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Criticism of communism

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Note that Communism is a branch of Socialism. This article only discusses criticisms that are specific to communism and not other forms of socialism. See criticisms of socialism for a discussion of objections to socialism in general.

Criticisms of Communism can be divided in two broad categories: Those concerning themselves with the practical aspects of 20th century Communist states, and those concerning themselves with communist principles and theory. The two categories are quite distinct: One may agree with communist principles but disagree with many policies adopted by Communist states (and this is quite common among communists, particularly in the case of Trotskyists), or, more rarely, one may agree with policies adopted by Communist states but disagree with communist principles.

20th century Communist states

Strictly speaking, the term "Communist state" is an oxymoron, since the communists themselves define communism as a social system that has abolished private property, social classes, and the State itself. No country or government ever called itself a "Communist state". However, during the Cold War, the term "Communist state" was coined in the West to refer to single-party states where the ruling party officially proclaimed its adherence to Marxism-Leninism. It is these "Communist states" that are the targets of criticism presented below.

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

Anti-communist critique of Communist states

Censorship, personality cults, and foreign policy

Critics start by pointing out that the Communist states often practiced censorship. The level of censorship varied widely between different states and historical periods, but it nearly always existed to a greater or lesser extent. The most rigid censorship was practiced by hardline Stalinist or Maoist regimes, such as the Soviet Union under Stalin (1927-1953), China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and North Korea during its entire existence (1948-present). This censorship took various forms:

On a related note, the personality cults of many of the leaders of Communist states and the fact that in some cases the leadership of the state has become inherited has also been criticized. Critics have also argued that a new powerful class of party bureaucrats emerged, and exploited the rest of the population. This new ruling class is usually called the nomenklatura.

The restriction of emigration has also been criticized, the most prominent example being the Berlin Wall.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Prague spring and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution have been criticized as imperialistic wars where military force crushed popular uprisings against the Communist state. There were also a number of internal uprisings suppressed by military force, like the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Human rights violations

Extensive historical research has documented large scale human rights violations that occurred in Communist states, particularly during the regimes of Stalin and Mao, but shown to have started during the Russian Civil War and to have continued to occur in most Communist states during most of their existence. Most prominent being deaths due to executions, forced labor camps, genocides of certain ethnic minorities, and mass starvations caused by either government mismanagement or deliberately. The exact number of deaths caused by these regimes is somewhat disputed, but extensive historical research shows at least tens of millions (see, e.g., the estimates reached in The Black Book of Communism and the references below). Other widespread criticisms concern the documented lack of freedom of speech in Communist Party regimes, religious and ethnic persecutions, lack of democracy and systematic use of torture.

Some advocates of Communist states find this approach simplistic, noting that executions, forced labor camps, the repression of ethnic minorities, and mass starvation were patterns in both Russian and Chinese history before their respective Communist revolutions. Critics argue that past evils in an old regime cannot be used to justify new ones, while advocates reply that they only seek to put the events into perspective, not justify them.

See also: The Black Book of Communism

Economic and social development

Advocates of Communist states often praise them for having leapt 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. See Gregory J. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia: 1919–1929, Princeton University Press, 1974, hardcover, 451 pages, ISBN 069107562X. Finally, in the first half of the 1980s, Hungary, with a largely collectivised agriculture, exported more agricultural products than France from an agricultural area little more than a quarter of the French (FAO production, 1986, FAO Trade vol. 40, 1986). Critics, however, cite counter-examples: the failure of the Soviet Union to achieve the same kind of development in agriculture (forcing the Soviet Union to become a net importer of cereals after the Second World War), as well as the continued poverty of other Communist states such as Laos, Vietnam or Maoist China. Indeed, they point out that China only achieved high rates of growth after introducing free market economic reforms — a sign, claim the critics, of the superiority of capitalism. Another example is Czechoslovakia, which was among world's most developed industrial countries prior to World War II, but fell behind the West in the post-war era. Finally, critics also note that some Communist states do not compare favourably with other countries with similar culture and economic development: see East Germany vs. West Germany and North Korea vs. South Korea. To this point, advocates of the Communist states respond by drawing comparisons of their own, for example between Cuba and Jamaica or other Central American countries.

Communist states often engaged in rapid industrialization, and in some cases this has lead to environmental disasters. The most cited example is the disappearance 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.

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.

Communist critique of Communist states

Not all those who criticize Communist states are anti-communists. Some are communists themselves, who 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. 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 working class (for example Mao's Great Leap Forward).

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.

Marxism and communist theory

See Criticisms of socialism for a general critique of socialism. The following sections of this article deal with criticisms that are specifically raised against Marxist theory.

Historical materialism

Historical materialism is normally considered one of the intellectual foundations of Marxism. It looks for the causes of developments and changes in human history in economic, technological, and more broadly, material factors, as well as the clashes of material interests among tribes, social classes and nations.

Critics argue that it ignores other causes of historical and social change, like biology, genetics, philosophy, art, religion, or other causes that are not "materialist" according to Marxists. Some, such as Karl Popper and others, have also argued that Historical materialism is a pseudoscience because it is not falsifiable. Marxists respond that social sciences in general are largely not falsifiable, since it is often difficult or outright impossible to test them via experiments (in the way hard science can be tested).

Based on historical materialism, Marx made numerous predictions. For example, he argued that the workers would become poorer and poorer as the capitalists exploited them more and more; that differences between the members within each class would become smaller and smaller and the classes would thus become more homogeneous; that the skilled workers would be replaced by unskilled workers doing assembly line work; that relations between the working class and the capitalists would get worse and worse; and that the capitalists would become fewer and fewer due to an increasing number of monopolies.

Some of these are debatable, while others have been clearly proven wrong. This is often cited by critics as evidence that historical materialism is a flawed theory. Communists reply with two arguments: The first is that there were a number of major events and trends over the past century and a half which Marx could not have predicted: imperialism, World War I, the rise of social democracy and Keynesian economics in the West (that introduced the concept of redistribution of wealth, thereby narrowing the gap between rich and poor), World War II and finally the Cold War. In response, critics maintain that if so many unpredictable events have happened in the past, then an equal number could happen in the future, and therefore historical materialism is not a reliable method of making predictions.

The second communist argument is a specifically Leninist one. Lenin, in his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, argued that capitalism must be viewed as a global phenomenon, and different capitalist countries must not be treated as if they are fully independent entities. Instead, one must look at capitalism worldwide. From this point of view, Lenin goes on to argue that rich, developed capitalist countries "export" their poverty to poorer countries, by turning those countries into colonies (hence 'imperialism') and exploiting them as sources of cheap unskilled labor and resources. Part of the spoils from this exploitation are then shared with the workers from the developed countries, in order to keep their standard of living high and thus avoid revolution at home.

Critics point out that the European colonial empires of Lenin's time have all dissolved during the 1960s and 70s, as part of the decolonization process. Communists maintain that economic exploitation of poor countries continues even in the absence of direct political control (see globalization and anti-globalization).

Labor theory of value

Fundamental to Marxist theory is the labor theory of value. It claims that the value (or, to be more exact, use-value) of an item is determined by the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. In other words, the greater the amount of work necessary to produce an object, the greater the value of that object. This implies that value is objective, and that it may not be reflected by the price of the object in question (since price is determined by supply and demand, and is not linked to the amount of necessary work that must be expended to produce the object). The labor theory of value was first fully stated by David Ricardo, from suggestions by Adam Smith, and later adopted by Karl Marx.

By contrast, most capitalist economists now use the subjective theory of value, which states that the value of an object is always identical to its price on the market (and is therefore based on the subjective utilities of the participants).

Critics of Marxism hold that the qualifier socially necessary is not well-defined, and conceals a subjective judgment of necessity. They also hold that market prices are in fact objectively determinable: the market price of a widget can be discovered by attempting to buy one.


See also

References and further reading

Anti-communist books

  • Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History, Broadway Books, 2003, hardcover, 720 pages, ISBN 0767900561
  • Becker, Jasper (1998) Hungry Ghosts : Mao's Secret Famine. Owl Books. ISBN 0805056688.
  • Conquest, Robert (1991) The Great Terror: A Reassessment. Oxford University Press ISBN 0195071328.
  • Conquest, Robert (1987) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195051807.
  • Courtois,Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis & Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674076087.
  • Hamilton-Merritt, Jane (1999) Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253207568.
  • Jackson, Karl D. (1992) Cambodia, 1975–1978 Princeton University Press ISBN 069102541X.
  • Kakar, M. Hassan (1997)Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 University of California Press. ISBN 0520208935.
  • Khlevniuk, Oleg & Kozlov, Vladimir (2004) The History of the Gulag : From Collectivization to the Great Terror (Annals of Communism Series) Yale University Pres. ISBN 0300092849.
  • Natsios, Andrew S. (2002) The Great North Korean Famine. Institute of Peace Press. ISBN 1929223331.
  • Nghia M. Vo (2004) The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam McFarland & Company ISBN 0786417145.
  • Pipes, Richard (1995) Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage. ISBN 0679761845.
  • Rummel, R.J. (1997). Death by Government. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1560009276.
  • Rummel, R.J. (1996). Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers ISBN 1560008873.
  • Rummel, R.J. & Rummel, Rudolph J. (1999). Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. Lit Verlag ISBN 3825840107.
  • Todorov, Tzvetan & Zaretsky, Robert (1999). Voices from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0271019611
  • Yakovlev, Alexander (2004). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300103220.

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