I think the main problem is not whether Communism killed more than Capitalism or vice versa, but why Communism faded away, whereas Capitalism flourished. I think there are two factors when it comes to the behavior of intelligent creatures within a social system: genetics and education. This means that humans fit in a Capitalist system better than a Communist one, given their genetic makeup and education. We cannot do much with the genetic makeup of humans since it is subject to slow change. So what is left is education. So the key question is whether Communism can be successful in a society with a proper educational system.
Small-c communism has not really been attempted on a large scale outside of revolutions in which it has consistently been crushed by force of arms. It has never really had the chance to fail of its own accord.
The “Communism” you speak of big-C Communism, i.e. authoritarian state capitalism, and the cases in which it has failed has been because people generally do not like authoritarian systems, so when they have the chance to overthrow them they generally attempt to do so, and as capitalism has been its only real competitor for long on a large scale, it readily replaced it, even when people were open to actual socialism as a replacement.
Do you mind elaborating on the difference between communism and Communism?
Can you elaborate on what you have in mind with a “proper educational system”. Why couldn’t it be successful?
Small-c communism is an economic system centered around from each according to their ability, to each according to their need, with no use of currency. As envisioned by Marx and by anarcho-communists this is a stateless system, even though Marx and anarcho-communists disagree with regard to how to arrive at it. Marx claims that this is to be arrived at via a temporary ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ — note that ‘dictatorship’ here is not to be used with its usual meaning, and Marxists themselves disagree with regard to what that is, as Marxist-Leninists claim that it is rule by a vanguard party while libertarian Marxists claim that the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ comprises collective direct rule by the proletariat as a whole rather than a state acting in their stead — while the anarcho-communists believe that no kind of state can bring it about.
Big-C Communism is a family of authoritarian state capitalist systems based off of or inspired by Marxism-Leninism, where a vanguard party rules in the name of the proletariat (rather than the proletariat actually holding power) and the state takes the place of the capitalist, with the entire state functioning like one gigantic company and accruing profit from the labor of the workers. The supporters of big-C Communism claim that their system will sometime, somehow turn into small-c communism per the predictions of Marx, but this has never happened; rather big-C Communism has shown itself to either revert to private capitalism (as in the case of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc) or turn into an authoritarian mixed-economy system (as in the case of the PRC and Vietnam).
@SSU Sorry for the delayed reply.
“I think the real tragedy is that when the Soviet system collapsed, the Soviet leadership was able to control this process without bloodshed (except for the conflict between Azerbaijanis and Armenians), yet now this “civil war,” similar to the one that happened when Yugoslavia collapsed, is taking place between Ukraine and Russia, and soldiers are dying who were not even born during the Soviet Union, even though the ideology has changed into old nationalism. The saddest part of this is Russia’s inability to create a “Commonwealth of Independent States” and then exist peacefully, like Great Britain.”
"Part of my previous reply was hidden, probably because its first part may have seemed too political. (But the question itself was political.) I was asked to rework it. At first I thought about canceling my reply completely, but then your question would have remained without any reaction from me, which I consider not very polite. So I tried, as best I could, to avoid the sharp corners.
About the possibility of Soviet and Russian leadership controlling the situation…
- I think there is a big difference between the Soviet Empire and the British Empire. One of the factors here, in my opinion, may be that the British colonies were not located near the borders of England itself. Therefore, territorial and border disputes with England did not arise between them. On the territory of the Soviet, and before that the Russian Empire, nations had common borders which were formed by the central власти in Moscow. As long as strong central authority existed, territorial and border contradictions were restrained by it.
But the old territorial claims did not disappear anywhere. And as soon as the союзная authority weakened, these neighbors immediately began presenting territorial claims against each other, including by military means.
But probably, besides territorial and border issues, some former national republics wanted to leave Moscow’s control altogether. The so-called CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), which was created afterward, began to weaken and fall apart. And some CIS participants are now trying to become more and more independent. In my opinion, this became one of the causes of the conflicts you mentioned. So the Soviet leadership turned out to be unable to keep the situation on a peaceful track.
Your next question:
- “However, I think the implications of Marxist theory itself should be discussed in terms of why this experiment led to dictatorships.”
Here you almost answered your own question. The true reason for dictatorship here is not simply that Marxism portrayed wealthy people (the bourgeoisie) as class enemies, but that, from the point of view of Marxist theory, they were considered such by their very nature, because according to Marx they exploited the proletariat and appropriated the results of its labor. As a result, they possessed the wealth created by the working class.
From the point of view of Marx and the proletariat, it seemed completely fair that capitalists should return their unjustly acquired wealth to the people who had created it. But the rich did not want to give up their wealth peacefully. And what else could Marx propose for this, except taking it away by force? For this reason, after the violent seizure of power, it was considered necessary to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
And at the same time, as you yourself mentioned, we should not forget the role of the KGB (NKVD). And not merely an ideological role. To call it simply a police or gendarme function would not be enough. It was an instrument of harsh physical terror.
That is how I managed to express my thoughts regarding your questions.
Sorry that the answer turned out so long, but often short answers generate several new questions, which I think (and probably you as well) we have both observed on this forum."
The concept that fits better than propaganda is ideology, which in Marxist and Marx-influenced thinking refers to the ideas that give legitimacy to the status quo. People ordinarily think along the lines of ideology, and repeat ideological ideas, without knowing they’re doing it.
Propaganda is the deliberate shaping of public opinion, but the ideas that hold up capitalism don’t take that form—they are more organic and unconscious. I gave some examples in another discussion:
But you’re right that there’s always a risk of being condescending, and of claiming special enlightened status.
But how does ideology relate to the claims that the OP is addressing?
Before doing anything else, something has to be clarified. As @tabemann has been explaining, there’s a distinction between big C Communism and small c communism. This doesn’t seem to be well-understood even among educated people in the West.
The government of the Soviet Union never claimed that the country had become a communist society. The internal propaganda was always along the lines of if we struggle on and remain dedicated to the cause of the party, we shall reach communism. Kruschev in 1961 said this:
Мы руководствуемся строго научными расчётами. А расчёты показывают, что за 20 годы мы построим в основном коммунистическое общество.
We are guided by strictly scientific calculations. And the calculations show that in twenty years we will build, in the main, a communist society.
—Khrushchev, Nikita, 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1961
Long before 1980, this had become an embarrasment among the nomenklatura and a joke among the people in general.
The ruling party was called the Communist Party because its job was to guide the country towards communism. At some point, though, “Communism” became a label for countries ruled by such Communist Parties, thus “communism” came to refer to the bureaucratic authoritarian state socialist regimes that had been created by self-declared Marxists.
And this is why we now have to use big-C “Communism,” to distinguish it from the imagined stateless, classless, post-scarcity society of communism.
We can now understand more clearly what is going on in the statements from the OP:
If this claim is meant to refer to Communism, then historians mostly agree that in Communist countries, authorities were responsible for millions of deaths. Denials and excuses are, in my opinion, intellectually and morally execrable. The same goes for this whataboutism:
One’s complaints about the suffering caused by capitalism lose all force when one minimizes or dismisses suffering under Communist regimes. It should be admitted that what was attempted in Russia was a disaster, and was carried out by people who were variously bloodthirsty, cruel, ruthless, willing to use millions of people as a means to an end, willing to reduce people to their class or ethnic origin, and even willing to kill those who had ensured the success of the revolution (in case you’re not aware of the history, that description covers all the bases: Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky).
And whether or not the regime was forced to turn nasty because of pressure from the imperialist countries is not the point. The point is what they chose to do and how they did it, and that they did all this in the name of communism.
However, the common inference, that therefore all attempts to build a communist society will result in the horrors inflicted on humanity by Communists, does not follow.
To conclude on this point: if you want to keep communism alive, you have to abandon and condemn Communism without reservation. This is the only way to separate the “communism killed 100/x million people” claim from communism as such.
This claim is a bit more complicated, because there are two versions of it: the sophisticated and the unsophisticated. The unsophisticated version assumes that communism, and Marxist movements motivated to build a communist society, must be aligned with the Communist Parties of the twentieth century. Because the thing is, they are more or less right that a country organized like the Soviet Union will tend to be authoritarian and bureaucratic (to put it quite mildly).
The sophisticated version is that the dictatorship of the proletariat will inevitably degenerate into a self-serving authoritarian bureaucracy. This criticism comes from other Marxists outside the Marxist-Leninist tradition, and from many other leftists. So it’s by no means just capitalist ideology. And Marxists of all kinds have to face up to this criticism, because the dictatorship of the proletariat is an idea that goes right back to Marx himself.
So, back to ideology. I would say that Western Cold War ideology, in demonizing the Soviet Union simplistically, also demonized communism and Marxism. Back then, the concept of propaganda describes what was going on on both sides pretty well, but what we have now is an ideological (but generally non-propagandist) legacy of the Cold War, but one that is reinforced every time a Marxist defends, say, Lenin’s hanging order:
Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be ruthlessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because ‘the last decisive battle’ with the kulaks is now underway everywhere. An example must be made.
- Hang (absolutely hang, in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, fatcats, bloodsuckers.
- Publish their names.
- Seize all grain from them.
- Designate hostages - in accordance with yesterday’s telegram.
Do it in such a fashion, that for hundreds of verst around the people see, tremble, know, shout: “the bloodsucking kulaks are being strangled and will be strangled”.
Telegraph the receipt and implementation. Yours, Lenin.
P.S. Find tougher people.
—Telegram from Lenin to the Penza Soviet, August 1918 (Lenin’s hanging order)
(In case anyone wants to jump to his defence by supplying the Civil War context, it should be noted (a) that the people targeted were just those who resisted grain requisitioning, who in many cases did so because they didn’t have enough to eat; and (b) that the Bolsheviks at this time were already receiving criticism for their brutality and authoritarian rule, from communists.)
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And this is @Flying 's main argument, that this hasn’t worked. Not in China, not in the Soviet Union, not anywhere.
Assuming here that “it just hasn’t been done / implemented properly” is a weak argument, when we look at just how much socialism has historically been attempted. How much education truly can change human behavior is a big question.
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I think here it’s not something unique to socialism or Marxism. Think of ANY violent revolution. All of them have the possibility of degenerating to self-serving authoritarianism to protect the revolution. Just look what the final outcome was of the French Revolution. A French Emperor attempting to seize all of Europe.
Perhaps here the ideology of Marx reaffirms this violence as it talks highly combatively about the “class enemy” and the “violent class struggle as an inevitable outcome of capitalism”. Talking about violence being inevitable is something that can lead itself to violence. It can end in simply killing the rich people as the class enemy. This naturally creates a hostile counter-reaction to Marxism. Where social democrats can be accepted, communism can be seen as a threat. Still, many countries have had Communist parties that do have followed democratic and parliamentary principles.
Here I think the question is more about the social cohesion in a society and the structural problems it faces. If there are huge problems in a society and little social cohesion and the system collapses, people will kill each other irrelevant of the ideological background. We cannot blame just one ideology about this as bloody civil wars have been fought for many reasons.
Hegel thought Napoleon was “The world soul on horseback.” Napoleon was supposed to be a kind of Ubermensch, bringing in a new world order per the inevitable evolution of the Absolute in time and space. It’s a repeating and powerful motif where the old world is washed away and new one takes its place. The next phase is huge disappointment. Then it starts over. Again.
It will be a controversial comparison, as we don’t need to give any more excuses for detractors to make communism seem bad, but I am reminded of watching Nazism documentaries and the patriotism of National Socialism did seem to encompass this community spirit, of course only for the ingroup and death to those who were deemed as other.
One can still see the spirit of community and not support the cause. When they would discuss how Hitler rallied the German people to the goal of rebuilding the country it seemed like they were all mostly behind it working for that common cause. Doesn’t have to be Nazism though, it is just a general observation of when humans are able to rally for a common cause. I imagine similar things were happening in the Allied forces to defeat Nazism - likewise I do now remember similar camaraderie could be observed in the same WW2 documentaries when covering the Battle for Britain.
So is it just a case of getting the ‘volk’ to rally under the cause of communism?
Informative post, thanks. I will look over it in more detail later.
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There’s a difference between the temporary violence of a revolution and the long-standing systemic oppression of an authoritarian system in power. The Bolsheviks and the Communists which followed them remained severely oppressive even when the Russian Revolution was said and done (consider the Purges and the ethnic cleansing of national minorities under Stalin, for instance). As another example, CCP remains brutally oppressive of Uighurs and Tibetans to this day even though the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949.
By the proper educational system, I mean a system that teaches us we are equal regardless of our skin color, age, social status, family that we belong to, etc. A system that teaches us that wealth is the common property of individuals and not something that belongs to individuals because of their fate, genes, skills, etc. A system that teaches us that all individuals deserve a minimum standard of living. A system that teaches us that resources are finite, so we cannot have a growing population constantly and ask for more luxuries all the time. That is all that comes to my mind right now.
@WeSee@unimpottant
Tsis answer is primarili WeSee
“Marx seems to have envisioned, ultimately, a stable society. The question is how to maximize the stability of society. Cooperation should be maximized. Imagine a well-managed organization where everyone works to maximize the well-being of the organization rather than for personal gain. In the case of communism, the organization is society as a whole. Division of all kinds is the enemy. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,’ a classless society, common ownership, etc. Cooperation is the engine that drives communism.”
Of course, it is possible to imagine such a society. Even more than that — we would very much like to have such an organization. But it turned out to be unrealistic to expect people, on a mass and stable basis, to work more for the well-being of the organization than for their own benefit. Even for the simple, not even philosophical reason that people go to work primarily out of necessity, in order to earn a living. Isn’t that true? And the more a person earns, the better they can materially provide for their life. That is their personal benefit. And there is nothing antisocial or unethical about that. It is simply human nature.
I have already said several times that communists wanted to create such a “well-managed organization” precisely through the creation of a NEW MAN — someone who would place society’s interests above personal interests. It did not work in a single socialist country. As soon as communist power weakened, all of them quickly rushed toward capitalism.
Meanwhile, capitalists — who, as everyone knows, work primarily for their own benefit rather than for the common good — somehow, almost contrary to their own intentions, ended up creating societies with a level of public prosperity that Soviet socialist citizens could hardly even dream of.
You may say: at the cost of exploitation. But first, under socialism the exploitation of workers by communist authorities was no less harsh. And second, I do not see workers in today’s developed capitalist countries massively raising slogans against exploitation to any serious degree.
By the way, speaking philosophically: under communism there was supposed to be friendly cooperation. Under capitalism there is maximum competition — in other words, struggle. And have we forgotten one of the central laws of Marxist dialectics itself: that the struggle of opposites (competition) is the source — the engine — of development? Yet the desired “cooperation as the engine” never managed to move communism very far forward.
Thanks for the elaboration!
Thanks. That’s enough to go on.
Can you also answer the second question? It’ll help me to know how to frame my response.
I think that Communism can be successful if we try to approach it correctly by providing proper education to individuals rather than brute force!
Not sure why you took that paragraph out of context.
Let’s put it back in context
The second paragraph was in answer, at least in part, to the question posed in the last sentence of the first. It’s very much about removing internal destabilizing forces by leveling the playing field and keeping the field level. From what I can tell, Marx was against Capitalism because it is intrinsically destabilizing.
Did you misunderstand my post or am I misunderstanding you?
I take it from your response that you have in mind what @tabemann calls big-C Communism. Seems extremely unlikely that a totalitarian state would implement such an education system. It’s one thing to claim the name and another to actually implement it. Just as Nazi Germany had the word “Socialist” in its name, but never had any intention of implementing socialism.
Initially thought that you had small-c communism in mind. If you’re interested in discussing education in that system let me know.