Wednesday: Why Has Communism Failed?
WEEK 17
WEDNESDAY
WHY HAS COMMUNISM FAILED?
Galatians 6:1-5
We have seen that the unity in material goods was founded on a truth and a wrong application of that truth. I am persuaded they were fundamentally right in seeing that distribution should be according to need, but wrong in thinking that the method of achieving that distribution was the method of having all things in common.
This method of having all things in common has been tried here and there through the ages. It has invariably failed after being sincerely tried. The Christian church tried it for three centuries. One of the church fathers in the third century could say, “We have everything in common except our wives.”* Then it faded out. But it has come back again in many places in all ages. In India we tried it for a time in the Ashram at Sat Tal and Lucknow. It produced a wonderful fellowship, but as an experiment in communal living it failed. In the present day it is seen in the Amish and the Bruederhoef Mennonite settlements. Why have they failed to make any significant contribution to human living? And why have the Communists of Russia and China and elsewhere hesitated to apply the pure form of Communism? They say they are in the stage of state socialism but only on the way to Communism. And to make their state socialism work, they have to appeal to personal incentives by offering extra income for extra effort. Why do Communistic communities or states begin with a big spurt and then ultimately break down or slow down and become sterile, without driving force? Is it because Communism is appealing to one urge—the social urge—and fails to awaken and appeal to the personal urge? People apparently cannot live by the social urge alone. Bees can. But we are not bees. So human society cannot be a hive where only the social urge is at work. Nor can we live in a society where the drive is, “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost!” Not only does the devil take the hindmost, but all. We are feeling after something beyond an anthill and a prize ring.
O Lord, guide our steps toward your order, your plan for humanity. We know you have a plan, and that plan will be good and good for us. Help us to find it. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My life shall be a blend, an equal blend, of the personal and social urges.
*Attributed to Tertullian.