Communism is a good idea, just no one's done it." Those were the words I overheard in the Hop several weeks ago. The student making the statement was commenting about the exchange of letters in The Dartmouth over the visit of the American Communist Party Chair Sam Webb. His comment was a disdainful rebuke to Professor Jindrich Zapletal's criticism of Webb. These sorts of comments are commonplace on college campuses and the strongly held opinion of many of our generation. The understanding is that communism is a wonderful and sound theory that simply has never been put into proper practice. And indeed the student making the comment, said it with a certain level of condescension. He was suggesting that anyone who holds communism to be both bad in practice and in theory is utterly out of touch and confused.
I suppose in the eyes of that student I am one of those out of touch and confused souls. For I subscribe to the view that communism has not only been bad in practice but that it is at the same time a horrid and mistaken theory. Communism is not a good idea that simply has not been put into practice; rather it is a deeply flawed concept with horrible manifestations. In short, communism is a bad idea.
But let us first examine the manner in which communism has been put into practice. The most bloody regimes in terms of sheer numbers of people killed have been communist. Some estimates hold that as many as 120 million people fell victim to communist regimes in the 20th century. More conservative estimates still place the figure in the tens of millions of people. Communist regimes suppressed (and one might add continue to suppress) religious liberties and basic human rights and attacked human dignity. Wherever communism arose it pulverized the human person. Where it still exists that pulverization continues. Communism failed not simply because one man happened to read Marx wrong. It failed in every instance in which it was put into practice, in different cultures, in different times and in different situations. This should at least make us pause and consider the possibility that communism might arise out of a flawed theory. But for communist apologists the experiments of the Soviet Union, China and Cuba were aberrations of the true utopian ideal of 'pure' communism -- that 'good idea.'
Perhaps the historical manifestation of communism is an aberration as Marxist believers hold. Let us grant that for the sake of argument. 'Pure' communism is just as mistaken as its manifestation in history. Communism is built on an anthropological error -- or rather, several anthropological errors. Pope John Paul II, a man who lived under the twin horrors of Nazism and Communism and who at the same time is no friend of unbridled capitalism, dissected the great problem with communist theory when he wrote that communism "considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socioeconomic mechanism." Man is reduced to his material nature and made simply to be another part of the state. In this view, nothing outside of the state is necessary to fulfill man. At the same time, communism denies man's transcendent nature through its atheistic conception of the world. A theory which begins from such anthropological starting points naturally leads to a flawed social and governmental system. Ideas indeed do have consequences and thus it is no surprise that communist theory leads to severe and harsh consequences.
In closing, we can cheer the good and genuine motivations of communists to help the downtrodden and the poor. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If those good intentions latch onto a faulty idea with grave implications, we should not shy away from criticizing that idea. For in opposing a bad idea we will ultimately be opposing bad practice.
