From a Marxist perspective, why did the fall of communism occur?

[Arakir]

In 1989, why did communists lose power and abandon Marxism-Leninism in Eastern Europe and other countries? Why did the Soviet Union collapse? In China, why did it shift to a market economy? Why is it that in most of the countries that Marxism-Leninism was implemented in, they are no longer Marxist-Leninist?

Also, in the event that a wave of radical leftism sweeps the world, what can be dome from preventing this from happening again?

[tuwix]

I'm an eye-witness of so-called 'fall of communism'. I'm living in Poland almost all my life. But there was no communism. And the people ruling so-called 'communist party' were not communist at all and calling them 'communists' is and was insult to them. It's just imperialist propaganda named state capitalism a 'communism'. But the only communism present on this planet is the primitive communism unfortunately. And I don't mean North Korea. If you don't know what is it, you can check it out in Wikipedia.

And Leninists have lost a power because of errors predicted by Bakunin. Bakunin in mail to Marx was warning that not abolishing the state will cause a creation of 'red bureaucracy' which will have the same role as bourgeoisie in classic capitalism. And it had. Lenin has created a “vanguard” party which was that 'red bureaucracy'. And they caused a collapse the system. In Poland, nobody believed that it is 'proletarian state' in any way. The reforms of the system went into market economy and not to the real Marxism and system has collapsed. The new-born bourgeoisie and elites have crashed it.

But without any hard feelings to me. The Leninist system had nothing to do with freedom promised in Marx's books. It was another tyranny. The difference was only propaganda that gave the illusion of “workers' state”. But when workers are disobedient to the rulers, the authorities killed workers as in classic capitalist system.

[LOLseph Stalin]

You'll get a different answer from pretty much every tendency. One main reason I think it fell though is that they could just no longer sustain themselves without world revolution. It's funny because I was just having a discussion almost like this on Facebook and that is one of the conclusions I came to.

[Skyhilist]

So basically to sum up tuwix's post:

[LOLseph Stalin]

So basically to sum up tuwix's post:

I'm a Marxist and that meme still cracks me up. Bravo.

[Let's Get Free]

The collapse of the “communist” states was a inevitable clarification of a unstable compromise situation.
Bureaucrat capitalist classes which had established their rule through leadership of successful popular revolutions or at the end of the Red army's bayonet offered a extensive social wage to the proletarianized strata in exchange for the acceptance of their political domination, while violently suppressing any moves toward popular autonomy.
It was inevitable that the bureaucrats would in the end fully reintegrate into the world market, remove any limitations on the full commodification of labor power and declare that “to get rich is glorious”, once they felt it safe to do so.

We see this happening in Cuba right now as we speak.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

So basically to sum up tuwix's post:

Please don't use pictures in learning.
People come here to learn, not for shitty memes.

[Skyhilist]

Please don't use pictures in learning.
People come here to learn, not for shitty memes.

Actually, I find it to be quite an entertaining meme :D

[Blake's Baby]

That's not the pont - it doesn't belong in learning.

Arakir - unlike tuwix and skybutton I am a Marxist, and from my point of view, yes, the regimes of Eastern Europe (including the Soviet Union) were state capitalist. In 1917-27, the world revolution failed to overthrow capitalism an the state. As the revolution must be worldwide to succeed, what was established after the failure of the revolution in Russia was not any kind of socialism but a brutal and inefficient militarised state capitalism. This stagnated from the late 1960s - when the economic crisis began to affect both west and east - and ultimately collapsed in the late '80s-early '90s, because it was not as capable of transorming itself as the west was.

After the outbreak of the crisis in '68, and especially after '73, the west began its economic restructuring - which involved moving from a Keynesian model to a neo-liberal one - but the Eastern Bloc didn't. It stuck with Keynesianism. By around 1985 countries like Hungary were openly trying to move to a more market-orientated approach. By 1989 after 15 years or so of restructuring in the west, and very little 'perestroika' in the east, the economies of Eastern Europe were utterly crisis-ridden. Hence their collapse.

[TiberiusGracchus]

In 1989, why did communists lose power and abandon Marxism-Leninism in Eastern Europe and other countries? Why did the Soviet Union collapse?

"At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure."

Karl Marx, preface to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy".

I think this gives a good explaination. But how did the relations of production in these countries become fetters for the development of the productive forces?

I think it's becaue the state capitalist nomenklatura finally got what they wanted. Stalin benefited them, but terrorised them. Khrushchev benefited them, but harassed them. Brezhnev benefited them and left them in peace. Thus stagnation and the gradual collapse and dissolution of the system.

Something like that tend to happen all the time when the money lords get direct phone lines to the political power. Capitalists have very narrow mental horizons, much more narrow than what is needed at the political arena. Therefore they are very bad at maintaining their own economic system.

[RedMaterialist]

It wasn't communism that "fell," it was the Soviet Socialist State that collapsed. As predicted by Marx and Engels, once the proletarian dictatorship achieved power it began to suppress and destroy the capitalist classes. It was a very brutal process but no more brutal than the means used by the capitalists to suppress the working classes. Once the capitalist classes were more or less destroyed in the Soviet Union, there was no more class left to suppress. Without class suppression there can be no state. The Soviet Union therefore collapsed and along with it the Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe.

However, the SU did not collapse in a vacuum; it was surrounded by the extremely hostile and powerful capitalist class which poured capital into Russia, thereby re-establishing a semi-capitalist state, in the hopes of privatising the entire Russian economy. The Russian people under Putin rejected the privatisation and Russia state now owns most of the major means of production, such as oil, transportation, utilities, etc.

[Arakir]

Suppose we could go back in time. During Marx's time, and during the Bolshevik Revolution, what could they have done differently that would lead to the creation of a communist society, and have the revolutions of 1989 have never occurred?

[tuwix]

Firstly, they shouldn't have created a 'vanguard' party.
Secondly, they should have created mechanisms to prevent restorations of oligarchies.
Thirdly, they should have give a power on means of productions to workers and not bureaucracy.

And this means to dissolve a state as a guardian of private property.

[Lucretia]

From a Marxist perspective, communism is and can only be a global system. It was not established, and therefore did not "fall," in this country or that in the late 80s and early 90s.

[Broviet Union]

I know the standard hardline tankie answer is that post-Stalinist leaders were Revisionist. My question is: what motivation did Kruschev et al have to BE revisionist?

[Lord Hargreaves]

The USSR collapsed due to a combination of chronic economic stagnation and political crisis. Gorbachev's attempts to liberalise the economy and introduce political reform ended up undermining the whole system, and the military finally decided it had no interest in defending the bureaucracy.

As most Marxists will tell you, the USSR was effectively doomed after the failure of the political revolution in Germany, but also of Western Europe more generally (many others - non-Leninists - who were more deterministically minded, thought it was doomed anyway.) The USSR became a kind of "holding exercise" for a socialist revolution that was never going to come.

While instituting some important reforms that considerably reduced inequality, and while developing an industrial economy (which had some rather disastrous effects for some people, it has to be said), the USSR never came close to abolishing wage labour or becoming a meaningfully democratic society.

It found itself bound into a kind of "worst of both worlds" situation: it was "left out in the cold" due to its semi-outside peripheral status vis a vis the world economic system, yet all the while it remained a slave to that world system in other respects. In the end, the Cold War amounted to something of a collaboration between it and the United States, even if in other areas the USSR provided important aid and assistance to anti-imperialist, anti-systemic forces (e.g. Vietnam, Cuba).

The dramatic collapse in living standards experienced post-1991, when many state industries were callously broken up and auctioned off, really was an absolute tragedy for the Russian people. Nevertheless, there is not much for communists to mourn in the collapse of the USSR, which history will ultimately judge as folly.

[Lord Hargreaves]

After the outbreak of the crisis in '68, and especially after '73, the west began its economic restructuring - which involved moving from a Keynesian model to a neo-liberal one - but the Eastern Bloc didn't. It stuck with Keynesianism.

In what sense was the USSR a "Keynesian" economy? Could you suggest some reading materials on this? (since this is 'Learning') :huh:

It isn't immediately clear to me that the economic crisis suffered by the Eastern Bloc was the same as the situation in the West at that time, since Western/US neo-liberalism was not primarily a response to economic stagnation.

[Blake's Baby]

In what sense was the USSR a "Keynesian" economy? Could you suggest some reading materials on this? (since this is 'Learning') :huh:...

Massive investment in the economy by the state. Total investment by the state in the case of the Soviet Union.


It isn't immediately clear to me that the economic crisis suffered by the Eastern Bloc was the same as the situation in the West at that time, since Western/US neo-liberalism was not primarily a response to economic stagnation.

Are you really sure about that? That's not my recollection of what was going on. I'd say neo-liberalism was precisely a response to economic stagnation.

[RedMaterialist]

Suppose we could go back in time. During Marx's time, and during the Bolshevik Revolution, what could they have done differently that would lead to the creation of a communist society, and have the revolutions of 1989 have never occurred?

I doubt there is anything they could have done differently. It appears now that socialism must first go through a nationalist stage first before it can develop internationally. Capitalists seem to recognize this instinctively as they try to "contain" communism within specific nation-states. Marx said that the working class in each state would have to settle accounts with their own bourgeoisie before further developing internationally. I wonder if even Marx could have foreseen the brutality of the fight the capitalists would put up.

[Lord Hargreaves]

Massive investment in the economy by the state. Total investment by the state in the case of the Soviet Union.

Keynesianism isn't state investment in the economy.




Are you really sure about that? That's not my recollection of what was going on. I'd say neo-liberalism was precisely a response to economic stagnation.

Well, we can see that global economic growth rates went through something of a boom in the 1960s, at least as compared to what was seen in subsequent decades. That runaway inflation was the major problem during the period is a good half-indicator of this. Economic growth remained reasonable enough during the 1970s.

Rather, neoliberalism was a ruling class project for the upwards redistribution of global wealth (taking it out of the hands of workers, etc). It was also about privatization of state services and industries, and increased financialization, both undertaken in an effort to weaken the power of the labour movement.

What happened in Russia after 1991 is something of a textbook example of what this is about: the people who mattered got incredibly rich, while the economy (everyone else) collapsed. Neoliberalism was never principally about addressing economic stagnation (unless by "economic stagnation" you mean something other than increasing GDP growth, which is hard to fathom).

It is difficult to reconcile the idea that neoliberalism was simply about the so-called capitalist class in the USSR attempting to restore economic growth, with the facts of the catastrophe of what actually happened. If neoliberalism was about restoring economic growth, it was a monumental failure (and we would see this still today in our own economies). But because it was, and is, actually about defending the 1%, we can see it rather as a success.

So, better to see the period of neoliberalism in Russia as the restoration of class power, the building of a class, the political effort to concentrate great wealth in fewer and fewer hands, rather than in terms of some neat continuity between bureaucrats/capitalists who were all just trying to beat "stagnation".

[Blake's Baby]

...

Well, we can see that global economic growth rates went through something of a boom in the 1960s, at least as compared to what was seen in subsequent decades...

Are you serious? The crisis didn't exist because after it started it got worse? Is that really what you're saying?

You don't compare the the 1960s to the 1970s to find out if there was a crisis in the 1960s, you compare them to the 1950s. Unless you think crises unfold backwards in time of course, or that a crisis necessarily only lasts a couple of years.

From the period of the post-war reconstruction for about 20 years, economic growth in the west was sustained (and the economic production in the east was even more impressive, if I recall my post-war econometrics correctly). From the late 1960s various economic indicators showed that the economy was beginning to unravel - the first (that I'm aware of) being the Wilson government's devaluation of Sterling in November 1967.

By 1973 the crisis was pretty blatant. Since that time, the crisis has been with us permanently. There is an argument that 40 (or 45) years of crisis means that the term 'crisis' is not appropriate any more (as 'crisis' implies something short-term that can be overcome) - but this is because the crisis is so huge that it now looks like the systemic failure of capitalism, not because it's not happening. The problem is that there's too much crisis for the word 'crisis' to be appropriate, rather than not enough.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

In the absence of a global revolution, the bureaucratic degeneration that had existed in the Soviet Union due to the destruction of the most conscious elements of the proletariat deepened; this rule by bureaucratic strata prevented the construction of an extensive proletarian democracy. Other "communist" states were, so to say, "born deformed". All of them remained dictatorships of the proletariat, and all of them operated centrally planned economies; but the exercise of the dictatorship was left to the bureaucratic strata.

These strata, however, were not classes; they did not have the independence that classes have in economic relations. So every degenerated or deformed workers' state was unstable by virtue of its power relations; the ruling bureaucracy tried to resolve the contradiction in multiple ways, but ultimately collapsed under it.

[Blake's Baby]

... All of them remained dictatorships of the proletariat ... but the exercise of the dictatorship was left to the bureaucratic strata...

So it was a proletarian dictatorship, but the proletariat didn't exercise that dictatorship? In what sense was it 'proletarian' then?

Nationalised property administered by a bureaucracy = state capitalism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So it was a proletarian dictatorship, but the proletariat didn't exercise that dictatorship? In what sense was it 'proletarian' then?

The proletariat was the most prominent class, complete nationalisation and a centrally planned economy are economic forms of the D. of the P., and the bureaucracy was itself a stratum of the proletariat.


Nationalised property administered by a bureaucracy = state capitalism.

Not in the "new class" sense, unless it can be demonstrated that the bureaucratic stratum had become an independent class that extracted surplus value from the proletariat. And if it had become an independent class, why did all the "communist" states collapse so ignominiously? One would expect "centuries of state-capitalist states".

[Lord Hargreaves]

Are you serious? The crisis didn't exist because after it started it got worse? Is that really what you're saying?

You don't compare the the 1960s to the 1970s to find out if there was a crisis in the 1960s, you compare them to the 1950s. Unless you think crises unfold backwards in time of course, or that a crisis necessarily only lasts a couple of years.

[...]

By 1973 the crisis was pretty blatant. Since that time, the crisis has been with us permanently. There is an argument that 40 (or 45) years of crisis means that the term 'crisis' is not appropriate any more (as 'crisis' implies something short-term that can be overcome) - but this is because the crisis is so huge that it now looks like the systemic failure of capitalism, not because it's not happening. The problem is that there's too much crisis for the word 'crisis' to be appropriate, rather than not enough.

Yes I think you are right, I was thrown by words like "crisis" and "stagnation" into reading far more into your words than was actually there. You are, of course, completely correct to say that from the end of the 1960s, there began a general economic slowdown which lasts until the present day. I apologise for my misguided and inaccurate criticisms.

But it remains the case imho that neoliberalism was primarily about restoring ruling class power and wealth, rather than jump-starting new economic growth. The loss of wealth by investors and CEOS and all that jazz, was more pronounced than the onsetting economic slowdown/stagnation.

I don't really believe those who institute neoliberal policies themselves think that they are going to solve capitalism's problems. They can't be that deluded - they can see everything you and I see, and surely much more. As Russia after the Soviet collapse shows, they couldn't care less about how the general economy performs so long as they get theirs.

[Blake's Baby]

The proletariat was the most prominent class, complete nationalisation and a centrally planned economy are economic forms of the D. of the P...

I disagree.


... and the bureaucracy was itself a stratum of the proletariat...

I disagree.


...

Not in the "new class" sense, unless it can be demonstrated that the bureaucratic stratum had become an independent class that extracted surplus value from the proletariat. And if it had become an independent class, why did all the "communist" states collapse so ignominiously? One would expect "centuries of state-capitalist states".

Why? I'm hoping state capitalism (which developed apace, East and West, during the 20th century) is the last death-rattle of capitalism. Unfortunately, I suspect it isn't. But there's no reason to think that there should be centuries of 'Soviet'-style command economies. What makes you think there should?


...
I don't really believe those who institute neoliberal policies themselves think that they are going to solve capitalism's problems. They can't be that deluded - they can see everything you and I see, and surely much more. As Russia after the Soviet collapse shows, they couldn't care less about how the general economy performs so long as they get theirs.

Well, what is the point of economic growth? It's to grow profits, isn't it? So it is them 'getting theirs' - I'm not arguing that they promote policies for growth out of goodness - only so that their profits grow. When the economy is growing, capitalists get fat; when the economy is not growing, capitalists still get fat, but the rest of us get very thin.

I really think that you're looking at the problem in a strange way. I think the people who impose neo-liberal policies do think that what they're doing is for the good health of the economy of the country - and by 'economy' they tend to mean 'for their mates/vested interests' whoever they are. Yes, in Russia, mafia oligarchs and oil billionaires destroyed the economy, but enriched themselves in the process. The point is the enrichment. If that comes from state investment then they'll get the state to invest. If that comes from selling state assets they'll sell state assets. It doesn't matter. Neither policy can save capitalism, but either policy can in the right circumstances bring a bit of profitability back to the economy, allowing the capuitalists to make money. Briefly, before the ongoing crisis engulfs them again.

[Comrade Alex]

Thier are many factors for each nation's collapse but some things are universal in a sense
For example much of eastern europe with the exception of Yugoslavia
Was forced into communism by Stalin thier wasn't much of a popular movement for communism
Another factor which I think is the biggest factor a true dictatorship of the proletariat was never really achieved instead a bureaucratic. Govt was in place combine all this with the countries individual factors (nationalism, corruption, etc) and the bloc could not survive they collapsed what we Can do learn from the past don't make the same mistakes