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APOLOGIA
The Carillon,
November 9, 2017
Remembering communism
Fall 2017 marks the 100th anniversary
of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the beginning of a grand experiment in
communism. This social experiment had bitter fruit that shouldn't be forgotten.
Influenced by Karl Marx, the leaders of
Soviet communism—Lenin, Stalin, and Co. (Comrades)—strived to create a utopian
society. After taking power, the communists abolished private property and took
control of the means of production (factories, farms). Their promise was that
state control (a “dictatorship of the proletariat”) would be temporary.
Eventually, new men and women would come into being.
Moreover, these men and women would be
transformed from self-oriented to other-oriented. Their lives would be characterized by this mantra:
“from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” A
socialist heaven would finally come to earth.
Apparently, however, nobody seemed to
be aware of the saying, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely.”
It turns out that the temporary
dictatorship by the communist elite wasn’t temporary. And the Soviet experiment
was a disaster.
In fact, Soviet communism's killing of
its own people makes Nazi death camps pale in comparison. Whereas 6 or 7
million died in the Nazi holocaust, multiple millions more died as a result of
Soviet communism.
Some historians estimate the Soviet
death toll was 20 million, whereas Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (who lived in the Soviet
Union) estimates 60 million.
Of this total, approximately 5 or more
million died at a result of the Soviets’ 1932-33 deliberate starvation of
Ukraine (some say the number was 3 million, others say 7 or more million; this
genocide is known as the “Holodomor” or “Death by Hunger”).
Millions of Soviets also died in slave
labour camps (a.k.a. Gulags, made famous by Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago). Underfed and living in sub-zero
temperatures, citizens were worked to death or were murdered in the woods.
In addition, many Soviet citizens were
simply arrested, tortured, and shot. Why? Often times only for criticizing
government or for suspicion of being a saboteur, other times to fill government
quotas.
Was the Soviet disaster merely peculiar
to the Soviet Union’s attempt at communism? Apparently not.
According to The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press 1999), other
communist regimes had similar disastrous results.
- China: 65 million deaths
- Vietnam: 1 million deaths
- North Korea: 2 million deaths
- Cambodia: 2 million deaths
In total, over the past 100 years communist regimes have been responsible for about 100 million deaths (of their own people).
At this juncture, one might object that
western capitalist societies are not wholly innocent and we should, for
comparison’s sake, account for the evils done by capitalist societies.
In reply, we should keep in mind that
capitalist societies have done wrong, of course. (And crony capitalism is especially
problematic.)
Nevertheless, whereas communism
requires total government control, governments in capitalist societies tend to
be limited in their power. They protect private property, voluntary exchange,
and individual freedoms; they do not tend to murder their own people en masse.
It remains, then, that the killing of
one's own people has been extraordinarily huge in—and a salient feature of—communist
societies such as the Soviet Union (Gulags), China (under Mao), Cambodia (Pol
Pot's killing fields), etc.
When I was an undergraduate student, I
was enamored (briefly) by Marx. I wrote an essay for my Marxist philosophy
professor in which I critiqued capitalism with its emphasis on self-interest
(though I failed to distinguish between selfishness and self-interest, I failed
to discern selves whose interest included doing business for the good of others,
and I failed to notice how free markets could harness the selfishness of some/
many for the benefit of others). I received an A+ for the essay.
I showed that essay to my late uncle [Oom George], a
businessman, whose only comment was this: Isn’t it great that we live in a
society that allows us to criticize it?
My late uncle was right.
The 2008 film The Soviet Story (available on YouTube) provides additional historical
perspective on the bitter fruit of the 1917 Russian Revolution, bitter fruit
that should never be forgotten.
Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is associate professor of
philosophy at Providence University College. The views expressed in this column
do not always represent the views of Providence.
For further thought:
Video
- The Soviet Story (1.5 hours)
Articles
Books
- The Black Book of Communism
- The Gulag Archipelago
- Defending the Free Market (see especially chapter 5: “Why greed is not good—and why you can get more of it with socialism than with capitalism”)
1 comment:
In my 1992-94 summer visits to Lithuania to set up a new college there, several of my Lithuanian friends who had lived all their lives under communism till 1991 described that system as "They pretended to pay us and we pretended to work."
Unfortunately, in our time, schools fail to inform students about the disastrous record of 20th century experiments with communism. Hence a large majority of our educators admire Karl Marx out of envy for those richer than themselves, as did Karl Marx. We all tend to recognize the depravity of others, while being blind to our own.
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