agricultural, (3) advanced agricultural, (4) industrial, and (5) special (e.g. fishing societies or maritime societies).[13]
Thus, over time, some cultures have progressed toward more complex forms of organization and control. This cultural evolution has a profound effect on patterns of community. Hunter-gatherer tribes settled around seasonal food stocks to become agrarian villages. Villages grew to become towns and cities. Cities turned into city-states and nation-states.
Feudal regime and Capitalist regime accept the union in a country.Every body, every class, every religion are friends. They are a part of the nation, they can contribute their part to the nation. All people are citizens, all people are equal.
It is also wrong because Marx did not want to level the world and society.In fact, Marx advocated a single-party state and proletariat dictatorship when Marx wrote:"
We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.(Communist Manifesto)
Marx did not want a classless state, but he wanted communist party under the name of proletariat to play the role of a ruling class, an exploiting class.
Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.(Communist Manifesto)
On the contrary, Communists created many classes, but the New class was the ruling class, the exploiting class, and the gap between the social classes was daily more and more deeping.
A single-party state with dictatorship means anti-democracy and anti-freedom. It is a specific feature of the totalitarian regime. Marx, Lenin, Hồ Chi Minh always said of democracy and freedom:
"Democracy is the road to socialism." (Karl Marx);"Democracy is indispensable to socialism." (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin);"Modern Socialism is inseparable from political democracy."[14]
But when they won, they seized all freedom and democracy of people. In communist world, people do not have the right to vote, the right to speech, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion.
Lenin stated brazenly and insolently: " We do not have time to play at “oppositions” at “conferences.” We will keep our political opponents... whether open or disguised as “nonparty,” in prison. The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy’s cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this. [15]
Soviet power took thousands upon thousands of these best buildings from the exploiters at one stroke, and in this way made the right of assembly;without which democracy is a fraud; a million times more democratic for the people. Indirect elections to non-local Soviets make it easier to hold congresses of Soviets, they make the entire apparatus less costly, more flexible, more accessible to the workers and peasants at a time when life is seething and it is necessary to be able very quickly to recall one’s local deputy or to delegate him to a general congress of Soviets.Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.[16]
By the proletariat dictatorship, their ambition and their stupidity, communists destroyed their countries , and killed hundred million people in the world.
3.COMMUNISM AND SOCIETY
(1). Abolition of property.
Karl Marx wrote:
The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property...
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
(Communist Manifesto)
In fact, Communists abolish the property generally, including the bourgeois property. In Viet Nam, the peasants and the workers have to hand in their tools, and their animals to collective farms and collective workshops.In the communist countries, all people became the slaves of the communists. Communists exploited workers thousand times more than the capitalism. After taking power and seizing property of the bourgeois and people, communists think that they will make their country wealthy quickly. It is a dream or a deception. Marx said:
" The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible".(Communist Manifesto)
In reality, communism is a theory of failure, especially in economics. Stalin's regime moved to force collectivization of agriculture. This was intended to increase agricultural output from large-scale mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more direct political control, and to make tax collection more efficient. Collectivization brought social change on a scale not seen since the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and alienation from control of the land and its produce. Collectivization also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants, and it faced violent reaction among the peasantry.
In the first years of collectivization it was estimated that industrial production would rise by 200% and agricultural production by 50%,but these expectations were not realized.Famine affected other parts of the USSR. The death toll from famine in the Soviet Union at this time is estimated at between 5 and 10 million people. The worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, had caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths. On the contrary, 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.Thus, capitalist system is a million times more wealthy than communist system.
(2). Dictatorship
Lenin said: Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic, but in reality, in the communist world, communists seized democracy and freedom of people. In Vietnam, communists stated that like the democratic countries they also have separation of powers: "People are the owner, communist party the leader, the government manager".
But in fact,
communists hold all power, people are slaves. In the elections, people have to chose
one or two communists on the list given by government. That is the policy " party
chooses, people vote", a
tricky game of communists .
Communists in Vietnam now became the robbers, they occupy land and houses of people, they also robbed the banks, they sold Vietnam to Communist China. Communism is a disaster for Vietnamese people.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.
In Vietnam, the communist party with two million members, two million soldiers, and policemen, their movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities.
(3). Abolition of the old culture
In Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote:"
" communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
Marx was extremist. Culture is the common property of humankind. It is result of many ages of working of our ancestors. Marx was a fool when he wanted to destroy everything. Despite life and universe are in the change but they are also in the continuation. Feudal bourgeois did not die but transformed into modern bourgeois. Hegel's philosophy did not die but remained in Marx' s philosophy. Marx's philosophy was not new, Marx did not make a radical rupture with traditional relations. Following the Marx's teaching, Mao Zedong made The Cultural Revolution in 1950 led to the destruction of much of China's traditional cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese citizens, as well as creating general economic and social chaos in the country. Millions of lives were ruined during this period, as the Cultural Revolution pierced into every part of Chinese life. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, perished in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.
4. COMMUNISM AND FAMILY
Marx condemned bourgeois family based on capital and the bourgeoisie caused the public prostitution. The capitalists considered their wives as the instrument of production. Marx said:"The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women".(Communist Manifesto)
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.[17]
The marriage for money, slave trade and the prostitution are the common phenomena from the beginning of the world. In the "The Origin of the Family", Engels said of the monogamous family
in Greek during the Euripides (c. 480 – 406 BC) time:
The man had his athletics and his public business, from which women were barred; in addition, he often had female slaves at his disposal and during the most flourishing days of Athens an extensive system of prostitution which the state at least favored. It was precisely through this system of prostitution that the only Greek women of personality were able to develop, and to acquire that intellectual and artistic culture by which they stand out as high above the general level of classical womanhood as the Spartan women by their qualities of character. But that a woman had to be a hetaira before she could be a woman is the worst condemnation of the Athenian family.ORIGINS OF THE FAMILY V [17]
Engels was wrong when he said:"Within the family he is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat". With the theory of class struggle, Marx and Engels torn society into pieces. Now he imagined the antagonism between the husband and his wife in a bourgeois family!
Engels preferred the society of Primitive communism. Engels criticized "The jealousy of the male, which both consolidates and isolates the family, sets the animal family in opposition to the herd. The jealousy of the males prevents the herd, the higher social form, from coming into existence, or weakens its cohesion, or breaks it up during the mating period; at best, it attests its development."[17]
And he appraised the harmony between men and men and women and women in the community of women in the primitive communism: "Mutual toleration among the adult males, freedom from jealousy, was the first condition for the formation of those larger, permanent groups in which alone animals could become men. And what, in fact, do we find to be the oldest and most primitive form of family whose historical existence we can indisputably prove and which in one or two parts of the world we can still study today? Group marriage, the form of family in which whole groups of men and whole groups of women mutually possess one another, and which leaves little room for jealousy.[17]
Engels appraised love in the communist society:
"Sex-love in the relationship with a woman becomes, and can only become, the real rule among the oppressed classes, which means today among the proletariat-whether this relation is officially sanctioned or not. But here all the foundations of typical monogamy are cleared away. Here there is no property, for the preservation and inheritance of which monogamy and male supremacy were established; hence there is no incentive to make this male supremacy effective." [17]
Full freedom of marriage can therefore only be generally established when the abolition of capitalist production and of the property relations created by it has removed all the accompanying economic considerations which still exert such a powerful influence on the choice of a marriage partner. For then there is no other motive left except mutual inclination.[17]
Before Marx and Engels, many philosophers opposed the abolition of family, the group marriage, community of women and free love in the primitive communism. That is right. In Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Engels affirmed that when the capitalist class and their property were destroyed, the bourgeois family also disappears.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Engels dreamed of one day humankind would go back to the primitive communism:
" Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society." [17]
We are now approaching a social revolution in which the economic foundations of monogamy as they have existed hitherto will disappear just as surely as those of its complement-prostitution. Monogamy arose from the concentration of considerable wealth in the hands of a single individuals man-and from the need to bequeath this wealth to the children of that man and of no other. For this purpose, the monogamy of the woman was required, not that of the man, so this monogamy of the woman did not in any way interfere with open or concealed polygamy on the part of the man. But by transforming by far the greater portion, at any rate, of permanent, heritable wealth – the means of production – into social property, the coming social revolution will reduce to a minimum all this anxiety about bequeathing and inheriting. Having arisen from economic causes, will monogamy then disappear when these causes disappear?[17]
Marx and Engels have the right to dream of the primitive communism with free love, and community of women. But many philosopher opposed this life. Aristotle said:"
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. And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few. Each citizen will have a thousand sons who will not be his sons individually but anybody will be equally the son of anybody, and will therefore be neglected by all alike. Further, upon this principle, every one will use the word 'mine' of one who is prospering or the reverse, however small a fraction he may himself be of the whole number; the same boy will be 'so and so's son,' the son of each of the thousand, or whatever be the number of the citizens; and even about this he will not be positive; for it is impossible to know who chanced to have a child, or whether, if one came into existence, it has survived. But which is better- for each to say 'mine' in this way, making a man the same relation to two thousand or ten thousand citizens, or to use the word 'mine' in the ordinary and more restricted sense? For usually the same person is called by one man his own son whom another calls his own brother or cousin or kinsman- blood relation or connection by marriage either of himself or of some relation of his, and yet another his clansman or tribesman; and how much better is it to be the real cousin of somebody than to be a son after Plato's fashion! 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.[18]
There are a number of fiction and imagination in Marx and Engels works. In the capitalist society, women played an important role in society. And in capitalist world, people have a lot of freedom, and democracy. But nobody can find any human rights in the communist society. Communist world is an enormous prison, in which, hundred millions were the slaves of communists.
Communists robbed people's land and houses, they betrayed their countries. After they defeated the national government, they seized power and seized property all people, they became the New Class, the red capitalists when people became poorer. The proletarians were not the revolutionary forces but the slaves of the new class. Therefore, the slave trade and prostitution developed quickly under the communist regime.
In the communist world, the women be came the toys of communists. Marx and Engels criticized the slave trade and prostitution in the capitalist countries but in the communist world, especially in Vietnam, communists exported men and women to Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore. Mao Zedong and Hồ Chí Minh had their harems. Hồ Chí Minh was a real communist in primitive communism, because he wanted to play not to marry, and not to recognise his children. Moreover, Hồ Chí Minh was a beast, a barbarian when he killed Nông Thị Xuân, his secret wife and threw her body in the street. In China and Vietnam, the millionaires bought a lot of concubines under 15 year old. In Vietnam, the prostitution became popular with the taxi girls or call girls. A number of waitress or hostesses in Vietnam are the whores. Marx and Engels believed that human society developed gradually into five phases: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism. Why did they want to abolish the monogamous family? Why did they want to roll back the wheel of history?
Communism was a nightmare for a half of people in the world.Communism was a world of prison including Gulag, Siberia, reeducation camps and collective farms and collective industries in Soviet Union, East Europe, China, North Korea, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It was history of hundred million people in the world.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.
In Vietnam, the communist party with two million members, two million soldiers, and policemen, their movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities.
(3). Abolition of the old culture
In Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote:"
" communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
Marx was extremist. Culture is the common property of humankind. It is result of many ages of working of our ancestors. Marx was a fool when he wanted to destroy everything. Despite life and universe are in the change but they are also in the continuation. Feudal bourgeois did not die but transformed into modern bourgeois. Hegel's philosophy did not die but remained in Marx' s philosophy. Marx's philosophy was not new, Marx did not make a radical rupture with traditional relations. Following the Marx's teaching, Mao Zedong made The Cultural Revolution in 1950 led to the destruction of much of China's traditional cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese citizens, as well as creating general economic and social chaos in the country. Millions of lives were ruined during this period, as the Cultural Revolution pierced into every part of Chinese life. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, perished in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.
4. COMMUNISM AND FAMILY
Marx condemned bourgeois family based on capital and the bourgeoisie caused the public prostitution. The capitalists considered their wives as the instrument of production. Marx said:"The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women".(Communist Manifesto)
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.[17]
The marriage for money, slave trade and the prostitution are the common phenomena from the beginning of the world. In the "The Origin of the Family", Engels said of the monogamous family
in Greek during the Euripides (c. 480 – 406 BC) time:
The man had his athletics and his public business, from which women were barred; in addition, he often had female slaves at his disposal and during the most flourishing days of Athens an extensive system of prostitution which the state at least favored. It was precisely through this system of prostitution that the only Greek women of personality were able to develop, and to acquire that intellectual and artistic culture by which they stand out as high above the general level of classical womanhood as the Spartan women by their qualities of character. But that a woman had to be a hetaira before she could be a woman is the worst condemnation of the Athenian family.ORIGINS OF THE FAMILY V [17]
Engels was wrong when he said:"Within the family he is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat". With the theory of class struggle, Marx and Engels torn society into pieces. Now he imagined the antagonism between the husband and his wife in a bourgeois family!
Engels preferred the society of Primitive communism. Engels criticized "The jealousy of the male, which both consolidates and isolates the family, sets the animal family in opposition to the herd. The jealousy of the males prevents the herd, the higher social form, from coming into existence, or weakens its cohesion, or breaks it up during the mating period; at best, it attests its development."[17]
And he appraised the harmony between men and men and women and women in the community of women in the primitive communism: "Mutual toleration among the adult males, freedom from jealousy, was the first condition for the formation of those larger, permanent groups in which alone animals could become men. And what, in fact, do we find to be the oldest and most primitive form of family whose historical existence we can indisputably prove and which in one or two parts of the world we can still study today? Group marriage, the form of family in which whole groups of men and whole groups of women mutually possess one another, and which leaves little room for jealousy.[17]
Engels appraised love in the communist society:
"Sex-love in the relationship with a woman becomes, and can only become, the real rule among the oppressed classes, which means today among the proletariat-whether this relation is officially sanctioned or not. But here all the foundations of typical monogamy are cleared away. Here there is no property, for the preservation and inheritance of which monogamy and male supremacy were established; hence there is no incentive to make this male supremacy effective." [17]
Full freedom of marriage can therefore only be generally established when the abolition of capitalist production and of the property relations created by it has removed all the accompanying economic considerations which still exert such a powerful influence on the choice of a marriage partner. For then there is no other motive left except mutual inclination.[17]
Before Marx and Engels, many philosophers opposed the abolition of family, the group marriage, community of women and free love in the primitive communism. That is right. In Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Engels affirmed that when the capitalist class and their property were destroyed, the bourgeois family also disappears.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Engels dreamed of one day humankind would go back to the primitive communism:
" Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society." [17]
We are now approaching a social revolution in which the economic foundations of monogamy as they have existed hitherto will disappear just as surely as those of its complement-prostitution. Monogamy arose from the concentration of considerable wealth in the hands of a single individuals man-and from the need to bequeath this wealth to the children of that man and of no other. For this purpose, the monogamy of the woman was required, not that of the man, so this monogamy of the woman did not in any way interfere with open or concealed polygamy on the part of the man. But by transforming by far the greater portion, at any rate, of permanent, heritable wealth – the means of production – into social property, the coming social revolution will reduce to a minimum all this anxiety about bequeathing and inheriting. Having arisen from economic causes, will monogamy then disappear when these causes disappear?[17]
Marx and Engels have the right to dream of the primitive communism with free love, and community of women. But many philosopher opposed this life. Aristotle said:"
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. And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few. Each citizen will have a thousand sons who will not be his sons individually but anybody will be equally the son of anybody, and will therefore be neglected by all alike. Further, upon this principle, every one will use the word 'mine' of one who is prospering or the reverse, however small a fraction he may himself be of the whole number; the same boy will be 'so and so's son,' the son of each of the thousand, or whatever be the number of the citizens; and even about this he will not be positive; for it is impossible to know who chanced to have a child, or whether, if one came into existence, it has survived. But which is better- for each to say 'mine' in this way, making a man the same relation to two thousand or ten thousand citizens, or to use the word 'mine' in the ordinary and more restricted sense? For usually the same person is called by one man his own son whom another calls his own brother or cousin or kinsman- blood relation or connection by marriage either of himself or of some relation of his, and yet another his clansman or tribesman; and how much better is it to be the real cousin of somebody than to be a son after Plato's fashion! 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.[18]
There are a number of fiction and imagination in Marx and Engels works. In the capitalist society, women played an important role in society. And in capitalist world, people have a lot of freedom, and democracy. But nobody can find any human rights in the communist society. Communist world is an enormous prison, in which, hundred millions were the slaves of communists.
Communists robbed people's land and houses, they betrayed their countries. After they defeated the national government, they seized power and seized property all people, they became the New Class, the red capitalists when people became poorer. The proletarians were not the revolutionary forces but the slaves of the new class. Therefore, the slave trade and prostitution developed quickly under the communist regime.
In the communist world, the women be came the toys of communists. Marx and Engels criticized the slave trade and prostitution in the capitalist countries but in the communist world, especially in Vietnam, communists exported men and women to Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore. Mao Zedong and Hồ Chí Minh had their harems. Hồ Chí Minh was a real communist in primitive communism, because he wanted to play not to marry, and not to recognise his children. Moreover, Hồ Chí Minh was a beast, a barbarian when he killed Nông Thị Xuân, his secret wife and threw her body in the street. In China and Vietnam, the millionaires bought a lot of concubines under 15 year old. In Vietnam, the prostitution became popular with the taxi girls or call girls. A number of waitress or hostesses in Vietnam are the whores. Marx and Engels believed that human society developed gradually into five phases: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism. Why did they want to abolish the monogamous family? Why did they want to roll back the wheel of history?
Communism was a nightmare for a half of people in the world.Communism was a world of prison including Gulag, Siberia, reeducation camps and collective farms and collective industries in Soviet Union, East Europe, China, North Korea, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It was history of hundred million people in the world.
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