Word: communisms
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...Communism, by contrast, is not attached to a political superstructure: it has become that superstructure. That transformation explains why Communist politics, despite the crippling defects of Communist economics, has come to dominate about 1.5 billion people in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean-more than a third of the world's population, inhabiting more than a quarter of the earth's land surface...
Whatever idea Jaruzelski is helping defend in Poland today, it is certainly not the one that Karl Marx had in mind 134 years ago, when he and Friedrich Engels wrote, at the beginning of their Communist Manifesto, "A specter is haunting Europe-the specter of Communism." By that, they meant the spirit of the underclasses, seeking vengeance against their exploiters. Nor is Jaruzelski defending the vision summed up in the closing exhortation of the Manifesto: "Working men of all countries, unite!" In Poland, the workers have been trying to unite for a better life, but their efforts are haunted...
...idea of Communism is both ancient and simple. It is also, in many respects, sensible and admirable. Private ownership creates inequalities, which carry with them injustices, which generate tensions, which lead to conflict. Therefore property should belong to the community as a whole...
...Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, makes it sound as though Christ's first followers practiced a form of Communism: "Not a man of them claimed any of his possessions as his own, "Not a man of them claimed any of his possessions as his own, but everything was held in common .. . They had never a needy person among them, because all who had property in land or houses sold it, brought the proceeds of the sale and laid the money at the feet of the Apostles; it was then distributed to any who stood in need...
...Communism figured in the theoretical schemes for a just society put forward by Plato and by Sir Thomas More. Through the centuries, communitarian systems have been tried by Benedictine monks and other small groups of individuals who have voluntarily adopted a life of discipline, self-sacrifice and altruism in order to serve God and their fellow...