“Communism” vs. Communism

The Fundamentals of Communism - The Case of the Czech Republic

By Milan Valach

The current power elites’ greatest fear is represented by the revitalization of the left-wing ideal. That’s why they keep reminding the public about the repulsive practices of the Soviet Union and its controlled countries.

Every attempt at its renewal has to firstly cope with the practices of the ruling communist parties in the so-called eastern block. It was these parties that announced their rule as truly communist. I will try to show that this statement was and still is not true. That is why the discussion about the essence of communism is still very much alive. It is topical because we still really don’t understand what communism was, and because of efforts to use one interpretation or other of the past for current purposes. Every attempt to objectively examine the totalitarian past fails immediately if it’s not based on clarifying the concepts that are being worked with and if ideologies, including their historical background, are not separated from the practice of them. Ideologies must also be separated from those who - rightly or not - called themselves their implementers. In the case of communism it is therefore important to separate its ideology, as it was gradually created in the environment of west-European philosophy and mainly its most in-depth Marxist version, from the practices of the political regime that arose in Russia after 1917. Whether this Leninist-Stalinist political model was in fact carried out according to Marx’s philosophy, or whether it had completely different roots, is to be examined only after the aforementioned is thoroughly clarified. Preconceived judgment that already knows the “answer” has nothing to do with science and testifies to ideological prejudice, or even to the blindness of a persons thinking.

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