Off to Great Debates.
It’s true that most (all?) major communist countries have degenerated into totalitarianism and/or poverty. Anyone who has ever visited Centeral America or Africa will know, however, that most capitalist countries are the same way. Even during its hight, they’re were relativly few communist countries, its possible that the vast majority of any form of gov’t will be corrupt, and that the # of communist countries simply was never large enough for there to be a good one.
I believe it’s true that communism/Communism is fundamentally flawed. My father spent his childhood in Stalinist Russia, and some of the stories he tells are just horrendous (and he never tells the worst ones, which I’ve heard from other relatives, because they’re too upsetting).
Communists the world over LOVED Stalin, even when it was revealed what he had done, up to the point when he was officially denounced by the party. Also, it’s only since the fall of the USSR and the Eastern European communist states that western Communists have gone into the rationalisations of ‘oh well, what can you expect from a third world country like Russia? Of COURSE communism couldn’t work there’, etc. And there are still communists today who think Mao was a wonderful person, not one of the most evil mass murderers in history.
I remember seeing a documentary on the Berlin Wall, where someone says that the Soviets in Germany had a hard time explaining it, because according to the party line, people should have been trying to escape from the west to get to the worker’s paradise in the east. However, it was almost exclusively the other way. Any political institution that needs to shoot people to keep others inside (out of fear) is a ‘bad thing’.
HenrySpencer
how many native americans were killed in the process of creating the land of the free and home of the brave? just a minor detail. easy to be brave when you have superior fire power.
how much do american consumers loose in depreciation on automobiles every year? another minor detail the CAPITALIST economists don’t notice.
ECONOMIC POWER GAMES and POLITICAL POWER GAMES are taken advantage of whenever people can get away with it. social-psychology is more important than ideology.
Dal Timgar
I find Communism very much akin to radical religion. I’ll illustrate:
It is possible (and has been shown to work on a very limited scale) that communism can exist in a capitalist framework. (Arguably, it is the best and only way in can exist.) The kibbutz has been used as an example of this. I works for likeminded groups of people who embrace the communal lifestyle and all that it entails. The kibbutznicks share cars and other communal property, however, they exchange their manufactured goods in a capitalist fashion. The proceeds (gains) are then in turn distributed among the commune members in a socialist fashion.
The problem with hardline communists is that it is not enough for them to enjoy and participate in that level of communism. They feel the urge to compell and convert the entire society to their way of life. They claim that it is the only way that communism/socialism can be achieved and become an unqualified success. Everyone must participate in it. With that kind of approach one can easily see how communism quickly turns into totalitarianism by necessity and under it’s own weight. The USSR and China and Korea are not examples of bad applications of communist ideals, they are examples of how communism fails humanity on a large social scale. It is not the fault of negative influence by capitalist regimes (as many socialists claim) that doomes communism. It is simply a social order that collapses under it’s own weight.
On the other hand, communist notions have been demonized for so long by America that they have become synonymous with evil - which of course they are not. America is so affraid of even the mention of communism that it instantly blacklists any person even remotely associated with the idea. It’s an extremely silly knee jerk reaction but the only boogey man that the US gov’t has to continue to fuel blind Pro-American nationalism.
Communism is nothing less than slavery writ large. At its basic level, communism states that the individual exists to benefit others. Thus, I believe that communism is an evil philosophy.
Any system of government that does not recognize basic human rights is evil.
The argument that communism only fails because people are greedy is circular. If you assume a population that always works to maximize benefit for all, then ANY political system will work. You can have perfect capitalism, perfect communism, or a perfect society based on the worship of the great god Whoo-Hoo. None of it matters, because you’ve defined the populace as one that voluntarily does the right thing at all times.
But politically philosophy and economics are based on the notion that resources are finite, and that there is scarcity. Not everyone can have everything they want. So you need some way to allocate goods and resources. Capitalists believe in property rights, the market, and the freedom of individuals to barter amongst each other and trade. Communism replaces this with a large state which allocates resources based on the ideas of central planners, and enforces those decisions with guns. It is evil at every level of conception.
I know people say that, and it makes nice pro-capitalist propaganda, but I don’t see any evidence for that causing the USSR’s downfall in reality. I always thought the massive beurocracy needed to keep the system going (from the military to the politbeuros) that made it inefficient and untimately unsustainable.
The people I met when I was there were generally happy with their careers if a little paranoid of the KGB and slightly disappointed that they couldn’t get all the latest American gadgets. They didn’t seem lazy though, and the system wasn’t ultimately overthrown by greedy people unless I missed something.
Well, the Soviet Union failed for several reasons; but the biggest reason was the obvious failures of the government and the Communist system. Under Brezhnev, the Black Market had become nearly enshrined as a way of life- you did your work for the government, and got what you could from the government stores, then did some work as a sideline to make a bit of real earnings that you could use to buy real goods.
The obvious failure of the government to provide real goods in desired quantities, combined with the various oppressions of the government- exterminating dissidents, squelching free speech, trying to prevent any form of worship (except hero worship for the past and present leaders of state)- made people quite ready for a change to the system. Gorbachev’s reforms of the '80’s actually worsened matters; the taste of freedom and capitalism, rather than quenching the thirsts of the populace, only made them desire more.
By the time of the coup, the great successes of the Soviet Union- the rapid industrialization of the '30’s, the Great Patriotic War of the '40’s, and the Space Race of the '50’s- was well in the past and the failures of the SU- the Black Market, Afghanistan- were much more in people’s minds, and when the chance to rebel came, enough people supported it that the whole thing came crumbling down.
Well, I was going to reply to this thread, but every point has been refuted, counter-refuted, and beaten into the ground with a very very large stick. So I’ll just post some links. for all the info you could want, and much you don’t. Look here, here, here, and here.
Why is Communism “supposed” to be evil and nasty? it destroys free will, religion, democracy, and everything american.
Why is it potrayed that way? Because the ruling class fears it.
And when were you there exactly? Under what circumstances?
Well how could you not be. At the height of Brezniev’s rule a nurse made 60 rubbles a month, an engineer made 120, and doctor 150. What’s not to be happy with. Everyone stands in line… not sure what the line is for until they get there but there is so little to buy that they are happy to be able to spend some of that money.
Well those stories about the KGB knocking on your door in the middle of the night and entire families suddenly disappearing weren’t just fairy tales you know. A little paranoia was a healthy thing back then. Kept you out of the gulags. In fact, simply listening to a little radio broadcast called Voice of America on your short wave radio was cause enough for arrest and questioning by the KGB. Yup. Paranoia. That’s all it was.
But American gadgets are sooooo cooool! Ask youself this, why crave something from America when everything in the USSR, according to your account, was so darn wonderful?
Certainly not. My dad, an engineer, picked up the shovel and dug ditches half his working days just to prove he was not lazy. And then he’d stay and finish his drawing after hours to further illustrate that fact. Or, no wait, was that because his labourers would show up to work drunk half the time and proceed to fall asleep in those same ditches. And why shouldn’t they. You could always get cheap vodka at those standardized workers wages - weather you did a day’s work or not. They sure as hell couldn’t fire someone so dedicated to his job that he’d sleep there.
No it wasn’t. It was undermined by greedy senior communist party members who built datchas with the cement intended for public roadworks. Oh, and that black market economy that thrived under communism - just a rumour. You think the Russian mafia suddenly got organized in a few short weeks after the fall of the communist regime? How naive, jmullaney. I mean really.
I am just saying things were not as bad as some people make things out to be. Of course, I was there after peristroika (sp?) began. I think it was '88? And I was only there for a month.
None of the problems you have suggested are unique to Communist Russia. Try capitalist Mexico during the same time period or most of South America. When capitalist Russia turns into a jewel of perfection I’ll concede your argument. Are the Russian people any less drunkards now than before? I doubt it. I think the U.S.S.R. had some remarkable accomplishments especially considering how backward they were in 1917, the cost in lives and capital of the Great Patriot War, and the general lack of resources compared to the U.S.
But, I defer to oldscratch. This isn’t my baileywick. I don’t think a lack of concrete brought down the government. That people had to go to the black market for goods simply shows that system, without as much beurocracy, was more efficient.
JMullaney: You happened to be there at probably the best moment of 20th century Russian history. You should have tried it there in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, or early 80’s. For that matter, any other time since the Bolshevik Revolution.
You might like to read “The Gulag Archipelago” for a first-hand account of conditions for dissidents in the Soviet Union.
You know, we rightfully condemn those idiots who try to deny that the Holocaust happened. It’s about time we applied the same level of condemnation to those who refuse to acknowledge the atrocities committed in the name of Communism (or any other totalitarian state, for that matter).
Stalin’s body count is higher than any other murderer in this century, including Hitler’s. Things were a bit better in the Soviet Union after he died, but it was no worker’s paradise. Millions were enslaved in forced labor camps, women had to stand in lines for an average of three hours a day just to provide basic sustenance for their families, waiting lists for apartments and cars could stretch into years and even decades, etc.
Human rights violations abounded. The knock on the door in the middle of the night was not a fairy tale - it happened on a regular basis to millions of people. The prime motivator of the public was fear. People lived while constantly looking over their shoulders. The state had internal spies everywhere, people ratted on each other to curry favor with the local bureaucrat, etc. Not a fun place to be.
Read “The Russians” by Hedrick Smith. No right-wing capitalist he… He’s a staunch Democrat who was the ambassador to the Soviet Union under Carter, if I recall correctly.
Then read “The Gulag Archipelago” by Solzhenitzyn.
While you’re at it, dig up some Amnesty International reports on human rights violations in Cuba, the last great Communist ‘worker’s paradise’.
I only took issue at what caused its collapse!
Also, jmullaney, your comment about the USSR’s lack of resources is absurd. The USSR controlled one-sixth of the world’s land mass and had all the resources it needed. The Communists did not know how to exploit that wealth.
My impression is that most of that land was tundra. You surely can’t say they had resources anywhere comparable to the U.S.
Actually, you can. The Soviet Union was rich in resources. Oil, Gold, farmland, Uranium, most precious metals… The U.S.S.R. had the world’s largest reserves of many primary resources.
Hell, forget Siberia. The land between the Urals and Poland was as big as the U.S., and much more useful - no deserts, no mountain ranges, just good soil. Under the Tsars Russia was the breadbasket of Europe; It was only under communist rule did they have to import grain.
Alessan’s comment strikes me as wrong, but I can’t find any cites right now I’ll have to dig them up. It is at the least misleading however. While grain exports might have shown a surplus, total imports/exports created a huge deficit. Russia was incredibly backwards in manufacturing and other fields. If you are going to give Stalinn credit for destroying grain, you must give him credit for making russia a G8 worhy country. I for one am reluctant to give credit for either.
Oldscratch:
I’ll give credit to Stalin for stoppiing Hitler, at least.
I’m noy saying that Communism is the worst form of government possible. To people used to corrupt monarchies, military dictatorships an colonial rule, going Marx’s way is not such a bad idea. Still, it’s far inferior to a democratic system, both in principle and in practice.
For Russia, Communism was a bit of a crutch - it got them on their feet, but it couldn’t get them running.
Agree completely with you on this one. That was Trotsky’s position. Of course Bukharin came back with the idea of socialism in one country, which was supported by Stalin in his battles with Trotsky. As we’ve seen, that turned out to be a disasterous failure.
Also, without Stalin it is questionable whether the nazi’s would have taken power in the first place. I don’t give him credit for that either. He also helped Franco into power, helped slaughter communists and peasents in China and supported proto-fascists there.