The Economic System of Islam — Page 97
97 situation is that although they claim to support representative government, in reality they do not share governance with ordinary citizens. There has only been dictatorship since the inception of Communism in Russia. Lenin was the first dictator, who was succeeded by Stalin; Molotov may well be the third dictator, and so on. In any case, such regimes cannot survive without the use of force, and the Russian experiment stands testimony to that. 5. Interest, a Part of Communist Philosophy The fifth flaw of Communism is that it has not rejected the institution of interest as part of its philosophy. It is claimed that there are no private banks in Soviet Russia that operate on the basis of interest. I do not at the moment have any certain knowledge that this is actually the case. But the absence of banks that run on the basis of interest is an entirely different matter from rejecting interest as something fundamentally wrong. The absence of such banks may be due to a number of reasons: lack of facilities, general ignorance on the part of the public in regard to the working of banks, or just expediency. When the necessary facilities are installed, the public gets educated about the banking system, or when the opportunistic policy is abandoned, individual banks may start operating throughout the country. But when something is forbidden as a matter of principle, no change in circumstances can make it lawful or acceptable. Communism does not put interest under this absolute ban. There is no prohibition of interest in the communist literature, which leads me to conclude that Communism is not fundamentally