Ideocracy: The Primacy of Doctrine over Reality
Thierry Wolton defines communism as an ideocratic civilizational project in which an abstract idea gains primacy over human existence. This system is not limited to political power but strives for the total colonization of minds. Its essence is the planned destruction of the "I" in favor of a collective "we," leading to the disappearance of autonomy, conscience, and personal responsibility. In Wolton's view, communism is a fundamental structure of oppression that, under the mask of liberation, unleashed the greatest systemic crimes in history, treating the individual merely as an obstacle to the realization of utopia.
Marxism-Leninism: Secular Religion and Systemic Terror
Marxism-Leninism functions as a secular religion of salvation, rooted in messianic mythology. It possesses its own eschatological structure: the proletariat as the messiah and a classless paradise as the ultimate goal. In this system, terror and violence are not errors but a logical consequence of the doctrine—a "sacrament" purifying the world of the old order. The state becomes a tool of violence in the hands of the party-state, which, as a demiurge, controls every sphere of life, from education to the family.
Wolton points to a key difference between police repression and institutional terror: in communism, one is a class enemy by definition, rather than becoming one through specific actions. Despite the scale of the cruelty, the West ignored these crimes for decades, succumbing to pragmatism or an intellectual fascination with "better socialism." Wolton regards this silence as secondary complicity in dehumanization, resulting from prioritizing ideas over facts.
Homo Sovieticus and the Maoist Tabula Rasa
The Soviet model was an ideological mutation that, on Russian soil—devoid of civic traditions—created homo sovieticus. This is a person uprooted, stripped of identity and property, belonging entirely to the party. In turn, Maoism adapted Marxism to rural realities, making the peasantry the "chosen people" of the revolution. Chinese communism, driven by national resentment, took the form of a brutal struggle for dignity through violence.
The culmination of this process was the Cultural Revolution—a total purge of tradition and memory. The system sought to create a tabula rasa by destroying family ties, religion, and history. In Mao's China, children denounced their parents, and the extermination of elites served to "cleanse" society of the bourgeois spirit. It was an act of methodical destruction of the past to replace it with the monotheism of Maoist ideology.
Putin's Russia and Digital Totalitarianism
The legacy of Soviet structures has survived in Putin's Russia, despite the formal rejection of Marxism. Imperial resentment and a cult of strength have replaced class struggle, while the failure to account for past crimes has allowed for the reinterpretation of guilt into pride in imperial power. Systemic opacity and the instrumental treatment of the law are direct continuations of Soviet mechanisms, where the individual remains defenseless against the apparatus of power.
Modern China has developed these mechanisms further, creating digital totalitarianism. AI technology and surveillance systems close the loop of social control more effectively than the camps of old. Today's communism does not need to burn books; it manages algorithms and information, controlling the emotions and behaviors of citizens in real time. This is the new face of a system that, instead of inspiring the masses, permanently eavesdrops on and profiles them.
Wolton's Testimony: Describing Crime as an Ethical Mandate
For Thierry Wolton, the analysis of communism is a witness's moral duty to millions of victims. This system was not a historical "mistake" but the largest experiment in dehumanization in history, inherent to the ideological project itself. Wolton calls for the truth to prevent a recurrence of the catastrophe, which today takes on technological and imperial forms. Understanding that evil was the goal, not an accident, forms the foundation of ethical resistance to contemporary forms of totalitarianism. Memory of the past is the only dam protecting us from a return to a world where the idea means more than the human being.
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