Sebastião Jose de Carvalho e Mello, Marquês de (1699-1782)] (then at
odds with the Jesuits) ordered the priests and the natives to leave the
settlements; and after some resistance by the Indians the experiment came
to an end.
In the social revolt that accompanied the Protestant Reformation in
Germany, communistic slogans based on the Bible were advanced by
several rebel leaders. Thomas Münzer [Münzer, Thomas (1489?-1525)], a
preacher, called upon the people to overthrow the princes, the clergy, and
the capitalists, and to establish a “refined society” in which all things were
to be in common.
He recruited an army of peasants, inspired them with
accounts of communism among the Apostles, and led them to battle. They
were defeated, five thousand of them were slain, Münzer was beheaded
(1525). Hans Hut [Hut, Hans (fl. 1530)], accepting Münzer’s teachings,
organized at Austerlitz an Anabaptist community that practiced
communism for almost a century (c. 1530-1622). John of Leiden [John of
Leiden (1509-36)] led a group of Anabaptists in capturing control of
Munster, the capital of Westphalia; there, for fourteen months, they
maintained a communistic regime (1534-35).
In the seventeenth century a group of “Levellers” in Cromwell’s
[Cromwell, Oliver, Lord Protector of England (r. 1653-58)] army begged
him in vain to establish a communistic utopia in England. The socialist
agitation subsided during the Restoration, but it rose again when the
Industrial Revolution revealed the greed and brutality of early capitalism–
child labor, woman labor, long hours, low wages, and disease-breeding
factories and slums. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels [Engels, Friedrich
(1820-95)] gave the movement its Magna Carta in the Communist
Manifesto of 1847, and its Bible in Das Kapital (1867-95). They expected
that socialism would be effected first in England, because industry was
there most developed and had reached a stage of centralized management
that seemed to invite appropriation by the government. They did not live
long enough to be surprised by the outbreak of Communism in Russia.
