This is my first (proper!) response to MSB's post #16. I've been editing it quite heavily, this is now over.
MSB, I was dismissive last night because I was drunk. You'll forgive me my human foibles I hope! You raise several good questions which I will attempt to address. I am not an all-knowing guru, I am always learning, but I'll try to give some ideas which are representative of current Libertarian-Communist* thinking.
I hope you also recognise that it's easy to raise objections and ask questions, but it takes more time to research and answer them thoughtfully and meaningfully. So I'm putting some effort in here and I would appreciate if people would respond in kind.
Also, I am grateful for your questions because it gives me an opportunity to clarify my own thinking. As I'm in some sense predisposed to communism I am guilty of not questioning the precepts as much as I should, or seeking support for my assumptions in the lessons of history, so it's useful for me to have to answer you!
My time is limited, and yours is too, so I will not provide
exhaustive detail, but I will provide links to exhaustive material.
I think you've made 10 points here that need answering. I will address them individually and as I put a bit of time into addressing each one I won't cover them all in one go. I'll start here:
1.
"No true Scotsman fallacy" - socialism has always failed, socialists respond with "that wasn't socialism".
Firstly, I am not discussing socialism, but specifically communism. It's true, communism has so far "failed" to be realised for an extended period of time, and an oft-cited reason is that what failed was "not communism".
There is another oft-given reason for the failure of "communist" regimes which I will tackle here - that communism which is not globally dominant cannot persist.
The widespread view amongst communists is that it must be achieved on such a scale as to dominate the globe. Why is this?
Revolution must be Global (or at least Globally Dominant)
If a communist revolution does not dominate the globe then it is outflanked by aggressive capitalist regimes. Those with a stake in the status quo - those who benefit the most from it, the ruling classes, capitalists etc, would be threatened, their way of life would be threatened. While I don't consider the Soviet Union to be an example of communism in action, or even intent, (few communists do), the ruling classes in western nations saw it as a threat of a similar kind, and we ended up with a cold war of military escalation which lasted for decades. The USSR was an amalgamation of many countries who, prior to the October revolution, started off in a less socially advanced state; they were societies organised largely along feudal lines. The western world, on the other hand, was in an fairly advanced state of capitalism. Given this poor starting point, it is remarkable that the USSR modernised so quickly to become a super-power which presented a threat to the west. This achievement was not one of communism but of dictatorship and took place at great human cost. However it's strength was in the end weaker than the combined forces of the capitalist nations, and thus was doomed to fail.
I give this as a general example we are all familiar with to demonstrate that in a contest between two opposed forces of any kind, the more powerful force will eventually prevail. The specific example is not one of Communism failing due to it's limited reach, but serves to demonstrate the principle which can be applied to a true Communist revolution.
One would expect a globally dominant revolution to finalise as a global revolution as the exploited classes in the remaining capitalist regimes, with support from international revolutionaries, see the possibility of revolution actualised and stage their own revolutions. As we can see from North Africa, revolution is contagious, even when it's not communist in nature.
This requirement for revolution to be global, or globally dominant, is enough on it's own to explain why communism has yet to be implemented, as revolutions have so far been geographically limited. But that doesn't address the "that wasn't ...." factor. I'll now present a couple of examples of societies with honest communist intentions, which attempted communist implementation, but which failed due to statism. It will then be straightforward to apply the principle thus exposed to your 100 examples of failed regimes, and explain why communists and socialists so frequently invoke the "it's never been done" argument.
Statism is Not Communism
The Paris Commune
There are instances of
temporarily successful societies with
communist intentions. Communist
practices have been implemented to varying degrees. Charlie has mentioned the Paris Communes, I normally think of the
Paris Commune, singular. This commune didn't last long at all, which isn't surprising given it was so small. Other than being too small to survive, the Paris commune made it's own mistakes, such as continuance of representative democracy which dis-empowered the people and left things in the hands of rulers. Anarchists, who argued (and still do today) for immediate implementation of workers councils as the instrument of revolution and ongoing communist democracy, were in a minority and unsurprisingly the government became increasingly authoritarian. In the end the French army took the commune by force, massacring the "Communards" in their thousands. Now, aside from the fact that the Paris commune was doomed thanks to it being hugely outnumbered by reactionary military forces, it was not communism. All communist thinkers define communism as a stateless society. The paris commune had a representative democracy and thus was not stateless. It was not communism. The intention may have been to eventually dissolve the state, but as Anarchists have always argued, states are resistant to dissolution. They must be torn down.
The Spanish Collectivisation
A more successful example is the
society which emerged in Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War and lasted for three years. The form this took was collectivisation. In Spain at the time there was a right wing force (Franco's fascism), dominating western Spain, and in the East various more or less communist factions - Marxist Communists, Anarchists (represented by the
CNT-FAI "coalition") and other socialist groups. Anarchist ideas were widespread amongst workers and peasants in the area at the time. The workers and peasants formed militias, land was collectivised on a voluntary basis, industry was likewised collectivised and managed by assemblies of workers, with decision making taking place in a directly democratic fashion. The productivity of the areas of Spain managed in this collective fashion far exceeded that of areas managed in the old, hierarchical way. Other successes included free medical provision and improvements to infrastructure. Removal of the profit motive allowed resources to be allocated in a rational, democratic manner rather than according to the needs of capital.
However a Stalinist presence mounted a counter-revolution. The USSR was funding and co-ordinating the counter-revolution, with the Spanish Communist Party and the PSUC (the Catalonian "socialist" party) as it's agents. Despite using the Communist name, Stalin's interests were not for Communism but for his dictatorship and the Anarchist movement was in opposition to his goals. So there was an enemy within, and a powerful one backed by a super power. Additionally the CNT, nominally Anarchist, had made many concessions, in the name of solidarity against the fascists, to the Soviet-backed statists and remnants of a state were rebuilt and the collectivisation project dismantled. Then of course the Civil War broke out in full, resulting in the fascists gaining control of these territories.
So, the Spanish example demonstrates that anarchist communist organisation can be productively superior to the statist, capitalist modes of society. It's failure lay in that concessions were made to statists who, thanks to their powerful backer, Stalin's USSR, destroyed the achievements of the workers. This was not communism, but an unfortunately compromised collectivisation which put anarchist ideas into practice, demonstrated their effectiveness, but was ultimately destroyed by statists.
Lessons from Spain
My contention is that we cannot look to history for examples of actual communism, but we can find examples of attempts to implement communist ideas and we can study where mistakes have been made with the aim of learning from them. There are many lessons we can take from the Spanish case, but the striking one is that statist tendencies are counter-revolutionary. Anarchists cannot make concessions in revolution to statists. In terms of action right now, it is important that anarchist ideas are spread widely together with the historical understanding which underpins them. Anarchist ideas must clearly dominate statist ideas, so revolution can follow the anarchist path.
Video
Here is a rather good film covering the Spanish Revolution including interviews with participants and historical footage.
*Libertarian Communism is frequently used as a kind of umbrella term for various anti-state approaches to communism and communist revolution, including
Anarchist Communism,
Anarcho-Syndicalism and
Council Communism. They are more similar than they are different, and many believe that they can co-exist depending on geographically dominant tendencies. No communist tendency wants a state as the end goal, but the Marxist tendencies see the state as the instrument of revolution, the embodiment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat", and that the state would be gradually dismantled as it is replaced with communist institutions , while the Libertarian tendencies see the state as inherently counter revolutionary, and would contend (rightly IMO) that this is borne out by history, and in place of they state as the revolutionary vehicle they argue for communist institutions as that vehicle - workers councils, syndicalist unions and other bodies conceived of
by workers prior to and during the process of revolution.
Conclusion - This is not a No True Scotsman fallacy
Mr Smokes Blunts, you argue that the oft-made claim, "Communism has never been implemented," is a No True Scotsman fallacy. (again, I am not writing about "socialism" but specifically "communism", so I've modified your argument appropriately.)
The No True Scotsman fallacy is defined in wikipedia thus:
wikipedia said:
When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule.
Communist society is a
stateless society which, in order to persist, must be
globally dominant - this latter criterion is embodied in the notion, expressed by Marx and broadly supported amongst communist thinkers, of
World Revolution. My claim is that "Communism has never been implemented". Your counterexample to my claim is "100 failed communist regimes". I deny your counter example by demonstrating that those "communist regimes" were
not stateless and thus they were
not communist; further they were
not globally dominant so were doomed to failure. This does not modify the subject of my initial assertion, therefore your appeal to this fallacy fails.
and
But I will.
If you are "viewing" how about you "read the thread", I think between the questions of sceptics and my own commitment to answering them (and I certainly wouldn't mind others doing that too if they feel able and willing) there is scope for quite an enlightening exposition here.