I don't know the exact personal context of Antonin Artaud's comments. But his critique of 'communism' is dissatisfying and maybe misses the point, at least if we place it in the larger historical context that includes communalism, socialism, Marxism, anarchosyndicalism, etc. That is because 'communism' has never been a single narrow political ideology but more of a general impulse, attitude, or worldview. The Russian Revolution prior to the Stalinist takeover, for example, resulted in diverse groups with their own ideologies, agendas, and practices.
Even limiting ourselves to communism proper over the past couple of centuries, it has meant a diversity of things and has had a diversity of advocates. This quickly becomes more complex when we include the longer development of communist-like thinking, such as going back to the English Civil War and the Peasants' Revolts, not to mention the wide variety of primitive communism, from early Christian communes to hunter-gatherer tribes. One might argue that anyone who dismissed communism "only proved that their revolutionary impulse had not penetrated deeply enough."
I don't know the exact personal context of Antonin Artaud's comments. But his critique of 'communism' is dissatisfying and maybe misses the point, at least if we place it in the larger historical context that includes communalism, socialism, Marxism, anarchosyndicalism, etc. That is because 'communism' has never been a single narrow political ideology but more of a general impulse, attitude, or worldview. The Russian Revolution prior to the Stalinist takeover, for example, resulted in diverse groups with their own ideologies, agendas, and practices.
Even limiting ourselves to communism proper over the past couple of centuries, it has meant a diversity of things and has had a diversity of advocates. This quickly becomes more complex when we include the longer development of communist-like thinking, such as going back to the English Civil War and the Peasants' Revolts, not to mention the wide variety of primitive communism, from early Christian communes to hunter-gatherer tribes. One might argue that anyone who dismissed communism "only proved that their revolutionary impulse had not penetrated deeply enough."