Barracks communism

Barracks communism (German: Kasernenkommunismus)[1] is the term coined by Karl Marx[2] to refer to a crude, authoritarian, forced collectivism and communism where all aspects of life are bureaucratically regimented and communal. Marx used the expression to criticise the vision of Sergey Nechayev, outlined in "The Fundamentals of the Future Social System".[2][3][4] The term barracks here does not refer to military barracks, but to the workers' barracks-type primitive dormitories in which industrial workers lived in many places in the Russian Empire of the time.[5]

In the ideology of the Soviet Union the term was applied to theories of "some ideologues in China" of 1950s-1970s.[6] During the Soviet perestroika period, the term was used to apply to the history of the Soviet Union itself.[5]

  1. ^ Campbell Duncan, Graeme (1973). Marx and Mill: Two Views of Social Conflict and Social Harmony. p. 194.
  2. ^ a b Lenin, Vladimir (2001). Marxism versus Anarchism. p. 88.
  3. ^ Glavnyye osnovy budushchego obshchestvennogo stroya (Главные основы будущего общественного строя). According to Marx, it was printed in the second issue of Narodnaya rasprava available in Geneva in December 1869, but it was labelled "St.Petersburg, winter 1870".
  4. ^ Marx, Karl (1988). Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: collected works. Vol. 23. New York: International Publishers. pp. 542–543. ISBN 0717804070. OCLC 1007861.
  5. ^ a b Alexander Busgalin; Günter Mayer (2008). "Kasernenkommunismus". Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus. 7: I. Spalten. pp. 407–411 (PDF text)
  6. ^ Aleksandr Bovin, «Казарменный коммунизм», an article from Great Soviet Encyclopedia