But seriously, why didn't communism triumph in the 20th century when things were looking so good? If the russian revolution and chinese revolution can succeed, liberating 800 million people, 1/3rd of the world's population, defeat the nazis, why couldnt we finish the final stretch? What was the fatal flaw?
Structural issues in the party system that led to a bureaucracy that could not respond to threats coherently or effectively and a military that could coup the gov with just a few jerks at the top consenting - with zero answer by the people to restore the revolution.
The government needs to be structured around the people such that it is not only responsive, but is responsive precisely because incentives align with the people's consent. Not capitalist incentive, but still material. Not bourgeois electoral consent, the threat of more engagement and involvement such that those in power are displaced by those with an interest in maintaining the line. Democracy that filters up through party activism and the necessity of regional coordination.
The USSR's bureaucracy stagnated and consequently aged out. The gerontocracy wasn't bad just because old people start losing their minds, it was a symptom of a system that depended on central administration but could not constantly replace its staffing, let alone ensure that said staffing had coherent theory behind their positions and actions. The gerontocracy was just one signifier of a deeper rot in engagement with the party and the accessibility of power structures.
So when some jerks at the top did a lib in times of decaying material conditions, there was nothing left to defend the revolution.
I think lenin proposed doubling size of central committe before he died but it never happened
The one constant you can find in every single one of the Bolshevik's writings during 1917-1923 is that they all expected a follow-up revolution in Western Europe, most likely in Germany. It almost happened, too: Spartacist uprising, Ruhr uprising, Hungarian Soviet Republic, Bavarian Soviet Republic, Europe was on fucking fire. However, the European revolution failed. The Bolsheviks had no choice but to make due and remain on their little island, doing what they can to survive and maybe spread Revolution later on. An opportunity came for that post-WW2, but Stalin, god bless his liberal soul, cucked out and let the West set the table for the following Cold War instead of being more proactive. He also made a bunch of crucial mistakes that pretty much fucked the SU later on, mainly purging the wrong people and letting people like Beria and Khrushchev be the future of the Soviet Union. The USSR was always at a disadvantage, the fact that they survive this long and managed to expand the Socialist camp into Eastern Europe is already a miracle in itself.
pretty much. it is the same reason those parties largely went along with WW1. Ireland was the first, even before the Russians, and eventually ended up being the only other european revolution of that time to somewhat stick even if betrayed and leading to a civil war. I think much of that comes from the fact that the irish by and far didn't have the opportunity for comfort. You had the classic Irish elite who sold them out sure, but some concessions had to be made to them because their status as a colonized people made for a contradiction that could not even be temporarily resolved. You never got something close to that in Germany, while in Ireland people who otherwise would be SPD or tuned out of politics, engaged in revolutionary action and aligned with the nascent Soviet Union
As the other commenter said, Matt Christman and his co-host has talked about it in one of the Hinge Points episodes and broadly goes through the events. The series as a whole is a good listen and pretty interesting.
It’s funny that the chapos get a lot of shit for being libs but Matt consistently has great takes and actually knows his history.
Yeah, when listening to them, I can see why most serious communists on here who believe in AES and love the USSR don't like the Chapos very much. Definitely some weird takes here and there. But I think they collectively have one of the less shit opinions about China if you absolutely have to be a typical western leftist who hates any socialism that isn't theoretical, which is basically "Think what you want about China but if you're more concerned about what the Chinese government is doing, which you have no way of affecting, than what the United States is doing, which you can theoretically affect, you're a fucking moron." Unfortunately I think their influence on the younger left has diminished due to the rise of breadtube and their epic twitch streamers but they still have one of the largest Patreon bases on the website, which is something.
And yeah, Matt is legitimately very intelligent and I agree with the vast majority of his takes. And even the ones I don't agree with, I sorta have to be like "Well, he's read his shit so at least I know he's coming at this from a place of knowledge and good faith and not just agreeing/disagreeing with something because he doesn't know shit about it." He's honestly probably one of the best thinkers we have on the left, certainly in the top 10% of at least vaguely prominent socialists alive today, just because he's done the goddamn reading.
A bunch of things, like the SPDs betrayal. But ultimately The Battle of Warsaw prevented the Soviets giving direct support to any revolutionary outbreak.
Extreme :doubt: for this, especially on the grounds that it's ridiculous to think Trotsky's presence would have been the deciding factor in a successful western/central European revolution.
World War 2 20 years earlier with an excuse for the entire west to openly ally with the fascists.
That's fair but if German Communists won there wouldn't have been a Third Reich. I also think France would have been rolled BC of how underindustrialized France is compared to Germany, even up to today.
Communist France could also have flipped the Spanish Civil War so the only capitalist power left on the continent would have been TERF island.
The Russian people were tired of war though the continuation of WW1 and the fact that major land reform wasn't possible during a massive war were huge factors that brought down Kerensky they were what stopped there being bread peace and land
well it was mostly the part where they praised deng's treatment of Mao and the fact that it barely even mentions Mao.
It's was combination of factors including economic stagnation and gerontocracy
My pet theory is a failure to pair planned economy with increasing computing power à la a larger scale cybersyn
Also Trotsky ended up being right in a roundabout way. Once Khrushchev took over there was a decided move toward bureaucratization and this basically became baked in under Brezhnev. At that point the stagnation aging and decline of the party was set in.
This strikes me as a failure of party education and party discipline. Something the Chinese seem to be VERY strong about, presumably as a reaction to seeing exactly how the Soviets declined.
It was the decline of the ideology within the party that ultimately did them in. Destalinisation ended the soviet union.
Lack of capital to put it simply. Even before the Russian Revolution the USA was acknowledged by Marx and Lenin as the most economically powerful capitalist nation. Seriously the US economy was massive especially after the 2nd World War, take a look at this graph for comparison. (I know some think GDP is a 'fake' measurement but it's really not that bad as long as you don't try to fetishize it) Of course the US built that economy with slavery, genocide and exploitation but those things do tend to make a select few people a hell of a lot of money. The USSR was always behind the US and having to find creative ways to make up that gap.
The USSR by contrast inherited the feudal backwater of Russia, the place with some of the worst infrastructure and industrial development in the world. The Russian Empire was big, but it was also wartorn and full of many nationalities that made it extremely difficult to govern. The Bolsheviks managed to fight a civil war, unify all that land and all those peoples, then valiantly fought off the largest land invasion on world history, then pushed the country into Superpower status and directly opposed the most powerful empire in human history for half a century. That's fucking impressive, and while they did not succeed in destroying global capitalism, they competed well and scared the shit out of the bourgeoisie for a couple decades. Communism allowed that country to punch far above it's weight.
But alone the USSR never really stood a chance in the long term, the USA is massive and also remember that they were fighting with the colonial powers like France and England too. The West's resources only got bigger while the East's continued to fall behind, forced to choose between defense and growth. The USSR mostly had only poorer nations as allies who often needed aid from the Soviets just to stay stable (as most of the countries were ravaged by colonialism and war previously, by fascists or colonizers) but they still managed to aid revolutionary movements in the Global South and some of those still endure (Vietnam, Cuba, etc.)
China was in the same position as the USSR, lots of resources, people, and land but very little capital. Mao, Deng, and now Xi have successfully developed the country and with a combination of foreign investment and homegrown industry they are turning the country into a superpower. This time the economics are actually favoring China in the long term in competition with the USA... it's a much more even fight and the CCP can still press the communism button for full mobilization of the economy against the US if they really wanted to.
they were run by a bunch of out-of-touch, doddering, demented geriatrics for over 20 years; luckily the usa doesn't have that problem
They were goaded into an arms race with the US. One they couldn’t keep up with and lead to stagnation in growth. Arming and supporting rebels around the world also didn’t help.
Focus on heavy industry instead of light manufacturing is another that doesn’t get brought up much.
Also I think we forget how adaptive capitalist structures are. People don’t have money? Introduce credit. Keep unemployment down? Have a jobs program in the form of the United States military.
These are just basic answers that others could answer much more thoroughly.
I think one of the things missing here is that the totally centralized economy supposed to be a temporary thing in theory, only for the immediate redistribution of resources for the worker. But since the post WWI revolutions didn't pan out and WWII followed after that, the centralized economy remained. It didn't have diversified investments redundancies like capitalist economies do and therefore didn't do well in the long haul.
Then you also have Stalin getting rid of anyone who would have done that. MLs love to blame Gorbachev and such but Stalin's the reason for Gorbachev.
One thing I've learned about Marxists is they too readily dismiss planning future governments as Utopian. Focusing on the here and now should be a priority but you really do need those Utopian nerds when the time comes to plan your society and ensure the ideological goal is carried through. Say what you want about George Mason and the US Constitution but it's been doing its job for almost a quarter millennia. IDK if the Soviet government had such consistent ideological planning. AFAIK they made it up as they went.
One thing I’ve learned about Marxists is they too readily dismiss planning future governments as Utopian. Focusing on the here and now should be a priority but you really do need those Utopian nerds when the time comes to plan your society and ensure the ideological goal is carried through. Say what you want about George Mason and the US Constitution but it’s been doing its job for almost a quarter millennia. IDK if the Soviet government had such consistent ideological planning. AFAIK they made it up as they went.
have you like read a single page of marx lmao
In which book does he actually go over how a socialist/communist government should work at any detail? It's not in Kapital and the manifesto has less than a page on it. I know he wrote other works but I'm not sure which has that.
If Siddhartha achieved enlightenment then why aren’t we all experiencing nirvana right this very minute? Checkmate people who maintain earthly possessions
They didn't develop a Havana Syndrome weapon quickly enough.
Shortly after that in 1986, William Casey, then Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, went to Saudi Arabia. According to Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser Richard Allen, Casey negotiated with King Fahd what was to occur next. For the six previous years, the Saudi government has been restraining oil prices, sharply decreasing their petroleum extraction; but after Casey returned, in September 1985, Saudi Arabia started rapidly increasing its extraction – even though the prices were still low!
In four months, Saudi extraction rose from two million to 10 million barrels a day, and prices plummeted from $32 a barrel to $10. For the USSR’s economy - already accustomed to exorbitant incomes from its oil, this was a death blow. in 1986 alone, the USSR lost more than $20 billion (approximately 7.5% of the USSR’s annual income), and it already had a budget deficit.
But Saudi Arabia’s economy was also punished because of the low prices! Why did they do it? Allen’s opinion is that Casey offered the sheiks financial reparations in exchange for the move; this opinion is backed up by the fact that in 1986, 80% of Saudi oil was sold through Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, and Chevron – all American companies.
There was another reason, as pointed out by Yeltsin’s chief financial adviser, Yegor Gaidar. As deputy prime minister of Russia in early 1992, Gaidar would become famous as the architect of a program of radical free market reform known as ‘shock therapy’. He and his team were keen to introduce shock therapy even before then. However, as Gaidar later explained, they did not believe that the leaders of the other Soviet republics were willing to do the same.
Since economic reform in the USSR had to be carried out simultaneously in all republics, the opposition of the non-Russian republics meant that shock therapy was impossible as long as the USSR remained in existence. The only way Russia could carry it out was to get rid of the other republics and become an independent state. In short, the choice was the Union or shock therapy. Yeltsin and Gaidar chose the latter.
Some giant dork wanted Pizza Hut so bad he allowed fascists and liberals to coup the USSR.
yeah but by that time everything was already fucked, he just put the nail in the coffin
same question but from a different angle: why didn't the USA dissolve? i think imperialism allowed the USA to outlast the USSR. the USA has been rotting from the inside out for 50 years now. winning the cold war also basically was like cutting their own throat. south korea, japan, germany, and now china are all capitalist competitors that could break loose and bring down the USA, the dollar, the sanctions, the giant military. no more USA might mean a second wave of socialist revolutions
Well, there's a lot of commentary and debate about why the USSR failed, but communism is hardly dead in the water. A very substantial portion of the world's population lives in a socialist state - the PRC is the largest and soon the most powerful country in the world. Vietnam is a major player in Asia with a huge population. Cuba's kicking and stable. There's other smaller ones as well, and we're just talking ML countries. Socialism's having a moment in Latin America. Liberal capitalist countries are flailing internally and in their capacity to exert power globally.
So... Communism is still on the path to victory even with it's greatest champion fallen thirty years ago.
the question is why did the soviet union dissolve, and why communism did not triumph in the 20th century. I'd say we are perhaps past the nadir of the 90s where communism genuinely seemed over, but the reality is simply the failures in the 20th century did set back the global communist movement back massively.
Rome wasn’t build in a day. Capitalism, feudalism, and any other mode of production all took time to develop and then take hold. If you say the first socialist state is the Paris commune, this movement has been around for about 150 years. (It was also fucking dead in the water for decades after the commune’s failure.)
Although history moves faster these days, it’s a little like asking why it took hundreds of years for Rome to dominate the Mediterranean, why it took hundreds of years for landlords to make Europe feudal, why it took centuries for British capital to transform the world. These different modes of production are objectively real. Capitalism objectively produces a shitload of capital. Socialism takes that capital to the next fucking level, as China is beginning to show. Marx was initially wrong (it seems) when he predicted that the first revolutions would occur where capital was most developed; the 20th century shows that it’s much easier to organize the global south against imperialism than it is to organize the global north against capitalism (especially when so many of the global north’s workers are bribed by treats produced by slave labor in the global south). But maybe the 21st century will see the first successful revolutions in the imperial core, after which it’s game over for capitalism.
my understanding is the economic stagnation which lead to leaders like gorbachev implementing free market liberalization which - along w the somewhat flawed implementation of state enterprise markets - lead to the development of material conditions that gave the bourgeois enough resources to push the counterrevolution far enough to break apart the Soviet Union, even if the dissolution was unlawful. (also a sidenote but the emphasis on heavy industry slowing the implementation of cybersyn before the fall of the ussr will always be a shame and interesting thought experiment)
even in the most 1984 gorge orwel societies reactionary forces w material support from the bourgeois within and capitalist forces from outside will always have the potential to attempt counterrevolutions, the question as another user put it is who is there to defend the revolution.
