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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. Note also that communism and related words are written with the uppercase "C" when they refer to a political party of that name, a member of that party, or a government led by such a party.
Criticisms of communism can be divided in two broad categories: One is those concerning themselves with the real-world results of the 20th century Communist states. Such critics include both pro and anti communists. Another is those concerning themselves with Marxism, the claimed political ideology of the Communist states. A central question is the implications of the real-world results of the Communist states for Marxist theory.
Criticisms of 20th century Communist states
Arts, science, technology, and environment
The Communist states censored the arts, usually only allowing socialist realism. Some Communist states have been involved in the destruction of cultural heritage: Romania (planned destruction of historical centers of most towns — partially achieved in Bucharest), China (repression of Tibetan culture, destructions during the Cultural Revolution) and the Soviet Union (destruction, abandon or reconversion of religious buildings) are the most cited examples .
The Communist states also censored science. One example is censorship and revisionism of history. Research was suppressed in biology and genetics (see Lysenkoism), linguistics (see Japhetic theory), cybernetics, psychology and psychiatry, and even organic chemistry. See also Suppressed research in the Soviet Union. In some Communist states it was common practice to classify internal critics of the system as having a mental disease, like sluggishly progressing schizophrenia - which was only recognized in Communist states - and incarcerating them in mental hospitals. Although the Communist states often emphasized the importance of the "hard sciences", comparatively few advances were made in them. For example, there were very few Nobel prize winners from Communist states .
Soviet technology generally lagged Western technology by many years. Exceptions include areas like the Soviet space program and military technology where occasionally the Communist technology was more advanced due to a massive concentration of research resources. According to the CIA, much of the technology in the Communist states consisted simply of copies of Western products that had been legally purchased or gained through a massive espionage program. Stricter Western control of the export of technology through COCOM contributed to the fall of Communism .
Also pointed out is the environmental disasters. One is the gradual disappearance of the Aral Sea and a similar diminishing of the Caspian Sea because of the diversion of the rivers that fed them. Another the pollution of the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the unique freshwater environment of Lake Baikal. Many of the rivers were polluted; several, like the Vistula and Oder rivers in Poland, were virtually ecologically dead. In 1988 only 30% of the sewage in the Soviet Union was treated properly. Established health standards for air pollution was exceeded by ten times or more in 103 cities in the Soviet Union in 1988. The air pollution problem was even more severe in Eastern Europe. It caused lung cancer, forest die-back, and damage to buildings and cultural heritages. According to official sources, 58 percent of 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 toxic waste sites and 1,500 in St. Petersburg. . The environmental situation has improved in every studied former Communist state. .
Human rights violations
(See references below)
Extensive historical research, especially after the fall of Communism opened the achieves of many of the former Communist states, has documented large scale human rights violations that occurred in these states, particularly during the regimes of Stalin and Mao, but shown to have started immediately after the Russian revolution during the regime of Lenin. 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 the historical research shows at least tens of millions and several overviews give a number close to one hundred million deaths . Other widespread criticism concern the documented lack of freedom of speech in Communist Party regimes, religious and ethnic persecutions, and systematic use of torture.
Many of the Communist states used an extensive network of civilian informants to spy on their own population. This created a society where no one could trust other citizens, who might report real or fabricated criticism of the Communist system to the secret police.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Prague Spring, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution can be seen as imperialistic wars where military force crushed popular uprisings against the Communist system. There were also many internal uprisings suppressed by military force, like the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
The Communist states had strict restrictions on emigration, the most prominent example being the Berlin Wall.
Many of the leaders of Communist states cultivated an extensive personality cult. In some cases the leadership of the state has become inherited. Critics have also argued that a new powerful class of party bureaucrats emerged which exploited the rest of the population. This new ruling class is usually called the nomenklatura.
Several of the Communist states directly supported claimed terrorist groups with money, training and safe bases. Examples include the PFLP, the Red Army Fraction, and the Japanese Red Army .
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". Some supporters of the Communist states have 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).
Some supporters of communism find this approach simplistic, noting that humans rights violations such as executions, forced labor camps, the repression of ethnic minorities, and mass starvation were patterns in both non-democratic Russian and Chinese history before their respective Communist takeovers, and that later the opposing capitalist states also committed some human rights violations, like state terrorism. However, evils in other regimes can hardly be used to justify new ones. Advocates reply that they only seek to put the events into perspective, not justify them. Also this defense can be criticized. Alexander Solzhenitsyn argues in his book Gulag Archipelago that the living conditions and death rates of the inmates in the Soviet era Gulags were much worse than those of the Tsarist era Katorgas. The worst crop failure of late Tsarist Russia, in 1892, caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths, while famines under both Lenin and Stalin caused many millions of deaths .
See also: The Black Book of Communism
Economic and social development
Advocates of communism praise Communist parties for running countries that have sometimes leapt ahead of contemporary "capitalist" countries, offering guaranteed employment, health care and housing to their citizens. Critics of communism 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. Another example is the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Cuba. However, these examples are anecdotal and there are 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. China only achieved high rates of growth after introducing Capitalist economic reforms. Another example is Czechoslovakia, which was among world's most developed industrial countries prior to World War II, but fell far behind the Western nations under the Communist rule. The Communist states do not compare favorable when looking at divided nations with similar culture before the Communist takeovers: North Korea vs. South Korea; China vs. Hong Kong and Taiwan; and East Germany vs. West Germany. East vs. West German productivity was around 90% in 1936 and around 60-65% in 1954 . When compared to the EU, the East German productivity declined from 67% in 1950 to 50% before the unification in 1989 .
Supporters of the Communist states note the social and cultural programs, sometimes administered by labor organizations. They included in theory guaranteed employment, subsidized food and clothing, free health care, free child care, and free education. Early advances in the status of women were also notable, especially in Islamic areas of the Soviet Union . They point out to the high levels of literacy enjoyed by Eastern Europeans (in comparison, for instance, with Southern Europe), Cubans or Chinese. However, education was full of propaganda and censored opposing views. Workers were not allowed to join free labor unions. There were often great scarcity and rationing even of basic products like food, forcing ordinary workers to spend much of their time waiting in queues, hoping to get one of the rationed products. Some of these benefits can also be found in nations with market economies, like Sweden.
In the Soviet Union in 1989 there was rationing of meat and sugar. The average intake of red meat for a Soviet citizen was half of what it had been for a subject of the Czar in 1913. Blacks in apartheid South Africa owned more cars per capita. The only area of consumption in which the Soviets excelled was the ingestion of hard liquor. Two-thirds of the households had no hot water, and a third had no running water at all. According to the government paper, Izvestia, a typical working class family of four was forced to live for 8 years in a single 8x8 foot room, before marginally better accommodation became available. The housing shortage was so acute that at all times 17% of Soviet families had to be physically separated for want of adequate space. A third of the hospitals had no running water and the bribery of doctors and nurses to get decent medical attention and even amenities like blankets in Soviet hospitals was not only common, but routine. The average welfare mother in the United States received more income in a month, than the average Soviet worker could earn in a year .
After 1965, life expectancy began to plateau or even decreased, especially for males, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe while it continued to increase in Western Europe. This divergence between two parts of Europe went on during three decades leading to a profound gap in the mid 90s. The life expectancy sharply declined after the change to market economy in several of the states of the former Soviet Union but may now have started to increase in the Baltic states. In several Eastern European nations life expectancy started to increase immediately after the fall of Communism. The previous decline for males continued for a time in some, like Romania, before starting to increase .
Cuba is often cited as a successful example by communists. However, Cuba was one of most developed nations in Latin America before Castro. Other Latin American nations have seen greater increases in literacy than Cuba. Calories per person have declined in Cuba while it has increased in most other Latin American nations. Cubans eat less cereals and meat than before Castro . On the other hand, there is a United States embargo against Cuba.
Marxist criticisms of Communist states
There were early Marxist critics of the first Communist states, like Mensheviks and Trotskyites. However, most foreign communists and Communist parties at first supported the Communist states and accepted the leadership of the Soviet Union (see Comintern). Criticisms gradually increased, especially after Stalin was denounced in the 1956 speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences, after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and after the fall of Communism in 1989-91.
Criticisms of Marxist theory
See criticisms of socialism for a discussion of objections to socialism in general. There are also some specific criticisms of Marxist theory.
Relevance of the Communist states for Marxist theory
Marxist critics of the Communist states argue that the problems in the Communist states cannot be used to criticize Marxist theory and the communist society. One argument is that a "Communist state" is an impossibility according to Marxist theory. The communist society itself is stateless in theory and thus cannot be 20th century states. However, Marx and Engel's theory includes a transitory state phase known as the dictatorship of the proletariat . Later, the state will "whither away" and the dictatorship of the proletariat will be replaced by the communist society. The Communist states, all claiming to be following Lenin's interpretation of Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, claimed to be this dictatorship of the proletariat . If they did follow Marxist theory, then the theory failed to work in the real world.
Trotskyites and other Leninists explain this by arguing that the Communist states after Lenin's death did not actually adhere to Marxism-Leninism but rather were perversions heavily influenced by Stalinism. Lenin's War communism and New Economic Policy were in many ways different from Stalinism. On the other hand, in many ways the institutions of the later Communist states differed from those under Stalin. Examples include the profit-sharing in Titoism, the extreme self-reliance in Juche, and the reforms in Perestroika, and Glasnost. Maoism is a broad concept that includes episodes such as the self-sufficient communes during the Great Leap Forward, the anti-intellectualism during the Cultural Revolution, and the almost primitivst Red Khmers. A response is that all later Communist states may have differed in some ways but that all had common problematic institutions created by Stalin and that this explains problems such as systematic human rights violations.
However, recent historical research has revealed the harsh repressions during Lenin's regime. They include summary executions of hundreds of thousands of "class enemies", the creation of the system that later become the Gulags, and a policy of food requisitioning during the Russian Civil War that was partially responsible for a famine causing 3-10 million deaths (see also references below).
Some Marxist supporters instead argue that no Communist state was Marxist since no Communist state was democratic. However, Marx and Engels gave few hints regarding how the dictatorship of the proletariat or the later communist society should be implemented. They rejected the concept of liberal democracy, arguing that it could not represent the interest of the proletariat. It is often argued that Marx and Engels supported the claimed direct democracy of the Paris Commune as a model . However, this is disputed and there were human rights violations even during the few months the Commune existed . Engels stated that "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?" and "the proletariat needs the state, not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries". Lenin later used cited these and other statements by Marx and Engels as support for using the authoritarian principles of vanguard party and "democratic centralism" during the dictatorship of the proletariat in Communist states. This excluded democracy even in theory outside the ruling Communist party . When the Marxists only gained a minority vote in the democratic Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917, Lenin dispersed the Constituent Assembly at the end of its first day's session and overturned the election . All the later Communist states became and remained totalitarian as long as the Communists remained in power, justifying this by referring to Lenin's interpretation of Marxism.
On the other hand, some democratic states have been ruled by parties calling themselves Communist without becoming totalitarian. One example is Moldova. Whether these parties and similar parties without power are Marxist is disputed, because, while they aim for a socialist society, they reject Marxist cornerstones like a proletarian revolution and at least for now accept a market economy (see also Definition of a Communist state and Eurocommunism).
Another argument is that true communism can only develop as a response to the contradictions of bourgeois capitalism; therefore, the failure of those experiments in communism to date can be attributed to the fact they did not emerge in this manner. In short, in order for a successful socialist revolution to occur, capitalism must first dominate the globe. The Soviet Union is a case in point - Tsarist Russia was quasi-feudal, not capitalist, and was overthrown by a small cadre rather than by a mass revolution. So it is argued by that the failure of Soviet socialism to sustain itself is actually an affirmation of Marxist theory.
Historical materialism
Historical materialism is normally considered the intellectual basis 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.
However, 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.
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 implies that the only value of an object on which different observers can agree is its price on the market (which is based on the subjective utilities of the participants). Critics of communism hold that the qualifier "socially necessary" in the labor theory of value is not well-defined, and conceals a subjective judgment of necessity.
Marx's predictions
Marx made numerous predictions. He thought 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; that the capitalists would become fewer and fewer due to an increasing number of monopolies; that the capitalist states would become increasingly authoritarian; and that the proletarian revolution would occur first in the most industrialized nations.
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 Marxist theory is not a reliable method of making predictions.
Lenin noted that the predicted increasing class polarization and communist revolution had failed to occur in the developed world. He then attempted to explain this by stating that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, and that developed countries had created a labor aristocracy content with capitalism by exploiting the developing world.
After the Western nations voluntarily gave up their colonies, supporters of communism have attempted to explain this with still another stage, sometimes called neoimperialism, arguing that the Third World is exploited even without formal empires. For criticism of this, see Anti-globalization#Criticisms.
Pseudoscience
Marxism does not claim be to a science. However, historical materialism does. Karl Popper and others have argued that historical materialism is a pseudoscience because it is not falsifiable. Marxists respond that some social sciences are not falsifiable, since it is often difficult or outright impossible to test them via experiments (in the way hard science can be tested). This is especially true when many people and a long time is involved. Popper agreed on this, but instead used it as an argument against central planning and all ideologies that claim to know the future.
See also
References and further reading
Scholarly references on human rights violations by Communist states
- Applebaum, Anne (2003) Gulag: A History. Broadway Books. 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.
- Pipes, Richard (1991) The Russian Revolution. Vintage. ISBN 0679736603.
- Rummel, R.J. (1996). Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers ISBN 1560008873.
- Todorov, Tzvetan & Zaretsky, Robert (1999). Voices from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0271019611.
- Van Canh, Nyuyen (1985) Vietnam Under Communism, 1975-1982. Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 0817978526.
- Yakovlev, Alexander (2004). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300103220.
External links
Criticisms of the Communist states and Marxism
Directories
- Google Directory
- Communism
- Crimes of Soviet Communists
- The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Media Center
Articles
Online estimates of Communist democide
- Summary of different estimates for total 20th century democide Note that only some of numbers are totals for the Communist states.
- How many did the Communist regimes murder?
Support for Marxism
Support for the Communist states
Marxists opposed to the Communist states
- Marxists Internet Archive
- History Archive
- Leon Trotsky Internet Archive
- The Revolution Betrayed An analysis of Stalinism, from a Trotskyist communist point of view.
- Capitalism versus socialism: The great debate revisited