National Communism

National Communism is a political system in which a country’s government adopts the fundamentals of communism but adapts them to its particular needs rather than conforming to a single global standard. The idea of National Communism runs contrary to the original teachings of Karl Marx and other fundamental Communist philosophers who believed that communism is a global force of worker empowerment that cannot be confined to the borders of any nation. Marx believed that workers of all nations had more in common with one another than they did with the ruling classes of their respective countries. Although the Soviet Union tried to suppress National Communism in states such as Yugoslavia and Hungary, the movement proved difficult if not impossible to prevent. In some cases, people in countries outside the Soviet sphere, such as Italy and Spain, have attempted to promote National Communism in their own countries.

Background

Throughout history, groups of people have devised many types of governments. A government, in basic terms, is a system by which a country is ruled. The government may be large or small and have different levels of control over various aspects of a society. Some governments control almost every aspect of life in their country, while others take a hands-off approach and mostly let people make their own decisions. Governments may oversee the economy, industry, military, healthcare, and education systems in their countries. They may also strongly sway citizens’ beliefs, attitudes, and ethics.

In modern times, about four main types of governments have emerged. These systems include socialism, fascism, capitalism, and communism. Each takes a different approach to the leadership and oversight of a country, particularly in its economic methods. For instance, in socialism and fascism, private individuals have limited ability of ownership, and the government controls essential services. Both systems also feature high taxes, which in socialism go toward social services, and in fascism, typically fund military and defense initiatives. Socialism strives to create social classes that are essentially equal in their resources and abilities. Fascism, on the other hand, seeks to establish a strong class structure under the ultimate control of a hugely powerful dictator.

The remaining two forms of government, capitalism and communism, have often been viewed as opposites. In capitalism, governments exert relatively little control over the lives of their citizens. Individual citizens have the right to own property and control resources and production. People can buy and sell as they choose, with only limited restrictions, and allow the balance of supply and demand to dictate the prices in a market. Government taxes are low, reflecting the government's limited role and reach. People who support capitalistic governments and economic systems believe that the so-called free market, unfettered by excessive government intrusion, will naturally set the fairest prices and allow competition between companies to drive constant improvements.

Often seen as the ideological and political—and, sometimes, physical—opponent of capitalism is communism. In communism, people do not have any right to own property or resources. Rather, the government controls the land, the resources, and production. The government also controls the economy and sets prices in a market through manipulations of supply and demand. High taxation allows Communist leaders to gather and distribute the country’s wealth equally among citizens. (The idea of equal sharing of wealth exists in the theory of communism but has not truly been practiced in major communist governments.)

Capitalism had become the dominant governmental style by the 1800s, when opponents of the system created communism. Early Communists pointed to the flaws of capitalism, mainly the unequal distribution of wealth in which business owners often reaped huge fortunes from the hard work of their laborers, who often earned far less pay and sometimes lived in squalor. This inequality highlighted the danger of promoting individualism in an economic system, an idea that Communists attempted to replace with a new focus on shared communal wealth. According to Communists, capitalism was so ingrained in the world's mindset that only an international revolution of laborers could pave the way for a new Communist world.

Overview

Early stirrings of what would become communism may be traced to the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century, when the people of France rebelled against the aristocratic ruling classes. This spirit became concretized in the next century through the writings of philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They taught that want, conflict, and suffering in the world were traceable to the division of people into two major classes: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

The proletariat is the group of laborers across the world who produce most of the goods and services that people need and want. The bourgeoisie is the class of owners, the generally wealthy people who own businesses and reap the rewards of their workers’ struggles without actually contributing useful labor themselves. To Marx, Engel, and their growing body of followers, the bourgeoisie represented a grave threat to the happiness and flourishing of humankind.

Communists believed that the proletariat had to revolt against the bourgeoisie. Once the bourgeoisie had been overthrown, people could employ a communist system in which people would continue to work but distribute the goods, services, and wealth equally among the people of the country according to their needs. That way, people would enjoy the benefits of their own work, rather than merely working to enrich wealthy business owners.

Marx and Engels did not simply believe that communism would benefit particular countries. Rather, they believed it would become the single global system, crossing, if not destroying, all previous national borders. They believed that the world’s workers, regardless of their countries of origin, had more similarities to one another than with their domestic ruling classes. In envisioning communism as a global movement, the philosophers looked with great suspicion upon the idea of nationalism. Nationalism refers to people identifying strongly with their own nation and favoring their nation and its interests over those of other nations. Marx believed that the concept of nationalism was a tool used by the bourgeoisie to control people and safeguard themselves from revolutionary new ideas or global unification of the proletariat under communism.

The theoretical tenet of communism eradicating all national borders proved difficult to maintain when governments began adopting communism. The first great communist power was the Soviet Union, which lasted from 1922 to 1991. It centered on Russia but extended throughout much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, encompassing many countries including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

Soviet leaders intended to establish a single global communist government. As each country was drawn into the communist sphere of influence, however, its people and leaders instinctively sought ways to customize the Soviet system to best fit their own national characteristics. This phenomenon came to be known as National Communism. Soviet leaders continually tried to quash it but were unable to do so consistently or effectively.

The first major display of National Communist tendencies arose in Soviet Yugoslavia in the 1940s. Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, while technically a supporter of communism, attempted to perform foreign policy tasks independently of the overall Soviet leadership. Tito’s actions greatly dismayed the Soviet power structure. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin attempted to stop Tito and like-minded leaders from acting independently through political purges of suspected troublemakers, as well as a blockade of Tito’s Yugoslavia. However, Tito persisted, as did the idea of National Communism.

The death of Stalin in 1953 led to a slight relief of political restrictions, and Communist leaders such as Hungary’s Imre Nagy began to push for nation-based differences in Soviet policies. Nagy promoted reforms in Hungary that backed away from the strictest tenets of Soviet communism, including allowing more private enterprise, greater religious tolerance, and the end of collective agriculture.

In the middle of the twentieth century, China established its own communist government. The Russia-based Soviet Union felt threatened by this new force and was obliged to tolerate some level of National Communism to keep its constituent states from seeking alliances with China instead. In some cases, the Soviets still attempted to suppress National Communist actions, such as in the Soviet occupation of Hungary after Nagy tried to raise an anti-Soviet uprising around 1956.

At the same time, the idea of communism without strict and oppressive control by Soviet authorities—communism that could be customized to fit the specific needs of a country—began to win some wider appeal. In Italy, a Communist Party arose under the banner of instituting National Communism. Similarly, Spanish Communists established a short-lived system of so-called “Eurocommunism” based on national communist practices.

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