Marx Didn’t Distinguish Between "Communism" and "Socialism"; Why Should We?
Remember, socialism has the same ends as communism
NB: This column in its original form ran in The Epoch Times on February 3, 2020. As Americans once again clash over the unimportant and purposefully distracting “differences” between socialists and communists, it seemed like a good time to run it again.
When President Donald Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he believes the Democrats’ frontrunner, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), is a communist, the president clarified, “You could say socialist,” but then again, “I think of Bernie sort of as a socialist but far beyond a socialist.”
As the pundits trip over poli-sci-class definitions, my question is, what’s the difference?
As far as freedom-lovers go, safeguarding our liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, there is none. To be sure, communists and socialists argue and split hairs. They fight and break heads. But they also work together and destroy liberty because they all travel to the same soul-crushing destination of collectivism.
What anti-communists need to know is that communists and socialists—and “democratic socialists,” Fabians, progressives, “Alinskyites” (not to mention most Democrats and an awful lot of Republicans)—believe in the same centrally planned, varyingly totalitarian vision for America that our Founding Fathers would have had to declare independence from all over again.
To that point of ideological convergence, here are a couple of argument-settling quotations from recognized experts—one, from the anti-communist camp; the other, from the communist camp.
The first is from Rene A. Wormser, a renowned lawyer specializing in estate planning and taxation who served admirably as the general counsel of the remarkable Reece committee, the second of two 1950s congressional committees investigating the Marxist–socialist–communist–progressive subversion of the great American foundations, which undergirded the subversion of our educational institutions over the past century.
Reflecting on both committees’ work, Wormser wrote the following on the topic of “socialist penetration” in his extremely important 1958 book “Foundations: Their Power and Influence”:
“The two recent congressional investigations were largely concerned with ’subversion.‘
Gotta interject here to salute that long-ago-moment when Americans sent to Congress representatives who sought to investigate and legislate against the subversion of our nation. This posed a dire threat to the continuing progress of the communist revolution in the USA (whose salad days began with FDR), which explains why Congress as a co-equal branch of government simply had to be neutralized (by that same communist revolution). Nowadays, most people hear the Pavlovian prompt, “Red Scare,” and gnash their teeth over (Saint) Joseph McCarthy — and not the army of subversives, including thousands of foreign agents, who have brought our once great nation to the point of dissolution.
Wormser:
The Cox Committee interpreted this term [subversion] to include only international communism of the Stalinist brand and organized fascism. The Reece Committee, in the course of its work, came to give the term broader or deeper meaning. Neither investigation established sharply, however, the characteristics of Communist activity that would be clearly held to be subversive. In the public mind, the term ’subversion’ is generally confined to Moscow-directed Communist activity, or that of domestic Communists allied in an international conspiracy. …
Of course, seven decades later, there is nothing in the “public mind” regarding revolutionary activity against our Republic — in and of itself another strategic victory of that same communist revolution.
Wormser continues:
There are varieties of Communist sectarian programs and propaganda of a dissident nature, aside from those directed from Moscow. A follower of Trotsky’s brand of communism may be no less a danger to our society because he opposes the current rulers of Russia. It is likely that there are more Trotsky followers in the United States than followers of the Kremlin. Even among the formerly orthodox supporters of the Party line, there has occurred a mass conversion to a domestic form of the Communist theory and method. Moreover, it is difficult to mark the line beyond which ’socialism‘ becomes ’communism.‘ The line may be between methods of assuming power, communism being distinguished from other forms of socialism by its intent upon establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat. But this line is by no means clear. Socialism has the same ends as communism, though with an allegedly democratic approach. The ’Communist Manifesto’ of 1848 is the basis of all socialist parties the world over. Marx himself did not distinguish between socialism and communism.”
Marx himself did not distinguish between socialism and communism? If Marx didn’t, why should we?
Just as the anti-communist Wormser makes a strong case for an intertwining our understandings of socialism and communism, so, too, does his political opposite, the British socialist Harold Laski.
Renowned as a leading British Fabian—yet another term for socialist—Laski was also known as a Marxist (see what I mean about interchangeability?), as well as being a friend and counselor to Franklin D. Roosevelt and just about everyone else on the left in the first half of the 20th century.
In the introduction Laski wrote in 1947 to a new edition of Marx and Engels’ “Communist Manifesto,” Laski addressed the “communist” in the “Manifesto”:
“Why ‘communist’ and not ’socialist‘ Manifesto? Obviously, in the first instance, because it was the official publication of the Communist League. We have little other evidence on which to base speculations. It was possibly the outcome of a recollection of the Paris Commune, an institution to which all socialists did homage. It was possibly a desire to distinguish the idea for which they stood from socialist doctrines which they were criticizing so severely. The one thing that is certain, from the document itself, is that the choice of the term ’Communist’ was not intended to mark any organizational separation between the Communist League and other socialist or working-class bodies.
Note the “Marx” in the Marx Rose T-shirt for sale by the NYC DSA at shop.socialists.nyc.
Sorry, it’s all sold out.
Laski continues:
On the contrary, Marx and Engels were emphatic in their insistence that the Communists do not form a separate Party and that they ally themselves with all the forces which work towards a socialist society.
In other words, let the socialists and communists (and Fabians and Marxists) argue about their differences. All that anti-communists need to bear in mind is their common aggression against every human liberty.
Thank you for this. I cannot tell you how many times I've stated the fact that Marx made no distinction between socialism and communism and used them interchangeably. I've written that over and over in various articles. Yet people have this strange idea that socialism is just making things more fair. It's bizarre. Thanks again Diana!
Thanks Diana. Interesting topic. I remember having an argument with my girlfriend in law school in which I asserted that socialism was an economic theory and communism a political theory, and she asserted the opposite. That's an indication of the popular confusion.
I think what makes them essentially equivalent is that in the practical realm in the US, communists never admit they are communsts. They never have, except maybe in the late teens and early twenties when the police did a number on them. They call themselves socialists or progressives. For example, Mandemi--who calls himself a democratic socialist but approvingly quotes Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist theorist. Also, as a practical matter, and I think you indicated this, in the U.S. the progressives, socialists, and communists will always rally together on any important issue against all others. And the media will always guffaw when some politican is labeled a communist (witness the AP's treatment of Trump's speech on communism), and then start wringing their hands over the McCarthy era.
Theoretically, communism is often identified as the most radical brand of socialism, involving revolution, violence, and terroristic repression. To some extent this is indicated in the Communist Manifesto itself, wherein Marx and Engels identify numerous forms of socialism that are derided as essentially bourgeois. In 1892 Engels wrote that "we could not have called it a socialist manifesto." He said that socialism "signified a bourgeois movement, communism, a working-class movement." Socialism was respectable, whereas communism was not. This difference played out to some extent in the Russian Revolution(s) of 1917, initially a bourgeois revolution and then a hard core coup d'etat by the Bolsheviks. Socialists are thus associated to some extent with representative democracies, whereas communism is an oligarchy tending to total dictatorship by one man. Also, I think there is a notion in communist theory that true communism is the ultimate utopian society (i.e., the most socialistic), which is attained progressively, whereas everything preceding it is some form of lesser socialism.
I agree that these theoretical differences matter little in the US compared to the practical realities. And since lying is part and parcel of the leftist way of doing business, the only thing we know for sure when a politician identifies himself as a progressive or socialist is that they want to curtail our freedom and take our private property. Maybe or maybe not they want a totalitarian government based on terroristc repression.
I also agree that as a society we were in a better place when we had institutional opponents of communism, such as the HUAC and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. When Eisenhower destroyed McCarthy out of a personal pique, he also did great damage to the cause of anti-communism, leading to the demise of the congressional committees. But then he and Marshall rose to power at the knee of FDR, who thought that Uncle Joe Stalin was our friend.