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commun[e84,jmc] Notes on communism
Reagan is attacked from the left about his "strident, anti-Soviet
and anti-communist rhetoric". However, the criticism is all about the
effect of the rhetoric on U.S.-Soviet relations, which would be better, it
is claimed, if only Reagan would shut up (and also stop rearming). The
leftist critics generally ignore the question of whether Reagan's
statements about the "evil empire" and "the focus of evil in the
world" are true, or what the precise truth of the matter is.
The leftist commentators have two reasons for not discussing
the truth of Reagan's statements. The first is that Reagan is on
reasonably strong ground in his attacks on the Soviet Union, and
the leftists would be embarrassed to have to deal with the issues
of the Soviet seizure of territory after World War II,
their making eastern Europe into satellites, the suppression of
attempts at independence in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956,
in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland in 1980, their encouragement
of third world aggression and of terrorist movements, and the tragic
results of their successes in Indochina, and their shooting down of
the Korean airliner, just to name a few. I forgot the invasion of
Afghanistan.
Side grumble: The Associated Press always refers to
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as in support of a communist
government threatened by rebels. Recalling that the Soviet invasion
involved arresting and killing the communist prime minister and
replacing him with a man the Soviets brought with them, this suggests
that the Associated Press writer considers that distorting the
facts helps world peace or something like that.
There is perhaps another reason for not discussing whether Reagan's
statements are true. The left does not have an entirely favorable
view of the Soviet Union, but the extent and nature of the disfavor
varies widely in the left. In particular, the extent to which the
Soviet crimes are historical accidents, e.g. the fault of the Mongols
(as George Kennan often suggests)
and to what extent they are characteristics of that kind of political
system is embarrassing to discuss. It potentially jeopardizes the
unity of the left. More specifically, it might jeopardize unity
in support of the Sandinista government of Nicaragua if there were
open discussion in the left of whether it is following the road to
the Gulag.
Curiously, however, my current point is not to disagree with
the left but to disagree with Reagan.
Reagan has a gift for putting his ideas in short phrases
which don't evade issues. "Evil empire" is descriptive in both
its words, and I agree with both. "Focus of evil in the world"
is another, but unfortunately I have to disagree.
Communism is an evil all right, but the ideology arises in every
country. Its appeal and its evil need to be understood apart from
their interaction with the Soviet Union and other communist ruled
countries.
First we'll discuss the evil and then the appeal.
We need to distinguish "revolutionary socialism" from
democratic socialism. The latter respects electoral democracy
to the extent that it accepts losing power rather than violate
it. No-one doubts that Mitterrand will leave office if defeated
in the next French election and that he will do nothing to
prevent the election from taking place.
Revolutionary socialism holds on to power at all costs.
There are several costs. First any democratic socialists in
the movement have to be excluded, whatever their talents.
They are replaced by people loyal to power - often thugs.
Second failures are blamed on the enemies, and this leads
to suppression of opposition access to publicity and to
concentration camps.
The result, over a period of a human lifetime, has been
amazingly similar in every coountry conquered by revolutionary
socialism, whether the Soviet Union has been involved or not.
The generation that takes power purges its moderates and then
holds on to power till it dies of old age. A kind of feudalism
develops in which each party boss has his following. Privileges
develop such as access to special stores and foreign travel.
Tendencies for privilege to become hereditary increasingly
develop. When the boss dies, there is always a struggle for
power. These struggles for power have so far avoided civil
war, but perhaps this is because it has turned out that the
sides were not evenly matched, so the losers gave in.
However, these struggles do not seem to be limited by any
sense of human rights, and ferocious accusations are made
by those who control the media against their rivals.
Each succession crisis therefore carries a danger of civil
war, which might even become nuclear.
It may be that the history of past oligarchies may
provide some guide to what can happen in communist countries.
Oligarchies sometimes survived succession crises for tens to
hundreds of years. In the end, however, there was either
territorial fragmentation or the development of a hereditary
monarchy. North Korea may be heading in the direction of a
hereditary monarchy.
All this can be observed in the life of revolutionary
socialist states, and the reasons why it might be expected
to occur were given long ago. However, almost no fair-minded
people found those arguments convincing. Indeed the theoretical
arguments are still not convincing. It is only the actual
history of more than twenty countries that convinces.
What is the attraction of socialism in general and revolutionary
socialism in particular? Some of the attractions are intellectual
and moral, but we should not neglect the appeals to the worse aspects
of human nature.
1. The appeal to rationality of a planned society. Everyone
sees what appear to be irrationalities of present society.
Typically one sees even more irrationality than actually exist,
because one doesn't see the good reasons for certain practices
if one takes only part of the facts into account. Competition
is often felt to be wasteful. Why should there be 10 competing
computer companies, when it would be simpler to decide on the
best computer and have all the factories produce it?
This is hard to see unless one sees the nature of the
competition among computer designs in the Soviet bloc. Because
of the excess of money among institutions in the Soviet Union,
there is always more money than computers, and so computers are
allocated. This means that the customers don't choose which
computer they prefer. The consequence was that the organizations
producing computers competed for resources such as buildings,
equipment, supplies and labor by bureaucratic intrigue. The
mechanism for deciding what to build broke down so badly that
the bosses at the top finally decided in 1964, "Don't bother
us with your arguments and intrigues, copy IBM".
2. The second argument is moral. Why should A be rich
while B starves? Historically, this was a pretty good argument.
European society still had a substantial hereditary aristocracy
in Marx's day. Hereditary aristocracies arose as a result of
conquest. If the Mafia came to rule the country, they would
create a hereditary aristocracy. Indeed as mentioned before,
the communist countries are moving in that direction.
In modern middle class society, the argument has much
less force. Only a tiny fraction of the income in the U.S.
goes to people who owe it to hereditary wealth or hereditary
jobs. In order to make the argument, one has to stretch some
points - to argue that most people who do well in public
school do well because of unfair advantage.