this is richard wolff from democracy at
work responding to another ask prof wolf
question from our patreon community
this one comes from it thing
self-identified uh questioner
uh and poses the question
why have the countries that were once
socialist in particular russia eastern
europe and so on that revert to
capitalism why do they revert to what
appears now to be a pretty harsh
uh conservative capitalism if not worse
and clearly the
thing is thinking about victor orban in
hungary the polish government and so on
these are rough capitalisms uh not at
all the softer social democratic ideals
of scandinavia and western europe that
some might have expected would be the
next step in a society that had enjoyed
the benefits of socialism but was
choosing to go over and become again
capitalist
so i want to answer these questions
and they have a lot to do on the one
hand with all the particular reasons why
first the soviet union and then eastern
europe
disintegrated as socialist
systems i don't want to go into that
here because of the time obviously but
also because my close friend and
colleague steven resnick and i
spent 10 years of our lives trying to
explain what happened in the soviet
union why it fell apart in the end given
its history we felt it was necessary
that critics of capitalism
explain what happened in the soviet
union so the field wouldn't be left just
to the people who had always hated
socialism were celebrating capitalism
and who basically wanted to dismiss what
happened in the soviet union uh under
the idea that socialism doesn't work
people who continue with that
perspective even in the light of the
people's republic of china
and so we produced a book
here it is
class theory and history
capitalism and communism in the ussr
uh it does the the job with both theory
and lots of empirical history if you're
interested in a
perspective that you may not have
encountered on what happened in the
soviet union
this is the place to find it
let me turn then to the question
basically here is the answer i would
offer
the people who lived in eastern europe
russia and so on
enjoyed all kinds of benefits
free education subsidized housing and
transportation virtual guarantee of a
job etc etc
these were the things these socialist
societies emphasized
alongside of industrializing their
backward economies
which was urgent for them
maintaining a military because they were
threatened all the time
by the rest of the world particularly
the capitalist world
uh and they forwent
consumption
and the result was that the propaganda
against them
uh before the
second world war against russia after
the second world war against russia and
all of eastern europe was basically we
in the west have two things you don't
have lots of civil liberties and lots of
personal consumption
you are short on civil liberties and you
are short on
personal consumption and that was the
contest in most cases
because the socialist countries
had a lot of problems
and problems which by the way were no
surprise let's remember that russia and
then eastern europe were some of the
first places in the world
where people who had been critical of
capitalism that's what socialists were
for example in the 19th century
they suddenly found themselves in power
they were now able to shape and run an
economic system criticizing capitalism
is one thing
designing and running a socialist
alternative is something else they had
long experience and were very good at
the former but they were just starting
out
in russia after 1917
to do the latter and they made loads of
mistakes lots of trial lots of error
and that put their people in a
complicated position you would have had
to be very honest with your people
here's what we're doing and why we're
doing it here's why we're stopping
because we made a mistake here's what
they said they didn't do that
they were terrified of the threats from
abroad i want to remind you that within
months of the russian revolution four
countries sent troops into russia to
destroy their communist revolution and
those countries to remind you france
britain japan and the united states
and this was not lost on anybody just
like it wasn't lost that the west
encouraged adolf hitler to move east
before he attacked in the west hoping he
never would perhaps and so hitler did
and decimated eastern europe and russia
as anyone who knows the history of world
war ii acknowledges so they were
terrified and they built up their
industry and they built up their
military and they provided collective
goods to their people but personal
levels of consumption your car your tv
no
they didn't and because they didn't
square with their people they weren't
too keen on having public debates
fearful of what the hostile west would
do
civil liberties were constrained
it's not all that surprising given their
situation and so they were vulnerable to
the criticism
you don't have the high enough standard
of living and you don't have free civil
liberties and so they're developed in
the east understandably
whatever problems people had and there
were plenty of problems in the economic
development they were undertaking even
though there were plenty of achievements
too there were plenty of problems but
people began to think about the problems
in terms of the
insufficient civil liberties they had
and the insufficient personal
consumption
so when those societies hit major
problems whatever the real cause of
those problems were
it was in the minds of the people maybe
the way to solve this problem
is to do away with the socialism
go to capitalism and here was the key
idea
because if we do that
we'll be able to get the civil liberties
and
the higher consumption without losing
the social supports that socialism has
given us
naive
wrong
when they made the move when they
followed the leaders who told them
exactly that would happen you will get
all the good things
you can see in paris and rome and italy
and berlin and so on
you can get all that
they followed those leaders but it was
all wrong
what they discovered and they're
discovering it to this minute
is that the higher consumption and the
higher civil liberties come at the price
of losing large portions
of your social support and they're angry
and they're bitter about it it's not
what they thought they were going to get
and it means that in those societies
there's now a big split
some people who made money and joined in
the move to capitalism are very happy
doing well and want to hold on but a
growing part of their working class
feels betrayed wants to change again
increasingly some want to go back even
to what they had
and that produces tension in a society
and the capitalists want to hold on to
the transition they fear there might be
a going back and so they become very
harsh
look at poland
look at hungary
yeah that's why you have harshness
that's the issue
don't get caught lost in fanciful
notions of the struggle between
capitalism and communism has very little
to do with it had very little to do with
it back then either
but it is the framework
but if you really want to understand it
i think the things i've suggested will
explain why we see that
if this kind of an approach
is preferable to cold war rhetoric which
remains the major way these issues are
posed and discussed
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