I’m not talking about the inner circle guys, that seems pretty obvious. And I know about a little guy named Marx and his book.
But just for one example the Cultural Revolution in China
This wasn’t an unpopular movement, it clearly had support from the common man. The goals are so wide ranging and almost scatter shot I’m at a loss how you could get the masses behind you. I guess what I’m saying is I’m trying to get into the head of the average supporter. Was it really just demagoguery? Did the average person really want to abolish religion completely? How did things snowball and get as crazy as they did?
I’ve read similar accounts of communist insurgency in Cambodia, which makes a tad more sense even.
What exactly was the average supporter hoping to gain by the end of emptying the cities and killing all professionals?
There is nothing complicated or obscure about this. They hoped to gain a society free of oppression, injustice and want, where everyone would be treated fairly, and no-one would be exploited. Sure, that is nothing like what they actually got for their pains, and perhaps (arguably) it was very naïve of anyone to ever believe it would ever be possible (although lots of very smart people did believe it), but as an ideal it was and is both rational and noble.
It is important to understand that none of the major communist nations that existed (and AFIK none of the minor ones either) ever represented itself as having achieved communism: they represented themselves as working towards it, and any suffering or injustice that that struggle caused for people today was justified in terms of the much better society that they expected to emerge in the relatively near future. (Presumably that is still the case in China and other nominally communist countries that still exist. Whether anyone in the Chinese leadership still truly believes it is another matter.)
Anti-communists can make a good case that a communist society is unattainable, or even that any attempts to achieve it are bound to make the world much worse rather than better. After the events of the twentieth century, in which little good and much evil came of some determined attempts (all, in different ways, abject failures) to create communist societies, these cases seem much stronger than they did when that century began. However, it is very much harder to make a persuasive case that if (perhaps per impossible) a communist society, as envisaged by communism’s supporters, could be achieved, that it would be a bad thing, and, indeed, that it would not be a much better society (certainly for the vast majority of people) than any of the ones we have.
Can’t talk too much about China and Cambodia, but I just finished up Anne Applebaum’s latest book, “Iron Curtain,” and it focuses quite a bit on the average Eastern European in the immediate post-war period, 1945-1956, specifically highlighting the experiences in Poland, East Germany and Hungary.
Short version: There weren’t many true believers, but there were many people interested in a return to normalcy after the war. Never underestimate the desire of most people to just go along and get along in exchange for a decent life, particularly after something as devastating as a world war.
Applebaum writes about many of these people as “reluctant collaborators”: people who sang the songs and spoke the words but didn’t really believe them. They just knew that if they didn’t go through the motions, they’d be suspected of bad things, or worse, and awful consequences would befall them. These could range anywhere from losing out on the “perks” delivered by the command economies (lose your job, lose your apartment/home) to actual imprisonment, exile, torture or death.
Some, however, were clearly more enthusiastic communists than others. Some of these people were just “social democrats plus,” meaning honest believers in the power of communism to improve lives. Unfortunately for them, they were never as trusted as those communists more willing to break eggs in making their omelettes, i.e. the Soviet-trained (and controlled) communists in Eastern Europe quickly gained a commanding power over most domestic allies of communism, and purged those domestic socialist movements (a common theme in the history of communism is that nominal “allies” were often the deadliest of enemies: see Bolsehviks vs. Mensheviks, Stalin vs. Trotsky, etc.).
Anyway, I recommend the book. It’s not quite as devastating as her earlier book “Gulag” (can’t recommend that one enough), but still, “Iron Curtain” is one of the saddest histories I’ve read in a while. Communism-- not to mention Stalinism-- was a grand tragedy for the people of Europe, and lives just barely spared destruction from Nazism were simply turned around and made to suffer an equally miserable fate by their communist conquerers.
The “communist society” envisioned has in effect no method to actually accomplish anything it claims or maintain itself once effected, and Communists never actually bothered to come up with any. Barring some truly absurd technology or miraculous advance in social science, it can’t actually function even if you managed to magically put it into place one day. Thus, Communism as such requires all problems to be eliminated first. Which is nice, but rather tautalogical: It’s not much of a claim to say that human civilization will be perfect once there re no flaws. It’s technically true, but really trivial.
However, on that very point, Communism as espoused by its supposed greatest thinkers is a rather tedious and trivial paradise. Its fixation on workers and obsession with the obsessions of Marx and other 19th-century Socialists has left it with rather little to say in a very different world of today. Even in its own time, it was never capable of actually talking with said workers; it could exhort them, not communicate to them. And not surprisingly, it couldn’t actually function in the modern industrial societies precisely because it was unsuited to changing conditions, which were pretty well constant. In fact, the appeal of Communism devolved down to self-absorbed intellectuals and the more ignorant breed of peasant. It validated the snobbish sense of superiority and desire for control of the first, and offered the latter a dream of the industrial life they wanted.
But this means its horizons are necessarily extremely limited. It can include the very trivial (i.e., the things intellectuals like or claim to like, but which tend to include lots of rather silly ideas and quixotic obsessions) and the extremely basic (things peasants like: lots of decent clothing and housing for everybody), but not anything of much good for anybody. And let us not be too harsh: it does indeed manage both. It gives the intellectuals lots of things to intellectualize over and the peasants somewhat more crappy goods than they might have gotten from a feudal peasant society. But hence it ends up saying nothing much to anybody else, and by nature there aren’t anymore peasants or intellectuals in the new Communist society, and who the hell knows what the New Communist Man might want? There’s no real reason he’d particularly want Communism.
Yeah, and that’s true of a Libertarian society, too. If one could be made as envisioned by the supporters. The problem with both systems is that they are not suited for actual, living human beings, and so they will be voted out unless an authoritarian regime prevents that from happening.
Do you really think that communism is achievable in a democratic society? That people won’t want to own the means of production themselves? I’m not a huge student of communism, but didn’t Marx actually envision (in a weird 19th century pseudo-scientific way) that a communist system would somehow change human nature and create a person suited to that type of system?
You shouldn’t regard China’s Cultural Revolution or Cambodia’s Year Zero as “average” events in Communist revolutionary history. These were the most extreme examples.
In a more typical communist revolution, the average man in the street expects that the existing political system, which is usually controlled by a corrupt elite, will be overthrown. In the short tem, the average people will benefit when the wealth of this elite is confiscated and redistributed. In the long term, they’ll benefit from a new regime that won’t be corrupt and won’t have an elite it will favor at the expense of the average citizens. The Bolsheviks, as a prime example, rose to power by promising three things: “Peace, Bread, and Land”.
Mao, and his lieutenants, would march into a village, string up the landlords, promise everyone their own land, and appoint some local popular guy to serve as the interim leader. They’d hold “people’s tribunals” and have quick trials, where the popular people were acquitted and the unpopular people were convicted (and executed on the spot.)
The people were promised swift, sure, certain, popular (or populist) justice. It takes a high level of education and sophistication to see how this is a fraud. The people lapped it up.
I didn’t say there is no case to be made, just that it much harder to make one that will be so widely convincing, especially to those many people who are far more sensitive to the massive defects and injustices of capitalism than you seem to be. The vast majority of people under capitalism do not lead rich, fulfilling lives, even if they are not driven into poverty. The communist utopian vision, by contrast, depicts people not only living in peace and plenty, but also doing fulfilling work for which their talents best suit them. The only urges that society would systematically try to thwart would be those of trying to obtain domination over other people.
Is such a society attainable? Probably not. Is it attractive to the vast majority of people who understand what the vision is? Darn right it is! Are there exceptions? No doubt. Most people would quite like to be able to dominate others, and some doubtless really feel that urge to dominate very strongly. (I am not sure they deserve to be indulged, though.)
I do not disagree.
I am not so sure about that. If a stable communistic economy of plenty of the sort envisaged by Marx and Engels could be achieved, I think there is little doubt that it would provide a much more comfortable and satisfying way of life for the vast majority of people than capitalism (or any other system that has been tried) has been able to provide, and would thus be very popular. The trouble is that the likelihood seems to be that such an economy would either be massively inefficient, or horribly unstable, or both, and could not long survive even if it could ever be set up. (The same goes quadruple for libertarianism.)
Authoritarian regimes should not be needed to buttress communism if it worked as an economic system, and indeed, idealistic communists looked forward to the “withering away of the state”. The authoritarian, and outright ruthless, regimes that were associated with communist rule were needed (according to the theory) only to shepherd people through the painful upheavals associated with the death of capitalism and the initial transition to communism. They were ruthless (and won supporters despite their ruthlessness) only because the very desirable end was believed to justify the frequently very unpleasant means. (I dare say that many or even all of those regimes quickly began to be corrupt too, but that is a different matter. Very likely communism would be doomed to failure even without any personal corruption amongst the movement’s leaders.)
Yes, I think that that is right, and you are probably also right to imply that it is absurd. However, I am not sure I agree that people wanting to own the means of production themselves would be one of the major problems. Remember that, in this context, communists are really talking about the means of mass production: factories and the like that one person (or corporate person) owns, and that other people work in or with, selling their labor to the owner. That is what communists object to. I do not think communists necessarily think there is anything wrong with a craftsman owning his own tools, for instance, and I am not convinced that many people, absent the historical and economic conditions that created capitalism, and outside of a capitalist system itself, particularly want to be capitalists.
The main attraction of being a capitalist in a capitalist society is that the capitalists (successful ones, anyway) get to be rich and autonomous, whereas most of the other people get to be relatively poor and have very little autonomy. Even then, it is probably true to say that most people have little or no real interest in becoming capitalists themselves. That sort of work does not really appeal to them (and perhaps they know they do not have the right talents for it) even though the rewards it brings are hugely disproportionate to obtainable by most other sorts of work and talent.
One of the key features of a communist economy (maybe the key feature) is that it would be set up so as to make it impossible (or, at the very least, unprofitable) for persons or corporations to gain control of means of production (means that other people will then have to use to actually produce). The (financial and power) rewards of being a capitalist thus no longer being available, the incentive to try to become one would surely be even less than it is now, and even now it is not all that great for most people. I also see no reason to think that most of the talents and drives that make some people potentially successful capitalists could not readily be harnessed to other socially useful and personally fulfilling ends.
(This is one of the key mistakes that libertarian utopians make, it seems to me: they assume that just because they think they would like to be, in some sense, entrepreneurs, and fondly imagine they would be brilliant at it, that everybody else would be happy and effective in being an entrepreneur too. Whatever mistakes they may make, Marxists do not make this one. Marxism is very pluralistic in the sorts of work it thinks should be valued.)
The key word is “utopian”. If you look closely as the Communist vision, you find that, well, it’s a vision. Extremely vague and bland, and there’s very little to argue about because there’s no substance. If you want to claim that noone (or very few people) can disagree with a vague promise of “good stuff”, then there’s very little one can say because it’s a platitude and not a promise. But the Communist vision, even vague as it is, remains a petty and fairly emoliated ideal. It’s a paradise only for fairly shallow materialists. I suppose as long as you promise more GOOD STUFF for everyone else who comes along, you can add to it, but it won’t amount to much even then.
to be fair the khmer rouge was overthrown by communist Vietnam and maos cultural revolution was because more level headed communists wanted to stop him from fucking up society so he tried to retake prominence. so communism was also part of what stopped or tried to stop those problems too.
also a person back then was far poorer, accustomed to brutality and death, and less educated than any of us talking about this. so there is that too, there atrocities weren’t as out of the ordinary.
but what did people expect from communism? probably liberation from both corrupt elites at home and imperialists abroad. a higher standard of living and national assets being invested in the poor rather than the well off. those see really appealing and are pragmatic goals rather than utopian social engineering.
Simply put, what the common man wants from communism is all the things that his better off neighbor has - for no more work than he is doing now. Equally simple put, that’s exactly what he gets - because the neighbor loses his stuff to the government.
Maybe I’m reading that wrong, but it sounds like you’re saying that communism probably can’t work, but if it did it would be great. That’s true of any wrong-headed idea, including Libertarianism. But at least Libertarianism doesn’t claim to make life easy for everyone. It just claims to give people maximum freedom. Sounds great in theory, but most people don’t really want maximum freedom when that means they may starve if they fall on a bit of bad luck.
Do you really think that most people in what we call The West are “relatively poor and have very little autonomy”? Or are you thinking that most Western countries aren’t really capitalist? Also, to be fair to Marx in my remark about his pseudo-scientific idea, he lived in a time when many pseudo-scientific ideas (like Social Darwinism and Eugenics, to name just two) had wide currency.
I don’t think Libertarians make that mistake at all. They realize that most people are not going to be entrepreneurs. One advantage that a Libertarian society has is that a sub groups could form a completely Communist society within “Libertaria” if they so wished. Any group form whatever associations they wanted. If a group of workers want to have a “paradise” by owning their own corporation, they could.
Not so with Communism-- it’s Marx’s way or the highway. That’s where authoritarianism comes in.
Early 20th century China was a dirt poor society that would make today’s third world poverty look luxurious. Most people barely eeked out a living using medieval farming technology- we are talking hand tools here, and were subject to regular periods of famine. The cities were overcrowded and overrun with disease. Women (half the population) were largely considered nothing more than property, and child marriage, food binding, and forced seclusion was common. A fairly immobile class system was in place, and most of the country could expect to die as poor as they were born.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world had undergone massive changes. The industrial revolution had come long ago, and at that point the middle class had become a normal thing. In the rest of the world, ordinary people were well-fed, had leisure time, and even had access to things like education. Women and minorities were slowly gaining access to some rights. On a larger level, nations were making great changes, and the modern world was forming. And China had no part of it. It was still torn by internal divisions, hopelessly behind, and subject to the indignities of colonialism.
For the intellectuals who brought in Communism, it seemed like the west’s path to modernization was unavailable to China. How else could you explain how easily China had been to invade, steal from, provoke into war and generally keep down? How could China compete with that? The rules seemed unfair, and it seemed like China would need to find it’s own path to prosperity (a thought that still persists today.)
For the foot soldiers it was any number of things. It was a chance to gain access to land and resources. In a village, it could be a way to settle old grudges. Some people were just hedging their bets, and hoping to be on the right side of history when somebody finally united China.
And the thing is- it worked. In what is a rare historical moment, China stepped away from it’s history as a mass of warring states and united. It became a real country, able to act on the international stage as such. It had allies- big powerful allies who previously couldn’t have cared less about a too-big backwards country.
China modernized quickly. Loads of bullshit- stuff like footbinding and concubinage- was quickly and rather decisively abolished, and China seemed to step out of medieval times into modernity overnight.
And people were proud of this. Their once proud country seemed to be finally getting over the shit they went through in the past hundred years. And it really did seem to be a people’s effort. The future looked limitless.
Of course, politics happened. But during the cultural revolution, people were scared. They were scared of the current political situation They were also scared of losing the progress they hand made.
Anyway, it’s worth noting from a historical perspective that turmoil and famine were familiar things to China. It wasn’t considered some uniquely Communist situation, it was something the Chinese people had always had faced periodic for centuries, and the Communist failures were basically seen as a continuation of a long history. Furthermore, people really did see real progress. Even today, Chinese people recognize the bad things Mao did, but they do appreciate being a united country that is a normal part of the modern world.
Actually, Mao’s Communism didn’t much change any of that. China wasn’t a particularly modern nation until the post-Mao reforms radically altered its course. Up until that time, it was essentially the same third-world state, except dumping a lot of resources into the pet projects of the ruling class (which happened to include the military). One can perhaps make the claim that the Communists were less chaotic/more capable than the previous rulers, but it was mostly a lack of any internal dissention brought on by unrivalled ruthlessness.
You’re consolidating several decades worth of history here as if it happened all at once. The Qing Imperial regime collapsed and China became a Republic in 1911. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921. Mao took over the Communist Party in 1935. The Communist took over most of China and established the People’s Republic in 1949. The Cultural Revolution began in 1966.
So there were several different waves of change, reform, and revolution. The people who were fighting to overthrow the Qing in 1911 were not the same people fighting against “rightism” in 1966.
Not true. The political unity was fairly immediate, and quite a triumph in a country that had seen so much warfare and internal strife. There were also sweeping changes in the status of women (huge! And women are half the population) and the role of religion. Stuff like child marriage and foot binding ended very quickly.
Economic modernization is, of course, quite new. But the even before 1978, China had an (shitty, but existent) industrial sector and reasonably modern military. The USSR at the time looked like a viable model for rapid industrialization, and many felt Communism could lead to similar changes in China. They would have seen the failures as a result of working with a country large, poor and troubled as China, rather than as failure of Communism itself.
Nobody is defending Maoism, and in hindsight we realize it was an extremely bad scene. But from the perspective of a supporter at the time, it would have seemed like a reasonable way for China to modernize. During the cultural revolution, a lot of people saw the harsh reality, but there are always passionate and uncritical young people who’ll buy in to any well-marketed cause to make up for them.
Of course. I’m trying to speak broadly for “why did people think this was a good idea for so long.” You could fill a library with Chinese revolutionary history.
I’m not in a postion to give references, but based on what I’ve read, and people I’ve worked with,
In AUS and the UK, there was also significant support from people who just didn’t like the present system, and didn’t see any particular downside to destroying it.
The rank and file in any movement tend to believe that the leaders of that movement are more or less capable of and more or less interested in doing what they say they’re going to do. That, after all, is usually why they support it. So when Communist leaders said “we’re going to make everything better for everyone” (which I think, in many cases, the founders or the various Communist parties really did intend to do, at least at first, at least as they understood “everything,” “better,” and “everyone”), the people who believed they could and would flocked to them.