By Kamala Sarup
Democracy is a political governmental system. We cannot compare the democratic political system with the Maoists communism economic system. That would be like comparing apples to oranges. There is nothing common to compare. We cannot compare communism with capitalism. Or democracy with communism.
We also cannot compare composites of political and economic systems: democratic capitalism (polity + economy) with dictatorial communism (polity + economy), etc. Both are not exactly the same. A Democratic economy system provides opportunities. Thus, a democratic economy creates greater amounts of money and greater average living standards, which are distributed unequally among its people. The communist economic system was unsuccessful in raising general living standards. Socialist and communist communities and nations all failed to produce sustained income and wealth for most of their citizens.
The communist authorities of many countries were able to bring a radical change in their systems of production and distribution. Their stakes in that undertaking were high and so were their hopes for making improvements. But, as it turned out, their systems failed to achieve the desired economic progress. If economic command is thought to be the most powerful instrument for economic change, why then did those communist regimes fail?
"Anyway, the Russian Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin, having accepted the communist doctrine, established the first communist regime there in 1917. Some thirty-two years later the Chinese Communist Party, under the leadership of Mao Tse Tung, took a similar step. These two countries, though different in certain ways, represented what communism stood for. When the communist parties came to power, both countries' economies were very much in shambles. But communism successfully turned that situation around. The fact that central planning transformed these distressed societies and put their economies on the right track was in itself a great achievement of communism. However, having made that achievement, the system seemed to have stumbled. It couldn't keep the communist countries going and bring them the ultimate economic prosperity they yearned. So, after experimenting with the system for seventy-three years, Russia abandoned its course and China soon followed suit. What really went wrong?" Professor Mahfuz R. Chowdhury has stated.
He further added "In addition, communism was faced with extreme pressure from outside. From its inception the capitalist countries bitterly opposed communism and virtually dragged it into serious confrontations with them. Soon both groups became locked in proxy fights and were thrust into a situation known as the Cold War. As a result, the communist countries had to divert most of their resources for arms build-up, which came at a very high cost of their consumer products. Their economy was weak to begin with, so when faced with such confrontation the consumers suffered tremendously. Communism has failed to achieve efficiency, and capitalism has failed to achieve fairness. Now the big question is, why did communism's failure lead to its apparent end, but capitalism's failure didn't lead to its destruction? Could it be because society has regarded efficiency as more important than fairness?"
The Communist economy, especially the Maoist economy, often focuses on the core tenets of socialism but the world's economy only refers to their taking a position of doubt. There is a difference between the democracy economy and and communism economy.
We as a democratic nation do not have a belief that a Maoists communist economy exists with human values and freedom. The shift in the verb and the object is critical here. It is a reality that democracy that has come to a conclusion about the existence of economic wealth. If we shift the working areas to simple possession, and negate it, while leaving belief in the existence of democracy as the object (sic).
So many economic socialism systems have problems with this degree of precision because they want to assert with democracy. We therefore don't want to have to have a communist economic system.
Politically, democracy consists of the nations of freedom. There are circumstances so offensive to the interests of some parties of a compact that will compel them to want out of it no matter what the democracy says or implies that is democracy. There are other parties to the compact who will want to compel these aggrieved communist parties to remain no matter what their grievances to satisfy their own interests. If the aggrieved parties are not allowed to leave peacefully, the result is war and arguing about democracy.
