José Latour

The human race has been unsuc­cess­fully try­ing to crack a num­ber of nuts for sev­eral millennia.

In our time, bil­lions of peo­ple all over the world are greatly con­cerned with the 21st century’s social prob­lems. Most wealthy democ­ra­cies con­front predica­ments such as ter­ror­ism, wars abroad, global warm­ing, crime, drugs, ille­gal immi­gra­tion, ever-increasing prices and taxes, de-industrialization, out­sourc­ing, and stag­na­tion (in real terms) of aver­age per­sonal income for sev­eral years.

Regard­less of their stage of eco­nomic devel­op­ment, all demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ments also face two, three or four other plights, such as: soar­ing unem­ploy­ment, prim­i­tive (or untimely or unaf­ford­able or under­staffed) health-care insti­tu­tions, insuf­fi­cient or inad­e­quate edu­ca­tional pro­grams, unfore­see­able swings in the prices of cer­tain exports and imports, sci­en­tific and tech­no­log­i­cal back­ward­ness, incom­pe­tent and cor­rupt politi­cians and government-appointed offi­cials, secret mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence pro­grams, and so on, and so forth.

Peo­ple seek­ing solu­tions may be clas­si­fied in three cat­e­gories. The over­whelm­ing major­ity oper­ate within the exist­ing legal frame­works, respect­ing the free­doms and civil rights of oth­ers. There are, how­ever, ultra-rightists and ultra-leftists that take advan­tage of their demo­c­ra­tic rights to found polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions, raise funds, orga­nize pub­lic protests, and pub­lish their plat­forms through mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion, espe­cially the Inter­net. Neo-fascists blame a Jewish-Communist con­spir­acy for the prob­lems of planet Earth and put for­ward unde­mo­c­ra­tic, iso­la­tion­ist, racist, and homo­pho­bic poli­cies. Com­mu­nists con­sider cap­i­tal­ism the source of all social ills and rec­om­mend abol­ish­ing pri­vate prop­erty and estab­lish­ing a class­less soci­ety where democ­racy will reach all its unre­al­ized goals and nobody will be dis­crim­i­nated against for any reason.

Because my expe­ri­ence con­cern­ing fas­cism and neo-fascism is strictly book­ish, I leave to oth­ers instruct­ing or remind­ing neo-fascists of the his­tory and results of fas­cism. But hav­ing lived forty-four years under Com­mu­nism, it pains me to see peo­ple born and raised in demo­c­ra­tic coun­tries, most under forty, argu­ing for a form of social orga­ni­za­tion that has failed in each and every coun­try where it has been imple­mented and whose prac­ti­cal results they have never suf­fered in the flesh. What makes these peo­ple espe­cially wor­thy of note is that, unlike many of their con­tem­po­raries, they show more inter­est in resolv­ing social prob­lems than in the heavy gold jew­elry of cer­tain singers, the ques­tion­able achieve­ments of a few pro­fes­sional ath­letes, or whom do celebri­ties have sex with.

This essay will try to prove that in the realm of pol­i­tics Com­mu­nism restores the abso­lutism that pre­vailed five and six cen­turies ago in many soci­eties; that eco­nom­i­cally it returns labor­ers to Mid­dle Age servi­tude; that sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies and the edu­ca­tion of chil­dren must tout the party line; that the media devotes all its efforts to sub­stan­ti­at­ing the infal­li­bil­ity of the party and to exalt­ing its top lead­ers as much as 16th cen­tury kings and queens exalted them­selves; that it tries to sub­vert democ­ra­cies by all pos­si­ble means; that it con­trols all forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, includ­ing travel abroad, and that it severely restricts emigration.

Those, in a nut­shell, are the rea­sons why Com­mu­nism hasn’t worked in the past, and why it won’t work in the future.

Pol­i­tics

Between the 16th and the 20th cen­tury national pol­i­tics expe­ri­enced pro­found trans­for­ma­tions all over the world. Kings and queens evolved from a Louis XIV who allegedly said “I am the State,” to un-influential indi­vid­u­als restricted to per­form­ing largely cer­e­mo­nial roles.

By rea­son of the enor­mous power that Catholi­cism wielded over kings and their domains for many cen­turies, and because Com­mu­nist the­ory and prac­tice, despite negat­ing the exis­tence of God, shows amaz­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties with Catholicism’s polit­i­cal prac­tice, it is impor­tant to bear in mind some his­tor­i­cal facts.

In his coro­na­tion cer­e­mony Louis XIV was anointed with orig­i­nal oil brought from Heaven by the Holy Ghost; this raised him above all mor­tals by mak­ing him “a ‘roi thau­maturge,’ a king on whom the Almighty had con­ferred mirac­u­lous pow­ers” (Man­ning, The Pur­suit of Glory, Pen­guin Books, 2007.) At the French Estates-General of 1789 the first estate was the clergy. Also accord­ing to Man­ning, after the bat­tle of White Moun­tain Hab­s­burg Emperor Fer­di­nand II’s chief pri­or­ity “was to advance the inter­ests of the Catholic Church.” The Church’s influ­ence on the Span­ish king­dom (and by exten­sion on the Span­ish colonies in Amer­ica) was even big­ger. In Ital­ian king­doms such as Naples, the Catholic Church was only slightly less promi­nent than in the Papal States.

The Inqui­si­tion was renewed in 16th-century Spain, Por­tu­gal, and Rome to defend that part of Catholic dogma impugned by the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion. The Counter-Reformation brought some new orders to the fore, the Jesuits one of them. It may be the­o­rized that, in some respects –like the indis­putabil­ity of dogma, the care­ful selec­tion of mem­bers, their rig­or­ous train­ing and iron dis­ci­pline– Com­mu­nist par­ties copied the Jesuits. Hav­ing said that, we may return to politics.

Few peo­ple would con­test the notion that modern-day democ­ra­cies are legit­i­mate descen­dants of the French rev­o­lu­tion. In 1789 the National Con­stituent Assem­bly brought feu­dal­ism to an end and approved the Dec­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Man and the Cit­i­zen, which abol­ished the divine right of kings and declared that “all cit­i­zens were equally admis­si­ble to all pub­lic dig­ni­ties, places, and employ­ments accord­ing to their capac­ity and with­out dis­tinc­tion other than that of their virtues and of their talents.”

The French rev­o­lu­tion also coined the first slo­gan of mod­ern times: Lib­erty, Equal­ity, Fra­ter­nity. But as British thinker Isa­iah Berlin observed, lib­erty and equal­ity seem to be con­flict­ing rights. The more free­dom, the less equal­ity; the more equal­ity, the less freedom.

Analy­sis and com­men­tary that tries to be unbi­ased should be truth­ful. In many African, Asian and South Amer­i­can coun­tries author­i­tar­ian gov­ern­ments have thwarted years of painful demo­c­ra­tic progress. The sep­a­ra­tion of leg­isla­tive, exec­u­tive and judi­cial pow­ers has been effec­tively achieved in few coun­tries, is ten­u­ous in some, still an aspi­ra­tion in many. The num­ber of demo­c­ra­tic coun­tries where basic human and civil rights are fre­quently vio­lated is con­sid­er­able. Free­dom of the press and asso­ci­a­tion is ques­tion­able in numer­ous nations. In pre­cious few coun­tries elec­tions have never been rigged. Democracy’s route has been tor­tu­ous indeed.

Despite abol­ish­ing slave labor in 1865, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion sur­vived in the United States until the 1960s; in South Africa until the 1990s. Almost in all coun­tries (if not all) women gained the right to vote less than a hun­dred years ago. Ruth­less dic­ta­tors that called them­selves anti-communist democ­rats ruled with iron hand, embez­zled bil­lions, and tor­tured and assas­si­nated dis­si­dents under the approv­ing eye of democ­ra­cies such as France, the United King­dom, and the United States. Those pow­ers sold weapons and pro­vided devel­op­ment aid to dozens of despots in exchange for ensur­ing the unhin­dered oper­a­tion of for­eign pri­vate com­pa­nies in oppressed countries.

Nev­er­the­less, no 20th cen­tury dic­ta­tor­ship was more ruth­less than Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ships. Suf­fice to say that all the blood shed by right-wing tyrants pales in com­par­i­son with the mas­sacres com­mit­ted by Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung and other Com­mu­nist despots in the name of social­ism and the work­ing class.

Fol­low­ing the fall of the Soviet Union, archives revealed that under Stalin around 800,000 were exe­cuted for polit­i­cal or crim­i­nal offenses, approx­i­mately 1.7 mil­lion died in prison and close to 400,000 dur­ing resettlements.

Adding to the sum­mar­ily exe­cuted those that per­ished of mal­nu­tri­tion, for lack of proper med­ical care, and as con­se­quence of gru­el­ing slave labor, it is esti­mated that one third of the pop­u­la­tion — around two mil­lion Cam­bo­di­ans — died under Pol Pot.

China, Cuba and North Korea, hereto­fore under Com­mu­nism, have not dis­closed how many dis­si­dents Mao, Cas­tro and Kim Il Sung ordered exe­cuted or imprisoned.

Prov­ing that no dic­ta­tor­ship is more abso­lutist than a Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship is unde­mand­ing. In nations with mar­ket economies suf­fer­ing under tyran­nies that flout civil rights such as free­dom of expres­sion and the press, dis­solve by bru­tal repres­sion polit­i­cal protests, and tor­ture and mur­der oppo­nents, com­mon peo­ple are still free to travel abroad, change work­places, prac­tice a reli­gion, buy and sell real estate or other per­sonal prop­erty, pay for pri­vate edu­ca­tion and health­care if they can afford it, and join non-political orga­ni­za­tions such as char­i­ties and arts or book clubs.

Under Com­mu­nism, there is a sin­gle party, a sin­gle owner, a sin­gle employer, a sin­gle media. Every­thing under Com­mu­nism (includ­ing dog clubs, asso­ci­a­tions of col­lec­tors and the Red Cross) is over­seen by the party. In all pro­fes­sions, the per­son con­sid­ered a dis­senter or polit­i­cally untrust­wor­thy is denied oppor­tu­ni­ties for advance­ment in life. Reli­gious peo­ple are banned from the party and posi­tions of respon­si­bil­ity. Under some Com­mu­nists gov­ern­ments the sell­ing of per­sonal prop­erty, like a house or a plot of land, was made illegal.

Peo­ple who openly ques­tion the dogma that an author­i­tar­ian, one-party polit­i­cal sys­tem is supe­rior to a multi-party democ­racy are con­sid­ered “ene­mies of the peo­ple.” If not sen­tenced to prison, they are kept under 24/7 sur­veil­lance; many are sacked, and when so, offered employ­ment as street clean­ers, grave-diggers or whichever occu­pa­tion is con­sid­ered more humil­i­at­ing. Every­one has a labor record they never get to see and a “labor ID” they have to sur­ren­der to prospec­tive, state-owned employ­ers. This com­pares favor­ably with the 16th cen­tury burn­ing of wor­shipers of Satan but unfa­vor­ably with the Dec­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Man and the Cit­i­zen, not to men­tion the United Nations Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights.

Cit­i­zens who argue that pri­vate busi­nesses are more prof­itable and effi­cient than those state-owned are con­sid­ered less dan­ger­ous, but they are charged with “economism,” side­lined, and blackballed.

Com­mu­nist abso­lutism requires some exam­i­na­tion. The ulti­mate goal of Com­mu­nism is to save the human race from exploita­tion, work­ers are the van­guard of the pop­u­la­tion, party mem­bers should be work­ers –although Lenin pro­posed a tac­ti­cal alliance between work­ers and exploited peas­ants. He also said that sci­en­tists, intel­lec­tu­als, artists, and mil­i­tary offi­cers that betrayed their class ori­gin and sided with the pro­le­tariat could be admit­ted into the party.

As all other hier­ar­chi­cal orga­ni­za­tions, the party has munic­i­pal, provin­cial, and national lev­els. To make coun­try­wide deci­sions, provin­cial del­e­gates are elected to a national (cen­tral) com­mit­tee. Said com­mit­tee appoints a polit­buro cho­sen from among the most devoted and self-sacrificing party mem­bers, those who were sent to prison for defend­ing the work­ing class when the exploiters were still in power. The polit­buro has to have a chief, the great­est and most pres­ti­gious of all comrades.

Prob­lems began when some party intel­lec­tu­als (few, if any, work­ers and farmhands grasped Marx’s logic in Das Kap­i­tal, or Engels’ Dialec­tics of Nature) ques­tioned some basic tenet of Marx­ism. The first thing ide­o­logues did was try to con­vince the doubters that they were wrong –did they truly believe their intel­lect was supe­rior to Marx’s? If despite all the argu­ments the skep­tics stood their ground, they were told that as party mem­bers they had to strictly observe the iron dis­ci­pline demanded of all mil­i­tants. Marx­ism, and later on Marxism-Leninism, was the ide­ol­ogy of the pro­le­tariat and no part of it was to be amended; that would be revi­sion­ism, a most seri­ous error penal­ized with expul­sion. Should the dis­senters insist on their right to think and express their opin­ion, they had three alter­na­tives: go into exile, get sent to a “reed­u­ca­tion” camp or be sen­tenced to death.

At that point in time Marx­ism and Marxism-Leninism became reli­gious dogma and party mem­bers were no dif­fer­ent from Jesuit priests. The peo­ple had to attend the coun­ter­part of mass every time the Com­mu­nist Pope asked them to. Unyield­ing heretics were shot, not burnt.

The class enemy (the armies and secret ser­vices of demo­c­ra­tic nations, cap­i­tal­ists, the bour­geoisie) aggra­vated the sit­u­a­tion as they tried to recover their lost lib­er­ties and prop­er­ties. The class enemy would “take away the recently-won achieve­ments of the work­ing class, return it to sub­ju­ga­tion, and destroy the party. The Moth­er­land and the party had to be saved at all costs.”

There­fore, all rights and free­doms had to be put on hold. Dis­sent­ing from deci­sions made by the polit­buro cre­ated divi­sion within the party and divi­sion weak­ened. The peo­ple (non-party mem­bers) “would be con­fused if the party’s mono­lithic unity was put in jeop­ardy.” On Octo­ber 15, 2007, Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Hu Jin­tao put it like this: ““All party mem­bers must firmly uphold the cen­tral­ized and uni­fied lead­er­ship of the party, con­sci­en­tiously abide by the party’s polit­i­cal dis­ci­pline, always be in agree­ment with the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and res­olutely safe­guard its author­ity to ensure that its res­o­lu­tions and deci­sions are car­ried out effec­tively,” [The Globe and Mail, with a report from Reuters]

Not a new idea, how­ever. From Lenin to Fidel Cas­tro, all Com­mu­nist lead­ers have argued that the his­tor­i­cal days the Moth­er­land was liv­ing demanded to whole­heart­edly sup­port what the most proven com­rades, those with the great­est rev­o­lu­tion­ary mer­its, decided. The time would come when all issues would be debated with absolute free­dom of expres­sion. But now was not the time, nor the place. In the Soviet Union the proper time and place arrived nearly sev­enty years after the Octo­ber rev­o­lu­tion, when Mijail Gor­bachev took the helm. In China, Cuba and North Korea the proper time and place have not arrived yet (2008.)

This could be the right place to quote Lord Acton’s sim­ple yet pro­found dic­tum: “Power tends to cor­rupt, and absolute power cor­rupts absolutely.” Acton died in 1902, so he based his maxim on the obser­va­tion of pre-capitalist and cap­i­tal­ist soci­eties. Ancient and mod­ern his­tory reg­is­ters scores of indi­vid­u­als who reached polit­i­cal power as dyed-in-the-wool lib­er­tar­i­ans or democ­rats, suc­cumbed to the trap­pings of power, became dic­ta­tors, and held onto power as long as pos­si­ble, in some cases until the last day of their lives. Cer­tainly power has some mys­te­ri­ous fas­ci­na­tion that sub­ju­gates men. The exam­ple of George Wash­ing­ton, who rejected over­tures to become king at a point in his­tory when almost all civ­i­lized coun­tries were ruled by mon­archs, is both amaz­ing and unique.

The con­cen­tra­tion of polit­i­cal power and the eco­nomic and social cen­tral­iza­tion inher­ent to Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ships rede­fined cor­rup­tion. Com­mu­nist offi­cials embez­zled funds, lived at nice res­i­dences, had sev­eral cars, yachts and planes, vaca­tioned at the best resorts (some abroad), were exempt from the rationing sys­tem and enjoyed unheard of priv­i­leges. But not one of those coun­tries had a free press, so none could emu­late, for exam­ple, North Amer­i­can media’s denun­ci­a­tion of cor­rupt politi­cians and gov­ern­ment offi­cials. (Short anec­dote: Glas­nost in the Soviet Union revealed that Grig­ori Romanov, a senior mem­ber of the Soviet Polit­buro, “per­suaded” the direc­tor of the Her­mitage Museum to lend him Cather­ine the Great’s china to serve the buf­fet at his daughter’s wedding.)

Even worse, Gen­eral (or First) Sec­re­taries of Com­mu­nist Par­ties com­mit­ted abuses of power no less immoral as those of emper­ors and kings who made uniper­sonal deci­sions on the life and pos­ses­sion of their sub­jects with­out bat­ting an eye. Com­mu­nist courts, from the low­est to the supreme, were told what sen­tence to impart to those accused of polit­i­cal crimes. Absence of evi­dence was deemed unim­por­tant; the party knew that the defen­dant was guilty as charged. Pub­lic pros­e­cu­tors and defend­ers were actors in a play; appeals, a con­ces­sion to tra­di­tional jurispru­dence for win­dow dress­ing, were rejected auto­mat­i­cally. Con­fis­ca­tion of prop­erty had no appeal; com­pen­sa­tion was inexistent.

Dis­tances and the still prim­i­tive nature of trans­porta­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion forced 16th-century kings and emper­ors to del­e­gate power in the nobil­ity and other sub-autocrats that had con­sid­er­able lat­i­tude and could be more or less indul­gent than the monarch. I haven’t been able to find his­tor­i­cal evi­dence that a Gen­eral Sec­re­tary of any Com­mu­nist Party del­e­gated polit­i­cal power and ulti­mate respon­si­bil­ity con­cern­ing the lives of opponents.

Eco­nom­ics

From the 16th cen­tury onward Amer­i­can colonies gen­er­ated a vol­ume of inter­na­tional trade that enriched Europe. Guilds evolved into man­u­fac­ture, mer­chant marines grew fan­tas­ti­cally, fish­ing fleets too. The Dutch became the most impor­tant global traders, insur­ers, and financiers. The slave trade was one of the shame­ful devel­op­ments that also occurred.

Tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs such as the rever­ber­a­tory fur­nace to turn pig iron into mal­leable iron, steam power, and the inven­tion of mechan­i­cal spin­ning devices fan­tas­ti­cally increased the pro­duc­tiv­ity of labor and pro­pelled the British indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion (or evo­lu­tion, some his­to­ri­ans argue.) The power and author­ity exerted by kings grad­u­ally passed to par­lia­ments; cap­i­tal­ism was born.

In the early 20th cen­tury cap­i­tal­ism became much more humane. The rea­sons for this were (1) numer­ous sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies and new tech­nolo­gies that boosted pro­duc­tiv­ity and low­ered costs, (2) the flour­ish­ing of par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cies in Europe, and (3) the valid and well-publicized obser­va­tions con­cern­ing the rela­tion­ship between mas­ters and labor­ers in Eng­land that Adam Smith and Karl Marx had made. In the 1950s and 1960s the Euro­pean colo­nial pow­ers lost, or granted inde­pen­dence to, their last colonies.

In the early 1900s it was widely admit­ted that busi­nesses were much more effi­cient, pro­duc­tive, and prof­itable if privately-owned than if state-owned. Con­cern­ing social ser­vices such as health care and edu­ca­tion, the debat­able con­sen­sus in demo­c­ra­tic coun­tries was that states were com­pelled to pro­vide both to all nation­als. But in many coun­tries privately-owned schools and hos­pi­tals imparted bet­ter edu­ca­tion and offered supe­rior med­ical care, so those who wanted to attend and could afford pri­vate insti­tu­tions could opt-out of pub­lic edu­ca­tion and health care. Other ser­vices, as the post, remained under state con­trol, but the irres­ol­u­ble inef­fi­ciency of many postal ser­vices cre­ated busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. Privately-owned com­pa­nies started courier ser­vices (Lon­don hav­ing the first same-day courier) and the trans­mis­sion and deliv­ery of telegrams.

Then, in 1917, Vladimir Ilich Ulianov (Lenin) and his fol­low­ers put into prac­tice Marx­ism in Rus­sia. Pro­claim­ing that all evils in this world derived from the exis­tence of pri­vate prop­erty, they expro­pri­ated or con­fis­cated nearly every busi­ness in the areas of man­u­fac­ture, energy, trans­port, agri­cul­ture, min­ing, whole­sale and retail trade, etc., etc. Pri­vate hos­pi­tals and schools suf­fered the same fate. As crit­ics had pre­dicted, inef­fi­ciency set in and pro­duc­tiv­ity dropped. Lack of com­pe­ti­tion brought about pre­cip­i­tous declines in qual­ity. Pro­duc­tion vol­umes regard­less of unit cost were deemed more impor­tant than prof­its. Indi­vid­u­als were sup­posed to work for the bet­ter­ment of Moth­er­land Rus­sia and the pro­le­tariat, not to make money and raise their liv­ing standards.

Every nation under Com­mu­nism has gone through an iden­ti­cal first stage. Some of the Euro­pean coun­tries where the Soviet Union imposed Com­mu­nism at the con­clu­sion of the sec­ond world war allowed some small busi­nesses to remain pri­vate, but all placed the whole econ­omy under party and state con­trol and put into prac­tice iden­ti­cal policies.

The monop­oly of power and author­ity exerted by Com­mu­nist par­ties infected every area of soci­ety. Eco­nomic cen­tral­iza­tion demanded the cre­ation of min­istries (heavy indus­try, light indus­try, chem­i­cal indus­tries, con­struc­tion, agri­cul­ture, trans­port, fish­ing, and many oth­ers) each man­ag­ing hun­dreds or thou­sands of busi­nesses. From their offices, count­less kilo­me­ters away from plant floors, shops, rail­road yards, farms, build­ing sites, and fish­ing fleets, bureau­crats decided what to do (or plant or fish), when, how, at what cost, the raw mate­ri­als and sup­plies needed per unit, whether to main­tain, repair or make cap­i­tal invest­ments, the price of fin­ished prod­ucts (the word mer­chan­dise was con­sid­ered an abom­i­na­tion) and where to dis­patch them.

The labor force was pow­er­less to gain con­ces­sions such as higher wages or bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions. The work­ing class held the reins of power, so strikes were deemed self-destructive and coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ary; party mem­bers led the unions. The per­son was told where to work, how much he/she would earn after ful­fill­ing his/her quota, and how much he/she had to exceed the quota to get a bonus. The eight-hour work­day was for­mally respected, but unpaid “vol­un­tary work” was encour­aged and pro­claimed deci­sive, for it con­tributed to the wel­fare of the Moth­er­land and proved the person’s loy­alty to the party. Life essen­tials such as obtain­ing a dwelling to raise a fam­ily or a coupon to buy durable goods were con­trolled by party cells at work­places; the main con­sid­er­a­tion made to des­ig­nate a ben­e­fi­ciary was how pro­duc­tive and sub­servient to party pol­icy he or she was. Under Com­mu­nism the com­mon man became a Mid­dle Age serf.

Job secu­rity and life­time employ­ment were sup­posed to com­pen­sate for all of the above. Not even the most devel­oped economies in the world guar­an­tee a job to every adult, so as the pop­u­la­tion grew, the Com­mu­nist solu­tion con­sisted in employ­ing two, three or even four peo­ple where one would suf­fice. Besides the drop in pro­duc­tiv­ity, other neg­a­tive con­se­quences of job secu­rity were con­sid­er­able hand-sitting and absenteeism.

Such absur­di­ties brought about eco­nomic stag­na­tion (total col­lapse in Cam­bo­dia under the Khmer Rouge.) Pop­u­la­tions kept grow­ing and rationing became inevitable. Coun­tries in war or still suf­fer­ing its con­se­quences have had to ration food, gaso­line and other basic com­modi­ties for years, as in Europe from 1940 to 1950. But peace­time rationing under Com­mu­nism was caused by sev­eral rea­sons, the most impor­tant being that the over­whelm­ing major­ity of farmhands and work­ers lost moti­va­tion and tried to work as lit­tle as pos­si­ble and steal as much as they could get away with. The out­come of this col­lec­tive nose­dive into poverty was that peo­ple were handed out ration cards and told how much food, clothes and other arti­cles (from toi­letries to light bulbs) they could buy on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis. Quan­ti­ties based on aver­age con­sump­tion were increased or reduced accord­ing to availability.

Sci­ence, health­care, and education

Clearly, it was very dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to make these regres­sive under Com­mu­nism. It would have been mad­ness to repu­di­ate nuclear energy and vac­cines, or pro­hibit the study of com­puter aided design.

Sci­en­tific poli­cies, how­ever, were strongly influ­enced by Marxist-Leninist and Stal­in­ist ide­ol­ogy. What hap­pened in the field of biol­ogy in the Soviet Union per­fectly exem­pli­fies a case of regres­sive­ness. Trofim Deniso­vich Lysenko, with the full sup­port of Stalin, claimed to have devel­oped “ver­nal­iza­tion” –an agri­cul­tural tech­nique. He refuted the exper­i­men­tal ver­i­fi­ca­tion of genetic the­o­ries that emerged from stud­ies of fruit flies, denounced biol­o­gists, and accused them of pur­pose­fully caus­ing the fail­ure of Soviet agri­cul­ture. Some geneti­cists were exe­cuted, oth­ers sent to labor camps. Mao Zedong applied Lysenko­ism when he con­ceived the mon­u­men­tal fiasco he named Great Leap For­ward. In the end, sci­ence proved Lysenko a charlatan.

Under Com­mu­nism health care was free of cost. Patients were assigned the fam­ily doc­tor, clinic or hos­pi­tal based on prox­im­ity to place of residence.

Three cat­e­gories of med­ical insti­tu­tions coex­isted in the class­less soci­ety, though. The top polit­i­cal lead­ers (some­times just one per­son, occa­sion­ally three or four, infre­quently ten or twelve) and their rel­a­tives were treated at small hos­pi­tals equipped with cutting-edge tech­nol­ogy, stock­ing avant-garde phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and staffed with the best doc­tors; if needed, for­eign spe­cial­ists were called.

Second-tier med­ical insti­tu­tions cared for mid-level party and gov­ern­ment func­tionar­ies, for­eign­ers, and mil­i­tary offi­cers; these were adequately-stocked, had effi­cient staff and appro­pri­ate stan­dards of clean­li­ness. In some coun­tries these units were housed in spe­cial floors within the hos­pi­tals and clin­ics that served the gen­eral population.

Although in the third cat­e­gory equip­ment were fre­quently out of order and sup­plies and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in short sup­ply, the ded­i­ca­tion and human­ity of hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tors, doc­tors and nurses com­pen­sated for the lim­i­ta­tions. Some excel­lent pro­fes­sion­als judged polit­i­cally unre­li­able worked in these insti­tu­tions and pro­vided first-rate care to the masses.

Regard­ing edu­ca­tion, Com­mu­nist par­ties real­ized that a child’s mind is the most fer­tile of all fields and con­cluded (wrongly) that any seed sown there will sprout, develop strong roots, and grow unhin­dered until reach­ing matu­rity. Con­se­quently, from first grade chil­dren began to hear about –and watch pic­tures of– Marx, Engels, Lenin, and their great national lead­ers. In some coun­tries, before march­ing to their class­rooms in the morn­ing, boys and girls had to form columns, hail the slo­gans in fash­ion, and swear alle­giance to the Moth­er­land and the party.

Read­ing and foreign-language text­books included sto­ries about the nation’s cap­i­tal­ist past, the strug­gling here and now, and the glo­ri­ous future. The plants’ healthy devel­op­ment, it was adduced, required pro­tect­ing them from plagues such as con­sumerism, pri­vate prop­erty, cap­i­tal­ism, and sim­i­lar reac­tionary ide­olo­gies con­ceived by the class enemy and con­demned to history’s garbage dump. Said pro­tec­tion included cen­sor­ing the pro­grams and car­toons chil­dren watched at the movies and on tele­vi­sion. Don­ald Duck and Mickey Mouse were labeled spear­heads of imperialism.

At school all chil­dren under twelve were encour­aged to join a polit­i­cal insti­tu­tion (called Pio­neers in most coun­tries.) By sec­ondary school, how­ever, in the Soviet Union, Cuba and other hard-core Com­mu­nist coun­tries those young­sters who had not shown suf­fi­cient ardor for the cause in pri­mary school were not invited to join the orga­ni­za­tion (Com­mu­nist Youth) that would nur­ture the future party members.

Briefly con­sider the prob­lems that this edu­ca­tional sys­tem posed to par­ents that opposed Com­mu­nism or had reli­gious beliefs. Home school­ing was not an option; pub­lic edu­ca­tion was com­pul­sory until 9th grade in some coun­tries, until 12th in oth­ers. Should rel­a­tives con­tra­dict what teach­ers and text­books pro­claimed, the chil­dren would be under­stand­ably con­cerned. In some cases, teach­ers told the sons and daugh­ters of jailed dis­senters that their fathers were “ene­mies of the people.”

Notwith­stand­ing all this, besides learn­ing to read and write, the young learned math­e­mat­ics, physics, chem­istry, geog­ra­phy, biol­ogy and other sci­ences. Con­cern­ing the human­i­ties, ide­ol­ogy also cas­trated and shame­lessly altered text­books on his­tory, soci­ol­ogy, eco­nom­ics, phi­los­o­phy, and law.

Pro­pa­ganda

Self-promotion is part of human nature. Like most indi­vid­u­als, all ide­o­log­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions, gov­ern­ments, pub­lic and pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions, asso­ci­a­tions, busi­nesses and other social groups are self-promoting to some degree. As indi­vid­u­als and as com­mu­ni­ties we tend to min­i­mize our bad qual­i­ties and exalt our good ones. We also have a propen­sity to shift the blame for our fail­ures to others.

Kings built and mag­nif­i­cently dec­o­rated palaces and cathe­drals and retained the best painters in the realm to por­tray them as brave war­riors or hunters. But there is pre­cious lit­tle infor­ma­tion about their vices, health prob­lems or other per­sonal traits that could be con­strued as demean­ing to them. For cen­turies courtiers, gen­er­als, and rich men and women exhib­ited the same behav­ior on a smaller scale.

Where democ­racy rules, polit­i­cal par­ties, reli­gions, busi­nesses, char­i­ties, etc., pro­mote their ideas, beliefs, prod­ucts or causes and have the right to attract believ­ers and/or con­sumers to per­pet­u­ate themselves.

As noth­ing in this world is totally good or entirely bad, peo­ple under Com­mu­nism were spared the unend­ing stream of radio and TV com­mer­cials and the fifty or more pages of ads in one-hundred-page news­pa­pers typ­i­cal of mar­ket economies, but the price they paid for such piece of good for­tune was high.

Noth­ing is more effi­cient in Com­mu­nist soci­eties than the min­istries or depart­ments of repres­sion and pro­pa­ganda. In what regards pro­pa­ganda, the absence of com­pet­ing ideals and val­ues makes dup­ing peo­ple pos­si­ble. Thou­sands of bill­boards, all news­pa­pers, and many radio and tele­vi­sion pro­grams repeat ad infini­tum the most recent polit­i­cal mantra and slo­gans. No jour­nal­ist that opposes Com­mu­nism gets to work for the media; only those reli­gious and char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions approved by the party can func­tion and they are not allowed to broad­cast radio and tele­vi­sion pro­grams in state-owned sta­tions. With per­sonal con­sump­tion restricted by fixed quo­tas and by what stores stock, pub­lic­ity is unnecessary.

The main job of Com­mu­nist pro­pa­ganda machines is to explain to “the peo­ple” why the per­fect soci­ety seems increas­ingly dis­tant in time. This is achieved by bald-facedly shift­ing the blame for all fail­ures to the class enemy –defined as impe­ri­al­ism, cap­i­tal­ism, their intel­li­gence agen­cies, local enemy agents, and unruly reli­gious lead­ers. Such rea­sons were par­tially true for a num­ber of years in the Soviet Union, but after the Sec­ond World War in Europe, and after the 1970s in all other coun­tries where Com­mu­nist par­ties ruled, such excuses were increas­ingly lame. Weather took the blame for food short­ages and it was adduced that con­sumer goods were insuf­fi­cient, qual­ity defi­cient and durable goods inac­ces­si­ble, because “the enemy” com­pelled the party to invest heav­ily in the mil­i­tary to defend the Moth­er­land. On the other hand, the party explained to the pro­le­tar­i­ans that they shouldn’t be infected with the con­sumerism that char­ac­ter­izes cap­i­tal­ism. All this while the man and woman on the street wit­nessed (or learned through rel­a­tives and friends) the lav­ish lifestyles their lead­ers enjoyed.

The most impor­tant func­tion of jour­nal­ism in democ­racy — to keep tabs on pub­lic offi­cials — is a crime under Communism.

Plane crashes, min­ers killed in under­ground explo­sions, train derail­ments and all other acci­dents went unre­ported. Crime didn’t exist in the per­fect soci­ety. If a ten-year-old Russ­ian musi­cal genius could mas­ter­fully play Tchaikovsky’s con­cer­tos, Pravda would declare it a tri­umph of social­ist upbring­ing. On the other hand, should a ten-year-old New Yorker kill his father, the party’s news­pa­per would con­sider this pal­pa­ble proof of cap­i­tal­ist deca­dence. When the assas­sin was a Russ­ian boy and the musi­cal genius an Amer­i­can, Pravda wouldn’t print a word.

The per­son­al­ity cult was cre­ated and fed by the pro­pa­ganda machines. Ten to fif­teen years before Stalin died stat­ues of him started dot­ting Russ­ian plazas. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and other Com­mu­nist lead­ers were embalmed to pre­serve them for­ever for future gen­er­a­tions. On Labor Day and other fes­tiv­i­ties the parad­ing masses car­ried huge pho­tographs of the polit­buro mem­bers sit­ting or stand­ing at the ros­trum. In this way Com­mu­nist lead­ers exalted them­selves as much as any 16th– or 17th-century king or queen.

Sub­ver­sion

Soon after Rus­sia adopted Com­mu­nism, the party founded the Third Inter­na­tional or Com­intern. Its goal was to orga­nize and develop an inter­na­tional worker’s move­ment in all major coun­tries of the world, espe­cially in West­ern Europe and North Amer­ica. This could be achieved by “tak­ing advan­tage of the con­tra­dic­tions of imperialism.”

This jewel of party speak referred to the pos­si­bil­ity that Com­mu­nists in demo­c­ra­tic nations had of legally found­ing par­ties, unions, and pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tions of all sorts (from lawyers to nurses), of nom­i­nat­ing can­di­dates to elec­tions, pub­lish­ing uncen­sored books, mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers, and broad­cast­ing radio pro­grams. These were “forms of strug­gle” that the dic­ta­tor­ship of the pro­le­tariat con­sid­ered crimes against the state when dis­senters within Com­mu­nist coun­tries tried to repli­cate them.

Although the Com­intern was dis­solved in 1943, Com­mu­nist par­ties and espe­cially their intel­li­gence ser­vices never aban­doned the idea of overtly and covertly doing to democ­ra­cies what they labeled “med­dling in the inter­nal affairs of the com­mu­nity of social­ist coun­tries” if their adver­saries did it to them.

McCarthy­ism in the United States and active coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and anti-communist move­ments in other nations greatly reduced (but did not elim­i­nate) the influ­ence of front orga­ni­za­tions. This forced Com­mu­nist lead­ers to rely even more in covert sub­ver­sion. In the 1960s the secret ser­vices of East Ger­many and the U.S.S.R. sup­plied to Cuba all the forged pass­ports and other iden­ti­fi­ca­tions required to infil­trate spies and sabo­teurs in Latin Amer­ica and Africa.

Sol­diers from the Soviet Union, China and other Com­mu­nist coun­tries died lend­ing “fra­ter­nal assis­tance” to North Korea in the 1950s, to Hun­gary in 1956, to Czhe­coslo­vaquia in 1967, and to Afghanistan in the 1980s. Over 3,000 Cubans breathed their last breath in Africa ful­fill­ing “inter­na­tion­al­ist mis­sions.” In Ethiopia, Cuban mil­i­tary assis­tance propped and sup­ported the bloody dic­ta­tor­ship of Mengistu Haile Mariam. Angola’s cur­rent regime, mil­i­tar­ily propped by Cuba for four­teen years, ranks among the most cor­rupt coun­tries in the world.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Soci­eties are con­sid­er­ably influ­enced by com­mu­ni­ca­tion between peo­ples and between peo­ples and places. Three and four cen­turies ago, for lack of loco­mo­tives, mod­ern roads, and other works of infra­struc­ture, travel by land between coun­tries took months and was mostly under­taken by kings, their courtiers and diplo­mats, and the rich. Trav­el­ing by sea and by water­ways was expen­sive and time-consuming. Postal ser­vices were in their infancy and the news were mostly local and spread by word of mouth.

In the 20th cen­tury, com­mu­ni­ca­tion between nation­als of demo­c­ra­tic coun­tries (includ­ing some that suf­fered under right-wing dic­ta­tor­ships) was con­sid­ered a basic civil right. Indi­vid­u­als trav­eled abroad and had unre­stricted access to postal ser­vices, tele­phone, radio, tele­vi­sion, news­pa­pers and, by the end of the cen­tury, the Inter­net. The person’s finan­cial stand­ing was the sole restric­tive factor.

One of the first mea­sures adopted by all Com­mu­nist par­ties that reached power was to con­fis­cate or exert total con­trol over all forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between nation­als and per­sons resid­ing abroad, includ­ing next of kin. Free­dom of the press ceased to exist, travel abroad was severely restricted, phone calls and let­ters were cen­sored and, in those nations still under Com­mu­nism, Inter­net sites are cen­sored (China, Viet­nam) or are only acces­si­ble to gov­ern­ment bod­ies and the party (North Korea, Cuba).

Some Com­mu­nist gov­ern­ments increased lit­er­acy con­sid­er­ably, but the lit­er­ate could only read what had the party’s seal of approval.

With travel abroad pro­hib­ited or severely restricted, the local media cen­sored, and lim­ited or no access to for­eign sources of news and ideas, con­cern­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion those per­sons liv­ing under Com­mu­nism were not much bet­ter than 16th cen­tury illit­er­ate peasants.

Migra­tion

In the Mid­dle Ages migra­tion of com­mon peo­ple was min­i­mal for a num­ber of rea­sons. Igno­rance, lack of infor­ma­tion, the rig­ors involved in trav­el­ing long dis­tances, and reli­gious ide­ol­ogy seem to have been deci­sive dis­cour­ag­ing factors.

Wars, the dis­cov­ery of Amer­ica, reli­gious per­se­cu­tion fol­low­ing the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion, bet­ter roads and means of trans­porta­tion, and the pos­si­bil­ity of mov­ing from densely to thinly pop­u­lated areas in search for bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties were the most impor­tant rea­sons for migra­tions in the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s. Nearly all those who went into exile for purely polit­i­cal rea­sons were kings and nobles. The com­mon man and woman knew they could flee from a sov­er­eign but not from monar­chy. The excep­tion was France for fif­teen years, from 1789 to 1804. Regret­tably, Napoleon put away the cra­dle of democ­racy the day he was titled Emperor.

Migra­tion in the 20th cen­tury was dif­fer­ent. Most democ­ra­cies (and again some dic­ta­tor­ships) allowed cit­i­zens to reside abroad for as long as they wished for whichever rea­son, return when­ever they wanted to, and even hold dual cit­i­zen­ship. Mil­lions left their coun­tries fear­ing racial, tribal or reli­gious per­se­cu­tion. Coups d’ etat and other polit­i­cal events forced politi­cians into exile.

But in the 20th cen­tury, unlike their ances­tors, indi­vid­u­als suf­fer­ing under a Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship knew that it was pos­si­ble to flee from Com­mu­nism. As par­ties real­ized that peo­ple were vot­ing with their feet, they took extreme mea­sures to pre­vent emi­gra­tion. In the Soviet Union bor­ders were closed and only those that proved (or sim­u­lated) total alle­giance to the party were allowed to travel abroad. East Ger­many erected the Berlin Wall. Viet­namese and Cubans sailed away. Shoot­ing escapees and giv­ing long prison sen­tences to those cap­tured became com­mon practices.

In this way peo­ple liv­ing under Com­mu­nism in the 20th cen­tury were con­demned to Mid­dle Age immobility.

Con­clu­sion

I started pen­ning this essay on the fifth anniver­sary of the day I went into exile. Before access­ing the free flow of ideas and infor­ma­tion that char­ac­ter­izes democ­racy, I hadn’t fully grasped the colos­sal mag­ni­tude of Com­mu­nist failure.

If as many thinkers have pro­posed, only prac­tice con­firms whether or not a the­ory is cor­rect, the prac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion of Com­mu­nist the­ory has been a stun­ning fail­ure. How­ever noble the inten­tions of Marx and Engels were, the par­ties in power, rather than grad­u­ally reduc­ing the role of the state, the gov­ern­ment, and their own –as was the­o­ret­i­cally con­ceived– made all three grow dis­pro­por­tion­ately, reach into every cor­ner of soci­ety, and con­sol­i­date the most total abso­lutism since Louis XIV.

Rather than lib­er­at­ing peo­ple from slav­ery and exploita­tion, Com­mu­nism made them slaves of the party and the state and exploited them worse than cap­i­tal­ism. Instead of achiev­ing an upward spi­ral to riches, it accom­plished a col­lec­tive nose­dive into poverty. It had total dis­re­gard for all kinds of free­dom and for the rights of human beings. And to cap it all, instead of admit­ting its mis­takes and fail­ures, Com­mu­nism con­cealed them under a thick blan­ket of secrets, lies, half-truths, dis­in­for­ma­tion, and repression.

Democ­racy and cap­i­tal­ism are far from achiev­ing some goals and rights mankind has been dream­ing with since Plato’s Repub­lic. At the begin­ning of this paper I listed some of the most press­ing prob­lems that demo­c­ra­tic nations and mar­ket economies con­front. But we should keep in mind that we know the exis­tence and nature of those dif­fi­cul­ties and imper­fec­tions because democ­racy respects two great prin­ci­ples from which a great achieve­ment stems. First, it con­se­crates basic rights and free­doms, like a free media. Sec­ond, its courts of jus­tice are totally (in a few coun­tries) or par­tially inde­pen­dent from gov­ern­ments and may sen­tence to prison abusers of power and cor­rupt politi­cians and busi­ness­men. The achieve­ment is that no per­son or insti­tu­tion, how­ever pow­er­ful, is exempt from crit­i­cism. In a democ­racy no social issue remains secret for long and, as every­body knows, to solve any prob­lem the first thing that has to be done is to admit its existence.

Those who, out of the good­ness of their hearts, strive to make their soci­eties bet­ter are admirable peo­ple. When debat­ing how to, how­ever, they should care­fully con­sider whether Com­mu­nism is an option. I believe that by rea­son of its regres­sive nature, and because in all the coun­tries where Com­mu­nism ruled it proved itself bru­tally repres­sive, highly incom­pe­tent, and totally inef­fec­tive, it is not a viable alternative.