Many reading this will be well aware that the word “commune“, from which the word communist is derived, originally referred to simply what we might call a “municipality” or “township”. Yet Marx named the oppressor class holding market power via violently accumulated capital “bourgouisie“, regarding the etymology of which we can say the following:
The French word bourgeois evolved from the Old French word burgeis, meaning “an inhabitant of a town” (cf. Middle English burgeis, Middle Dutch burgher and German Bürger). The Old French word burgeis is derived from bourg, meaning a market town or medieval village, itself derived from Late Latin burgus, meaning “fortress”
So, the communist ideal revolves around the city or town and supposedly would be achieved by casting off the yoke of the city-dwellers? Not quite, but my sense of humor tempts me to say that. The seeming incongruity is resolved through the understanding that (among other things) cities could be considered geographically concentrated capital. Thus, any system of thought that concerns itself with the production, distribution, use and control of capital would tend to have some things to say about cities, city-dwellers and city-life — some of it positive and some negative.
Which reminds me…
Not far into The Communist Manifesto we find this passage that practically jumps off the page at the left-Rothbardian reader (emphasis added):
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favor of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
While anyone can read implications of any sort into anything if they want to see them badly enough, I must say that this certainly seems to leave the door open to some truly extraordinary creative deviationism.
UPDATE: Note carefully that the insurrectionary “National Guard” units during the Paris Commune of 1871 were de facto private (i.e. non-state) militias and their seizure of cannon was justifiable in their view as reclaiming their own property.
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