The Theory and Practice of Communism: An Introduction

by R.N. Carew Hunt

Spine has a crease and front cover has some scratches and slight edge wear. Back cover also has some scratches, a top left corner crease and a small name inked in. Front inside page has writing and marks and last page has some writing. Some of the first few pages has underlining. Intact, ships very quickly and packaged carefully!

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Russia, Social Science

315 pages, Paperback

First published May 30, 1951

About the author

R.N. Carew Hunt (1890 - 1959) was a theoretician with the United Kingdom's Special Intelligence Service (SIS).

Reviews

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I went looking for this book I found a copy that had been discarded by a private prep school that charges $35,000 a year. As I started to read it I thought it was no wonder they wanted to get rid of it – don’t want the little capitalist one-percenter darlings knowing that there are alternatives to a life of screwing the poor.

R. N. Carew Hunt’s The Theory and Practice of Communism is a brilliant work of history. Although he was not deceived by communism’s rhetoric and endless promises of a better world coming soon (though it never seemed to be getting any closer), he did not let his personal opinions lead him away from a thoroughgoing, objective retelling of history. He clearly and dispassionately examined the ever widening gap between theory and practice, and the compromises, self-dealing, and thuggery that passed for enlightened government. Communism was never going to work, never could work, given the differences between how men should act and what they actually do. Trying to force the creation of a new man, homo sovieticus, led to oppression, misery, and murder everywhere communism was tried. Capitalism has many sins but communism was much, much worse, and it well deserved to be thrown on the ash heap of history.

These days the word “Communism” seems to have lost most of its meaning and, as photos from political rallies show, it has become a general pejorative for anyone who holds different views. Certainly communism as it exists in China and Cuba is a far cry from what Marx, Lenin, and Mao believed. Marx himself was long on theory and short on implementation, so when Lenin found himself at the head of a revolution, beset by chaos and civil war, he had to make up practical communism as he went along.

It is important not to dismiss Marx as simply a bogeyman; he truly deserves his place as one of the great political theorists of all time. His vision of communism was always humane, just, and progressive, but even during his lifetime he could see his disciples propounding darker visions of his system. Toward the end of his life Marx said that he himself was no longer a Marxist.

The ideals of communism captured the hearts and minds of many of the best and brightest of their generation, because it seemed to offer a way out of the brutal inequalities of capitalism. Marx spent most of his life in crushing poverty and watched several of his children die, so he knew well the bitter injustices of society. Blake’s dark satanic mills were no exaggeration to Marx.

He had been educated in Hegelian philosophy, so the concept of opposing forces finding solutions in synthesis was part of the framework of his thinking. In much the way that Christianity sees history as an unfolding process from sin to salvation to ultimate victory, Marx came to view it as a set of intermediate steps that would lead, eventually but inevitably, to a just and peaceful world “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” From a starting point of primitive communism mankind had to move through the stages of slavery to feudalism to capitalism, to socialism, until the conditions were finally right for the state to wither away and universal communism to prevail.

Carew Hunt not only does a fine job explaining how everything went wrong, his explanations show that it was always going to fail, leading to a weird, dark reflection of Marx’s own belief in the inevitability of his system. Be careful what you wish for.

[Liam Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-written and convincing criticism of Marxism from its philosophical tenants to its ruthlessness in practice. For Carew Hunt, the writings of Marx were akin to a religion, yet one that masquerades as science:

For its devotees communism has the value of a religion in so far as it is felt to provide a complete explanation of reality and of man as part of reality, and at the same time to give to life, as does religion, a sense of purpose. And much as communists resent the analogy, it must be pressed still farther. If reason is to be our sole guide, the only intelligible attitude towards the riddle of existence is agnosticism, seeing that all our knowledge is conditiond by the nature and limitations of our human faculties, and that there is nothing outside ourselves and the products of our minds by which its final truth can ever be tested. As neither comunism nor religion is content to rest in this position, each is ultimately drive nto appeal to certain propositions which have to be accepted by faith, but from which, once accepted, whatever else it is desired to prove logically follows. Only, while religion frankly accepts this, communism maintains that its fundamental dogmas are guaranteed by science, which they certainly are not, since one and all are very disputable. Nor indeed would the issue be affected if it were so guaranteed, since a belief in the hypotheses upon which science rests requires an act of faith like any other. p.29

Carew Hunt especially took issue with the equation of Hegelian dialectical "logic" with scientific inquiry. Carew Hunt here queries the term "antithesis", and objects the tendency to propose historical cause-and-effect with no specific historical mechanism other than the dogma of the dialectic:

Now it must surely be obvious that it is impossible to found upon the above any sociological or other system which claims to be scientific unless there is a clear definition of what a contradiction or an opposition menas, so that we can immediately recognize one when we see it. Yet, as we shall see, it is never made clear upon what principle one thing may be legitimately be represented as the negation of another - for example, capitalism as the anithesis or negation of feudalism. For what marxists do is arbitrarily to select any two dissimilar phenomena which it may suit them to represent as contradictions or oppositions, term them respectively the thesis and the antithesis, resolve them into a third phenomenon described as the synthesis, and label the whole process as dialectical. [...]Present-day marxists hold that such objections [to the N.E.P.] as were made at the time revealed an inability to understand the dialectic, and that the N.E.P. was the dialectical anthithesis of "War Communism" of which Stalin's policy from 1924 onwards represents the synthesis. Thus are the defeats of communism converted into its victories. p.46

Marx said that "men must be able to live in order to be able to make history," he did not simply mean that society depends on production for its existence, as this would have been a view that no one would have contested. Air is an essential condition of life, but if a scientist should succeed in proving that institutions and opinions depend upon the particular composition of the atmosphere, he would have made a very important discovery indeed. What Marx meant was that the way in which men produce determines the entire complex of ideas and institutions which make up the social order. [...]The method [of marxists] is to show that an economic change ocurred at a certain time, that some decades or centuries later a change took place in the ideas or institutions of the same people, and then to attribute the second change to the first. Thus, Kary Kautsky accounts for puritanism in England by saying that "the transition from a natural to a monetary system of economy caused the lower classes to fall a prey to a sombre puritanism." Why this should be so is not explained; in fact the transition to a monetary economy had been completed by the fourteenth century, whereas puritanism did not appear until the end of the sixteenth. p.71

Most interestingly for me, he criticized the most intuitive moral draw of communism: that the downtrodden working classes are an heroic class who would never suffer from their own internal power struggles were they to recognize their solidarity:

The belief in the class struggle as the "inner essence" of history vitiates the thinking of marxists by leading them to attribute to the proletariat attitudes and judgements which are in fact confined to little groups of revolutionaries. The classical economists were in the habit of generalizing widely about a class of factors of production which they called "labour," and to which they opposed an equally chimerical general monopoly of employers. But this classification breaks down upon analysis, So also does the marxist version of the class struggle. It is, in factm a myth, and the very exhortation of the works to unite is an admission that there is no natural proletarian solidarity, as is attested by the relations in any particular country between male and female labour, skilled and unskilled, white and coloured. Still less is there an identity of interests between workers in different countries. [...]

Finally, Marx's thesis that all conflict among men arises from the class struggle, albeit of ubdoubted tactical value as calculated to convince the masses that their misfortunes are attributable to the capitalist system and will disappear with the victory of the proletariat, is none the less fallacious. For the supreme source of conflict in life is the inevitable opposition between the claims of the individual and those of society - a conflict which is not reducible to the class struggle and cannot be dialectically resolved (even were it desireable that it should be) because it is a part of the unchanging human situation. p.66-7

When it comes to communism "In Practice," Carew Hunt treated marxism as hurtful to working class interests, putting the lion's share of blame for the factionalism of the Left on USSR-backed groups' avarice for political power, even in the face of a threat which would eclipse them all:

In 1932 a left wing "World Congress against War and Fascism," organized by Henri Barbusse and others, was held at Amsterdam; and, according to a statement made by the French communist leader, Marcel Cachin at the 7th Congress of 1935, the change of tactics ultimately adopted dated from this event. Yet for some time the two parties remained sharply divided. The communists periodically approached the socialists with requests for united action; but negotiations always broke down, if only because the communists would not give the elementary undertaking to refrain from attacking their rivals; and their démarches were, in fact, solely prompted by tactical motives, since the refusal of the socialists could always be represented as evidence of a desire to keep the workers divided. p.196-7

The communists, however, had no interest in improving hte lot of the workers, but only in creating a revolutionary situation. It was good tactics for them to seize upon some grievance and obtain its redress, as they could then represent themselves as the champions of the workers and steal the thunder of their rivals. On the other hand, their policy of surenchére was a dangerous one, since if they engineered a strike based on demands which could not reasonably be conceded, it was likely to fail, and they would then be exposed to the reproaches of the workers, who would find themselves worse off than they were before. Nor was this danger removed if they secured control of the trade-union movement, since a wave of strikes promoted for purely political ends might cause such hardships as to alienate the masses, and so assist the social democrats. p.202

Throughout, Carew Hunt stresses the top-down intellectual history of marxism. It seems that he views marxism with contempt as primarily a failure of puffed-up intellectuals to find some realistic reconciliation between their sense of injustice in the world and the hope of improvement. Therefore he sees the October Revolution retrospectively as doomed declaration of democracy. He dislikes the implication that any particular application in practice "betrayed" the revolution, since it was already a second-rate intellectual enterprise:

The October Revolution failed to achieve [production for the common good] because it was only "proletarian" in the new sense Lenin had given the term, which identified the proletariat with the party as the vanguard of the masses and their most consciious selection, with the result that the leadership of the party came to imply its domination, the more so as the country soon became involved in all sorts of difficulties. Lenin seems t have struggled against this inevitable outcome, and the bitterness of his writings against Kautsky may conceal a certain uneasiness of conscience which did not trouble his successor. But the forces he had set in motion did not become immediately apparent, and the obloquy for "betraying the revolution" has thus fallen upon Stalin, under whom marxism became grafted on to the Asiatic-Byzantine tradition, with a consequent return to autocracy - the only form of government the Russians have ever known. p.213

After its intial successes, Carew Hunt believed that rulership in the historical "Asiatic-Byzantine tradition" returned, though with a new legacy of democratic lip-service. For example the subterfuge of the USSR's links to ostensibly peaceful causes was, according to Carew Hunt, only a cloak for an aggressive cloak and dagger foreign policy out of the heart of Moscow:

No account of communist technique would be complete, however, which did not include the various "front" organizations[...] the most notorious at the present time is the "Partisans of Peace," directed by the World Peace Council, which originated as a result of a congress of intellectuals at Wroclaw, in Poland, just after the setting up of the Cominform, and was founded with the object of diverting attention from the aggressive policy of the latter. As it purports to be a non-party democratic movement in defense of peace, and as peace is an issue which makes the widest possible appeal, it has attracted a large following among persons who do not realize that in communist jargon "peace" means unquestioning submission to Soviet policy and unyielding opposition to whatever obstructs it. p.202

Here he describes how novel egalitarianism (here, "equalitarianism") quickly succame to the older tradition of an extravagant wealthy elite:

As Koestler has pointed out, equalitarianism was taken so literally in the first revolutionary period that, during the Civil War, Lenin himself had to insist upon certain moditications. None the less, the "maximum incone" (about 400 roubles) remained in force for party member, and N.E.P. men and non-party specialists who earned more were regarded with contempt. During the first five-year-plan, contrasts in earnings became more makred, until the radical change came with Stalin's six-point-speech of 25 JUne 1931, in which he siad that uravnilovka, or equality in wages, was to cease once and for all, as it was "alien and detrimental to Socialist production". Equalitarianism was declared a "petty-bourgeois deviation" and a crime against the State; and the new doctrine was proclaimed with such force that the masses were eventually persuaded that inequality of wages was a fundamental socialist principle.[...] Max Eastman was able to show in 1937 that the gulf between the renumeration of the lowest paid [... and] highest-paid was far greater in the Soviet Union than in the United States. p.240

In the conclusion, Carew Hunt describes Communism as only the "most extreme example" of a collectivist political Zeitgeist which has emerged as political rights have become of secondary importance to the means of making a living in an urban economy:

In the last century, the subjective individualism which entered western Europe with the Renaissance and the Reformation issued in liberalism and laissez-faire until, in its third quarter, the tide turned in the direction of collectivism, and this has been advancing ever since. The change was primarily due to two causes - on the one hand, the extension of the parliamentary suffrage and the developmenmt of organized labour, and on the other, the growing complexity of the international world market which led the workers to believe that political rights were of little account if they failed to secure them a livelihood. Thus there arose the demand, which became intensified in the inter-war years, for such security as logically demands a State-controlled economy. Of this type of economy Russia is the most extreme example. p,284

[Glenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent study of the origins, theories and then the very dissonant application of communist theory. Comprehensive, well-researched and well-written.

[Ruby Jusoh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this so much. An old book - 1957, browned. Yet, the author presented the content of the book in a clear and very readable manner. A rare feat for a political philosophy text!
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The systematic arrangement of chapters is a win! He started with Marx and Engels, also a bit of Hegel. The European part of that philosophical bit got covered first. Also, some socio-economic background - feudalism, capitalism etc. I like this part so much. I learnt that philosophies are mostly built on the philosophers' background stories. Well, no surprise there. Then, the author went on to explain the Soviet Union part - Lenin and Stalin and the likes. Also very systematic.

[Julia Langnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially towards the end. The information was clear and well written, albeit very obviously biased negatively towards communism at times (just ignore). All in all I agree with everything that was said in the intro. I wish the book kept going further ahead though, might need to look for new editions of it. A good deep dive into the world of communism, definitely recommend.

[Teddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise and covers a ton of ground.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A classic used famously by MI6 as a training manual for novice agents in the Cold War. I read it in 1969 as a social sciences student.

[Clau Gennari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I’ve read about Communist Theory!

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A survey of the Communist system as it was practiced in the old Soviet Union and its satellites back in the mid-twentieth century. Read for a college class I took back in the day.