Communism: You hear about it a lot in class, but what do we really know about communism?
We know that certain people like communism, certain people are afraid of communism, and certain people are sent to Siberia for saying that they don't support a certain communist leader.
Communism in its purest form is not the same as the communism that we see in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Vietnam or Cuba. To separate the applications of communism from communist theory, I will refer to the former as communism and the latter as marxism. The communist dictatorships are not representative of marxist theory for a few reasons.
Marx predicted that a communist regime would come to power through a proletariat revolution within the borders of the country. This means that the prerequisites for a textbook revolution are as follows: there must be a developed industrial economy, a significant amount of dissent within the context of the factory, and a leader to arise from the ranks of the proletariat to help establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat". The examples of communist dictatorships do not generally follow this piece of marxist theory.
In Russia, Lenin was the son of some middle class professionals, and Cuba, Fidel Castro was a lawyer, ruling them out of the proletariat category. None of the communist states were industrialized before their revolutions, which means that they had a very small proletariat class. The lack of industrial infrastructure in Russia and China gave the leaders of those countries an opportunity to revolutionize their industries and build up their nations' industrial capacities within the communist system. Effectively, the Soviet Union and China had the opportunity to industrialize the "right" way, or indeed the communist way, without ever having private ownership of factories. To an extent this was carried out, but ultimately it failed as seen in Stalin's numerous 5 year plans, and Mao's great leap forward.
Some would argue with Marx, saying that a revolution by peasants over a pre-industrial ruling class would be much simpler than a revolution of the proletariat, because private manufacturing companies gain control over their workers and the government. I assert that while a peasant revolution would theoretically be easier, the effect would not be as complete. The reason for this assertion boils down to labor economics. Essentially, it is in the interest of labor to keep the cost of production high, which means more man/hours per product. It is in the capitalist's, or in Stalin's case the government's, best interest to cheapen labor, or to decrease the ratio of man/hours to product. Ultimately, it turns out that the capitalist is more effective at cheapening labor, because he has only himself to work for. In the context of communist industrialization, there is a certain apathy, which is the product of man's inability to comprehend the scope of his work. Without the driving competition of capitalism, communist industrialism eventually fails, which eventually leads to the economic failure of communist regimes.
Returning to the original distinction between marxism and communism, we see that such a distinction is necessary for one simple reason: the so-called communist regimes of modern history do not follow the model of communism put forth by Marx. These regimes are in fact capitalist regimes where the government is the capitalist rather than a private entity. Rather than the communist utopia Marx asked for where workers own the means of production, the government owns the means of production, and uses its ownership to retain control over the population.
Sources:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/communism
http://www.britannica.com/topic/communism
http://www.economist.com/node/1489165
Will any pure political or economic system ultimately be successful in implementation? If you look at capitalist ideals from philosophers like Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, or Friedman, none of the purely capitalist systems exist in the real world. For example, free-market capitalism, a similar counterpart to extreme Marxism, simply doesn't hold up in our world full of market controls and regulations. I wonder: what kind of balance is struck between pragmatism and Marxist idealism in our world?
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ReplyDeleteIt is true that these nations ended up suffering greatly due to their attempts at collectivization and handing management to the workers. As a result of these failed policies, these nations could not fully pursue the policy and ended up turning to government run industry as opposed to privately owned.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it is also important to see that no country that has tried to be truly communist has been able to practice and develop in complete peace. The misguided Chinese Great Leap Forward killed tens of millions of people and suffered from extreme famines. In the Soviet Union, World War II obliterated the USSR. In the Korean War, the North Koreans were left with millions dead and a decimated country. In Vietnam, the Vietnamese war killed millions and the hatred between the two sides prevented true unification. Across the world in Africa and Latin America, these upstart Communists had to deal with the military, CIA supported coups, rebellion, civil war, and international relations. Had these nations been left in peace to develop, akin to how the United States was left alone to develop its own system, it may be interesting to see where these nations would have ended up.
These massacres, famines, CIA plots, and international feuds kept Communist leaders on their feet and paranoid of the outside world. Had they not had this mentality, it is possible they may have created a more successful socialist state. True communism is largely impractical on a nation wide scale with multi-ethnic nations and diverse economies. It is also true that Communist success relies on the workers of the world to unite, not for the workers of the West to churn out more opposition to the Communists. While economic theory does end up failing these nations, there is a larger part to be said about the role of politics and history in their collapses/transformations.