Evolutionary Stages of Communism: Revolution, Politics, Corruption
Revolutionaries are idealists. They have to be. They risk their lives to fight for what they believe in. Lenin, Mao, Castro — they all truly and deeply believed that they were fighting for a better way of life for their people. And to a varying degrees, they accomplished that. In fact in all three of these cases — Russia, China and Cuba, the early years after the revolution were relatively good for the people. Wealth was redistributed and poverty decreased. The second world is generally better than the third world. When I was living in communist China, I found it to be a lot like camping — everything worked and was possible, but nothing was quite as convenient or comfortable as I would have liked.
But as communist governments age they tend to become corrupt and dictatorial. Why? Unchecked power. Without elections or a free press, there is essentially no way to remove a bad leader. Highly secretive control structures like the politburo tend to select for leaders that can amass and wield power by any means possible. These traits tend to become much more concentrated than any traits related to good governance. This was the undoing of the Soviet block and hopefully soon will dismantle North Korea. How China managed to avoid this state I won’t ponder here.
Despite what the US State Department would like you to believe, Cuba’s government has not (yet) devolved to this state. Cuba is still highly egalitarian where top government officials only earn twice what a factory worker might make — not the wretched excess of a corrupt system. They probably get to drive cars, but are required to pick up all hitchhikers since really it’s the people’s car. For the most part Cubans trust their government and with good reason. Cuba is not corrupt. Of course if you’re smart and ambitious you have much more to gain in a capitalist system which leads to justifiably frustrated opponents. While their lifestyles are anything but luxurious, Cubans are generally fairly happy, healthy and well educated. Happiness is subjective, but statistics clearly show Cuba to be on par if not better than the US for healthcare and education in most measures. It’s not a bad place to live.
The success of Cuban communism should not come as much of a surprise considering what we’ve discussed so far. Castro was idealistic when he led the revolution, and he’s still on power. Corrupt leaders have not been able to take control yet. A problem with communism is that what happens next will depend very strongly on one individual. Will they be more like Fidel or Kim Jong-Il. We’ll have to wait to see.
Leo,
I spent 3 years in Vietnam in the mid-80's. Till that point in time, I was intrigued by socialism/capitalism. After living there, and spending time with a lot of East Europeans, I quickly realized that Communism was Utopia.
Life as a foreigner was wonderfully comfortable. Healthcare was good, education was of good quality, but there was a lot missing.
The constantly tapped phones, disappearing people (we knew one personally), the lack of ability to say what you wanted. Decisions about your future being made by the government when you were very young, and so on and so forth. No surprise that people came and asked you for help leaving all the time.
This was 20 years ago and things have changed a lot, but give me the chaos of democracy and capitalism any day. I don't like the thought of decisions being made for me by anyone else.
If China had not opened up and given people capitalist money-making power, the system would have collapsed by now, at least in the big urban centers. Even today, with China as successful as it is, I would take India over China 100 times out of 100. I don't need permission from anyone to live my life, nor worry about writing what I want.
One important thing to note is that communism != totalitarianism. Unfortunately, most instances of communism to date have been implemented as single-leader tyrannical states or as oligarchies that effectively amount to the same thing.
The problem with that (I mean, other than the purges and brutal repression) is that that kind of authoritarian political structure doesn't make any sense with the economic model. If the economy is intended to be ruled by the people as a whole, as opposed to those few who are talented or lucky enough to grab the most power…doesn't that really sound like the economic equivalent of democracy?
George Orwell's "Homage To Catalonia" is a really interesting read, and I highly recommend it. He fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the anarcho-syndicalists, who were effectively "communists" with the most egalitarian, non-hierarchical political structure conceivable. Even their army wasn't particularly hierarchical. In the end, the Communist Party undermined them, because the purpose of the Communist Party was to promote Stalin's interests–and what a swell guy he turned out to be–not the interests of the locals, or of international communism.
Obviously, there's a whole separate discussion to be had about whether communism reduces efficiency to the point that everyone is worse off, and thus is unworkable from a practical standpoint, but I think many of the critiques of communism are really critiques of totalitarianism.
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