Is communism what failed in Russia? Or was it failure to follow through?

Great Debates
21

I’m afraid this answer isn’t useful.

Now, to be upfront, I don’t know much about Kerala, never having been there and is not being a common topic in my readings. That said, I am perfectly happy to accept that everything you say is true. It’s also largely irrelevant, and that’s no insult.

Because Kerala isn’t Communist. It has a Communist party, no doubt, but it’s not Communist. It is, in fact, only moderately Socialist. It;s possible they’ve gone and redefined COmmunism to suit themselves, but it meets no definition of COmmunism I’ve ever heard.

Utopian Communism: Definitely not. Not utopia, not community.
Marxism: Nope. State is definitely not withering away. No rise of the proletariat to kill everyone.
Leninism: The Party hasn’t taken the sole power.
Maoism: The same…

Whether or not they fund education is irrelevant, because educaiton is not Communist. It is wholly irrelevant to Communist theory. Even Marx, who spent his last years teaching the proletariat, did so only because he felt it would make the inevitable bloodbath less terrible. In fact, every Communist power has risen to power on the backs of largely uneducated peasants and workers.

I’m sure they call themselves Communist. However, by your wn words, you show that they do not meet any of the classic or modern definitions of Communism. It sounds not too dissimilar from any other half-socialist state in the West.

22

Taking a look at wikipedia on this issue, it would seem that Kerala has some major advantages, too.

Despite it’s relatively high standard of living, it’s economic activity is lacking. It seems to thrive on tourism more than other Indian states, and has vast income from overseas Indians sending money home. That makes a huge difference. Also note that its key agriculture sector grows lots of valuable spices. It’s also a leader in outsourcing (frm the U.S. and other places).

It also appears to have a sky-high 20% unemployment rate. And it looks like the nationalist UDF, not the leftist LDF (led by the Communist party) are in charge now. I’m sure the LDF has had a lot of influence in Kerala - but it’s not a paradise, and they’re not the only ones at work here.

23

Taking a look at wikipedia on this issue, it would seem that Kerala has some major advantages, too.

Despite it’s relatively high standard of living, it’s economic activity is lacking. It seems to thrive on tourism more than other Indian states, and has vast income from overseas Indians sending money home. That makes a huge difference. Also note that its key agriculture sector grows lots of valuable spices. It’s also a leader in outsourcing (frm the U.S. and other places).

It also appears to have a sky-high 20% unemployment rate. And it looks like the nationalist UDF, not the leftist LDF (led by the Communist party) are in charge now. I’m sure the LDF has had a lot of influence in Kerala - but it’s not a paradise, and they’re not the only ones at work here.

24

That started with Lenin bolsheviks in Russia, so you are not talking about Communism but Leninism. Before Lenin, 'power grab and centralised control’ were not defining characteristics of Communism. Everybody knows that Lenin was always quarelling with political opponents of other parties. Not many people know how much opposition Lenin had within his own party. Most of the time he was in minority among the Bolsheviks, with majority opposing his ideas of taking power. Many prominent Russian bolsheviks thought,- quite correctly,- that taking power in 1917 would spell the disaster for the whole world-wide Communist movement. Lenin overcame their resistance once and again by making and braking temporary political alliances within his own party. By forcing the Bolsheviks to seize power in Russia in 1917, Lenin changed the nature of Communist movement. Since then, other ‘successful’ Communist have followed his model.

Sorry, but this is exactly backwards.

The power base of post-Lenin communists was always among radical intellectuals, factory workers and soldiers of Big City garrisons. Peasants never supported Communists, because prosperous farming and Communism are absolutely incompatible. That’s why Communists always had food problems.

Communists were always at war with prosperous peasants and productive farmers. Forcefully sending city dwellers to work in the countryside was a two-pronged strategy to put the agriculture on industrialized basis (without unpredictable and stubborn peasants and farmers) and to get rid of opposition in the cities at the same time.

25

While I think the first part of your post was correct, more or less, the second part was definitely wrong. Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, and more all came to power by exploiting rural groups. Especially Mao, whose entire party core after the civil war ended was formed out of rural peasants.

It is true that out-and-out Communism is incompatible with agriculture. But many of the people who supported it didn’t see that. They saw or thought they saw that they were being exploited by “rich city folks.” And this may have been true. They often did not know that the Communists would do so much worse.

26

Perhaps the stories of Communist takeovers in China, Korea and Vietnam were different.

I know that in Russia, Bolsheviks had practically no support from peasants (who voted overwhelmingly for SRs), so their relation with peasants were always hostile, to the point that Bolsheviks were sending armed workers to the countryside to confiscate foodstaffs from peasants by force.

However, Chinese and Cambodian communists were later forcefully sending students and intellectuals from the city to work like slaves in the fields, just like in USSR. I think that indicates they were following Soviet policy of radical change in the agriculture while ‘re-educating’ the potential opposition at the same time.

27

Getting back to the OP: I sometimes wonder what would have happened in Russia if the Bolsheviks had followed through on their slogan, “All power to the soviets!” The soviets (the word simply means “councils”) were self-organized workers’ councils that emerged in Russia starting in 1905, and were independent of the Bolsheviks’ political control, although there was a lot of Bolshevik sympathy in their ranks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_(council) The slogan meant that the soviets (rather than the state or the Party) would run the industries. E.g., the steel industry would be run by a workers’ soviet in every steel mill, all of them coordinated (IIRC) by a national steel soviet elected by the shop-level workers, etc. I wonder how that would have worked out?

28

Assuming it didn’t all simply fall apart (especially once the great depression hit Europe) or some other group of thugs take over they would have been steamrolled by the Nazi’s and WWII would have been a lot different.

-XT

29

Why? You don’t believe the soviets could have industrialized the country as fast as Stalin did?

30

Definitely not though thats not the point I was making (remember where they were at the start of the revolution industrially…no way could they have gotten so far without someone holding a whip). I don’t believe a collection of ‘soviets’ could or would be able to field a modern military force that was both cohesive and coherent in the face of what Germany threw at them. They would have shattered like glass and I doubt even the vaunted Russian winter would have saved them.

Bad and wacked out as Stalin was (wacking much of his office corps for example), he still managed to light fires under people and get things done. Also despite initial fuckups and shattering defeats the Red Army managed to hold together…and I think part of that was simple fear of Stalin. Without someone like that I think those initial defeats would have been worse and Russia would have folded much as France did.

Of course, AFTER the Russian people might have fought a stuborn guerilla war and tied down the Germans for years or even decades…especially if they actually had a love of country that was lacking in the average Soviet citizen at the start of the war.

-XT

31

This goes back to the problem of central planning versus the price mechanism. The workers’ soviets would be trying to guess how much steel they ought to make, which suppliers they ought to use, etc. The national steel soviet would be trying to guess what part of the country to ship the steel to, which industries needed how much steel to make their own products, etc. To get it right would require processing billions of bits of information, not to mention making value judgements about whether it’s better to have more bridges or more factories or more tanks.

The only way I can see central planning working on a large scale is if you have near-infinitely smart people who all share exactly the same values/preferences. And even then, letting a free market determine prices/costs frees up those smart people to enjoy their agreed-upon hobby of choice, instead of sitting around calculating all day.

I think most communist idealists of the industrial revolution would have been equally happy with workers becoming small business owners, having a stake in the means of production, and enjoying the fruits of their labor that way. It’s certainly closer to the communist ideal than the police state.

32

That would be called “distributism.” See this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=344179

33

Whether the peasants liked the Bolsheviks or not is hardly relevant to the argument, New Iskander. Communism became a backwater revolt because the analysis it gave of society fits most the economies of backward places where ownership of the land meant you had power, whereas if you didn’t own land you were impoverished and dependent on the landowners for everything.
Urban economies are far more complex, and have multiple classes with lots of mobility between them, the opposite of rural, land-based backwaters.
Points 8 and 9 of the Communist Manifesto show the disdain for city-based life that communism is all about; they could have been written by the Khmer Rouge:

Admittedly, the Khmer Rouge didn’t have much patience for gradualism.
As for centralization, see points 5 and 6:

Centralization of power is of course also inherent in the idea of point 1:

It’s hard to imagine this one happening without a strong central government.
Lenin was more a logical consequence of the ideology as far as his centralizing tendency, and Mao and the Khmer Rouge were the logical consequence of the simplistic economic analysis that so well fit backward agricultural places, and the equally simplistic solution of emptying the cities to distribute the population more “equably”.
I well remember a story about Shining Path guerrillas, most of whom were Indians, coming across a prosperous Indian settlement, where the people had, by their own hard work, built a small but prospering town for themselves.
They of course destroyed the place. Study its success? Never even occurred to them.

34

They were. Take China. The Nationalists controlled the cities. The Communists were forced to adapt. They organized cells of rural cadres and sort of absorbed the countryside. Then they mvoed into urban areas.

Actually, the Chinese and Cambodians weren’t sending out the opponents - they were sending out the loyal. Most of those kids were, at least as first, volunteers. IIRC, many were Red Guards, Mao’s loyal young lapdogs who broke the power of his former allies with public beatings and humiliations. The opponents were sent t the CHinese gulags if they survived. The Red Guards were sent to be revolutionary woth the peasants. But life in the fields was harsh, pointless, tedious, and unproductive. These were bright young city folk, and they weren’t able to cope in the hard and limited world of the peasant village.

In some ways, Chinese oppression was even worse than the Russian. hey were a little less openly brutal - but they constantly put on a show of fairness and justice. And the poor fool who was being beaten or held in a “struggle session*” and left to rot in a backwater village had to pretend that everything was AOK. It’s one of the reasons that China was able to keep up the pretense of being a happy, perfect society and fool so many leftists in the West. They were obscenely good at keeping up pretenses. For example, their private palaces were very discreet.

*I don’t even want to go into what this is. It’s one of the most horrific and corrupt acts ever committed by humans - with no blood involved.

35

But aren’t you contradicting yourself, just a little bit?

36

True, all that might have been in the Communist Manifesto. Only without the urgency.

That was the way things were prophecied to happen, eventually, when the world is ready. It was not said it had to happen in 1917, 2017 or 7017. It was inevitable, therefore not urgent. It was a beautiful cause, but it was not to be rushed. Trying to hasten this end might even be counterproductive. Taking power by force preemptively was interfering with History. It meant getting one’s hands bloody, adopting bourgeois and imperialist methods dealing with unruly masses, not yet developed to embrace the future. It might destroy the International Communist movement.

That’s exactly how most prominent Bolshevik veterans have thought. Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov and others were coming against Lenin again and again, and they had support of the majority among Bolsheviks. Unfortunately, it was inert majority, while Lenin was a single active force.

It is not easy to understand, but in 1917 Russia very few people actually wanted power. The Tsar abdicated in favor of his brother, the Grand Duke, who didn’t accept the throne, Provisional Gov’t was formed to guide the country until the Constituent Assembly, with it’s power growing weaker almost every day.

There is a famous episode in Communist hagiography, how many Russian Socialists were discussing the crisis of power at the Congress of Soviets in 1917; the consensus was that there was no Party capable to assume the power in Russia, to which Lenin shouted, “There is such a Party, it is our party!” to resounded laughter of the whole Congress.

The point is, most people were trying to keep the country going through the hard times. There was hope in freely elected Constituent Assembly. The war was extremely unpopular, but surrender was absolutely out of question. It was the best possible tactic under the circumstances. If only they could empower the Constituent Assembly and manage to hold on until Germany requested ceasefire from the Allies in 10-1918, the whole effort would pay off handsomely.

37

yes, in a few years, Afghanistan may be as egalitarian as America, with its few billionaires and its millions of working poor. What a victory!

38

First, Bolsheviks were driven by Lenin and Lenin wanted power, so it is naive to expect him to honor any campaign slogan. But suppose he did.

Soviets were not the seat of power and not the government. Russia had a real gov’t (Provisional Gov’t) in place until Constituent Assembly. ‘Soviet’ in Russian means ‘Council’, and that’s exactly what the Soviets (of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies) used to be before Bolshevik subversion. They advised the Provisional Gov’t, which was extremely responsive to them. Again, like most entities in Russia in 1917, the Soviets didn’t aspire to power. They wanted to influence things in favor of their constituency, but they had no desire or capacity to take power in their hands.

Now, imagine Bolshevik coup didn’t take place, democratically elected Constituent Assembly filling the power vacuum, Germany suing for peace, the War over victoriously, the new era opening for Russia under Democratic Socialist gov’t, working in close contact with influential grass-roots Soviet councils, representing the real people… why, the whole world might have been a tad better by now!

39

The answer to the OP is: Neither.

The failure of Russian Communists was succumbing to Lenin’s demands and agreeing to seize power by force.

40

No. They were the China’s future. They were all betrayed in turn as they had betrayed, and most wound up with no future. Almost a generation of China was wasted. But before the Red Guards, they were the new generaion of hope.

What’s wrong with billionaires? And the working poor? A poor person in America has a heck of alot of goodies. They can quite often afford cars, designer clothes, computers, cable television.