In this century of upheaval, we have seen communism, a philosophy introduced to the world by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engles, spread throughout the world, and bring governments to the point of global annihilation. In 1949 in the tense post-war years, Orwell saw communism as a major threat to world peace and personal liberty. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, he describes how a nightmare future could be created is communism triumphed. However, Orwell was certainly left wing, fighting against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, so why did he see communism as a threat?
The simple answer to this is that it was a threat. Marx’s ideals had been watered down from day one, and in the first communist state, Russia, the theory became so diluted and changed, that the new emerging theories became known after their creators (i.e. Stalinism).
If communist Russia was a threat in 1949, was communism itself the problem, or was it the leaders of the communist soviets? Well, I think that the threat to world peace was no greater under Stalin than under Lenin. Although, of course, Stalin could cause far more damage to the world with the advent of nuclear technology, his main threat was to his own people. He was not trying to enforce Marxist ideas of world communism, unlike Lenin, who believed in the world revolution. I am not trying to underestimate the threat caused by Stalin to world security, but I am saying that it was no greater than under Lenin (or for that matter Kruschev)
The Essay on Economic Policies Of Lenin And Stalin
"Both Lenin and Stalin adopted well-structured economic policies in order to build their country into a well-established and powerful state" Robin Ronne Both Lenin and Stalin had enormous power to change Russia as the leaders of the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'; the question is how did they succeed in giving economic power to Russian people. The first solid economic policy instituted in ...
So the question arises, is it the fact that they are head of a communist state that drives these leaders to be so hated by non-communists. I believe this is the truth. The problem stems from the fact that communism and capitalism cannot survive together in peaceful coexistence, simply because they each actively undermine the principals of the other. Communism destroys the single person, and capitalism revels in it. Capitalism believes in a ridged class system, whereas communism believe everybody is equal. In this way it is impossible for there to be peace between communism and capitalism, unless there is a common enemy.
An example of this is World War, when we see a united communist and capitalist front against Nazism (I consider the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939 as nothing more than a time winner for Stalin and Hitler).
As William Blake said in his poem, ‘The Human Abstract’, “Mutual Fear brings Peace”, and this was true of war time communism and capitalism.
Fundamentally, however, there is no way that these two diametrically opposed theories can exist side by side. Even during the war, there was distrust, especially over the question of the D-Day landings. Stalin saw their long delay as a sign that the Allies wanted Nazism to destroy communism in the war. It is because of the mis-trust, suspicion and treachery that arise from having opposing cultures, that communism is a threat to the world, maybe not as strong today, but certainly prevalent for the majority of this century.
