Matching Tracksuits

Given the fact that the lads in the program had a very weak grasp on recent history, I decided to do a six-weeks’ grading period on 20th century history. A hundred years in six weeks means 16.7 years per week, and I knew it would be a very rough overview at best. That said, I started in 1917, with the Russian Revolution.

“Why are we studying this crap?” one asked. He’d been keen on learning about the 20th century, but an obscure revolution led by people with “weird” names in a country on the other side of the globe was not what he had in mind.

“Because what came out of the revolution, namely the Soviet Union and the totalitarian Communist state, shaped much of the 20th century.” Already I knew that I was painting with broad strokes. The revolution had produced a communist state, but it wasn’t immediately totalitarian — unless you happened to be in the upper class. Value judgments aside, I went on.

We looked at the revolution, the outcome, and then spent most of our time on the Stalinist Soviet Union.

The classic free-market critique of communism is that it destroys incentive. If I’m going to get my needs met whether or not I work, why should I work? If I know that no matter how hard I work, I’m going to get the same rewards, why not just do what’s necessary to get by? I used to think “Whether or not this argument is valid on a scale large enough to make an impact on society’s production remains to be seen,” but then I lived in Poland in the years just after the fall of communism. What I experienced were people who were supposed to be helping me — after all, by my shopping in their store, I was paying their salary — sitting and reading a newspaper, then looking up with an expression of disgust and saying, “What?”

A consultant who’s been working with our program mentioned later, as an aside admittedly unrelated to his job description, that he felt I’d painted with strokes too broad and therefore misleading. He felt I’d blurred the lines between Stalinism and communism and that the lads would equate the two as being necessarily connected, synonymous even.

“Communism doesn’t have to end in totalitarianism,” he pointed out.

True enough, but I began thinking about this and realized something that one thing missing from the discussion is scale. To have a small-scale commune is one thing; to have an entire country that is communist is something entirely different. Small-scale communism can work because it can foster a tighter community spirit — it can be more like “family.” You’re less likely to cheat someone whom you know, with whom you share common values, etc. Small-scale communism also tends to be more voluntary. Choice goes a long way in determining how much you’ll play “within the rules” of a given society. Bottom line, because of the community sentiment and the voluntary nature, small-scale communism tends to be ideologically self-sufficient.

Marxism suffers from fatal oversimplification: all workers are saints and all owners are devils. There are saints and sinners among workers and owners alike, and communism cannot overcome the inherent selfish nature that so many of us have.

State-scale communism, however, is not ideologically self-sufficient, and it’s largely anonymous. Corruption arises more easily when you have no idea whom you’re cheating. Add the fact that communism historically has not been “voluntary” and you have an instant recipe for Animal Farm-type “cheating.” And since it’s not voluntary and the state has to keep a lot of people “in line,” it’s easy enough to evolve into a police state.

Talking with the consultant later about this, I sketched out the above thoughts, concluding that, to my knowledge, there’s not a single modern communist state that hasn’t evolved into a totalitarian regime.

He suggested Cuba. Aside from the imprisoned political dissidents, the fact that Cubans are shut up behind their own “Iron Curtain”, and the lack of any oppositional political party, I guess I’d agree…