This is something I have been thinking a lot about lately, does Communism have a future?
Yes. But futurologists would refer to it as a low probability, high-impact future event, or a "wild card". It would take a number of conditions to be fulfilled. My personal opinion is that a combination of serious climate change and socio-economic polarisation makes it very plausible it will emerge later in this century. that is easily an existential crisis for capitalism. However, at this point, it is virtually dead as an ideology and faces a form of extinction. After the horrors of the twenieth century, almost no-one wants to take that kind of risk. Even North Korea has given up on achieveing communism and they are the most hard-line pseudo-Stalinists you'll find. So, you need the two of the above conditions combined with major scientific and technological break throughs and consequent atmosphere of utopianism. People will only go communist if they actually think it can offer something better. (hopefully, it will, but it remains a long shot).
Can Communism be molded into a new form that would not cause the deaths of millions?
This would unquestionably be desirable, but I'm going to be hard-headed and say No. I haven't come accross a situation where that would be the case. I'm using the term communism to refer to it's "Marxist-Leninist" varient and "Maoist" derivation based on the assumption that any future varient of communism would have to draw on past historical experience and won't develop out of thin air. Both are based on asserting that the class struggle is an objectively existing historical law and that class conflict in the process of obtaining and keeping power is a necessary and inescapable part of communism, or as Mao put it: "Political power comes out of the barrell of a gun". logically, this led to the conclusion that the state was an instrument of class rule and therefore it must consciously serve the interests of the working class as a 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.
There are conflicting interpretations over what exactly would happen to the worker's state and as to how it would "wither away", but Stalin's view that the state would witheraway as a coercive force by becoming identical with society won out- this lead to a conclusion that
could be described as a democratisation of political violence where everyone became part of the state apparatus and was required to enforce the norms of society. Terror stopped being the weapon of the few and became the weapon of the many. This is what makes it potentially much more frightening that what the Nazis did as there was no 'higher law' that stopped everyone from engaging in mass murder. The Nazis used only a select group of people to commit mass murder to target specific groups, but the Communists had the power to make everyone do it to everyone else. it represented a purer and more effective form of totalitarianism (even if that word fails to grasp the gravity of the implications) because of how successful they were at getting people to think and behave the way they wanted.
At certain points in the history of communism, this was taken to the extreme of trying to 'liquidate' an entire social class because it was considered a dying or reactionary class that it's "liquidation" would simply accelerate the process. If this were referring to a racial or ethnic group, it would be considered genocide (and occassionally they did cross this line as well but its a very peculair interpretation of Marxism to do it). the difference is, is that race can be identified largely by visual cues, whereas class is defined more nebulously and more or less based on ideas and therefore whether a person agrees with the current party-line. Many communists fell victims to communist atrocities themselves (including members of the security services) because they the party-line changed and they were (or were suspected of being) on the wrong side of it. Being corrupted by absolute power isn't measured by the ability to kill you enemies. it's the ability to kill your current allies, freinds and family members. If the only measure of a person's worth is their usefulness to the revolution and to the state, all other considerations and allegiences are secondary.
Given that, I get the distinct feeling that the early communists grossly under-estimated the scale of the terror they would unleash and that it would be confined in the tens maybe hundreds of thousands "to build the new world" based on the experience of the French Revolution. Still bad, but not as existential to our humanity as what happened.They didn't take into account the fact that industrialisation had not only led to total war but to a total state capable of murdering its own citizens. it therefore represents something still very new and difficult in human experience. we've never had the power to destroy ourselves and it looks likely that the question of how we use that power, and whether we should even have it, will be a persistent one for future history. So even if there is no communism in the future, the questions it raises will still have to be answered.
Can Communism work without Atheism being the state "religion"? It is an interesting thought.
Generally No. But this only applies to the Marxist varient of Communism. If Marxism asserts materialism as a scientific fact, it therefore takes precedence over all other belief systems, necessitating an offical state ideology. There were however forms of Marxism that did entertian the idea that Marxism had to fulfill an innate religious impulse (known as the "God Builders") and these were characteristic of the 1920's. I sort of think they may have a point as communism is supposed to be the realisation of what makes us human, and religion is a dimension of that.
Do you think a society in the future could make communism work?
Yes. Communism "worked" in the twentieth century and proved it was not impossible. But it was the fact that it appeared at various times inevitable that a machine-like state killing apparatus would rip its way through society and kill indicriminately, whether by war or revolution, that made it terrifying. I hope if communism does develop in this century it won't be as lethal.
If so, what changes, if any, do you think will have to be made in order for the ideology to work?
Less killing. if you solve that, most of its other flaws are bearable and can probably be overcome using technology or more "relaxed" forms of collectivism.
