Did communism fail? No. Only “socialist” abortions.
YouTube transcript
Hello there
The generally accepted view is that communism has failed. People are thinking here of the collapse more than 25 years ago of the Soviet Union and the eastern European regimes under its control; and also of the decisions by China, Vietnam and Cuba to reintroduce lots of private ownership and foreign investment.
The first point to make is that these were not communist countries and did not claim to be. At best they were at a very early stage in the transition to communism and that is what failed. This transition period is referred to as socialism.
The second point to make is that with a few minor exceptions they were countries where the pre-condition for that transition period was completely absent. This necessary pre-condition for pursuing such a path is that a prior period of advanced capitalism has already created a modern economy and society. However, Russia in 1917 and virtually all the so-called communist countries established after World War 2 were essentially backward pre-capitalist societies.
A transition to communism needs advanced capitalism to prepare the ground in a number of ways
Firstly, you need capitalism to create modern industry and hence eliminate the necessity of poverty and arduous labor. This is because equality based on such uncongenial conditions is not going to work. Communism has to be based on the sharing of high and increasing livings standards and on labor that is enjoyable and performed for its own sake rather than reward.
Secondly, you also need capitalism to turn a population of peasants into a population of wage workers or proletarians. In Russia and China most people were still peasants and concerned about owning their own land rather than creating a society based on social ownership.
And finally, you also need capitalism to create a modern society. These countries generally had one foot in the Middle Ages. They definitely were not modern. The mass of people were simply not mentally or culturally equipped to begin the process of becoming their own masters and doing without a class of leaders.
So how is it that these regimes emerged under such unfavourable conditions? This peculiar state of affairs arose because the bourgeoisie was too weak, cowardly or treacherous to carry out its own historical tasks. Instead, in the first half of the 20th century, communists found themselves lumbered with the job of heading both anti-feudal modernist revolutions and also patriotic resistance to fascist aggression and occupation.
After World War II, the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union was joined by a host of other countries in what became 'the socialist camp'. It included China, Vietnam and Yugoslavia where their own revolutionary forces had taken power, and also eastern and central Europe and northern Korea where regimes were established by virtue of Soviet military occupation in the aftermath of the defeat of Germany and Japan. So, by historical accident communists found themselves burdened with the task of raising their societies out of social and economic backwardness. They had to perform the work of capitalism. They had to create an industrial base and a trained workforce virtually from scratch. They were making up for the tardiness, indeed even failure, of capitalism.
However, given the backward conditions, it was very easy for those in charge to effectively become a ruling class with waning interest in revolutionizing society and also for the working class to just be an obedient mass going about the daily grind rather than being a force for revolution. Mao Zedong, the head of the Chinese Communist Party until his death in 1976, recognized this problem and tried unsuccessfully to confront it with the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Not surprisingly, if you have a conservative ruling elite and a passive demoralized working class the best system is capitalism and private ownership. Also the abandonment of phoney socialism has in many cases opened up political space to something more democratic and allowed the abandonment of the old police states. Unfortunately that political change is still to happen in China, Vietnam and Cuba where the pretence of socialism is used to legitimize the regime. Then there is North Korea. It would be really good if there were a military coup and the coup leaders requested reunification with the south. We can only hope.
Notwithstanding this grim picture, there were still some significant achievements. In a large part of the world, landlords and feudal relations were swept from the countryside. Industrialization was raised from a very low base and generally outperformed the backward countries in the capitalist camp. Most importantly, after a crash program of industrialization in the 1930s, the Soviet Union was able to defeat the fascist Axis powers through the largest military mobilization in human history. This is something for which we should be eternally grateful.
See you next time