The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (50 page)

 
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Despite its title, the ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ argued that the ‘communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working class parties’. Rather, Marx and Engels claimed, the role of communists was to point out that working-class aims could only be achieved by the overthrow of ‘all existing social conditions’.
Until the collapse of the Second Socialist International in 1914, Marxists worked within social democratic parties. The Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party, however, had split into the radical Bolshevik (majority) and the more moderate Menshevik (minority) factions in 1903. Lenin had developed a theory of a ‘party of a new type’ in
What is to be Done?
written in 1902. Only a highly centralized and disciplined party of professional revolutionaries, which would act as ‘the vanguard of the proletariat’, was capable of overthrowing autocracy. After the victory of the Bolsheviks in the October 1917 Russian Revolution, Lenin's ‘democratic centralist’ party became the model for Communist Parties around the world.
Communist Parties outside the Soviet Union met with varying success. In the interwar period, the German party was the strongest in Europe, but was crushed by Nazism. In Asia, notably China in 1949, and Vietnam as a whole after United States withdrawal, the communists were able to win power on their own. In Eastern Europe, with the exception of Yugoslavia, communists relied on Soviet support to win and maintain power after 1945. In Western Europe, particularly in Italy and France, mass Communist Parties wielded considerable influence, as they did in some Latin American countries, notably Chile, but never held power.
With the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Communist Parties appeared to suffer irretrievable damage. However, in a number of European states such as Poland, Lithuania, Italy, and Russia itself, successor parties have achieved significant electoral success.
SWh 

 
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Advocacy of a social order in which individuals are bound together by common values that foster close communal bonds. A label used loosely to describe the ideas of a number of writers particularly critical of modern liberal political thought, because of the importance they attach to ‘
community
’. Hence an antagonism has been presented between communitarianism and liberalism, which may, however, be overdrawn. Frequently identified communitarians are Alasdair MacIntyre , Michael Sandel , Michael Walzer , and Charles Taylor . The fundamental division is said to be about the nature of the self. Communitarianism insists upon the interaction of the social context and individuals' self-conceptions, while liberalism allegedly works with an atomized individual artificially if not incoherently divorced from his or her social surroundings. The intellectual origins of communitarianism are various, but G. W. F.
Hegel
and the English Idealists, notably T. H. Green , provide important perspectives, because of Hegel's concept of
sittlichkeit
, or the shared values of the community, and the English Idealists' emphasis on the obligations of citizenship. The socialist tradition, notably through its concern with fraternity, and the anarchist tradition, with its focus on the possibility of community in the absence of state coercion, are also important. Ferdinand Tonnies's work on Community and Society drew attention to the value of community, and the threat posed to it by
industrial society
. Fundamental questions about the desirable relationships between ‘the community’, ‘the nation’, and ‘the state’ remain intellectually contentious and hotly contested in practical politics.
AR 

 
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A group of people who are socially related by virtue of identity with a particular location. The nature of the social relationship and location are, however, ideologically contested. Traditional conservative thought emphasizes the idea that community is based upon commonality of origin—the blood, kinship, and historic ties—of a people living in a particular location. Village localities as much as national groups are considered to cohere on such a basis. As in such terms as the ‘Jewish community’, commonality of origin may also have been derived in another location or by reference to a homeland. Socialist thought identifies conservative versions of community as hegemonic devices to bind both the haves and have-nots together in capitalist society, preventing them from seeing their real clash of economic interests and thus averting social conflict. Reformist socialists seeking to attain this goal may construct community on the basis of enjoining wealthier locations with poorer ones to effect redistribution of wealth and create the desired social relations at the local level.
Conservatives and socialists may stress different bases for the existence of community, but both identify the social relations inherent in community as something greater than the concerns and interests of each individual living in it added together, and as providing the basis for the longevity of a community. Liberals are reluctant to conceptualize community on the same elevated basis because of their commitment to individual freedom. Instead they see community as based on the freely chosen associations of individuals with common interests and needs. Such associations may be strongly locationally based. For example, ‘financial community’ suggests both a group of people who have common work-related interests and needs and a particular work location such as the City of London or Wall Street. Similarly, ‘travel to work area’ suggests the locational setting of motorists, commuters, and shoppers who have shared needs, and would be deemed to be a suitable basis for a community. However, given that they are based upon freely chosen association and the individual imperatives which drive employment and economic and social change, such communities may change both in nature and in location. For example, deregulation and information technology have changed the organization of financial markets, and suburbanization and the development of transport infrastructure have changed travel to work areas. In the practical domain, however, all too often ‘community’ is given no explicit meaning and used instead for the general sympathy it attracts as a legitimizing concept for any political programme.
JBr 

 
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