What Has Communism Failed?

[Diirez]

How would you respond to someone saying "Every time communism has been implemented, it has failed. So that shows that it does not work"?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Point out that communism has yet to exist.

[#FF0000]

How would you respond to someone saying "Every time communism has been implemented, it has failed. So that shows that it does not work"?

Hella attempts as the republic or a democratic society had "failed" since the Romans -- so just saying 'it's failed every time' isn't enough, and we have to look at why it failed.

There's a lot of reasons, if you ask me. The main one being the fact that no one country can build a socialist or communist society -- and places like Russia and China were in an even worse position than most other countries were on account of their lack of industrial development. The success of the Russian Revolution was entirely dependent on the success of revolutions in Europe. And in Germany, Hungary, Italy, etc -- they failed.

I think bad theory is also to blame. In particular, I think the entire Leninist idea of the party is totally off base, with how it assumes the party (leaderships) represents the "most advanced" of the working class movement, full stop, which, among other things, ends with a party in which the cadre calls the shots and the rank and file members have no voice. So naturally, when the Bolsheviks took power, it was really more a takeover on behalf of the working class, rather than a takeover by the working class.

That's a very rough and extremely Russia-centric explanation, I think. For more about China and and explanation of the spectacular failures of Maoism, I suggest checking out this article (http://insurgentnotes.com/2012/10/notes-towards-a-critique-of-maoism/)

[Red HalfGuard]

If you're the typical revlefter it's because your extra-special-snowflake communism wasn't tried and literally ever single other attempt was too nationalist/class collaborationist/bureacratic/totalitarian/whatever.

[Durruti's friend]

If you're the typical revlefter it's because your extra-special-snowflake communism wasn't tried and literally ever single other attempt was too nationalist/class collaborationist/bureacratic/totalitarian/whatever.
Indeed they were. But of course, we can make more attempts at nationalist and/or class collaborationist 'revolutions' if you like, because they proved themselves so well and we're all living in a socialist society now...

To the OP, communism was never really tried, as it never came into existence and will not exist if the whole world gets rid of the capitalist system, whatever the ML's say. All previous socialist revolutions have degenerated, so to speak, exactly because they failed to spread and there are historical and political reasons why they failed. But I think that's for another topic.

That doesn't mean we should stop striving towards a classless society, only that we should make different approaches than those already tried (and failed).

[tuwix]

How would you respond to someone saying "Every time communism has been implemented, it has failed. So that shows that it does not work"?

I'd respond with a movie that communism that works (just clicc on CC to turn the subtitles on to understan what is he talking about):

E88gOuI3XJQ


Point out that communism has yet to exist.

I'm affrais you're wrong. It has and does. Look above. :)

[Oenomaus]

Primitive communism is less progressive than the agricultural, sedentary slaveowning societies that destroyed most primitive-communist societies; as such, and given that such societies can't support anything even approximating modern culture, that is an awful example.

Communism is not something that can be "implement", as if an isolated state might spontaneously decide to abolish classes one day. The construction of communism presupposes certain things - particularly the global dictatorship of the proletariat. There is no, and there has never been, such a dictatorship. Even so, the existing dictatorships of the proletariat obviously led to rapid industrial development, social progress and so on. If anything, the lesson is that the bureaucracy should not be allowed to ruin the revolution - as if that needed to be spelled out.


I think bad theory is also to blame. In particular, I think the entire Leninist idea of the party is totally off base, with how it assumes the party (leaderships) represents the "most advanced" of the working class movement, full stop, which, among other things, ends with a party in which the cadre calls the shots and the rank and file members have no voice. So naturally, when the Bolsheviks took power, it was really more a takeover on behalf of the working class, rather than a takeover by the working class.

Obviously, only part of the working class will organise itself as a class for itself. Why, then, should the inert or even counterrevolutionary rest of the class drag the proletariat down with themselves? Bourgeois dictatorships can operate even without the support of the majority of the bourgeoisie; why should the proletarian dictatorship be any different? Of course, in general, proletarian democracy is a good idea (and I mean actual democracy, not counting of hands and talk-shop parliaments). But as Trotsky once said, one shouldn't turn democracy into a fetish.

In any case, the October Revolution included a significant non-Bolshevik element, so obviously the Bolsheviks, who governed in a coalition with the PLSR until the latter tried to overthrow the government, can't have been calling all the shots.

[Remus Bleys]

If you're the typical revlefter it's because your extra-special-snowflake communism wasn't tried and literally ever single other attempt was too nationalist/class collaborationist/bureacratic/totalitarian/whatever.
then why did it fail? where is your communism now?

[Alexios]

tbh just replying with "communism has never existed" is the most cliche and simplistic answer a leftist can give. When someone asks why communism failed, they're obviously talking about the Soviet Bloc and Maoist China, so try doing some actual research into why these states turned out the way they did instead of spouting cheap one-liners.

[Remus Bleys]

tbh just replying with "communism has never existed" is the most cliche and simplistic answer a leftist can give. When someone asks why communism failed, they're obviously talking about the Soviet Bloc and Maoist China, so try doing some actual research into why these states turned out the way they did instead of spouting cheap one-liners.
It was a bureaucratic inefficient debt ridden hell-hole that the bourgeois would do better without, would do better in the care of a liberal democracy. Thus they gotten rid of it, and the only people to protest were those in the parties, because they were the ones benefitting from the system laid out by the Eastern States.

Or is that too cliche?

[Tim Cornelis]

tbh just replying with "communism has never existed" is the most cliche and simplistic answer a leftist can give. When someone asks why communism failed, they're obviously talking about the Soviet Bloc and Maoist China, so try doing some actual research into why these states turned out the way they did instead of spouting cheap one-liners.

It's not simplistic. If you say you're a communist yet oppose the USSR and someone reply "didn't it fail [past tense]" then pointing out that communism has never existed is appropriate. If someone asks why the Russian revolution failed, or why the Soviet Union collapsed, I'd respond like this:

The Russian revolution failed with the introduction of war communism in 1918, which disintegrated organs of workers' power. The soviets lost their sovereignty and became extensions of top-down Bolshevik rule while factory committees were replaced by harsh discipline, Taylorism, and one-man management.


As for the rank and file of the workmen, the new system was scarcely conducive to enthusiasm on their part. In the first place they were forced to give up definitely the idea that the workmen employed in each particular enterprise were going to own or at least control that enterprise. This idea had been carefully inculcated in them by the demagogical agitators, and the introduction of nationalization was, indeed, a disappointment to them. For under the system of nationalized industry, the workmen became simply servants of the state, forced to submit to the officials appointed by the state in precisely the same manner in which they had been formerly forced to submit to private entrepreneurs and their managers. Moreover, immediately after the apparatus of management was somewhat put together under nationalization, the Soviet authorities began to exact labour discipline, which, naturally, appeared so hard and prosaic to the rank and file of the workmen after the revolutionary carousal, that the task of obtaining efficiency under the circumstances became increasingly difficult.
The Economics of Communism

All power was centralised and concentrated in the hands of the upper layers of the Bolshevik Party, thereby they had substituted themselves for the working class. Their policies contrasted with the wishes of the workers, and their enforcement meant the recreation of class dynamics and class antagonisms between the party-state and the working class. By 1922, the Bolsheviks had lost legitimacy in the eyes of the peasants (a major class still, in fact, it had even grown in comparison to 1916) and a significant proportion of the proletariat. They could not re institute the organs of workers' power without losing power themselves. Hence, a new class society was born.

From 1928 onward, economic growth (aka capital accumulation) was permitted through the massive mobilisation of Russia's resources, labour and natural resources. Technological progress was stunted because managers resisted the implementation of innovations in productive activity, which meant outdated methods of production. Once the volume of labour-power could no longer be expanded (full employment and enforcement of labour discipline) and the cultivation of natural resources did no longer wield sufficient returns (from the 1960s onward), the USSR began its path toward stagnation and its subsequent degeneration and collapse.

Marxist-Leninists argue that "capitalist restoration" occurred because the elite within the communist party had implemented capitalist reforms. This reveals two things:
1) They implicitly admit there was no workers' state
2) The Marxist-Leninist ideology is idealistic.
It's additionally implausible that "capitalist restoration", which would entail stripping workers of decision-making power, occurred without exposed or violent conflict between the revisionists and the workers.

The 'market reforms' implemented from the 1960s onward corresponded to the stagnation of the economy, and were an attempt to remedy it. That is, they had real economic (that is, materialist) underpinning, as opposed to 'revisionism'.

Further Reading:


The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience by Chattopadhyay

[Art Vandelay]

tbh just replying with "communism has never existed" is the most cliche and simplistic answer a leftist can give. When someone asks why communism failed, they're obviously talking about the Soviet Bloc and Maoist China, so try doing some actual research into why these states turned out the way they did instead of spouting cheap one-liners.

I personally think its the only acceptable answer a leftist can give. When someone wants to talk to me about how bad these 'communist states' were or why they failed, I really don't know what else to respond with. Sure I could go into a theoretical explanation of what happened, but I doubt much productive discussion can be had with an individual who has demonstrated they couldn't be bothered to read the opening line of the wiki page on communism, before tossing around terms that they don't understand. The only acceptable response is that communism is a stateless and classless mode of production, so a 'communist state' is an oxymoron.