Here’s something I have trouble wrapping my head around: the Jekyll and Hyde nature of communist movements.
While they’re still fighting as insurgents, communists look like heroes: selfless, brave, noble, idealistic. During the Vietnam era for instance, it must have driven American advisers crazy that the Republic of South Vietnam consisted largely of utterly corrupt dictators, their cronies, and their hired thugs, while anyone with a shred of idealism joined the Vietcong. Ditto Shiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalists in China during the late '40s. But then, once the Revolution is won, they invariably turn into monsters. Doubtless the preceding is an over-simplification, but it does look that way to a first approximation. Any explanation why?
I thought the war in Vietnam got rid of the ‘monsters’ - the imperialists and their cronies?
Not too keen one side labelling the other, seem way too many essentially socialist movements termed communist just to make it easier to get better funding. Yay capitalism.
I wouldn’t know how wonderful the communists are as insurgents, but keep in mind that if you have a well-functioning, liberal government with very little corruption, it’s unlikely you’re going to have a communist revolution in your midst. So, take it as a given that a prime reason for the revolution in the first place is the existence of a corrupt regime with little regard for the rights of the people it is supposed to serve.
Communism as an answer to authoritarian regimes appeals to idealists and to those who own little or nothing. They’re also often the ones who have nothing to lose and are willing to fight.
Once enough battles are won though, the idealists in charge have to contend with all the people who own at least something, with the fact that the people who own stuff are the people who know how to use it and the fact that a large portion of their troops didn’t understand that communism meant they wouldn’t be getting to own stuff personally. And that’s one of the ways they end up as violent oppressors themselves.
And then there’s also how in some cases the people who rise to the top in brutal struggles are the brutal people.
I think this is also a major factor in the resulting revolutionary government (often) being as bad as the ones they replace: Any country where a revolution can succeed is probably pretty badly off - they’re quite likely to have no money, no (or badly damaged) infrastructure, etc. Leading a country in that state is going to be difficult for anyone, and the skillset required to do it isn’t the same as the one that makes a successful revolutionary.
Given that, it’s not surprising to me that many revolutionaries end up in charge of a country whose problems they can’t fix, and that they then turn to violence (which is, after all, how they got into power in the first place, so they know it works) to maintain control. I don’t think this is a specifically Communist problem - it’s just a problem with revolutions generally.
I’m not sure if this is anything particular to communism and not revolutionary movements in general. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Those driven to grab power are those who want to wield it.
Maybe. But communism has shown to be only viable in a one-party state, which pretty much requires totalitarianism. People, if the can, always vote with their feet to get out of such countries.
We saw a massive throwing off of communism in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, with many successful transitions to liberal democracy. Not all were successful, but a good many were.
As I had to see things like that in El Salvador I can give my 2 cents:
In EL Salvador the first president of the former revel group demonstrated that he was not a monster, but that had to do IMHO with the fact that the civil war ended with a settlement, the key to avoid getting a monster like in other insurgencies was that not all reasonable and good people where killed by the oppressive militaristic and undemocratic regimes. But the oppressors came close to getting that result.
I do think that what happens in many other situations is that very reasonable leaders and veritable heroes that would had been fantastic leaders in the future were killed early by the oppressors (and sometimes by the insurgent group), sometimes they were killed too easily as those heroes first decided to give democracy a chance and meet in the open and with no armed protection.
I actually saw reports and violence then of how the military rounded up great men that would had been great leaders, but the elites then did not believe in democracy.
What happened was that then the next in line among the insurgents just got one lesson from seeing what the oppressors where up to. Moderate revels were rounded up and killed and then dropped into a ditch next to a road. The insurgents that were willing to give democracy a chance were captured in broad day light and then killed and nothing was done to capture the perpetrators (as it was found out later that the perpetrators were part of the government’s military and death squads). So the lesson the next in line got was that grabbing a gun and fighting was then the best choice. But it is a choice forced on a movement that can easily get them a leader that enjoys crushing others and loves to keep power.
The point for me is that the ones that supported (and some still support) the actions of the neo fascists in Latin America and elsewhere are not completely blameless for the resulting Mr. Hides.
It is indeed like one doper said once: “democracy is not for sissies” the powerful on the whole in the developed nations nowadays are following that lesson and found that there is little to fear from moderate more socialist groups that are winning in several countries. What I remember is that when the moderates are killed is very likely to turn a movement that was socialist in nature to become a more radical one thanks to the extreme opposition to change. And then things turn to pot.
The irony here is trying to view either side as black or white. You are doing the same thing. Not all of the South Vietnamese were as you are portraying them, just like the other side weren’t the white knights either before or after the revolution succeeded. Same goes for the Chinese nationalist verse Mao and the gang.
As to why, once they gained power they really went off the deep end (while, once the dreaded capitalists succeeded in hell holes like South Korea you get…well, one of the major economic powers in the region), you have to go back to the root differences between the two systems. In the end, Communism simply doesn’t work as an economic system…nor does Socialism, as an economic system. In order to keep people in line with how bad it is, you pretty much need a totalitarian and authoritarian system in place to keep them under thumb…otherwise they will either revolt (again) or leave (if they can). And will certainly make things difficult for those trying to rule purportedly in their name.
Allow a little bit of freedom and a little bit of economic prosperity while trying to maintain the thumb and you get…China. Which has been simmering in a borderline state of semi-rebellion for years now. And may not be borderline for long if the CCP keeps fucking up by the numbers as they have been.
One interesting bit of history to me is to remember how terrible the French Revolution was and that it led to Napoleon. (Heck, they even called one of the phases of the revolution “the terror”). But after centuries one can see that the French do understand the bad and hold on to the good that took place.
The French still feel that setting the ground for democracy and getting rid of the tyranny of the nobility of those days eventually led (many decades later though) to an stable democracy and Bastille day is a holiday now, of course that holiday did not take place until 1880 after Napoleon III was removed from office for being a military dunderhead and an incompetent leader; and that he showed the people how it was not a good idea to allow the nobility (that was Napoleon III then) to obtain high power.
Fighting against bad government does not make a cause good. Certainly by the Vietnam war anyone with a modicum of historical understanding knew that the communists were evil and if they won the war massacres and concentration camps would be the inevitable result. However Communists have always been good at propaganda and some people want to be fooled.
The Cold War era Marxist/Leninist movement was brilliant at seizing power – and totally bankrupt at exercising power.
However, they were corrupt from the beginning.
Mao’s “Long March” had the appearance of a liberation movement, but it was a sham. They’d come in to a village, hold “people’s courts” where they would try the landlords for charging too much rent, and shoot them. The common peasants thought this was a lovely idea…until they realized the new landlords were worse.
Some communist leaders really did have the goal of modernization, reform, cleaning up corruption, etc. (The same is true for capitalist leaders. Teddy Roosevelt, as New York Police Commissioner, had to fight like hell to reduce graft and corruption. No system is immune.)
The resistance of the National Liberation Front did not begin as a Communist protest movement, but as a protest from Buddhists angered over the elite Catholic power structure of Viet Nam, which began with the French colonization of Viet Nam. The Buddhist monks setting themselves ablaze were not Communists, as should be glaringly obvious.
When the oppression became increasingly violent, the Buddhists had no weapons or organization with which to resist, the Communists had both. And so it went.
I think that part of the problem is that a utopian philosophy like communism has a problem when reality does not conform to expectations. Remember that the first elections in eastern Europe after the war were fairly honest, because the Communist parties in exile that were put in power by the Soviets truly believed that they were right, and that the public would naturally choose them. Their losses were a wake up call, and the real start of oppression.
True believers do not deal with cognitive dissonance well. When they encounter it, corpses result.
