Communism In Wonderland

by **proldic** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 2:06 pm

From: Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism [1997 City Lights] by Michael Parenti Chapter 1 Rational Fascism <a href="http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm10.showMessage?topicID=2072.topic">p216.ezboard.com/frigorou...2072.topic</a> Chapter 3 Left Anticommunism <a href="http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm10.showMessage?topicID=2068.topic">p216.ezboard.com/frigorou...2068.topic</a> Chapter 4 Communism In Wonderland The various communist countries suffered from major systemic deficiencies. While these internal problems were seriously exacerbated by the destruction and military threat imposed by the Western capitalist powers, there were a number of difficulties that seemed to inhere in the system itself. Rewarding Inefficiency All communist nations were burdened with rigid economic command systems. Central planning was useful and even necessary in the earlier period of siege socialism to produce steel, wheat, and tanks in order to build an industrial base and withstand the Nazi onslaught. But it eventually hindered technological development and growth, and proved incapable of supplying a wide enough range of consumer goods and services. No computerized system could be devised to accurately model a vast and intricate economy. No system could gather and process the immense range of detailed information needed to make correct decisions about millions of production tasks. Top-down planning stifled initiative…stagnation was evident in the failure of the Soviet industrial establishment to apply innovations of the scientific-technical revolution of the 1970’s and 1980’s, including the use of computer technology. Though the Soviet system produced many of the world’s best mathematicians, physicists, and other scientists, little of their work found actual application… It is not enough to denounce ineptitude, one must also try to explain why it persisted despite repeated exhortations from leaders – going as far back as Stalin himself… An explanation for the failure of the managerial system may be found in the system itself, which created disincentives for innovation: 1. Managers were little inclined to pursue paths that might lead to their own obsolescence. Many of them were not competent in the new technologies and should have been replaced. 2. Managers received no rewards for r taking risks. They retained their positions regardless of whether innovative technology was developed, as was true of their superiors and central planners. 3. Supplies needed for technological change were limited. Since input was fixed by the plan and all materials were fully committed, it was difficult to divert resources to innovative production. In addition, experimentation increased the risks of failing to meet one’s quotas. 4. There was no incentive to produce better machinery for other enterprises since that brought no rewards. On the contrary, under pressure to get quantitative results, managers often cut corners on quality. 5. There was a scarcity of replacement parts for both industrial production and for durable-use consumer goods. Because top planners set such artificially low prices for spare parts, it was seldom costs-efficient for factories top produce them. 6. Because producers did not pay the real-value prices for raw materials, fuel, and other things, enterprises often used them inefficiently. 7. Productive capacity was under-utilized. Problems of distribution led to excessive unused inventory. Because of irregular shipments, there was a tendency to horde more than could be put into production, further adding to shortages. 8. Improvements in production would only to an increase in one’s production quotas. In effect, well-run factories were punished with greater workloads. Poor performing ones were rewarded with lowers quotas and state subsidies. Managerial irresponsibility was a problem in agriculture as well as industry… If anything, farm management was not motivated to succeed. For instance, since state buyers of meat paid attention to quantity and not quality, collective farmers maximized profits by producing fatter animals. Consumers might not care to eat fatty meat but that was their problem. Only a foolish or saintly farmer would work harder to produce better quality meat for the privilege of getting paid less. As in all countries, bureaucracy tended to become a self-feeding animal. Administrative personnel increased at a faster rate than productive workers. In some enterprises, administrative personnel made up half the full number of workers. A factory with 11,000 production employees might have an administrative staff of 5,000, a considerable burden on productivity. The heavily bureaucratic mode of operation did not allow for critical self-corrective feedback. In general, there was a paucity of the kind of debate that might have held planners and managers accountable to the public. The fate of the whistleblower was the same in communist countries as in our own. Those who exposed waste, incompetence, and corruption were more likely to run risks than receive rewards. Nobody Minding the Store We have been taught that people living under communism suffered from "totalitarian control over every aspect of life”. Talking to the people themselves, one found that they complained less about overbearing control than about the absence of responsible control. Maintenance people failed top perform needed repairs….With lax management in harvesting storage, and transportation, as much as 30% of all produce was lost between field and store, and thousands of tons of meat were left to spoil. People complained about broken toilets, leaky roofs, rude salespeople, poor quality goods, late trains, and corrupt and unresponsive bureaucrats. Corruption and favoritism were commonplace. There was the manager who regularly pilfered the till, the workers who filched foodstuffs and goods from state stores or suppliers from factories in order to service private homes for personal gain, the peasants on collective farms who stripped tractors to sell them on the black market, the director who accepted bribes to place people at the top of a waiting list to buy cars, and the farmers who hoarded livestock which they sold to townspeople at three times the price of the government’s low procurement price. All this was hardly the behavior of people trembling under a totalitarian rule of terror… Not surprisingly, work disipline left much to be desired. There was the clerk who chatted endlessly with a friend on the telephone while a long line of people waited resentfully for service., the two workers who took three days to paint a hotel wall that should have taken a few hours, the many who would walk off their jobs to go shopping. Such poor performance itself contributed to low productivity and the cycle of performance itself contributed to low productivity and the cycle of scarcity. If fired, and individual had a constitutional guarantee to another job and seldom had any trouble finding one. The labor market was a seller’s market…The dedicated employee usually earned no more than the irresponsible one. The slackers and pilferers had a demoralizing effect on those who wanted to work in earnest. Full employment was achieved by padding the workforce with people who had relatively little to do. This added to labor scarcity, low productivity, lack of work discipline, and the failure to implement labor-saving technologies that could maximize production. The communists operated on the assumption that once capitalism and its attendant economic abuses had been eliminated, once social production was communalized and the people were afforded some decent measure of security and prosperity, they would contentedly do their fair share of work. That often proved not so. Communist economies had a kind of Wonderland quality in that prices seldom bore any relation to actual cost or value. Many expensive services were provided almost entirely free, such as education, medical care, and most recreational, sporting, and cultural events. Housing, transportation, utilities, and basic foods were heavily subsidized. Many people had money but not much to buy with it. High-quality goods and luxury items were hard to come by. Al this in turn affected work performance. Why work hard to earn more when there was not that much to buy? …Prices were held artificially low, first out of dedication to egalitarian principles but also because attempts to readjust them provoked worker protests. Thus in the USSR and Poland, the state refused to raise the price of a loaf of bread, which was priced at a few pennies per loaf. One result” farmers bought the bread to feed their pigs. With rigorous price controls, there was hidden inflation, a large black market, a long shopping lines. Citizens were expected to play buy the rules and not take advantage of the system, even when the system inadvertently invited transgressions. They were expected to discard a self-interested mode of behavior when in fact there was no reward and some disadvantage in doing so. The “brutal totalitarian regime” was actually a giant trough from which many took whatever they could. There was strong resentment concerning consumer scarcity: the endless lines, the 10-year wait for a new car, the housing shortage that compelled single people to live at home, and the 5-year wait in an apartment. The crowding and financial dependency on parents often led to early divorce. These and other such problems took their toll on people’s commitment to socialism. Wanting It All I listened to an East German friend complain of poor services and inferior products; the system did not work, he concluded. But what of the numerous social benefits so lacking in much of the world, I asked, aren’t these to be valued? His response was revealing: “Oh, nobody ever talks about that.” People took for granted what they had in the way of human services and entitlements while hungering for the consumer goods dangling in their imaginations. The human capacity for discontent should not be underestimated. People cannot live on the social wage alone. Once our needs are satisfied, then our wants tend to escalate, and our wants become our needs. A rise in living standards often incites a still greater rise in expectations. As people are treated better, they want more of the good things and are not necessarily grateful for what they already have. Leading professionals who attained relatively good living standards wanted to dress better, travel abroad, and enjoy the more abundant lifestyles available to people of means in the capitalist world.. It was this desire for greater affluence rather than the quest for political freedom that motivated most of those who emigrated to the capitalist West. Material wants were mentioned far more often than the lack of democracy. The émigrés who fled Vietnam in 1989 were not persecuted political dissidents. Usually they were relatively prosperous craftsmen, small entrepreneurs, well-educated engineers, architects, and intellectuals seeking greater opportunities… Likewise, the big demand in the GDR was for travel, new appliances, and bigger apartments. The NY times described East Germany as a “country of 16 million [who] seem transfixed by one issue: How soon can they become prosperous as West Germans?”… n 1989 I asked the GDR ambassador in Washington, DC, why his country made such junky 2-cylinder cars. He said the goal was to develop public transportation and discourage the use of costly private vehicles. But when asked to choose between a rational, efficient, economically sound and ecologically sane mass transportation system or an automobile with its instant mobility, special status, privacy, and personal empowerment, the East Germans went for the latter, as do most people in the world. The ambassador added ruefully : “ We thought building a good society would make good people. That’s not always true.” Whether or not it was a good society, at least he was belatedly recognizing the discrepancy between public ideology and private desire. In Cuba today many youth see no value in joining the communist party and think Fidel Castro has had his day and should step aside. The revolutionary accomplishments in education and medical care are something they take for granted and cannot get excited about. Generally they are more concerned about their own personal future than about socialism. University courses on Marxism and classes on the Cuban Revolution, once overenrolled, now go sparsely attended, while students crowd into classes on global markets and property law. With the US blockade and the loss of Soviet aid, the promise of abundance receded beyond sight in Cuba and the cornucopia of the North appeared ever more alluring. Many Cuban youth idealize life in the US and long for its styles and music. Like the Eastern Europeans, they think capitalism will deliver the goodies at no special cost. When told that young people in the US face serious hurdles, they respond with all the certainty of inexperience: “We know that many people in the states are poor and that many are rich. If you work hard, however, you can do well. It is the land of opportunity.” By the 2nd or 3rd generation, relatively few are still alive who can favorably contrast their lives under socialism with the great hardships and injustices of pre-Revolutionary days. As stated by one Cuban youth who has no memory of life before the revolution: We’re tired of slogans. That was all right for our parents but the revolution is history.” In a society of rapidly rising –- and sometimes unrealistic – expectations, those who did not do well, who could not find employment commensurate with their training, who were stuck with drudge work, were especially inclined to want a change. Even in the best of societies, much labor has an instrumental value but no inherent gratification. The sooner a tedious task is completed , the sooner there is another to be done, so why knock yourself out? If “building the revolution” and “winning the battle of production” mean performing essential but routine tasks for the rest of one’s foreseeable future, the revolution understandably loses its luster. There is often not enough interesting and creative work to go around for all those who consider themselves interesting and creative people. Reactionism to the Surface For years I have heard about the devilishly clever manipulations of communist propaganda. Later on, I was surprised to discover that news media in communist countries were usually lackluster and plodding. Western capitalist countries are immersed in a n advertising culture, with billions spent on marketing and manipulating images. The communist countries had nothing comparable. Their media coverage usually extended to dull protocol visits and official pronouncements, along with glowing reports about the economy and society – so glowing that people complained about not knowing what was going on in their country. They could read about abuses of power, industrial accidents, worker protests, and earthquakes in every country but their own. And even when the press exposed domestic abuses, they usually went uncorrected. Media reports sometimes so conflicted with daily experience that the official press was not believed even when it did tell the truth, as when it reported on poverty and repression in the capitalist world. If anything, many intellectuals in communist nations were utterly starry-eyed about the capitalist world…Ferociously opposed to socialism, they were anticommunist to the point of being full-fledged adulators of western reactionism. The more rabidly “reactionary chic” a position was, the more appeal it has d for the intelligentsia. With almost religious fervor, intellectuals maintained that the capitalist West, especially the US, was a free-market paradise of superabundance and almost limitless opportunity. Nor would they believe anything to the contrary. With complete certitude, well-fed, university-educated, Moscow intellectuals sitting in their modest but comfortable apartments would tell US visitors, “The poorest among you live better than we.” David Brooks, a conservative editor of The Wall street Journal, offered this profile of the Moscow intellectual: “He is the master of contempt, and feels he is living in a world run by imbeciles. He is not unsure, casting about for the correct answers. The immediate answers are obvious – democracy and capitalism. His self-imposed task is to smash the idiots who stand in the way….He has none of the rococo mannerisms of our intellectuals, but values bluntness, rudeness, and arrogance….[These] democratic intellectuals love Ronald Reagan, Marlboros, and the South in the American Civil War.” Consider Andre Sakharov, a darling of the US press, who regularly praised corporate capitalism while belittling the advances achieved by the Soviet people. He lambasted the US peace movement for its opposition to the Vietnam War and accused the Soviets of being military expansionists and the sole culprits behind the arms race. Sakharov supported every US armed intervention abroad as a defense of democracy and characterized new US weapons systems like the neutron bomb as “primarily defensive.” Anointed by US leaders and media as a “human rights advocate” he never had an unkind word for the human rights violations perpetrated by the fascist regimes of faithful US clients, including Pinochet’s Chile and Suharto’s Indonesia, and he directed snide remarks toward those who did. He regularly attacked those in the West who dissented from anti communist orthodoxy and opposed US interventionism abroad. Sakharov’s advocacy of dissent did not extend to opinions that deviated to the left of his own… As a system of analysis mainly concerned with existing capitalism, Marxism has relatively little to say about the development of socialist societies. In the communist countries, Marxism was doled out like catechism. Its critique of capitalism had no vibrancy or meaning for those who lived in a noncapitalist society. Instead, most intellectuals found excitement in the forbidden fruit of Western bourgeois ideology. In looking to the West, they were not interested in broadening the ideological spectrum, a desirable goal, but in replacing the dominant view with a rightist anticommunist orthodoxy. They were not for an to ideology but for replacing one ideology with another. Without hesitation, they added their voices to the chorus singing the glories of free-market paradise. Heavily subsidized by Western sources, the right-wing intelligentsia produced publications like Moscow News and Argumentyi Fakti which put out a virulently pro-capitalist pro-imperialist message. One such publication, Literaturnaya Gazeta hailed Reagan and Bush as “statesmen” and “the architects of peace”. It questioned the need for an Ministry of Culture in the USSR, even one that was then headed by an anticommunist: “There is no such thing as a Ministry of Culture in the US and yet it seems that there is nothing wrong with American culture.” Who said Russians don’t have a sense of humor? With the decline of communist power in Eastern Europe, the worst political scum began to float to the surface, Nazi sympathizers and hate groups of every type, though they were not hey only purveyors of bigotry. In 1990, none other than Lech Walesa declared that “a gang of Jews had gotten a hold of the trough and is bent on destroying us”. Later on he maintained he was not referring to all Jews but only those “who are looking out for themselves while not giving a damn about anyone else”. The following year, in Poland’s post-communist presidential election, various candidates (including Walesa) outdid each other in their anti-Semitic allusions. In 1996, at a national ceremony, Solidarity chief Zygmunt Wrodak resorted to anti-Semitic vituperations while railing against the previous communist regime. Romanticizing Capitalism In 1990, in Washington. DC, the Hungarian ambassador held a press conference to announce that his country was discarding the socialist system in favor of capitalism because it did not work. When I asked why it did not work, he said, “I don’t know.” Here was someone who confessed that he had no understanding of the deficiencies of his country’s socio-economic process, even though he was one of those in charge of that process. Leaders who talk only to each other are soon out of touch with reality. The policy makers of these communist states show a surprisingly un-Marxist understanding of the problems they faced. There were denunciations and admonitions aplenty, but little systemic analysis of why and how things had come to such an impasse…. In the USSR, glasnost (the use of critical debate to invite innovation and reform) opened the Soviet media to Western penetration, and accelerated the very dissatisfaction it was intended to rectify. Leaders in Poland and Hungary, and eventually the Soviet Union and other European communist nations, decided to open their economies to Western investment during the late 1980’s. In fact, the whole state economy was put at risk and eventually undermined. Communist leaders had even less understanding of the capitalist system than their own. Most people living under socialism had little understanding of capitalism in practice. Workers interviewed in Poland believed that if their factory was closed down in the transition to the free market, “the state will find work for us”. They thought they could have it both ways. In the Soviet Union, many who argued for privatization also expected the government to provide collective benefits and subsidies. One skeptical farmer got it right: “Some people want to be capitalists for themselves, but expect socialism to keep serving them.”… Not everyone romanticized capitalism. Many of the Soviet and Eastern European émigrés who had migrated to the US during the 70’s and 80’s complained about this country’s poor social services, crime, harsh work conditions, lack of communitarian spirit, inferior educational standards, and the astonishing ignorance Americans had about history… Among those who never emigrated were some who did not harbor allusions about capitalism. In fact, numerous workers, peasants, and elderly were fearful of the changes ahead and not entirely sold on the free-market ideology. A 1989 survey in Czechoslovakia found that 47% wanted their economy to remain state-controlled, while 43% wanted a mixed economy, and only 3% said they favored capitalism. In 1991, a survey of Russians by US polling organizations found that 54% chose some form of socialism and only 20% wanted a free-market economy such as in the US or Germany. Another 27% elected for “a modified form of capitalism as found in Sweden.”… It seemed communism created a dialectical dynamic that undermined itself. It took semi-feudal, devastated, underdeveloped countries and successfully industrialized them, bring a better life for most. But this very process of modernization and uplift also created expectations that could not be fulfilled. Many expected to keep all the securities of socialism, overlaid with capitalist consumerism. As we shall se in subsequent chapters, they were in for some painful surprises. One reason siege socialism could not make the transition to consumer socialism is that the state of siege was never lifted. As noted in the previous chapter, the very real internal deficiencies within communist systems were exacerbated by unrelenting external attacks and threats from western powers. Born into a powerfully hostile world, communist nations suffered through wars, invasions, and an arms race that exhausted their productive capabilities and retarded their development. The decision by Soviet leaders to achieve military parity with the US – while working from a much smaller industrial base – placed a serious strain on the entire Soviet system. The very siege socialism that allowed the USSR to survive made it difficult to thrive. Perestroika (the restructuring of socio-economic practices in order to improve performance) was intended to open and revitalize production. Instead it led to the unraveling of the entire state socialist fabric. Thus the pluralistic media that were to replace the communist monopoly media eventually devolved into a pro-capitalist ideological monopoly. The same thing happened to other socialist institutions. The intent was to use a shot of capitalism to bolster socialism; the reality was that socialism was used to subsidize and build an unforgiving capitalism. Pressed hard throughout its history by global capitalism’s powerful financial, economic, and military forces, state socialism endured a perpetually tenuous existence, only to be swept away when the floodgates were opened to the West. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=proldic@rigorousintuition>proldic</A> at: 11/27/05 11:24 am

by **Dreams End** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 2:31 pm

I'll have to find this book. However, this particular chapter leaves me feeling rather hopeless. How could any revolution succeed with this combination of inherent difficulties within the system and the seige from without? Can you skip ahead a few chapters and find something that says there IS a model that could work? It's actually ironic, because you and I had an exchange one time about the role of "consumerism" in preventing positive social change. Here's an article that shows how the desire for "stuff" played a key role in undermining the Soviet system. Add that to what seems, in this chapter, to have been unavoidable problems in getting the socialist system to effectively deliver the goods, so to speak, and also the "short memory" of the people for the gains that had been made...even WITHOUT the seige, it sounds as if Parenti is presenting a picture of a system that could not have succeeded. It almost sounds as if the only way socialism could have made it on a large scale is if it had circumvented the capitalist phase altogether. Otherwise, even in the event of a simultaneous, worldwide revolution, (hey, it could happen) you'd still have a very active, "former" middle class who miss their privilege and their toys and gadgets. That's a LOT of discontent. And a LARGE underground economy and base of future counter-revolutionary shenanigans. I don't know, I'm sure that's not the message of this book, and I thought the first three chapter excerpts were exciting. This one, while no doubt an honest assessment, left me feeling rather pessimistic. Is he heading towards some idea of a mixed economy, where necessitities are guaranteed and controlled by the state while the "goodies" are privately produced? But that will still result in a two-tiered economy with a small privileged class making money off their gadgets and then exerting disproportionate influence on the state. I don't know. I used to think that you needed a "spiritual" revolution to go along with the material one, but given what I'm finding about who is behind such "spiritual" movements, I think I'll pass on that as well. Come on...just toss me a few "hopeful quotes" to combat my cynicism.

by **proldic** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 2:51 pm

DE: my hope in posting this is to dash away with fyah the covert creeps who are rotting us from the inside. Message: I am real. This is not apology, this is reality. This is an example of that mewling yuppie douchebag's "circular firing squad". It's called self-criticism. What they don't do. Sure there's more chapters, "positive" chapters -- everyone should get the book. I will post more when I get the chance later. Except for the first chapter, Rational Fascism, I entered it all by hand myself. I found this most recent chapter very "positive", actually. Everyone get the book, 'nuf said. I'm done acting the fool on this board, playing the dead messenger. This is not an attempt to steal minds. People: this is reality. Deal with it. Life is not some fucking pretty fairy tale. If you think that the world is going to wait around for us to bake a pie in the sky, you might as well drop some acid and go fly to the fucking moon. The propaganda is intense. It's dialectics. No te preocupa. It's the DNA helix, baby. Everything we know is a lie. We are soaking in Truth. People got to think for themselves. And if they can't come around, so be it. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=proldic@rigorousintuition>proldic</A> at: 11/27/05 11:54 am

by **robertdreed** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 5:48 pm

"that mewling yuppie douchebag" Who are you talking about, proldic? Such characterizations are fairly useless unless they come with a name attached to them. Come on, don't make us guess.

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