Criticisms of communism: Encyclopedia II - Criticisms of communism - 20th century Communist states

Criticisms of communism - 20th century Communist states

Communism is a social system that abolishes private property, social classes, and the state itself. As such, a "communist state" would be an oxymoron. No country or government ever called itself a "Communist state"; however, various states gave the Communist Party a special status in their constitution and laws^[1], while claiming to be heading in the direction of communism. The term "Communist state" has been coined and used in the West to refer to such countries. It is these "Communist states" (single-party states where the ruling party officially proclaimed its adherence to Marxism-Leninism) that are the targets of criticism presented below.

For related information, see the discussion regarding the definition of a Communist state.

No Communist state claimed to have attained communism, the social system, but all of them planned to do so in the not unreasonably distant future; Khrushchev, for example, forecast that communism would be reached in the Soviet Union by 1980, some quarter century later. The states which no longer exist never did reach communism, and none of the remaining ones seem likely to do so soon.

Criticisms of communism - General critique of Communist states

Most Communist states practiced censorship of dissent. The level of censorship varied widely between different states and historical periods. The most rigid censorship has been practiced by hardline Stalinist and Maoist regimes, such as the Soviet Union under Stalin (1927-53), China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and North Korea during its entire existence (1948-present).^[2] Usually, newly established Communist states maintained or tightened the level of censorship that was present in those countries before the Communists came to power; indeed, the Communists themselves had most often been the targets of this previous censorship. As a result, after coming to power, they argued that they wanted to fight the former ruling class using its own weapons, in order to prevent it from staging a counter-revolution.

An extensive network of civilian informants - either volunteers, or those forcibly recruited - was used to collect intelligence for the government and report cases of dissent.^[3] Some Communist states classified internal critics of the system as having a mental disease, such as sluggishly progressing schizophrenia - which was only recognized in Communist states - and incarcerated them in mental hospitals.^[4] Workers were not allowed to join free trade unions.^[5] Several internal uprisings were suppressed by military force, like the Tambov rebellion, the Kronstadt rebellion, and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

The Communist states themselves, as well as their advocates, often argue that censorship and similar restrictions are unfortunate but necessary. They argue that, especially during the Cold War, Communist states have been assaulted by capitalist propaganda from outside and infiltrated by the intelligence agencies of powerful capitalist nations, such as the CIA. In this view, restrictions and suppression of dissent were defensive measures against subversion.

Some have argued that, while censorship was practiced in Communist states, the extent of this censorship has been greatly exaggerated in the West. Albert Szymanski, for instance, in his comprehensive study entitled Human Rights in the Soviet Union, draws a comparison between the treatment of anti-Communist dissidents in the Soviet Union after Stalin's death and the treatment of anti-capitalist dissidents in the United States during the age of McCarthyism, concluding that "on the whole, it appears that the level of repression in the Soviet Union in the 1955 to 1980 period was at approximately the same level as in the US during the McCarthy years (1947-56)."^[6] Amnesty International estimated the number of political prisoners in the Soviet Union in 1979 at a little over 400.^[7]

Both anti-Communists and Communists have criticized the personality cults of many leaders of Communist states, and the hereditary leadership of North Korea. The dissenting communist Milovan Djilas and others have also argued that a powerful new class of party bureaucrats emerged under Communist Party rule, and exploited the rest of the population. A Czech proverb observed, "Under capitalism, man exploits man; under Communism, it's the other way around." (see also nomenklatura)

Restrictions on emigration from Communist states received extensive publicity. The Berlin wall was one of the most famous examples of this, but North Korea still imposes a total ban on emigration (reported on PBS's program Frontline) and Cuba's restrictions are routinely criticized by the Cuban-American community. During the Berlin Wall's existence, sixty thousand people unsuccessfully attempted to emigrate illegally from East Germany and received jail terms for attempting to "flee the Republic"; there were around five thousand successful escapes into West Berlin; and 239 people were killed trying to cross.^[8]

Similar restrictions to emigration have been in force in most capitalist countries prior to the late 19th century. France, Spain and Portugal even limited their citizens' travel to their own colonies.^[9] The various German principalities allowed only emigration to slavic lands in the east prior to the 18th century, and many of them banned emigration altogether from the 18th century to the mid-19th. Austrian authorities did not allow commoners to move beyond the empire's borders before the 1850s. While most European states relaxed or even completely eliminated their restrictions on emigration by the early 20th century - largely due to their population explosion - there were some exceptions. Romania, Serbia, and, most notably, Tsarist Russia still required their citizens to obtain official permission for emigration up to World War I. During the war, all European countries re-introduced strict restrictions on migration, either temporarily or permanently.^[10]

The restrictions imposed by Communist states on the emigration of their citizens were no more intense than such restrictions that had been imposed by capitalist (or otherwise non-Communist) countries in the past. In Poland, for example, the Communist government maintained the same emigration laws that had been in force in capitalist Poland from 1936.^[11] However, Communist states (particularly East Germany, Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea) did regulate emigration to a greater degree than most Western capitalist countries in the post-World War II period. The reason given for this was that they needed as much labor power as possible for post-war reconstruction and economic development.^[12] They did not deny that better standards of living existed in other countries, but argued that they were in the process of catching up.

Of the Communist states, only Albania and North Korea ever imposed a blanket ban on emigration. From most other Communist states, legal emigration was always possible, though often difficult. Some of these states relaxed emigration laws significantly from the 1960s onwards. Tens of thousands of Soviet citizens emigrated legally every year during the 1970s.^[13]

The Communist states were founded on a policy of militant anti-imperialism. Lenin believed imperialism to be "the highest stage of capitalism" and, in 1917, he declared the unconditional right of self-determination and secession for the national minorities of Russia. Later, during the Cold War, Communist states gave military assistance and in some cases intervened directly on behalf of national liberation movements that were fighting for independence from colonial empires, particularly in Asia and Africa.

However, critics have accused the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China of being imperialistic themselves, and have therefore concluded that their foreign policy was hypocritical (sometimes imperialist and sometimes anti-imperialist, depending on their interests in a given situation). Specifically, such critics accuse the Soviet Union of forcibly conquering the newly independent nations of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War.^[14] Stalin conquered the Baltic states in World War II and created satellite states in Eastern Europe. China conquered Tibet. Soviet forces intervened on 3 occasions against anti-Soviet uprisings or governments in other countries: the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets and Chinese, as well as their allies, claimed that these were all instances of liberation rather than conquest.

The most severe accusations made against Communist states is that they were allegedly responsible for millions of deaths. The vast majority of these deaths are held to have occurred under the regimes of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China. As such, most critics focus on those two regimes in particular, though others have claimed that all Communist states were responsible for some numbers of unjust deaths. These deaths generally fall under two categories:

1. Executions of people who had received the death penalty for various charges, or deaths that occurred in prison.
2. Deaths that were not caused directly by the government (the people in question were not executed and did not die in prison), but are considered to be the deliberate or accidental results of certain government policies. Most of the claimed victims of Communist states fall under this category, and it is this category that is usually the subject of controversy.

Most Communist states held the death penalty as a legal form of punishment for most of their existence, with a few exceptions (e.g. the Soviet Union abolished it from 1947 to 1950 ^[15][16]). Critics argue that many, perhaps most, of the convicted prisoners executed by Communist states were not criminals, but political dissidents. Stalin's Great Purge in the late 1930s (roughly 1936-38) is given as the most prominent example of this.^[17]

A number of Communist states also held forced labour as a legal form of punishment for certain periods of time, and, again, critics argue that the majority of those sentenced to forced labour camps - such as the Gulag - were sent there for political rather than criminal reasons. Some of the Gulag camps were located in very harsh environments, such as Siberia, which resulted in the death of a significant fraction of their inmates before they could complete their prison terms. The Gulag was shut down in 1960.

With regard to deaths not caused directly by government orders, critics usually point to famine and war as the immediate causes of what they see as unjust deaths in Communist states. The Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward are considered to have been man-made famines. These two events alone killed a majority of the people seen as victims of Communist states by nearly all estimates.

Many historians have attempted to give estimates of the total number of people killed by a certain Communist state, or by all Communist states put together.

The number of people killed under Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union has been estimated as between 3.5 and 8 million by G. Ponton^[18], 6.6 million by V.V. Tsaplin^[19], 9.5 million by Alec Nove^[20], 20 million by The Black Book of Communism^[21], 50 million by Norman Davies^[22], and 61 million by R.J. Rummel^[23].

The number of people killed under Mao Zedong's regime in the People's Republic of China has been estimated at 19.5 million by Wang Weizhi^[24], 27 million by John Heidenrich^[25], between 38 and 67 million by Kurt Glaser and Stephan Possony^[26], between 32 and 59 million by Robert L. Walker^[27], 65 million by The Black Book of Communism^[28], and 72 million by R.J. Rummel^[29].

The authors of The Black Book of Communism have also estimated that 9.3 million people have died as a result of the actions of other Communist states and leaders, distributed as follows: 2 million in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan, 1 million in Vietnam, 1 million in Eastern Europe, and 150,000 in Latin America.^[30] R.J. Rummel has estimated that 1.6 million died in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, and 2.5 million in Poland and Yugoslavia.^[31] The Black Book of Communism finds that roughly 94 million died under all Communist states while Rummel believes at least 144.7 million died under six Communist states. From a collection of the sources listed above, Matthew White also attempts to compose a total figure in his Historical Atlas of the 20th century^[32], and arrives at the figure of 92 million. These are the three highest numbers of victims blamed on Communism by any historian.

The reasons for such extreme discrepancies in the number of estimated victims of Communist states are twofold:

• First, all these numbers are estimates derived from incomplete data. Researchers often have to extrapolate and interpret available information in order to arrive at their final numbers.
• Second, different researchers work with different definitions of what it means to be killed by one's government. As noted above, the vast majority of alleged victims of Communist states did not die as a result of direct government orders, so there is no agreement on the question of whether Communist governments should be held responsible for their deaths. The low estimates may count only executions and labour camp deaths as instances of government killing, while the high estimates may be based on the assumption that the government killed everyone who died from famine, war, or is unaccounted for.

Finally, it should be noted that this a highly politically charged field, with nearly all researchers having been accused of a pro- or anti-Communist bias at one time or another.

Some have argued that it may be unfair to judge Communist states on issues such as famine because large numbers of people still die from hunger all over the world. For instance, some have estimated that hunger currently kills 24 thousand people daily.^[33] Colonialism (by protectionist-capitalist European states) has killed an estimated 50 million people.^[34] Whether these deaths can be blamed on capitalism is, of course, a matter of controversy.

Advocates of Communist states often praise them for having leaped ahead of contemporary capitalist countries in certain areas, for example by offering guaranteed employment, health care and housing to their citizens. Critics typically condemn Communist states by the same criteria, claiming that all lag far behind the industrialized West in terms of economic development and living standards.

Central economic planning has in certain instances produced dramatic advances, including rapid development of heavy industry during the 1930s in the Soviet Union and later in their space program. Another example is the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Cuba. Early advances in the status of women were also notable, especially in Islamic areas of the Soviet Union.^[36] However, the Soviet Union did not achieve the same kind of development in agriculture (forcing the Soviet Union to become a net importer of cereals after the Second World War). Other Communist states, such as Laos, Vietnam or Maoist China, continued in poverty; China has only achieved high rates of growth after introducing free market economic reforms^[37] — a sign, claim the critics, of the superiority of capitalism. Another example is Czechoslovakia, which was a developed industrial country approaching Western standards prior to World War II, but fell behind the West in the post-war era.

Nevertheless, some Communist states with planned economies maintained consistently higher rates of economic growth than industrialized Western capitalist countries. From 1928 to 1985, the economy of the Soviet Union grew by a factor of 10, and GNP per capita grew more than fivefold.^[39] The Soviet economy started out at roughly 25% the size of the economy of the United States. By 1955, it climbed to 40%. In 1965 the Soviet economy reached 50% of the contemporary US economy, and in 1977 it passed the 60% threshold.^[40] For the first half of the Cold War, most economists were asking when, not if, the Soviet economy would overtake the US economy.^[41] Starting in the 1970s, however, and particularly during the 1980s, growth rates slowed down in the Soviet Union and throughout the Communist world. The reasons for this downturn are still a matter of debate among economists, but there is a general consensus that the Communist states had reached the limits of the extensive growth model they were pursuing, and the downturn was at least in part caused by their refusal or inability to switch to intensive growth.^[42]

Technological progress in the Communist states was sometimes highly uneven, in the sense that some sectors surged ahead while others lagged behind. As noted above, the Soviet space program saw remarkable progress; so did pure science, mathematics, and military technology. Consumer products, on the other hand, were typically several years behind their Western counterparts. According to the CIA^[43], a number of Soviet products were in fact using Western technology, which had been either legally purchased or obtained through espionage. This situation has been largely attributed to the fact that economic planners in the Soviet Union and elsewhere were accountable to the government, but, in the absence of democracy, they were not accountable to the people. Thus, their plans tended to focus on long-term goals and scientific and military development, rather than the immediate needs of the population.

Both critics and supporters of Communist states often make comparisons between particular Communist and capitalist countries, with the intention of showing that one side was superior to the other. Critics prefer to compare East and West Germany; supporters prefer to compare Cuba to Jamaica or Central America. All such comparisons are open to challenge, both on the comparability of the states involved and the statistic being used for comparison. No two countries are identical; the western parts of Germany were more developed and industrialized than the eastern parts long before the Cold War and the creation of two separate German states, and Cuba was likewise more developed than many of its Central American neighbors before the Cuban revolution. Comparison of Cuba to the rest of the Caribbean or Latin America has a special problem: Cuba is the only Latin American country to have been Communist for forty years; it is also the only Latin American country to have been for forty years under embargo by its largest neighbor and geographically natural trading partner, while East Germany had much of its industry taken by the USSR for war reparations.

In general, critics of Communist states argue that they remained behind the industrialized West in terms of economic development for most of their existence, while advocates argue that growth rates were sometimes higher in Communist states than in capitalist countries, so they would have eventually caught up to the West if those growth rates had been maintained. Some reject all comparisons altogether, noting that the Communist states started out with economies that were much less developed to begin with, though this was not always the case.^[45]

Most Communist states chose to concentrate their economic resources on heavy industry and defense while largely neglecting consumer goods. As a result, standards of living in the majority of Communist states were consistently below those experienced in the industrialized West, even when their economic strength was comparable or higher.

Life expectancy has increased in fits and starts in the West. The latest of these began about 1970, and largely consists of improvements in cardiovascular medicine. Demographic studies^[46] have concluded that the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe did not partake of this increase, as they had in the earlier ones; male life expectancies even decreased by a year - leading to a large gap between East and West by 1990. However, since a market economy was introduced, a sharp decline in life expectancy was noted in the countries of the former Soviet Union. This decline has accelerated in Russia and Ukraine; in the Baltic republics life expectancy may have started to increase. In Eastern Europe, after 1990, the decline continued most notably in Romania, but life expectancy eventually began to increase in many of the other countries in the region. All these developments give information on post-Soviet capitalism, especially the economy of Russia, as well as on the policies of the Communist states.

Supporters of the Communist states note their social and cultural programs, sometimes administered by labor organizations. Universal education programs have been a strong point, as has the generous provision of universal health care. They point out the high levels of literacy enjoyed by Eastern Europeans (in comparison, for instance, with Southern Europe), Cubans or Chinese. Western critics charge that Communist compulsory education was replete with pro-Communist propaganda and censored opposing views.

Many Communist states censored the arts for significant periods of time, usually giving preferential treatment to socialist realism. Some Communist states have engaged in large-scale cultural experiments. In Romania, the historical center of Bucharest was demolished and the whole city was redesigned between 1977 and 1989. In the Soviet Union, hundreds of churches were demolished or converted to secular purposes during the 1920s and 30s. In China, the Cultural Revolution sought to give all artistic expression a 'proletarian' content.^[47] Critics argue that such policies represented unjustified destruction of cultural heritage, while advocates claim that the new culture they created was better than the old.

During the Stalinist period in the Soviet Union, historical documents were often the subject of revisionism and forgery, intended to change public perception of certain important people and events. The pivotal role played by Leon Trotsky in the Russian revolution and Civil War, for example, was almost entirely erased from official historical records after Trotsky became the leader of a communist faction that opposed Stalin's rule (see Fourth International). Soviet research in certain sciences was at times guided by political rather than scientific considerations. Lysenkoism and Japhetic theory were promoted for brief periods of time in biology and linguistics respectively, despite having no scientific merit. Research into genetics was restricted, because Nazi use of eugenics had prompted the Soviet Union to label genetics a "fascist science" (see suppressed research in the Soviet Union).

Communist states often engaged in rapid industrialization, and in some cases this has lead to environmental disasters. The most cited example is the great shrinking of the Aral Sea in today's Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which is believed to have been caused by the diversion of the waters of its two affluent rivers for cotton production. The Caspian Sea has also been diminishing; in addition, there was significant pollution of the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the unique freshwater environment of Lake Baikal. In 1988 only 20% of the sewage in the Soviet Union was treated properly. Established health standards for air pollution were exceeded by ten times or more in 103 cities in 1988. In Eastern Europe, air pollution is cited as the cause of forest die-back, damage to buildings and cultural heritage, and a rise in the occurrence of lung cancer. According to official sources, 58 percent of the total agricultural land of the former Soviet Union was affected by salinization, erosion, acidity, or waterlogging. Nuclear waste was dumped in the Sea of Japan, the Arctic Ocean, and in locations in the Far East. It was revealed in 1992 that in the city of Moscow there were 636 radioactive waste sites and 1,500 in St. Petersburg.^[48][49]

With the exception of radioactive waste, all of the aforementioned examples of environmental degradation are similar to what occurred in Western capitalist countries during the height of their drive to industrialize, in the 19th century.^[50] Thus, some have argued that Communist states have not damaged their environments any more than the average industrial society. Others claim that Communist states did more damage than average, primarily due to the lack of any popular or political pressure to research environmentally friendly technologies.^[51]

Many ecological problems continued unabated after the fall of the Soviet Union and are still major issues today - which has prompted supporters of Communist states to accuse their opponents of holding a double standard.^[52] In other cases the environmental situation has improved after a number of years^[53][54], but researchers have concluded that this improvement was largely due to the severe economic downturns in the 1990s that caused many factories to close down.^[55]

Criticisms of communism - Communist and Left critique of Communist states

Communist states are nominally based on Marxism-Leninism, which is only one form of Marxism, which is in turn only one school of the Left. Many communists themselves disagree with some or most of the actions undertaken by Communist states during the 20th century. Many of the anti-communist criticisms presented in the above section (for example, criticisms of violations of human rights) are shared by the communist critics.

Other varieties of the Left opposed Bolshevik plans before they were put into practice: The revisionist Marxists, such as Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky denied the necessity of a revolution; the anarchists had differed from Marx since Bakunin, and the anarchist Left Socialist-Revolutionaries under Nestor Makhno were at war with Lenin, forming another of the many sides of the Russian Civil War.

Marx and Engels (like Alexander Hamilton) did not believe that true liberal democracy was a possible form of government, since all states inherently give unlimited power to the ruling class. After the revolution, when all production was securely controlled by the proletariat, the state would eventually "wither away", since it would have no function.

Criticisms of Communist states from the Left began very soon after the creation of the first such state. Bertrand Russell visited Russia in 1920, and regarded the Bolsheviks as intelligent, but clueless and planless. Emma Goldman condemned the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion as a 'massacre'.

One specifically communist critique, however, is the allegation that the "Communist states" of the 20th century grossly violated communist principles, and were therefore only partially communist at best or completely un-communist at worst.

Firstly, all communists agree that democracy (the rule of the people) is a key element of both socialism and communism - though they may disagree on the particular form that this democracy should take. The leaders of the Communist states themselves frequently announced their support for democracy, held regular elections and sometimes even gave their countries names such as the "German Democratic Republic" or the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". Supporters of Communist states have always argued that those states were democratic. However, critics point out that, in practice, one political party held an absolute monopoly on power, dissent was banned, and the elections usually featured a single candidate and were ripe with fraud (often producing implausible results of 99% in favor of the candidate). Thus, communist critics of Communist states argue that, in practice, these states were not democratic and therefore not communist or socialist.

A lack of democracy implies a lack of a mandate from the people; as such, communist critics argue that the leadership of Communist states did not represent the interests of the working class, and it should therefore be no wonder that this leadership took actions that directly harmed the workers (for example Mao's Great Leap Forward). In particular, Communist states banned independent labor unions, an act seen by many communists (and most others on the political left) as an open betrayal of the working class.

Trotskyists, in particular, have argued that Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a bureaucratic and repressive state, and that all subsequent Communist states ultimately turned out similar because they copied his example (Stalinism). There are various terms used by Trotskyists to define such states; see state capitalism, degenerated workers' state and deformed workers' state.

While Trotskyists are Leninists, there are other communists who embrace classical Marxism and reject Leninism entirely, arguing, for example, that the Leninist principle of democratic centralism was the source of the Soviet Union's slide away from communism.

Finally, it should be noted that many of these communist criticisms draw counter-criticisms from anti-communists, many of whom have attempted to establish a direct link between communist principles and the actions of Communist states. Ultimately, this comes down to a fundamental disagreement between communists and anti-communists as to what those 'communist principles' actually are. A glaring example is the issue of democracy: Communists claim that democracy is an essential part of their principles, while anti-communists claim that it is not.

In addition to Communism, the names of several other ideologies and political systems have been used by governments or political parties whose policies are widely regarded as being contrary to the basic principles of those ideologies or systems. The Democratic Republic of the Congo or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), for example, are universally regarded as highly undemocratic. Likewise, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia shares virtually nothing with the ideology of liberalism.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "20th century Communist states", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki