Lalaki wrote:I notice that Marxian economics got a plurality of votes in the poll.
I have an honest question. Why has a Marxist society never successfully come to fruition? We have seen several cases where the radical left takes a government over, but then fails to accomplish its goals. They collapse into authoritarianism, or individual leaders take advantage of the system to secure their own power, or the economy plunges and people revolt, or they transition back to capitalism, etc. There are always convenient explanations that are given by Marxists. If only Stalin had never shown up, then the USSR would've been successful! Venezuela's movement was doomed by American economic imperialism. The Chinese Communist Party is a piecemeal organization that betrayed its roots. North Korea's leaders never adopted (and perhaps never believed in) true communism. Cuba had to become a dictatorship to weed out capitalist influences. Different arguments, all pointing out how successful a revolution could've been if only things had gone right.
These perspectives all contain flaws though. The fact that nearly all communist revolutions have produced authoritarian states is a testament to how susceptible their theories are to do the age-old truism: power corrupts. And even in regards to the situations where communist states were harmed by western embargoes, isn't the point of their revolutions to reject capitalism and show that another way forward is possible? Why is Venezuela being held back by America if Chavez and Maduro wanted to have independence from our economic circle? Are they looking for development assistance from capitalist countries? At some point, it stops being the "west's fault."
Whenever I point out to communists that genuine progress in economic/social equality can be made through socially democratic reforms, they are quick to emphasize that problems still persist and that no amount of non-revolutionary action can get the job done. Efforts in a market society to reduce poverty, guarantee health care, and boost economic equality, no matter how successful, are not enough in the absence of rebellion. If we are to apply this standard of absolutism to social democracies, however, I will apply the same to the twentieth century's communist experiments. When people are still suffering and have lost their political liberties, whatever you're proposing isn't enough.
A Marxist society can only be said to have "never successfully come to fruition" if you take an absolutist, all-or-nothing approach to Marxist goals. In other words, what is true is that no Marxist government has ever fully accomplished Marxist goals. But then, few ideologies can point to a historical government and say "this is the perfect example of everything we wanted". Most people are happy to point to governments that have only kind-of sort-of accomplished their goals as good examples of their ideology in action. Libertarians point to 19th century America, social democrats point to Sweden, liberals point to... almost any present-day Western government. Despite the fact that these do not represent perfect examples of those ideologies in action, and everyone understands that the people who bring them up are not endorsing every single thing those governments ever did.
The problem is, when Marxists do the same - when we point to governments that have sort-of accomplished Marxist goals, but not fully, such as for example the Soviet Union - we are immediately asked to defend every bad thing that those governments ever did. "So you support central planning, huh? What about Stalin's Gulag??" This is a double standard, since no other ideology is taken to account for similar problems with the historical examples that it brings up. When social democrats bring up Sweden, no one questions them on whether they support eugenic sterilizations in the 1950s. When libertarians bring up 19th century America, no one questions them on whether they support slavery for black people. Of course they don't. It is understood that they only support certain aspects of these societies, not everything. When Sweden did something clearly anti-social-democratic, or when 19th century America did something clearly anti-libertarian, it is understood that those things are not supported by social democrats or libertarians.
But Marxists are usually not allowed to support only certain aspects of the Soviet Union and not others, or the USSR at certain points in its history and not at other points. Everyone always brings up Stalin's crimes - which is the equivalent of people always bringing up slavery when someone praises the United States. So, to avoid the difficulty of having to deal with this, many Marxists take an absolutist stance and simply claim that the USSR was not Marxist, because it departed from Marxist principles in a number of important ways.
Personally, I am not one of those Marxists. I affirm that the Soviet Union, and the other socialist planned economies of the 20th century, represented imperfect examples of Marxism in action. I defend the economy of the Soviet Union and of the other Warsaw Pact countries, as I did for many pages in the beginning of this thread, for example. Of course, I also admit that they had many problems, they did many things wrong, they departed from Marxist goals in several major ways... but they were still more Marxist than not. We should learn from their experience, from their successes as well as their failures, and do better in the future. Simply plugging our ears and going "la la la they weren't Marxist and we don't have to pay attention to them" is stupid.
So then, you might say: "Okay, granted, we had imperfect examples of Marxism in history. And granted, they did some things right. But surely, overall, they weren't better than social democracies, right? So why are you a Marxist and not a social democrat?"
And you are correct, it's hard to argue that the Soviet Union was better than Sweden. And while social democracy in Sweden is being inexorably destroyed by neoliberalism, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact also fell, after all, so it's not clear which one has the potential to last longer than the other. So why don't I support social democracy? Because I don't believe social democracy is possible any more.
I don't think social democracy was ever actually possible in a vacuum. I think the existence of social democracy was only made possible by the Soviet threat. The capitalists only agreed to a compromise with the working class because they were afraid that a communist revolution would happen otherwise. Social democracy was the step-child of Marxism, and cannot survive without a looming Marxist threat to frighten the capitalists into making a compromise.
That is why I am not a social democrat. Because I don't believe social democratic Sweden could have happened in the absence of the big scary USSR next door. I don't believe you can ever get social democracy by fighting for social democracy. You can only get social democracy in country X by having a communist revolution in country Y that scares the shit out of the capitalists of the world. Strength is the only language that the capitalists understand.
