A guy from Facebook has been messaging me about communism. And since we were messaging for quite some time, I would like to document it.

In laymen term, communism and socialism is the same. It is also known as a leftwing ideology. Meanwhile capitalism is a rightwing ideology.

As we were told that communism is an ideology from The Devil itself, in academia world communism is actually suppose to be less evil than socialism.

Why less evil? Communism wants to abolish power of people over people meanwhile socialism connotes dictatorship of the proletariat.

That is why none of the communist leader ever claimed that his society has achieved communism, neither Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Ze Dong nor Fidel Castro.

Capitalism is a system in which natural resources and the means of producing goods and services are privately owned. An ideal capitalist economy has three distinctive features i.e. private ownership of property, pursuit of personal profit and consumer sovereignty.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) is a person who came out with the communist ideology. He is astounded and disturbed that industry’s riches were concentrated in the hands of a few. He asked, “In a society so rich, how could so many be so poor?” He was motivated by compassion and sought to help a badly divided society forge a new and just social order.
Karl Marx sensed that if society is not being arranged to hate capitalism the society itself will become capitalist and ‘Might will always win’ regardless whether it will corrupt the society.

But sadly Karl Marx born in a secular society where religious people are not that powerful. If he born in a Muslim country he knew that it is hard to convince people who think that it is ok to be in capitalist society as God will always give heaven in the afterlife.

However when we talk about socialism, communism and capitalism we must not only focus on economic perspective only. Yes the main problem is due to economic factor but in the end it will make the society on what they are going to become (such as social politic and social culture).

A person who is born in a socialist culture will value truth, justice and equality. The society signifies more on human capital and wellbeing, learned people, arts and culture.

While a person who is born in a capitalist culture will value money, material and power. The society is more individualistic and adores a person who is rich rather than people who is learned.

Leftwing ideology in Malaysia

What is Malaysian? Are Malaysians a capitalist society or socialist society? Malaysian is a capitalist society notwithstanding Chinese, Indian or Malay or Buddhist, Hindus, Christian or Muslim.

Socialism has been destroyed by the Imperialist to ensure their interest (element of capitalism) remained after the independence of Malaysia (then Malaya).

Socialism hates Imperialism and capitalism. But Imperialist wants capitalism to remain intact in the system. That is why soon before independence; Imperialist banned all leftwing political party and only allowed rightwing parties which are UMNO and PAS.

Do you ever think why the Imperialist remained PAS? Because they realized that to divide and conquer people, religion is always the best policy.

PAS is a party that promotes Islam. But PAS version of Islam is segmenting. It means that Islam is meant to be an exclusive club who join it. People who join and embrace this club (Islam) will get material benefit (capitalism). That is why nowadays (present situation) Malaysia is a major player that promotes Islamic product such as Islamic car, Islamic banking, Islamic financing, Muslim Consumer Association, Muslim Lawyer Association, Islamic toothbrush, Islamic slipper, Islamic kurma cake, Islamic kindergarten, Islamic pen, Islamic Art, Islamic Culture, Islamic Architecture, Islamic Literature so on and so forth.

UMNO is also a party that promotes segmentation. UMNO stressed that only Malay can be Malay, Chinese or Indian cannot be Malay and UMNO only fight for the Malay ethnic and don’t bother to promote unity among all race.

Meanwhile leftwing party stressed that to be a great nation society must not be defined into tribal community. They must unite as one and any barrier that hinders the people to unite such as language and religion must be abolished. They realized that if people are divided, society will abandon the value of truthfulness and justice as they tend to be racist when any issues arise.

That is why when PUTERA-AMCJA came out with Perlembagaan Rakyat (People Constitution) they define all Malaysian citizen as Malay. It means that if the leftwing party succeed in their war against British we all Malaysian are now known as Malay whether you Chinese, Indian, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist. And there is no special privileged for the Malays as everyone is already known as Malays.

PUTERA-AMCJA is a joint action by Malay Leftist and Chinese Leftist. PUTERA consists of PKMM, API and AWAS meanwhile AMCJA is a union of Chinese associations.

But current situation (rightwing ideology) states that Malay must profess Islam. Due to this barrier, unity is very hard to get as people can accept Malay language and custom but people are not that easy to leave their belief. And current situation also states that Malay must have special privileges. This is totally against justice and equality. Socialism state that everybody is equal before God.

But why people in power want to divide people? By dividing people, they can always be in power and consume material (capitalist thinking) as much as they can. When people want to unite against tyrant and corrupt government, people who has the power can always use racial and religion issues to break the unity.

That is why I told that guy, that a good nation is a nation that has a mark of socialism. Italy and France is a good example of a great nation. They have a history of socialism. Another country is Indonesia who born as a nationalistic socialist country.

I also told that young lad that communism is not a failure but it is utopia. Communism or any social ideology cannot stay forever in a society. They must keep morph from one ideology to other ideology so that they can reform and make better of their society.

A good nation must start as a socialist country and when the society has value fact, justice and equality then they can transfer their country to be liberal (capitalist embrace liberalism as they don’t want any government control over them).

Is Islam Socialist or Capitalist?

I remember in year 2004, Nik Aziz Nik Mat the spiritual leader of PAS prohibit Prof Syed Hussien Ali (now the Deputy President of PKR) from contesting in Kelantan. Nik Aziz said that Syed Hussien Ali is a socialist and Islam is against Socialism. So if Islam is not Socialist, is it Capitalist?

Islam has socialism in nature. As I stated up there that socialism embrace fact, justice and equality so does Islam. It means in Islam there is an element of Socialism. Zakat (tax) is an example of socialism where money is taken from the rich to distribute to the needy. Capitalist don’t like zakat (tax) as capitalist don’t want any interference by the government into their personal wealth.

Why Muslim afraid of communism? They think communism stripped away their religion right. That is not true as Chinese who for so long embrace communism still allowed Muslim community (Hui people at Xi Jiang) to embraced Islam.

But Communism and Socialism don’t want religion to diverse the people, which is why religion must be keep personally and not any way mixed to the government machineries.

But is that mean we must be secular as Islam is also against secularism? Well Prophet Muhammad never echoed Islamic segmentation. He promotes unity. It means that in his era, any law is meant to be law for all citizen not law for Muslim or the court establish is meant to be the court for all citizen not Syariah Court. In his era and era of Sahabat (Companion), zakat (tax) is distributed to everyone but in Malaysia, besides that we have distinguish zakat from tax we only distribute zakat to the Muslim community.

Summary

Communism is a good ideology. It wants people to be equal and promotes that to be equal society must embrace fact and justice. Communism wants society to value rationale, humanity and sensible. To be rationale and sensible the society must value knowledge and adore people who has a lot of knowledge. Communism wants all people to govern the country and not to let the elite class only to govern the society.

But since communism already has a bad image (due to his lost to the capitalist-west), communism must do rebranding. The name communism can be torn as the most important is the substance in it.

Afraid to say that Malaysia will not reform to anything and will always be the same forever due to deep grasped of capitalism in the system. People who currently have interest in current environment don’t want any changes as changes will erode power and money from them.

Radzwill Abdullah