Communistic history lesson
Being an (recently more and more passive) user of pagan social media, I could not help but notice a growing trend among (mostly freshly converted) Rodnovers to describe early medieval societies of our pagan ancestors as communistic societies. I am old enough to remember living under communism, but also young enough to remember history lessons, therefore it is really hard for me to comprehend how anyone can find a XIX century ideology among early medieval pagan tribes. Nevertheless, I am also a person who by nature questions everything, including my own opinions, therefore I decided to look closer in order to once more answer myself the question: Am I losing my marbles, or is the world going crazy?
The roots of Marxism
Although early para-communistic ideas can be seen in the work of such classics as Plato (“The Republic”), The Holy Spirit and Holy Spirit’s inspired evangelists (whose writings in turn inspired founding of many religious communes), or Tomas More (“Utopia”), communism in its modern form (a social system without private property, social classes or government) was developed only in XIX century, in the writings of Karl Marks and Friedrich Engels.
One of the main concept of communism is a theory of historical materialism, which assumes that the main drive of the development of human societies are not ideologies, religions or supernatural influences, but technology and material goods. According to the theory of historical materialism, analysis of the level of technology and material conditions of a society, allows to classify modern and historical societies into five basic categories:
Primitive communism;
Societies of hunter-gatherers with minimally developed technology and minimal level of material goods. In these societies the material conditions are poor and barely sufficient to sustain the society.
Slave societies;
Agricultural societies where advancements in technology allowed to improve the material condition. The material goods were produced by slaves (seen here as “the working class”), but consumed by the owners of the slaves (the citizens, seen here as “the exploiting class”).
Feudalism
Even more technologically advanced societies, where development of new technologies (like three-field system) allowed further increase of the level of production of material goods. The surplus was produced by serfs but used up by liege lords. On this level of development of the society a class of merchants and artisans emerges, which will later develop into bourgeoisie.
Capitalism;
Societies relying on the industrial (not agrarian) production, where the surplus of produced material goods takes the form of commodity (not food), which is produced by proletariat (the working class), but accumulated and invested by the bourgeoisie (the capitalists).
Communism;
The highest level of the development of human societies, where all the material goods are produced and consumed by the whole society.
Historical materialism considers the social classes, their development and struggle, as the main manifestation of the social inequality, which results from the advancement of technologies and improvement of material conditions. The social classes are defined by their relation to the means of production of material goods. The “exploiting class” (citizens in slave societies, liege lords in feudalism or bourgeoisie in capitalism) are the owners of the means of production (slaves, lands or factories) and the “exploited class” are people who actually do the work (slaves, serfs or factory owners). The class struggle (according to Marxists) ends up with inevitable revolution, which causes the collapse of capitalism and leads the society into the next stage of its development – the real (not primitive) communism. The revolution of the proletariat takes the means of production from the bourgeoisie and transfers them to the whole society (into communal ownership). In this way the society becomes class-less, because every member of the society is at the same time the (co)owner of the means of production and the worker producing material goods for everyone to use.
As we see from the above, following the concept of the historical materialism, the society of early Medieval, pre-Christian Slavs could not possibly have been communistic, because it was not on the correct stage of development. There is, of course, no doubt that neither Marx, nor Engels didn’t have a clue about historical or cultural anthropology, because:
Both lived in the XIX century, when anthropology as science was its infancy;
Neither of them had enough interest in anthropology to actually learn out that the “noble savage” (aka “primitive communist”) is idealised stereotype/myth and not historical figure.
Both were the typical XIX century theoretical thinkers, they did not conduct any experiments or studies in order to verify their theories, and they were interested in facts, only if these facts could confirm their concepts.
Because of historically incorrect premises of the concept of historical materialism, it is not possible to say for sure on which “materialistic phase of development” was the society of our pre-Christian ancestors. They most certainly were not hunters-gatherers, so they could not have been primitive communists. As pretty much every pre-industrial society, they knew slavery and, depending on the situation, they either were the slaves, had the slaves or traded the slaves. But, it can be said without a shadow of a doubt, the pre-Christian Slavic production of material goods did not rely on slave labour and they did not have a clue about industrialisation, factories or capital, so any sort of class struggle in their society could not have been advanced enough to lead to a revolution and, thus, development of communistic system.
So, as far as classic Marxism is concerned, here I could easily end my deliberation and conclude that pre-Christian Slavs did not live and could possibly not have lived in communism. I could, if not one “tiny” historical fact. The fact that, contrary to Marx’s theories, not a single known communistic revolution have ever taken place in an industrialised capitalistic country. How could that happen? Was Marx wrong?
The Lenin’s revelation
Vladimir Lenin was the first in history practitioner (not theorist) of communism. Although he agreed with Marx and Engels, particularly with regards to the historically inevitable triumph of communism, he did not think that the communist revolution has to necessarily take place in a highly industrialised, capitalistic country. Lenin lived in Russia, which at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries was more feudal than capitalistic and most certainly more rural than industrial. Despite that, how believed Lenin, Russia could become the very first in history, truly revolutionary and communistic country. The rationale behind his belief was a Lenin-own theory of breaking the chain of capitalism.
After analysing the economic and social changes in Europe at the turn of XIX and XX centuries, Lenin concluded that capitalism spreads from country to country like a plague and like a plague it weakens proletariat by improving the material condition of the bourgeoisie. For that reason, Lenin decided that inevitable arrival of the communistic revolution should be accelerated by implementing communism before, according to the classic Marxism, the society is ready for it, so before it becomes industrialised and capitalistic. Such acceleration of the arrival of the revolution was supposed to break the spread of capitalism, by breaking the weakest link of the chain of capitalistic countries. The weakest link was, of course, Russia. According to Lenin’s ideas the breaking of the chain of the capitalism was expected to cause the whole capitalism to collapse. The collapse would happen as follows:
→ the advancement, success, and, in general, awesomeness of communism in Russia happens as an inevitable result of the inevitable (but just in case – accelerated) communistic revolution,
→ the proletariat of the whole world sees the success of communism in Russia,
→ the proletariat of the whole world gets empowered by seeing the success of communism in Russia,
→ the proletariat of the whole world starts communistic revolutions in their own countries,
→ the capitalism collapses under the unstoppable force of superior socio-economic system.
Well, this is how it was supposed to work in theory, but in practice… (I hope) everyone knows how it went down in practice.
Apart of complete and total fiasco of Lenin’s version of Marxism, it is worth to consider how (if at all) can his theories be applied to the search of communism among pre-Christian Slavs. Although the societies of out early Medieval ancestors were about as industrialised as XIX century Russia (so not at all), it is not possible to say, that the land of early Medieval Slavs was any sort of a link in any sort of a chain of capitalism or even feudalism. As far as capitalism go, one does not have to be a historian to know that in early Medieval period capitalism could not have possibly existed, because capital (the surplus production, accumulated for the purpose of investing) did not exist in those days. Firstly, because the productivity of agriculture was so low that surplus pretty much never happened, and secondly, because if any surplus was produced it wasn’t accumulated or invested, but simply – eaten. As to feudalism – it’s not as straightforward as one can think. There is no consensus among medievalist whether feudalism existed in the Slavic part of Europe. The feudalism that Marx knew (vassal and fief system) was typical for Medieval Western Europe, but has never been fully developed or implemented in the Middle and Eastern Europe. For certain such system did not exist among pre-Christian early Medieval Slavs, in X-XI centuries and earlier. Therefore, any sort of communistic revolutions or uprisings of the proletariat of the whole world was absolutely and 100% impossible.
The social Slavs
Another concept of Lenin was differentiation of socialism and communism, which before Lenin (for example in Marx’s writings) were words used as synonyms. In Lenin’s opinion socialism was a transitional form between not-industrialized country (like Russia on the turn of XIX and XX century) and the real communism. It was a way to jump from feudalism to communism without having to go through capitalistic industrialization. Because socialism was, in Lenin’s opinion, a transitional form, it allowed for example, private property, which was unacceptable in the real communism and which, as we know, was very quickly abolished by Lenin’s successor – Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.
Another difference between communism and socialism is the way in which the material goods are divided between the members of the society. In classic communism the basis of distribution of the goods are individual needs, so the way in which the fruits of production are divided (as Marx wrote) “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”. However, in Lenin’s socialism the basis of distribution were not needs but the amount of labour put into the production of the goods. This is why, for example, in 1936, the constitution of USSR says: “from each according to their ability, to each according to their labour”. Such approach put hard work above the abilities, hence basically in the whole Soviet bloc, working class (like miners or shipyard workers) were positioned higher in the social hierarchy than intelligentsia (like lawyers or physicians).
So, if communism doesn’t fit into the social system of our ancestors, maybe socialism will? There can be no doubts that our ancestors knew and respected the concept of private property, both estate (land) and more “commodity-like” (horses, oxen or slaves*). It can, in a way, be said that the products of (mostly) agriculture were divided “according to labour”, because in those times pretty much everyone, including children, had to work “according to their abilities”. However, the obvious exception here are slaves, who, obviously, worked at least as hard as everyone else, but they were not paid for their work in any way. What more, despite the slaves’ hard work, their social status was so low, that the law treated them like animals. We see here then, that neither communism, not socialism can be applied to describe the socio-economic system of the societies of our pre-Christian ancestors.
Opium of the communists
Communism as a class-free, state-free and private property-free social system where everyone works for the benefit of the whole community, is an utopia. As it was beautifully summarized by an entomologist and twice Pulitzer Prize winner E. O. Wilson, communism is “great idea. Wrong species”, explaining that communism works great for ants, but not so much for humans. For over 100 years, millions of people in dozens of countries on the whole planet tried to make communistic utopia happen. And every time their efforts failed. Despite that, despite failed revolutions, unsuccessful uprisings, hard work of whole generations of people, death of millions and collapse of communistic blocs, the modern communists still believe that they can make this utopia come true. Despite irrefutable historical facts, countless evidence that people, as a species, don’t want and simply can’t live and die for an utopia, there are still people, who claim that they know better than everyone else, what people really need. How vain, how self-assured and - let’s just call it as it is – stupid one must be to live in the XXI century and claim that communism is achievable? To claim that some internet communist, typing in the middle of the night, in a basement, knows better than several generations of communists and their victims?
Theorists and practitioners of communism. From the left: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong.
Long live Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought!, ca. 1968
Our ancestors were reasonable and rational people. They did not live in delusions but remained firmly grounded in the reality. They had to be like that, otherwise they wouldn’t have survived a single medieval winter. If they fought and died, they did so not for some imaginary greater good or benefit of the community, but for their children, their family, their land and their home, for their own private (not communal) property. Communism, as ideology, is not a part of the Slavic tradition. Among the most important ideologues of communism, there is only one Slav (Lenin). The other ideologues had different roots” French, German, Georgian or Chinese. Communism is for Slavic Native Faith as foreign as Judeo-Christian ideas. Of course, it does not mean that a Rodnover can’t be a communist. The question is, however, what for? Marx himself said that religion is an opium for the people. Why then a respectable communist would want to follow a religion – of their ancestors or any other type of religion?
I would like to encourage communist to believe in whichever utopia they only please, as long as this utopia remains their private delusion. Imposing one’s belief – in Gods or an impossible to achieve social system – is not and has never been a part of Slavic tradition.
Slawa!
Bibliografia:
L. Holmes “Communism. A very short introduction”
A. Mildred Franklin “Communism and Dictatorship in Ancient Greece and Rome”
M. Dygo „Czy istniał feudalizm w Europie Środkowo-wschodniej w średniowieczu?”
K. Modzelewski “Barbarzyńska Europa”
*In the Early Medieval Ages, not only among Slavs, but pretty much everywhere, slaves were not the subjects (but the objects) of law. Legally they were seen as objects not as persons. It is illustrated in medieval legal codices (such as Russkaya Pravda), where wergeld (a fine for killing of a person, paid to the killed person’s family) was not applied after a slave was killed. A person who killed a slave had to pay the owner of the slave (not the family of the slave) the current price of a similar slave (as it was required after killing of an animal).