Ok, guys:
My position in this thread is quite unique. I am
not a communist, a marxist, nor even eminently left-leaning – except perhaps by USA standards. It is not even uncommon for me to debate
against left ideologues, at least here in Brazil, where they enjoy a credibility that seems uncommon in most of the first world.
That said, I feel that what this thread needs most is not someone pressing philosophical or practical
problems with communism, but a better understanding of what it was, and what went wrong, in the earthly attempts.
I don't fancy myself an expert, not as much as Luceafarul anyway, though I did have studied it at least some bit, and feel able to help communicating this, with the advantage of a more neutral perspective, for I don't aim to vindicate communism, just to understand it. As so, I got Luce's permission to answer questions in this thread as well, while still making it clear to him that I am not a defender of these ideas, though I sympathise with many of it's aspirations.
Quite democratically, he granted me the permission.
As so, I'll answer a few questions I pinpointed while the debate was progressing, while at the same time I make myself available to answer any questions that might be addressed to me.
Nothing. And everything. Communism isn't a phenomena which can be “pin down” by observation, but an aspiration that came to be theoretically, and because of that, many people can define “communism” in a whole number of different ways. Historically speaking, the seizure of the term “socialist” by the Nazi party – which is the anti-thesis of communism ideology, and actually a knee-jerk reaction to the red revolution – is the best example of how much the conceptualization may vary.
That said, there is a certain consensus on “what communism is”, as a form of social organization in which the focus lies in the collective pursuit of happiness, rather than the individual, through rational planning of both the pursuit and the distribution of wealthy. And contrary to the evocation this concept brings up today (at least in this audience), this does not intend to mean “making the individual meaningless”, but rather, to suggest that cooperation and brotherhood with fellow people is the most powerful manner through each person can achieve their personal goals, when sincere and among equals.
This is not an absurd idea at all. The history of human progress is the history of human beings gathering. But I'll explore this idea more deeply on the next answer, when I deal with the “communism is against human nature” argument, so let's get back to the point of “what it is”.
There being so much variation in the topic, the question
per se does not make much sense, so I'll reduce it to defining the most well-known communist proposition – and the most well-known proposition of communist implementation is Karl Marx and Friederich Engel's
Material Dialectics, because it is, allegedly, the substance behind the Soviet Revolution, which was trigger to all left-oriented regimes of the 20th century.
This is the bit I'd like to explore a more in this “what is communism” question, and for that I want to lay down premises, so please, cope with me. My interest here is trying to clear out the old debate of “was the Soviet Union truly communist”, which we get ever so often in every thread on the topic. But also, I want to handle a preposterous claim, that the “Fascism of the 20th century is communist”, which I have never heard until I joined this forum. So as I said, I'll adopt a Marxist model for the purposes of this reply, as it is the most commonly remembered form of communism.
But to do that, let me take a step back from Karl Marx, and look at Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's archetype of thought, better known as “Hegelian Dialectics”. Hegel proposed that complex systems are not “whole”, in the sense of being composed by a coherent “atomic” structure, but rather, dynamic, an interaction of autonomous events. Hence, any given situation of balance (c)would be corrupted by “defects of interaction”, as well as organic alterations of it's given structures.
For example, take Feudalism as a “complete”, functional system. The implication of a “system of smal independent political entities, subject to feudal lords ruling servants, with eminently autonomous economies and xenophobic relation with foreigners” was stable enough to compose a
working structure, which Hegel called “Thesis”.
“Thesis” is, however, inherently imperfect (like any human construct), and it is corrupted by the alteration of the elements that composes it. For example, banned individuals, lacking land to work, started to dedicate to commerce, effectively mining the isolation and xenophobia. Specialized workers, like healers, craftsmen and knights, effectively mined the rule of feudal lords, for, not being easily replaced, they started being able to dictate rules, at least partially; external forces, such as enemy armies from larger feuds, started pushing for unification of small areas into a stronger whole, beginning movements of centralization. These forces were called “micro-synthetic alterations”.
These micro forces would accumulate and reinforce each other: say, as commerce was reestablished, you need standard measures and coins, this necessity of standardization reinforces that born of the need to build larger armies, and “centralization” becomes an even more pressing topic. But centralization is not just an adjustment, it hurts the very core of feudalism, and creates at something entirely different than the model – this, an important change, is known as “macro-synthetic alteration” or “quantitative change”.
When enough quantitative changes accumulate so you can't even recognize the structure, the once stable system morphs into an altogether different thing, what is known as “qualitative change”, and marks the arrival of the anti-thesis, the denial of the core principals of the old system. The anti-thesis and the former thesis than merge into a
synthesis, or “new thesis”, that would in theory sum the best of the conflicting models, and the whole process starts over.
I have brought this up because this is the archetypal of marxist thought – he acknowledges the
laisser-faire capitalism of the 18th and 19th centuries as “thesis”, and proposes class struggle as the main agent of corrosion, as the proletarian class, enlightened by specialization and political rhetoric inside the factories, where unity is a natural development, would, theoretically, become aware of it's power and refute the model of “surplus-value being redirected to the bourgeoisie class”. This is the reason why Marxist model is known as “material dialectics” - because it supposedly applies the Hegelian abstract model to the concrete dynamics of society.
This is also the reason why marxist thought is commonly referred to bring about the “end of history” - because, by proposing a classless society, then the main actor of system modification as seen by Marx – class struggle – would cease to exist, effectively creating a reality without pressure for change.
Hence, from a Marxist perspective, you'd have three stages:
1 – Capitalist stage or “phase of enrichment” - to even start the Marxist model, you need to start from a rich and successful capitalist nation, in which the proletarian class enjoy sufficient share of the general wealthy to educate itself politically, managing to perceive that the distribution of wealthy is made in their disadvantage. This is
thesis.
2 – Socialist stage – when the “revolution” takes place and a strong (not necessarily dictatorial) government denies class advantage and confiscate the means of production in order to engage redistribution. This is
anti-thesis.
3 – Communist stage – when the redistribution is finished, and the new, fully aware proletarian class, in possession of means of production, does not need a strong government at all, the fluency of the system being maintained by the fact that there are no channels to divert wealthy from complete redistribution. Theoretically, this would sum the freedom of an “enlightened anarchy” with the efficacy of the capitalist model (for reward at “group level”, would be promptly perceived, hence, also the individual needs would be met by a swift redistribution). This would be the definitive synthesis.
Thing is that while Marx was perfectly right in the diagnoses of the class struggle, he IMHO went wrong when he tried to dictate the path of the anti-thesis and “predict” how it would go. Indeed, the very nature of dialectics is it's fluency, so trying to channel it is a no-go effort. History has “proved him wrong” in several ways:
1 – the wealthy nations, becoming aware of class struggle due to Marx' warning, established systems of welfare net to absorb the worst ills of capitalist models within their territories. In that, Ironically, by teaching the capitalist societies what ills it should be concerned about, Marx effectively raised awareness on how to keep the level of discontentment low enough to put off the revolutions any state successful enough to have money to redistribute (and hence, the only ones successful enough to go trough his three steps);
2 – outsourcing of poverty, which most famous face is the “sweatshops” in the third world, creating the false perception of areas in which capitalism have not created outcasts – when in fact its just a control of where the outcasts will show. This is why you so often see capitalism being presented as a staggering or even flawless success, by people who never had any experience with it's ugly face.
3 – Specialized jobs and liberal professions (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc...) blurring the line between explored and explorer, by providing functions that cannot easily be replaced and that require a great deal of study and natural talent that many wealthy people aren't willing to pursuit, and in all, to capitalism's credit, the promisse of social ascention, that while it's mostly unachievable, is still real enough to give credence to the claim that it's a fair and merit-based structure – what it mostly isn't;
4 – All the above moved the allure of the “social revolution” from the intended vector (rich capitalistic nations) to an unexpected and unforeseen vector – poor, rural and feudal nations, where there have been no “phase of enrichment”, and no great epiphany from the proletarian class – where, in fact, proletarian didn't even exist, and the masses simply followed leaders which promised change. There were, then, no real commitment to this ideology, except for a few leaderships which than became easily corruptible. Thing is, than, that instead of being a noble goal or flag, communist jargon became simply a new “fashionable” terminology to express class dispute, without a real revolutionary structure and substance behind – just regular old-fashioned power struggle.
5 – So the states which actually tried moving towards the anti-thesis were “not ready”, and because of that, the fluency between the “socialist phase” and “communist phase” was lost. The anti-thesis (highly powerful government) perpetuated itself and lost it's ideological commitment to the redistribution, and because of that, they merely replaced the former economical elite for a bureaucratic elite of party members, effectively incurring in every single vice of exploration they should have dismissed, and several more.
The first step was missed, and the third was never taken. As you see, the way I perceive it, it's indeed
very wrong to call the leftist regimes of USSR and China, and it's satellites, communist regimes, when the term “communism” is linked to Karl Marx's writings. They were not a fruit of the Marxist ideal, and never followed it's steps. That is why, indeed, when someone say that “a communist regime was never really tried”, he is mostly right, for while it's not unfair to acknowledge what happened in real life as regimes of communist
inspiration,
they certainly never followed the plans of the theoretical visionaries, specially when we admit that, by speaking of communism, we are speaking of
marxist communism.
So we were left with “aberrations” (for they diverted from the plan) and “abominations” (for, well, they were truly heinous), that however used propaganda to portray themselves as Marxist heaven to exploit the image of care and benevolence of such figurehead. When their true nature became obvious, propaganda reversed – and ideologues opposed to any and all form of communism have been trying to paint, in the head of the population, that those abominations are the “natural path” of anything collective, an endeavour that has been highly successful and makes collectivism sound worse than fascism, or even satanism, in quite a few people's ideology.
The decline of popularity of these ideas is behind many modern movements to disable nets of welfare and take away state-granted rights of laborers, the movement known as “neo-liberalism”, which is indeed, an attempt to partially reinstate the “liberal” laisser-faire conditions that communism rose to fight.
I will repeat here a warning that I often make when debating this topic – people of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries were not dumb, and there were good reasons why communism had such great appeal to them. We have to revert this tendency to make it a dirt word and remember that many of our rights were concessions to keep it's popularity in check, before were start getting reasons to remember
why people wanted it.
As for fascism, well, it was a dictatorial movement, and as so, inherently meant strong governmental power. That power, however, never meant to redistribute anything, just to oppress ideologies that contradicted it's ideologies, among which a liberal,
laisser faire ideology. This is not entirely true about Nazism, that resembled a form of chivalry as it praised mainly “heroes” that would sacrifice themselves for the “nation”, but both classic fascism and Nazism wanted a strong State
that would bring about the conditions in which the entrepreneurs/heroes would function unhindered, what is quite contrary of the leftist dictatorships, which always maintained a focus on the collective appraisal and glory of the people and the revolution above and beyond individuals (despite some cult of personality of a few leaders).
The problem is that the dictators tend to concentrate, and as so, it was not uncommon to have government dictating policies that interfered on how private businessman would run their factories, specially in the later years of war, when there were real necessity of focus on products that would help war effort (but that is quite natural and there is no single system in which government turns particularly string at war). Frankly, the only thing fascism and the leftist regimes of the 20th century had in common was their degeneration into tyrannies, what certainly isn't enough to sustain the obviously erroneous conclusion that fascist nations were left-leaning (and in fact, they actually were an extreme right reaction to communism, particularly the catholic right, that feared the “atheist” red revolution – but that is subject another thread entirely).
So, IMHO, these are the reasons why it's so common to see the term “communism” being thrown around to mean a whole bunch of completely different things.
Why will people bother to create economic growth in a communist society?
This is the old argument “communism is against human nature”, for the evocation here is that such system would not create incentives for production. But this question is actually reductionist and contain a few errors in premise.
First, I'd like anyone reading this to take a moment and try to visualize that human beings have a
conflicting, paradoxal, nature. While it's true that we are individuals specially concerned with our lives and our own genetic line, it's also true that evolution and sociology were shaped by the fact that we are able to survive better and in greater numbers when we gather in groups.
So, contrary to the discourse we hear often in this topic, I dare say that our communal (not communist) impulses are as relevant as our individual impulses – kind of “egoist gene” style, we acknowledge that society allows a better life for the individual. This is why abhorrent as the concept of “collectivism” is being painted in modern societies, very few people actually opt to become eremites.
That said, consider capitalism: is that
really coherent with human nature? If we evoke the pursuit of individual gain as the reason why it is, than we have to cope with the fact that
respecting the property of others becomes against human nature. Why a starving person should respect the property of the seven eleven and not simply “take” the food he wants?
If the answer is law, than an act of force serving as deterrence, the
fear of punishment crushes the argument – the human nature is being violated as people would be forced to act against their instinct, and taking away force would make the system crumble. So capitalism can't be tuned with human nature with this answer.
However, should you answer “respecting property is what makes the system work, and people have a inherent interest in it”, than you are acknowledging that human beings are capable of thinking beyond their immediate interest, consider the whole, and decide for the best to the group (so he can share the same benefit). But this answer gives credence to those who argue that we
can overlook self-interest and pursuit collective aims, and this opens the door to negating that communism is “against human nature”.
Frankly, I think both answers are correct and work together to make a functioning society. Problem is that the element of force in communism is applied
before production (centrally planned economy determining what to do and who to get paid), while capitalist element of force is applied after the wealthy is generated (do transfer the money you have after the service is complete; do deliver the product; do honor the contract).
So, capitalism and communism are both “against human nature”, but capitalism's deterrence is more easily implemented. IMHO, efficacy is capitalism's saving grace in all the debates on this topic, but as a human being that cares for more than efficiency, I hate to see this be mistaken with justice. What brings me to my second pont here: Communists
can have property even in the Marxist archetypal. This means that they can have rewards, and also, nothing prevents the rewards from being proportional to their contribution.
We remember the most famous cases – Russian astronauts, Olympic winners, Kasparovi. But everywhere there were guys who went from the lines of production to become head of the factory, and this meant improvement, even if not akin to their capitalist counterparts.
And herein lies the problem – as there have been no manner to create “objective value” to human functions, there were no way to measure rewards given except from a comparative angle, and this certainly was one of disadvantage to the communist countries, which were never as wealthy except perhaps between the 40 to the 60's. As I have already said, not justice, but efficacy, is capitalism's saving grace.
This is a perfectly good criteria to pick capitalism over communism, IMHO, because the second can't do better anyway. But it certainly should not vindicate the almost evangelical love some people have for the idea of capitalism, which also creates a majority of poor people. Besides, people choosing this line of thought should be willing to change their mind if some “communist” approach which is more efficient were created, otherwise this criteria is false and just a justification. It's fair to say that no such communist methodology was ever created, but there is nothing
inherently wrong with the assertion that planned economy *could* be more efficient than free market should we learn well enough to handle the variables.
I'd like to point out that this isn't an inherently “best” approach to how rewards should be handled in society. Our system of “you have to pay whatever the person selling is asking” is
just a choice of how to handle them, a choice that, so far, has proved to be functional enough to guarantee a working society – but hardly this is the immutable irrefutable unquestionable premise that some people make it out to be.
While, say, a government made “list of prices” saying how much each possible commodity and service would cost is a highly arbitrary solution, well, so it is to leave it to the fluency of the market. We are so used to gravitate around a certain set of oddities that we hardly notice it anymore, but there is something very weird in a system where a top-notch scientist whose work saves lives is paid less than a singer who plays the guitar very well, or a basketball player, whose utility is a fraction; a system where substance is much less important than image, and being a “known face” is on it's own a source of wealthy – more flagrantly, a system where you may have to destroy part of the prodution to keep prices up by having people who need such things be left without them (for example, destroying crops to avoid maket overflow). In a capitalist society, we are ok with accident of birth defining that some people will never have to work, an image that is not so different from that of Monarchs leaving the crown to their sons, but this we find odd because we are not being fed as the “right of inheritance” anymore.
Please perceive that I'm not saying that a “list of values” by the government is a better solution; what Iam saying, is that it also isn't inherently worse, and most important, not inherently more unfair. I'm saying that the concept of “invisible hand” should not be mistaken for a system of justice. It's saving grace is not an inherent “rightness”, but efficacy in creating wealth. Deciding to grant prise on efficacy over justice is a personal decision, but many of us never even have to process these ideas, so used we are with a discourse that the way we do things is “natural”.
It isn't, and again, in debates of this topic, I always try to point out how much it's choice, not “nature”, playing a role.
Abstract, than that were a list of values created by the government in a system of planned economy, and it decided that a garbageman will make X money, and a doctor, 5X money, X being truly enough to have a comfortable middle class life (shelter, good food, buying a car every five years). This isn't how communism is normally presented, and isn't Marx's intuitive archetype (than again, I said many times I'm not a marxist), but would this scenario work for you?
Of course, we would have to have refinements, like, garbageman could make from X to 3 X, doctors from 5X to 10X, and keeping in the best end depends on keeping the excellence. A “ministerial recognition” of excellence, from the government, is a judgement of opinion from a person, and today, that is already what happens – people look out for who is best and decide how much they are willing to pay. These systems aren't terribly different, except when it comes to centralization, and an attempt to put each job in perspective of utility, what would only be possible in the second one.
But here lies the one problem I have with “ministerial recognition” - sooner or later, we would have to *trust* a “minister” to pick the best, and I don't think we can do that. The tendency to pick who you want, instead of who is among the best, is too great. I see people placing their children in the high end, above better professionals. And this problem here, to which I don't have an answer except hope that one day we will improve as individuals and become fairer, is possibly the main reason why I don't think I'll ever be a communist.
Anyway, I do hope this shows that to think outside capitalism does not mean to think utopically that everybody would work out of kindness. One *can* proppose a system of rewards that is not linked to the idea of “invisible hand” delivering celestial justice, even if so far no one ever proposed one that works better than this one.
1. Does communist doctrine extend beyond domestic social and economic organization, to areas like foreign policy?
I don't think it's inherent of communism, but it certainly was part of the soviet union creed in the years right after the evolution – a proposal that died off right after the second communist wave faded after WWII.
Erick Hobsbawn says in his works that there were two “messianic” revolutions in the history of mankind, that intended to spread and be models to reshape the future all around the world – The French Revolution and the Russian Revolution – bot both lost their megalomania when internal problems begun to take away their momentum.
Do you believe the state can really wither away, and who do you forsee taking up responsibilities that used to be performed by the state? I'm thinking of things including (but not limited to) defence, diplomacy, the nationwide co-ordination of healthcare and education, etc.
How can a state wither away while there is opposition to it? What happens to political parties that do not think communism is the right way? I'm asking since communism lies at the end of a long road of reforms. What's to stop the public from changing their mind before the end is reached?
Funny enough, I think history works in a circle – and society, which begun without the state, will also end without it. It's curious that since the inception of centralized monarchies, states power have grown steadily until a peak, IMHO, at the WWII, when people were willing to line up and die by the millionms in order to defend their homelands.
There have been much fear of a “big brother” state that can control every aspect of citzens lifes, but truth is that the power of states have been diminishing, not increasing, since then. The access to information is indeed massive, but so massive that it can't be properly processed, and most ends up never been acknowledged. International organizations and corporations works outside boundaries of a single government, and are able to allocate resources that can even compete with agencies. Organizations such as the Red Cross shows that you can organize worldwide efforts without governmental power, and none of this is “communist” in any way.
I do think that the model of state will be reformed in the upcoming years, but frankly, I don't klnow what will replace it. As I said, I don't think I canm put a leash on dialectics and dictate the anti-thesis.
Can you put this myth down once and for all that Scandinavia and Europe as a whole are not socialist?
I see this thrown around the forums like it somehow makes the United States better to scream that Sweden is a socialist state.
Under the reading of my previous comments, I think it's fairly easy to see that the models of social-democracy aren't steps towards socialism or communism, but rather, amendments on capitalism. Is any further explanation required?
Why do communists governments always seem to continually fail? Why are they so abusive of their citizenry? Why do they eventually tread ever closer to capitalism?
Actually, I think their failure is not as clear cut. As sociological experiments, I agree they were disastrous, but economically,m they weren't all that bad, considering that they actually turned backwards rural states into modern economies at least for a time – but again, considering how badly the format was disrespected, their later problems weren't much of a surprise.
Remember also that, lacking the “enlightened enriched proletarian class”, the communist experiences had to abandon the “small committees” (known as soviets) model and concentrate power into the hands of a small elite of educated bureaucrats – what is a BAD idea and reinforced their path towards dictatorships. Also, the infamous “5 years plans” that aimed to emulate the “enrichment phases” required tyrannical powers to be implemented, and it help them even more to derail.
Remember also that isolation that put the new communist states away from international commerce except with each other certainly didn't help stability of their economies.
The dissociation with the ideological model, and circumstances that forced centralization of power helps to understand what went wrong, and hence, why they became tyrannies – this being the reason why they got so abusive of their citizenry.
As for why to get closer to capitalism, well, pretty obviously, because there is no other proposed option after the need to start over gets clear.
(continue)
). The heir who receives a fortune from his parents will soon be penniless, fleeced by his peers, if he fails at social power games. More important than the fortune, he will typically have received also a social network, connections to other powerful people, clients and dependents, and obtain more wealth out of it.
