To Overthrow the World

The Ancient Philosophical Roots of Communism

Plato observed that the words "mine" and "not mine" were the seeds of social decay. He believed a well-governed city required citizens to share their successes and failures, binding the community together through collective pleasure and pain. This ancient Greek ideal suggested that true political stability could only be reached when individuals equated their own fortunes with those of the state. Even the satirists of the time joked about a world where land and money were common to all, showing how deeply the idea of total equality permeated early philosophy.

Christianity later introduced a radical moral dimension to this search for equality. By teaching that the poor and humble held as much value as the mighty, it challenged the existing social order. Figures like Saint Martin of Tours, who lived in rags to help the needy, turned the renunciation of wealth into a spiritual virtue. This created a powerful narrative where history moved forward toward a final judgment, making every act of charity or greed a matter of eternal significance. While early believers chose poverty freely, their example established a moral standard that would later be used to justify the forced redistribution of wealth.

The encounter with the New World breathed fresh life into these concepts. Early explorers described indigenous peoples as "noble savages" who shared everything they owned without hesitation. These stories inspired Thomas More to imagine a society called Utopia, where economic activity was rationally planned for the public good and money did not exist. It suggested that the corruption of European life could be cured by returning to a simpler, more communal way of living, even if such a society required strict regulation and the loss of individual freedom.

Radical reformers eventually tried to turn these theories into reality through force. During the Reformation, a sect of Anabaptists seized the city of Münster, abolished money, and declared all food to be common property. They enforced this order with a regime of terror, executing dissenters and burning books. This brief, violent experiment demonstrated how the pursuit of a propertyless paradise could lead to absolute state control over every aspect of private life, turning a dream of liberation into a nightmare of conformity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau later argued that the invention of private property was the original sin of civilization. He believed that the first person to claim ownership of land brought crimes, wars, and murders upon the human race. While he did not call for the total end of ownership, he introduced the concept of the "general will," which allowed the community to force individuals into obedience. This idea became a cornerstone for revolutionaries like Robespierre, who used the state to control the economy and purge "enemies of the people" during the French Revolution. The final piece of the puzzle came from Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, who proposed a rigid code where nothing belonged to anyone. He argued that greed was the sole vice of humanity and could only be cured by the total abolition of private property. In his system, the state would oversee all labor and distribute goods from public warehouses according to need. This vision transformed the ancient dream of equality into a practical plan for state-managed life, providing the intellectual foundation for the communist movements that would soon attempt to reshape the world.