Anarchists in Their Own Words: Emma Godman, There is No Communism in Russia

This article on anarchist thought comes from this link.

There Is No Communism in Russia

Communism is now on everybody's lips.
Some talk of it with the exaggerated enthusiasm of a new convert, others fear and condemn it as a social menace.
But I venture to say that neither its admirers—the great majority of them—nor those who denounce it have a very clear idea of what Bolshevik Communism really is.

Speaking generally, Communism is the ideal of human equality and brotherhood.
It considers the exploitation of man by man as the source of all slavery and oppression.
It holds that economic inequality leads to social injustice and is the enemy of moral and intellectual progress.
Communism aims at a society where classes have been abolished as a result of common ownership of the means of production and distribution.
It teaches that only in a classless, solidaric commonwealth can man enjoy liberty, peace and well-being.

My purpose is to compare Communism with its application in Soviet Russia, but on closer examination I find it an impossible task.
As a matter of fact, there is no Communism in the U.S.S.R.
Not a single Communist principle, not a single item of its teaching is being applied by the Communist party there.

To some this statement may appear as entirely false; others may think it vastly exaggerated.
Yet I feel sure that an objective examination of conditions in present-day Russia will convince the unprejudiced reader that I speak with entire truth.

It is necessary to consider here, first of all, the fundamental idea underlying the alleged Communism of the Bolsheviki.
It is admittedly of a centralized, authoritarian kind.
That is, it is based almost exclusively on governmental coercion, on violence.
It is not the Communism of voluntary association.
It is compulsory State Communism.
This must be kept in mind in order to understand the method applied by the Soviet state to carry out such of its plans as may seem to be Communistic.

The first requirement of Communism is the socialization of the land and of the machinery of production and distribution.
Socialized land and machinery belong to the people, to be settled upon and used by individuals or groups according to their needs.
In Russia land and machinery are not socialized but nationalized.
The term is a misnomer, of course.
In fact, it is entirely devoid of content.
In reality there is no such thing as national wealth.
A nation is too abstract a term to “own” anything.
Ownership may be by an individual, or by a group of individuals; in any case by some quantitatively defined reality.
When a certain thing does not belong to an individual or group, it is either nationalized or socialized.
If it is nationalized, it belongs to the state; that is, the government has control of it and may dispose of it according to its wishes and views.
But when a thing is socialized, every individual has free access to it and use it without interference from anyone.

In Russia there is no socialization either of land or of production and distribution.
Everything is nationalized; it belongs to the government, exactly as does the post-office in America or the railroad in Germany and other European countries.
There is nothing of Communism about it.

No more Communistic than the land and means of production is any other phase of the Soviet economic structure.
All sources of existence are owned by the central government; foreign trade is its absolute monopoly; the printing presses belong to the state, and every book and paper issued is a government publication.
In short, the entire country and everything in it is the property of the state, as in ancient days it used to be the property of the crown.
The few things not yet nationalized, as some old ramshackle houses in Moscow, for instance, or some dingy little stores with a pitiful stock of cosmetics, exist on sufferance only, with the government having the undisputed right to confiscate them at any moment by simple decree.

Such a condition of affairs may be called state capitalism, but it would be fantastic to consider it in any sense Communistic.

source

(Continued tommorow, ed.)

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This series of posts will insure that these anarchists' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.

Don't lose hope now, dear reader.
We've made it this far.
At some point the ride gets easier.

Rule by force has had it's day.
When everybody sees the iron fist in the velvet glove we win.
We just have to survive its death throes.

There is a reason these facts are not in the modern curriculums.

Setting rewards to burn only burns the author portion of the payout.
The crowd isn't silenced.
Please cheer loudly, if that is your thing.