why did communism die?
There wasn’t any money in it.
Marc
Well, Cuba and China are still struggling along.
Generally, though, communism failed because capitalism proved to be more efficient. Trying to force the citizens to work using threat of punishment turned out to be less effective than rewarding them with salaries. Without a reward system, workers were less inclined to innovate and the USSR fell behind technologically.
Chernobyl was the most obvious symbol that decay had set in, but examing the former USSR now finds all kinds of hair-raising environmental disasters, which is ironic since environmentalists often point to corporations as the worst polluters. Put simply, the communist party of the USSR was dedicated exclusively to its own survival, and not to the comfort and well-being of its citizens. After a few mismanaged decades, even survival wasn’t tenable and the whole thing just collapsed.
Depends on what you mean by “communism.” And also what you mean by “die.” (And probably “is” as well.)
Marxism? Never lived, couldn’t die.
National Socialism? Died in 1945, of a nasty bullet infection.
Soviet Socialism? Died in 1990 of terminal obesity.
Chinese Socialism/Maoism? Still alive, though suffering from a disfiguring Western disease.
Cuban Socialism? On life support.
Define your terms, maybe get your teacher to help explain things to you, then maybe we can talk.
“A huge totalitarian system with all its tanks and guns, gulag camps and secret police, has been brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes.” - P. J. O’Rourke
As andros pointed out, it depends on what you mean by “communism.” Soviet communism died when Lenin and Trotsky took over in 1917, and created what they referred to as “state capitalism.” Probably the nearest systems to “state socialism” we have seen have been in Vietnam and Cuba. Given the circumstances these countries were in, they did remarkably well.
Vietnam has pretty much been forced to abandon its ideals, along with its social programs, in order to have the U.S.-enforced embargo lifted. So socialism is pretty much dead there. Cuba remains defiant to U.S. domination. Nobody knows if the country will eventually be swallowed up into the U.S. system.
Of course, communism is not dead, despite the constant pronouncements of its demise. Progressive movements will always erupt periodically, only to be beaten back by those with power. Who knows if we will ever see a true socialist system, based on equality and justice?
There are several tacit premises here that are highly dubious. The first is that there is no reward system under socialism, which is false. The second is that the USSR was socialist, which is false. The third is that soviet state capitalism was inefficient, which is false. (The USSR dragged itself from the Third World into the modern age under state capitalism, becoming the second most powerful country on Earth.) And, the fourth is that “communism” is less efficient than capitalism.
Capitalism is very efficient at producing products that rich people can buy. In other respects, though, capitalism is highly inefficient. When measured by quality-of-life indicators, like infant mortality, health of the population, health of the environment, etc., capitalism is an utter failure. U.S. capitalism, in particular, is simply scandalous is its failure to provide for its citizens. The U.S. has overwhelming advantages over any other country, and has had for several centuries. In terms of natural resources, arable land, lack of enemies, etc., the U.S. is in an ideal position. And yet, we cannot even provide food or health care for our citizens. Tens of millions do not have even basic health coverage. Tens of millions live in poverty. The infant mortality and hunger rates in the U.S. are an absolute scandal. And all this in what should be the richest country on Earth by several orders of magnitude. The U.S. should have health and wealth indicators in excess of any other country by 5 or 6 times, due to its natural advantages, but it doesn’t.
Instead, we have the highest concentration of wealth in the world. We have a small elite class who enjoys every luxury dreamt of by Mankind, and a large underclass that struggles to survive. This distribution of wealth is simply criminal.
All of these inefficiencies don’t even take into account the other horrendous effects of capitalism. Like this doesn’t take into account the wage-slave system that the majority has to live under, or the imperialist wars that must be waged to maintain the system, or the absurdity of “democracy” in a country where 1% of the population controls 40% of the wealth. Even if you are willing to accept all of those evils, though, just based on objective indicators, capitalism is an abysmal failure.
When I was in China, I once asked a local guide, farmer Tang, what he thought of communism. Farmer Tang wasn’t very educated and it would be an understatement to say his style of speach was blunt. Here’s more of less what he said:
Communism, in its application creates inequity through the very mechanisms that seek to foster equality. Equality and justice are, in the absolute, mutually exclusive because individuals are, in character and ability, unequal. Communism failed because it rewards mediocrity while taxing excellence.
I would dispute whether China has ever had a socialist system. Of course, it all depends on how you define “socialism.” What I mean by socialism, is the kind of classical socialism envisaged by people like Bakunin, Goldman, Orwell, etc., a system whose distinguishing characteristic is worker control of the means of production. China obviously lacked this distinguishing characteristic, so I wouldn’t count it as socialist. The type of system China had before the 1990’s is more akin to what Lenin and Trotsky called “state capitalism.” Basically, China was like one big corporation. Instead of many corporations, which are totalitarian institutions, you just had one, the state.
This is sort of the cartoon version of socialism that we are taught in high school (I speak of socialism instead of communism, as communism is a stateless system). It doesn’t have any relationship to what socialists actually are thinking of when they talk about socialism.
First off, “communism” does not reward mediocrity any more than capitalism does. Most rich capitalists are mediocrities. Just take a look at the Head Capitalist–George W. Bush, the chosen representative of the capitalist class. A more vulgar, illiterate, venal mediocrity is difficult to find. Some of the most idiotic and lazy people I have ever met have been wealthy, and some of the smartest and industriest have been poor. In fact, being stupid and vulgar seems to be almost a requirement for being rich. I haven’t met many exceptions to this rule. It is a consequence of the system, which rewards neither intelligence nor one’s contribution to society, but rather ruthlessness and aggressiveness.
Socialism grew out of the idea that “those who work in the factories should own them.” That is, the people who do the actual work should manage themselves and decide democratically how things are run, and how the benefits are distributed. This kind of system is in contrast to the capitalist system, where you have one or a few guys at the top who tell everybody else what to do. In its essence, capitalism is a highly hierarchical, class-based system, whereas socialism is essentially a democratic system.
Of course, there are depressingly few examples of socialist systems. Cuba has many industries that are sort of run on the socialist model, with workers councils deciding how things are done, an equitable distribution of wealth, etc. Right after the Russian revolution, workers councils, called Soviets, controlled large portions of the country before they were destroyed by Lenin and Trotsky. And, in Spain in 1936, socialism existed for a brief time before it was crushed by force. There are other scattered examples, but they are few and far between.
Aw, c’mon. I was trying to explain the fall of communism in 200 words or less.
The rest of your post is misguided captalism-bashing which has nothing to do with the OP’s question. I only mentioned capitalism is my own post because capitalist countries (the U.S. specifically) were able to produce goods and innovations at such a rapid pace that the USSR burned itself out trying to keep up and lost the Cold War.
Is that your understanding of why the USSR collapsed? Because it couldn’t produce as many SUVs as the U.S.? What does that mean: “burned itself out”?
The USSR collapsed mainly because Russia allowed more openness in its colonies, which led to massive People Power revolts. It had very little to do with anything the U.S. did.
With regards to Cuba being ‘on life support’ or struggling along.
Are we conveniently forgetting that blockade thingy?
Ah, but we must resist the temptation to think of “capitalism” as being a bunch of overweight decadent drug-using pleasure seekers who drool as they plan their latest act of conspicuous consumption, only taking time out to spit in the face of the pool boy and laugh at their cleverness.
It hardly seems worth pointing out out the collapse of the USSR took place years before SUVs were introduced in the U.S. I’ll just add it to the pile of fabricated facts in support of Comintern.
Capitalism consists of hugely more than consumer goods, including sport utility vehicles. It allows for more efficient construction, implementation and maintenance of mass transit systems (including road, rail and air), resource development (mining and energy) and communications (telephone, television, computer networks). All of these contribute mightily to the U.S. economy, which allowed them to maintain huge military and nuclear forces. The Soviet infrastructure, in contrast, was in a constant state of near-collapse. Despite superiority in some fields (space station Mir comes to mind), the Soviets had no ability for sustained economic growth, nor could they recover from disasters as easily as the Americans. Their conventional military had been humiliated and demoralized in Afghanistan and Chernobyl demonstrated how major power systems were hanging by a thread.
The Republicans took power in the U.S. at just the right time. The pain of Vietnam was slowly fading, computers were coming into use in a big way, and the stage was set for a huge capitalist advance. Helped along by Thatcher in England and Mulroney in Canada, greed was good and communism was evil again. The sharp contrast between the relative comfort in the go-go west and the boring misery of the stagnant east was a major factor in this colonial “openness” of which you speak. You should ask yourself why the colonies demanded more openness. Was it because they saw that westerners were living better?
Your “People Power” angle is ridiculous, trying to enoble people who really just wanted colour television and air conditioning and cars that worked, damnit! Gorbachev was chosen to try to modernize the system, and he wisely saw that it was fatally flawed and dissolved it.
I don’t consider Reagan a hero, but his administation did hasten the well-deserved collapse of the USSR. Unfortunately, Reagan’s cronies went too far in some fields and nearly bankrupted the U.S. at the same time. The key difference is that capitalist America survived Ronald Reagan, and the communist USSR couldn’t.
This thread is fairly amusing (as is any thread in which Chumpsky participates heavily), but this has been bugging me and I’m surprised no one has brought it up.
Nonsense. From a Marxist perspective, Marxism is still going on, it just hasn’t achieved a state of Hegelian synthesis yet. Marxism describes the process by which states would be eliminated and the end of history would be achieved.
To recap: Marxism = process, Marxism != just final result.
Conclusion: Marxism is still alive and well. If you believe that Marxism is a legitimate description of the world, that is, which I don’t.
A minor point, but one that was bugging me.
Carry on.
We also have a large middle class that has a pretty good standard of living by any international standard. I don’t see how you can state that we have the highest concentration of wealth and then criticise the system that allowed us to acquire it.
Well that is certainly a gross unsubstantiated generalization if I ever heard one. There are several ways a person gets rich in a capitalist society:
- Be born rich - Can’t do much about that
- Marry rich -
- Excell in a profession that pays well
- Start a business that becomes successful
I don’t see how a lack of intelligence or contribution would help anyone achieve any of these objectives. As a matter of fact, most wealthy people become that way through hard work and a little bit of luck. Aggressiveness and ruthlessness also help.
Most business leaders understand that employees who feel a sense of ownership in the company work harder than those who don’t. That is one of the reason that most public corporations offer stock ownership of some kind to their employees and encourage them to invest in the companies 401k.
Capitalism may behierarchial and class based, but unlike communism/socialism, it allows mobility between classes.
There has to be some happy medium. Somewhere.
Mostly, communism didn’t work because it’s too idealistic. The only place where you can see true communism would be a monastery, or a nunnery. People each pulling their weight, doing their fair share, for the good of the community.
However, communism, when practiced in history, for the most part, sucks, because you never get past the need for a dictator. And there’s no allowance for individuality, for the most part.
That doesn’t mean you have to go the opposite-laissez faire capitalism, however.
As someone said,
“Communism is man’s exploitation of man. Capitalism is just the opposite.”
Both in their extreme forms have flaws. We need to reach a happy middle-somewhere…
It wasn’t “us” that acquired it, but the small ruling class. What I mean by concentration of wealth is the gross inequity that exists in wealth distribution in the U.S. It is far worse than any other industrialized country.
You are correct, of course, that the middle class in the U.S. enjoys a pretty good standard of living. But then, so did Russians under Kruschev. The questions we should ask are at what cost, and what are the down-sides? The cost is that the imperialist system requires a large number of wage-slaves to do the drudge-work. As the middle class grows, these jobs are shipped overseas to countries that are severely oppressed. In the meantime, the working class at home suffers by having wages depressed and losing job security.
Also, like I said, the U.S. should have the highest standard of living in the world by far, but it doesn’t. It hovers around 5th or 6th from year to year. Given the huge natural advantages the U.S. enjoys, this is a major scandal.
Yes, of course. I was not considering the cases of acquiring wealth outside of the capitalist system, such as inheriting it or marrying into it. When I talk about how one succeeds in the capitalist system, I am only considering acting within the system. Numbers 3 and 4 in your list are simply tautologies, as you simply define success to be rising in the capitalist system. You are not saying anything.
It’s not so much that a lack of intelligence or societal contribution helps, it is just that they are irrelevant. The market does not reward intelligence or work that helps people. It rewards those who can produce what rich people will buy. Thus, we see that, whereas a high school teacher makes $40 k per year, a basketball player makes a couple million per year. Whereas a medical researcher can make around $100 k per year, executives at Philip Morris and Northrup, who sell death, make millions. And so on… The fact that you produce something that might benefit society is simply irrelevant to how “successful” you are in the capitalist system. In this sense it is highly inefficient, as the things that people need are secondary or irrelevant in the market.
Yes, the owners want their wage-slaves to “feel a sense” of ownership, as it does help to cast a fog over the vicious class war that is being waged. Actual ownership of the company is a different story.
Modern corporations are some of the most totalitarian institutions ever invented by humankind. They are totally unaccountable to the public, operate mostly in secret, and demand total obedience from their subjects. We wouldn’t accept this for a minute in the political sphere, and I don’t know why people should accept it in the economic sphere.
This is true, by definition, since socialism seeks to eliminate classes. And, incidentally, just because there can be movement between classes does not mean that the class structure isn’t highly oppressive to those in the lower classes. It has always been a feature of capitalism that there is movement between classes. Indeed, this is essential to the growth of capitalism, which is, in turn, essential to the existence of capitalism.
If you think that a hierarchical class structure is a good thing, then there is nothing inherent in the capitalist class structure that is intrinsically bad. On the other hand, if you think that equality is a necessary precondition for freedom and justice, and you value these things, then you would see something fundamentally flawed with capitalism.
Two general notes for Chumpsky:
First, you seem to have the same affliction as most supporters of Communism. You believe that Communism is, by definition, wonderful and that it works terrifically. Therefore, anything that crashed and burned either wasn’t “true” Communism, or was working fine until the Evil Capitalists came along and used their vile magical powers to shut it down.
Second, you do a terrific Noam Chomsky impression. You need to inject a little more consipracy theory to nail it down, but you’re on the right track.
For the most part, it does so quite well. The only real problems seem to be on the extreme ends of the spectrum. It can be tough to get out of the ghetto, so to speak, and obscene wealth tends to be self-perpetuating. While the latter isn’t so much of a problem in the grand scheme of things (and even fabulous wealth can wane over time - witness the Rockefellers), the former obviously is, and is going to require some work - likely some sort of “educate the poor” programs, or something. Nonetheless, I see plenty of people born into the lower class who become quite successful (my mom being one), and plenty of people born into the upper class who squander their opportunites and wind up poor.
In general, “capitalism” (define it how you will, I think you know what I mean) is better for everyone but the extremely poor and the tragically lazy or stupid. Communism establishes a nice level of blanket poverty for everyone. In the sense of providing equality of outcome, then, it’s a smashing success.
And to offer up a lazy soundbite to the OP: Communism doesn’t work for the same reason perpetual motion machines don’t work - nice in theory, but it has no place in the real world.
Jeff
Latro:
Blockade thingie? You mean the US trade embargo against Cuba? What about it? Bear in mind I didn’t say that Cuba was on life support–I said that Cuban Socialism is. Or would you like to take a position that Castro’s and Che’s revolutionary socialist agenda of the 1950s would have remained unchanged without the US embargo? I’m not sure that’s a tenable position to take.
Neurotik:
And a valid one. You’re absolutely right, of course, and my apologies. Maybe I should have said “Marxist Communism.” Or perhaps “Pure” Communism.
If I had to wager a guess, I would say that you are not wealthy, and are bitter at those who are, and thus contend that intelligence and ability have no correlation with success in the monetary realm. I could be wildly off, but it’s been my experience that those who claim that ability is irrelevant to wealth are people who have never managed to earn wealth, either because they achieved it easily (eg, actors), they were born into it, or they’re poor.
See, I would think you would love this, as it’s an exemplary case of the workers making out well. If the NBA star is the one doing all the work, shouldn’t he be getting all the money? If the NBA stars, and the actors, and all the people for whom the public is paying to see, aren’t the ones making the money, where should it go?
Yes and no. True, the market is driven by what people want, not what they need, but there is a large overlap there. I want everything that I need. However, I also want many things above and beyond what I need. The market provides me with what I need, at prices that are competitive. I would say that the things people need are not secondary or irrelevant at all. They are primary, and they are highly relevant. It’s just that they are so vital to our existence that, in most cases, the process has been refined to the point where acquiring these needs is fairly cheap. As such, more of our income can go to things that we don’t need, but merely want.
As an example, my wife and I pull in about $50k/year - after taxes, probably about $38k. We could probably get by on about $15k easily - that would provide cheap, crappy housing, cheap food, basic transportation, and such. The vast majority of our wages, though, go to things we want - a nicer place to live, better food, toys, entertainment, paying off bills from credit card-induced stupidity in our college years, and so on.
Why do you think corporations shouldn’t be totalitarian? You think they should be democratic? When my boss, the owner of the company, tells me to do something, should I require that we hold a vote? I’m sorry, but I think the person who’s funding my existence should have final say on what I do to earn that funding. If I don’t like it, I can go to another company. The reason we don’t accept it in the political sphere is because this is a democratic nation - you know, by the people, for the people, and so on? We, the people, subsidize the government. Therefore, we should have control over what this government does. However, in the economic world, the companies are funding the employees.
I suppose that’s true in a literal sense, but it tends to lose relevence when the people in question have the power to move between classes. Unless your definition of “oppressive” includes a desire by the upper class to keep the lower class “in its place”, in which case you’re completely detached from the real world.
There’s that “equality” thing, again. What do you mean by equality? Equality of opportunity? Equality of rights? I doubt it. More likely is “equality of outcome” - the lazy fool should have just as much wealth as the industrious genius. Capitalism provides for equality in every sense that is important. Communism provides a way for the lazy to prosper at the expense of the hard-working. “Equality,” indeed.
Jeff