That was like Holy Roman Empire - metaphorically neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire in essence. And there was no Gibbon to tell the world the truth of the rise and fall of Soviet Empire. The Soviet Empire collapsed under its burdens of unholy catastrophes that had inflicted the communistic system since it very inception as a prodigal son giving way to its unceremonious fall from the utopian heaven. And the very utopia remained as it was to be. Whatever was to happen to the Soviet system was destined to happen in the long rThe problem is that communists never listen to the voices of wisdom of others nor they dare to bare their hearts to others. As if they are the messiahs of their own fate. Yet they never get wiser as they do not have the right kind of ideological flexibility to see the light in truer wisdom. The lack of flexibility of listening to others or of learning from the mistakes in democratic persuasions gives rise to a kind of theocratic resoluteness which is historically the leitmotif of fascistic trends of authoritarian rule - kind of muzzling and usurping the people’s voices with resounding power over the democratic norms and practices.
And in equal measure the communist regime stemmed the flow of libertarian politics of equality and humanity. Equality is supposed to be the mainstay of the political philosophy of communism which is sweet nothings without the democratic coverage over the various cross sections of the people. Matter-of-factly speaking, democracy is nothing if political power is not duly distributed among the people. That was why Trotsky said that “Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.” Marx too vouched for democracy as a way to communism. Shunning the way of democracy, idealistic concept of ‘democratic centralism’ in favour of ‘proletarian dictatorship’ was practised by the Leninist school of communism.
The concept of ‘democratic centralism’ vis-à-vis ‘proletarian dictatorship’ became the de facto fulcrum of an aggressively centralised power of a single-party government where fewer and fewer people have any say in the decision-making policies - both in the government and economic productivity. As like a reductio ad absurdum, ‘democratic centralism’ turned out to be the be all and end all of partisan politics of a single-party mandate. So in ‘democratic centralism’, there is no democracy but centralism and in ‘proletarian dictatorship’, there is only dictatorship of the single-party mandate.
Rosa Luxemberg vehemently criticised Lenin’s single party theory which in the long run created a monolithic cultural ethos blocking all avenues of plurality. Lack of plurality is a divine way to political dictatorship and despotism followed in the Stalinist era and later in Mao’s China. Mao talked big of thousand flowers blooming but that never bloomed in terms of collective bargaining practices applied to everyday life. The basic essence of union philosophy is bound to fizzle out if the essence of plurality is at a stake from a broad spectrum of democracy and human values.
Monolithicity never allows diversity to excel in unity of people. The grand idea of all men being equal and of equal worth cannot trespass the individual ambitions and creative faculties lock, stock and barrel and it does not mean that rights to freedom of being ‘unequal’ should be kept in abeyance in the name being ‘equal’ amongst the equals - this cannot hold good in reductive reasons of ‘democratic centralism’ under the aegies of so-called ‘proletarian dictatorship’. conniving at the potential danger of some people being ‘more equals’ than the others. Who are those ‘more equals’? The ‘more equals’ are those people who have some axe to grind in the communistic system itself. History points to that very conspicuously.
Moreover, all these ideas taken together incorporate all inclusive social engineering that implicitly says that all ideas and behaviours have exclusively equal merits and as such all doctrines of indidualism and divergent views are set aside for a supposedly collective interests. But have collective interests been meted out measure for measure? The pet idea of collective interests are sacrificed when it intends to serve the interests of an oligarchy which is a chosen few - the chosen few are always at a hierarchical position to dictate power from top to below without furthering the cause of the collective. The collective remains as faceless as ever bellowing the clichés propounded by the oligarchy of chosen few who are over and above the collective.
The collective as it were are the others taking royalty and giving loyalty unequivocally for a historically determined society. But how and why is it historically determined? Is the course of human progression historically determined? If it is so, then the evolutionary theory could be nothing but a coincidence of historical metaphor and a repetition of history itself albeit more of functional nuances. Evolution of humankind may have some merits as historical facts but in no way it is historically pre-ordained, rather it is struggle for existence that has chartered the way of human progression - man (homo sapiens) has become Homo economicus (economic man) from Homo faver (labouring man) through protracted struggle for existence - a regenerative case of being to becoming.
Being to becoming cannot be historically determined. When Marx said that capitalist society would become communist via socialism, he merely used it most metaphorically, on good faith and all of a sudden. But in communist officialdom, historical determinism has assumed such a dizzying proportion that everywhere in their protocol and manifesto it is used ad nauseum to camouflage their authoritarian design. And Marx was never conscious of that authoritarian design. But he had to realise it afterwards when he sarcastically said, “Thank God, I am not a Marxist!” And Marxist he never was.
Communism as envisioned by Karl Marx philosophically a libertarian and humanitarian idea. It is a political philosophy that can show the humanity the way to liberty with bread and butter. But Marx made some basic flaws while he conceptualised his theory. He assessed the mankind more in a materialistic worldviews. The materialistic worldviews provokes to see the world of men juxtaposed amongst natural consequences and worldly weal and woes merely in a mechanistic parlance where the subtle nuances between man and matter dissolve altogether for nothing. On the premises of materialistic worldviews lie the problems of communism. And basing on this premise, later exponents of Marxism dare to vulgarise the concepts of communism to such an extent that capitalism with all its malevolent designs get the chance to settle the scores with human cries and whispers.
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