I was in a discussion in the car the other day about communism with an economics major and of course, since I am in this class, I brought up many complaints about capitalism. Being a liberally minded economist he agreed with the issues I brought up but he made the argument that I’ve heard time and time again: “Communism” has already failed, so clearly it is a less superior system to capitalism. I hear this argument almost every time Marx is brought up and I wonder about the efficacy of it. Many people with admit problems with capitalism such as the uneven wealth distribution but are resigned to these imperfections as they claim it is the best possible system for all it’s warts.
Although I am a history major, I am deficient in my knowledge of how exactly each communist or socialist system worked during the 20th century. However, I do know that many of these systems ended up as power in the hands of one singular leader than in the mass of the common people. The obvious examples are Stalin in Soviet Russia and even Castro in Cuba. People naturally gravitate towards such powerful figures, especially those who control the information and manipulate their persona. For example, I had an old Russian teacher who remember crying when Stalin died because he was so revered. Even though we now know how much damage he did to the Russian people, during his time he had godlike status. But I digress. The point I am trying to make is that has a true “communist” or “socialist” system ever been tried? Or has it not been tried because it is no way possible?
I do not have an answer to this question. I find most of Marx’s theories on estranged labor and communism extremely appealing. However, we have gone so far down the road in capitalism that it is hard for us to think outside of this sphere. We monetize everything, putting dollar values on what for many society would have simply been a favor, such as me coming over to watch your kids for the night. We have incorporated capitalism into our moral system, believing the poor people have less worth and are worse people than the rich. The rich are somehow better and smarter than regular people. It is almost impossible to even imagine a world without private property, a concept that Marx argues that we need to abolish. Socialism, when brought up, is always accused of being a utopia. Sure, it would be nice if life worked like that, but that would be impossible. I would like your thoughts on the possibility of a communist world. Is it even conceivable with how much we are ingrained in capitalism? Did capitalism spark the industrial revolution? Or did the industrial revolution entrench capitalism as the only workable system in our minds?
I am not surprised that your discussion with an economics major went that way here at Rhodes. I have friends in the economics department here and they are mostly libertarians and objectivists.
ReplyDeleteYour point about the problem of accessing whether or not 'communism failed' is well taken. The problem is what counts as communism and whether or not communism ever actualized itself, and this is related to your point about the distribution of political and economic power in so-called communist countries but applies to a large number of issues of how revolutions in the name of overthrowing capitalist systems developed.
As for thinking independently of capitalism, that is rather complicated because it depends on how constitute two things. What is capitalism and what is the relationship between ideas. For instance, is an electron a reflection of capitalism because capital is involved in the funding of research and the distribution of the knowledge of its theoretical existence?
You end with a question about historical causation. I am not going to really bother answering because I really don't know how causation works or if it exists. Instead I would like to point out how much a value judgement is involved in whether or not you interpreted capitalism as causing industrialism or industrialism causing capitalism. If one thinks capitalism is good, she would likely believe the prior while if one thinks capitalism is some distorted way of thinking, she probably prefer the latter.
I find one of the points you make particularly interesting. That is that you question whether examples of failed or flawed communism like the Soviet Union were really true examples of communism. I think you implicitly question, were these abused systems of communism really communism in the first place, the way Marx describes? It seems in part that the only arguments left to people who believe in communism in this light are that these weren't really examples of communism (and communism has not actually existed yet), that these were really communism but that these types of power abuses are not essential to communism, or that society was not yet ready for communism and that these failed attempts were steps along the way towards moving society forward to a time in which it is ready for successful communism. If one believes in the second of these three possible arguments, then he or she is really making the same points about communism that we made about capitalism in class. That is, yes, those things happened with communism but those things are not direct reflections on communism. I don't really know what to think about all of this, and I feel like if I tried to write through it now I would just be writing on it forever, so I'll just end it there. But it is an interesting issue.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, you could ask the same questions about capitalism. Abstractly speaking, capitalism, at the very least, encourages advancements in technology, innovation in business / trade, all with a focus on efficiency. However, historically speaking, Capitalism in this country, with its focus on capital, etc., has, in many ways, simply extended the de facto inequality, instituted by de jure slavery. If you could some how excise the historical context--and begin with a clean slate, what would capitalism appear like here, in the United States? What's pretty clear though, is that the Capitalist does not have any interest in the long-term efficacy of their plans. From this vantage point, people get shafted and the environment gets shafted. Now, if there were a better theory of Capitalism, or, better yet, a better moral framework that could subsume capitalism within it, maybe we'd be in business. capital cannot, however, be the ethic.
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