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He probably captured best the malaise and hypocrisy of the USSR. My hypothesis is that the conditions imposed in the name of communism, and not communism itsel

He probably captured best the malaise and hypocrisy of the USSR. My hypothesis is that the conditions imposed in the name of communism, and not communism itself, destroyed the USSR. In particular, success - especially political or military success, became more dangerous to achieve than failure. Not even Georgy Zhukov was spared a certain level of wrath, which was probably more of a warning to potential coup plotters than anything to do with Zhukov himself.

locacorten 8y ago
Yes, it's a hypothesis. A hypothesis that has been invalidated by data again, and again, and again, and again.
- squozzer 8y ago
  Then what exactly made Mr. Solzhenitsyn's work so powerful? Was he a capitalist stooge?
  - lordnacho 8y ago
    Isn't the false dichotomy between capitalism and communism exactly the kind of thing an aspiring writer might choose to illuminate? The hypocrisy he mentions in his work in Russia seems to be observed because he grew under communism. If he'd grown up in America, he might have written about some other injustices.
jerf 8y ago
"My hypothesis is that the conditions imposed in the name of communism, and not communism itself, destroyed the USSR." There's a sense in which that is true. The problem is, "the conditions imposed in the name of communism" are intrinsic to communism itself, because it is not a political system that works for human beings as they are. So the imposition of massive amount of force, and the subsequent second- and third- and so-on-order effects that come with that might as well be accounted as part of Communism, because otherwise people don't conform to Communism. I can imagine hypothetical intelligent species for which Communism might work fairly well, based on looking at social structures seen on Earth and extrapolating to what they may look like if the species in question were human-level intelligent. But it would be something like bees or ants, writ large. Trying to impose a bee or ant system on humans is utterly doomed to failure. That's not a value judgment. Maybe it's a terrible thing. It's just a true statement; humans, fundamentally, aren't bees or ants. You need that aspect of direct relationship for this to be stable. Fundamentally, a political system based on "you'll do this work happily, and you'll voluntarily send all these resources to people you are not particularly related to, and hopefully they'll be good enough to supply you in return" is just doomed, evolutionarily. It's pretty easy to see why it would fail if you try to imagine some animal species working that way; even if you somehow imposed that system onto a population of bacteria or something, I absolutely guarantee it would evolve away in a handful of generations. It's beyond unstable into the actively self-sabotaging. Adding lots of human intelligence doesn't really change that characteristic of communism. (Now, when it gets really scary is when people start deciding they just need to remake people then. Getting people to conform to political systems rather than getting political systems to conform to people is one of the greatest evils of our time.)
- carlob 8y ago
  You make all these sweeping claims, yet in Norway 37% of the population works in the public sector (compare with around 50% in Belarus and China), taxes are very high, and inequality is very low according to most measures. Another point a Trotskyst might make is that Communism can only succeed if adopted all over the world. I don't think that a country like Cuba makes for a good data point on anything except embargoes.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    Norway is well-funded by their oil. > if adopted all over the world Not a chance.
  - leetcrew 8y ago
    if the success of your political system depends on there being literally no alternatives to it elsewhere in the world, doesn't that suggest that something might be wrong with it?
  - SaintGhurka 8y ago
    "I don't think that a country like Cuba makes for a good data point on anything except embargoes." Neither is Norway a good data point from which we can extrapolate the viability of Communism. Norway has a population of 5.5 million - smaller than the San Francisco Bay Area. It's also swimming in oil money. It's probably easier to motivate people to work for the benefit of the whole community if the community is defined as a small number of people with whom you share a culture and background and live close to you. Maybe that's why communism works occasionally on communes, but anything more expansive requires the brutal application of force to keep people in line.
    - skookumchuck 8y ago
      The voluntary ones implode within a year or two as the participants get fed up and leave.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
golergka 8y ago
These conditions are the natural consequence of any attempt of imposing communism on a country scale. Red Khmers weren't much nicer either.
skookumchuck 8y ago
Communism has been tried repeatedly, under all sorts of conditions. It has failed 100% of the time.
- democracy 8y ago
  It is perfect... for families and small communities. But it does not scale well...
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    I wouldn't call parents feeding their children "communism". I don't know any small communities that successfully adopted communism (although it has been tried often).
    - neaden 8y ago
      There are communities that exist without private property, like communes and Monasteries and Kibbutz. I wouldn't really call them communist though and the hallmark of all of them is that they exist in a larger societal context, rather than being a separate society.
    - Viliam1234 8y ago
      People who compare families with communism have no idea what actual communism looks like. To make a family an equivalent of communism... ...for starters, all family members other than the father would be locked at home 24/7, forbidden from speaking to people outside the family, and sometimes even from looking out of the window. They would be randomly abused for no reason. Every day they would have to sing a song about how their family is the best in the world... and because they would have no information about what happens outside the house, half of them would actually believe it. People, please read The Gulag Archipelago and stop making such absurd analogies! Yeah, the book has many pages, but it explains a system that tortured millions of people to death, and has many sympathizers worldwide even today, so it's not like your time will be wasted on something irrelevant.
squozzer 8y ago
I forgot someone even more crucial to my argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kirov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kirov

locacorten 8y ago

Yes, it's a hypothesis. A hypothesis that has been invalidated by data again, and again, and again, and again.

squozzer 8y ago
Then what exactly made Mr. Solzhenitsyn's work so powerful? Was he a capitalist stooge?
- lordnacho 8y ago
  Isn't the false dichotomy between capitalism and communism exactly the kind of thing an aspiring writer might choose to illuminate? The hypocrisy he mentions in his work in Russia seems to be observed because he grew under communism. If he'd grown up in America, he might have written about some other injustices.

jerf 8y ago

"My hypothesis is that the conditions imposed in the name of communism, and not communism itself, destroyed the USSR." There's a sense in which that is true. The problem is, "the conditions imposed in the name of communism" are intrinsic to communism itself, because it is not a political system that works for human beings as they are. So the imposition of massive amount of force, and the subsequent second- and third- and so-on-order effects that come with that might as well be accounted as part of Communism, because otherwise people don't conform to Communism. I can imagine hypothetical intelligent species for which Communism might work fairly well, based on looking at social structures seen on Earth and extrapolating to what they may look like if the species in question were human-level intelligent. But it would be something like bees or ants, writ large. Trying to impose a bee or ant system on humans is utterly doomed to failure. That's not a value judgment. Maybe it's a terrible thing. It's just a true statement; humans, fundamentally, aren't bees or ants. You need that aspect of direct relationship for this to be stable. Fundamentally, a political system based on "you'll do this work happily, and you'll voluntarily send all these resources to people you are not particularly related to, and hopefully they'll be good enough to supply you in return" is just doomed, evolutionarily. It's pretty easy to see why it would fail if you try to imagine some animal species working that way; even if you somehow imposed that system onto a population of bacteria or something, I absolutely guarantee it would evolve away in a handful of generations. It's beyond unstable into the actively self-sabotaging. Adding lots of human intelligence doesn't really change that characteristic of communism. (Now, when it gets really scary is when people start deciding they just need to remake people then. Getting people to conform to political systems rather than getting political systems to conform to people is one of the greatest evils of our time.)

carlob 8y ago
You make all these sweeping claims, yet in Norway 37% of the population works in the public sector (compare with around 50% in Belarus and China), taxes are very high, and inequality is very low according to most measures. Another point a Trotskyst might make is that Communism can only succeed if adopted all over the world. I don't think that a country like Cuba makes for a good data point on anything except embargoes.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  Norway is well-funded by their oil. > if adopted all over the world Not a chance.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  if the success of your political system depends on there being literally no alternatives to it elsewhere in the world, doesn't that suggest that something might be wrong with it?
- SaintGhurka 8y ago
  "I don't think that a country like Cuba makes for a good data point on anything except embargoes." Neither is Norway a good data point from which we can extrapolate the viability of Communism. Norway has a population of 5.5 million - smaller than the San Francisco Bay Area. It's also swimming in oil money. It's probably easier to motivate people to work for the benefit of the whole community if the community is defined as a small number of people with whom you share a culture and background and live close to you. Maybe that's why communism works occasionally on communes, but anything more expansive requires the brutal application of force to keep people in line.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    The voluntary ones implode within a year or two as the participants get fed up and leave.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

golergka 8y ago

These conditions are the natural consequence of any attempt of imposing communism on a country scale. Red Khmers weren't much nicer either.

skookumchuck 8y ago

Communism has been tried repeatedly, under all sorts of conditions. It has failed 100% of the time.

democracy 8y ago
It is perfect... for families and small communities. But it does not scale well...
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  I wouldn't call parents feeding their children "communism". I don't know any small communities that successfully adopted communism (although it has been tried often).
  - neaden 8y ago
    There are communities that exist without private property, like communes and Monasteries and Kibbutz. I wouldn't really call them communist though and the hallmark of all of them is that they exist in a larger societal context, rather than being a separate society.
  - Viliam1234 8y ago
    People who compare families with communism have no idea what actual communism looks like. To make a family an equivalent of communism... ...for starters, all family members other than the father would be locked at home 24/7, forbidden from speaking to people outside the family, and sometimes even from looking out of the window. They would be randomly abused for no reason. Every day they would have to sing a song about how their family is the best in the world... and because they would have no information about what happens outside the house, half of them would actually believe it. People, please read The Gulag Archipelago and stop making such absurd analogies! Yeah, the book has many pages, but it explains a system that tortured millions of people to death, and has many sympathizers worldwide even today, so it's not like your time will be wasted on something irrelevant.

squozzer 8y ago

I forgot someone even more crucial to my argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kirov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kirov