Communism: The Specter and the Struggle

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courageous one. Jaruzelski's assurance that in modern times troubles like those in Poland need not lead to war has a ring of unintended irony in the wake of his decision two weeks ago to proclaim martial law—"a state of war," as it is called in the Polish constitution. Jaruzelski got his thankless, and perhaps hopeless, job heading the party because he was, and still is, Defense Minister and chief of the armed forces. The absurd logic of his appointment is now complete: he has threatened war against his own people.

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 by the specter of Communism. Marx has been stood on his head.

Prophets and Apostles

The 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.

St. 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 men.

Marx and Engels tried to apply their egalitarian ideal to secular goals and to much larger communities—entire countries and ultimately the whole world. Two German expatriates living in England, they were outraged by the abuses of the Industrial Revolution, which established new heights of wealth and new depths of poverty. The manufacturers and investors claimed wealth as their right, since they built the factories and paid the workers' salaries. Marx and Engels argued that the workers were being deprived of the very thing that gave them worth in society—the fruits of their labor. For capitalists to profit from the workers' labor was theft.

Therefore proletarians must rise up against their exploiters and establish a new society in which there would be no significant private ownership. Everything would belong to the community as a whole; goods and services would be produced "from each according to his abilities" and distributed "to