We're going to discuss world communism in the 20th century.
I want to give you 3 ways to view the expansion of communism.
First, think of it as a powerful ideology that promised a better life for most of the
world's peoples.
This is an ideology designed to overthrow the existing order and to replace it with
one dedicated to the working class.
It’s an ideology supposedly grounded in science.
Karl Marx had predicted the progression of human societies from slavery to feudalism,
finally to capitalism – and then transition to socialism and communism; this was not regarded
as a choice, this was regarded as inevitable, grounded in science – at least the social
sciences.
Second, I want to I want you to think of communism as a powerful – or there's an anti-communist
argument that's quite powerful, it views communism as sort of a virus or a contagion, something
that has to be quarantined or eradicated.
This anti-communist argument goes back to the old metaphor of the body politic whereby
the nation state is depicted as a living organism.
In this metaphor, communism is viewed as a dangerous pathogen in the body politic – a
pathogen that had to be removed in order to restore health to the infected society.
Third, you can think of communism in the twentieth century as an effective ideological weapon
against imperialism and Western colonization.
Communism proved to be a very potent weapon against those entrenched powers across Eurasia;
Africa; Central South America.
Communism, of course, flourished in an era of decolonization as the old Imperial structure
was dismantled and new nation-states emerged.
In the 20th century – especially the second part of the 20th century –new nation-states
emerged across Africa and Asia as the old Imperial structures were removed.
Now I want to mention, just for a moment here, the irony of communism.
This is especially pertinent in the 20th century because of where communism took root.
Marxist ideas found their most fertile ground in Russia and China.
Now these are large agricultural nations not fit –according to Marxist theory – not
fit for the transition to socialism, as there is no capital accumulation to support socialism.
Marxist theory envisioned communism flourishing in industrialized nations, like in the United
States or Great Britain or Germany – areas that had an accumulation of capital, had technology,
had a sophisticated proletariat.
Instead, it takes place in agricultural countries – countries that would have to rapidly industrialize
to even reach the stage of capitalism so that it could transition then into socialism and
finally communism.
I'm going to talk about a few historical cases here.
First, of course, is the Russian Revolution in 1917.
This takes place amidst the Great War – World War I; it's engineered by Vladimir Lenin – and
you can see 2 pictures of him here.
The first one you see Lenin, a great propaganda poster, standing there in front of the hammer
and the sickle – the Soviet flag – the hammer, of course, representing the urban
working class – the proletariat and the sickle representing the agricultural workers.
Here you can see the workers of Russia united in the hammer and sickle.
The second picture of course, is Lenin’s corpse.
For decades, since 1924 when Lenin died, his corpse was embalmed and it's been on display
in Red Square.
So tourists line up daily to parade past Lenin's corpse, a rather macabre tourist attraction.
The second photograph, of course, is of Leon Trotsky.
Trotsky is credited with creating the Red Army.
You can see Trotsky here with his big hair.
He's a chief lieutenant of Lenin.
And then this next picture is of Lenin and Stalin.
The gains of the Russian Communist Party – we call it the Bolshevik Party – are consolidated
in the 1920s by Stalin, as Trotsky is exiled from the country of course, and Lenin is dead.
You see this photograph of Lenin and Stalin together; Lenin incapacitated by a stroke.
So these men create the world's first communist state.
The Soviet Union will mostly remain in opposition to those Western market economies, those Western
sort of liberal democracies in Western Europe and the United States.
The one glaring exception, of course, was during World War II, when the grand alliance
was formed between the British and the Americans and the Russians, to fight and defeat Hitler
and the Nazis in the Third Reich.
Of course, this grand alliance rapidly came apart once Hitler was dead and the Nazis were
defeated.
But, we'll discuss – later we’ll discuss the fall of the Soviet Union.
Another area – obviously – where communism took root after World War II, is in those
Warsaw Pact countries.
These are the Eastern European countries that are allied with the Soviet Union.
They're allied with the Soviet Union in large part because they were occupied by the Red
Army at the closing stages of World War II, and the Red Army stayed there and the Soviets
imposed their will on, say Poland ¬– for instance – and Czechoslovakia and Romania
and Bulgaria, and these countries remained part of the Soviet alliance into the late
80s when they began to break away from the Soviet Union and establish their own sovereign
nations.
Red China, of course – a good example of communism in the 20th century, is established
in 1949.
You may remember, the Chinese situation is complex.
China – in the ‘30s and ‘40s – is fighting essentially 2 wars – one against
the invading Japanese and a second, and internal, civil war between the Nationalists – led
by Chiang Kai-shek, our ally, against Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party.
The communists win this civil war.
Mao Zedong declares the establishment of Red China in 1949 – and of course, this is the
Red China we still enjoy today.
Much of the junk you buy at Walmart is made in Red China.
Now this Chinese Communist Party has dominated – or not dominated, but it has exerted influence,
certainly in East Asia along the Pacific Rim – but it doesn't tend to exert influence
worldwide the way the Soviets tried to do throughout much of the 20th century.
And again, China is an agricultural country.
How do you get it in step with Marxist theory of the progression towards communism?
Well, Mao tried a couple of things.
One program was called the Great Leap Forward.
This was an attempt to rush China to the capitalist stage of development.
This came at a very, very high price in human life, this attempt to industrialize.
In the 20th century, you see communism creeping into Africa and to Angola, into the Horn of
Africa – of course we see it in Indochina, with Vietnam; you see it on the Korean Peninsula;
we see it in the Caribbean; in Central America and South America.
A few words here about the decline of this communist wave; it begins to recede in the
80s and 90s.
The gains that were made in the post-war era begin to kind of fall apart.
I think about Cambodia and Southeast Asia, Angola and Africa, Ethiopia and the Horn of
Africa, Nicaragua and Central America, Afghanistan and South Asia.
I want to mention here just briefly, a couple of strategic decisions that helped lead to
the fall of communism – essentially by weakening the most powerful communist state, the Soviet
Union, and we'll get into more detail here when we talk about the fall of the Soviets.
NATO's deployment of American intermediate-range missiles in Europe in the 1980s, it had been
feared that such a move would provoke the Soviets to counter that.
Instead, Mikhail Gorbachev – the last president of the Soviet Union – begins to unilaterally
disarm and withdraw Soviet forces from Eastern Europe.
This was not expected.
And then the second strategic decision that contributed to the decline of communism was
President Reagan's attachment to the Strategic Defense Initiative – we call it Star Wars.
This program was never actually built, but the sheer threat of it being developed was
enough to sort of shake the Soviets, because they simply did not have the innovative economy
that was capable of keeping up with the United States and this high-tech space warfare.
Two other things that I'll mention contributing to the fall of communism – there's increasingly
a drift toward liberal democratic governments across the globe, instead of these sort of
one-party totalitarian governments like you see in the Soviet Union – and then finally,
the failure of communist command economies, I believe that's the term that economists
use.
These command economies cannot respond to consumer wants, consumer desires and needs.
This increasingly diminishes the status of communist leaders as they're unable to produce
those goods that people want.
So I'll draw some conclusions here.
The fall of the Soviet Union diminishes communism as an ongoing ideology, to persuade either
the intellectuals or the masses to follow it becomes discredited.
Communism remains – at least in name – in Red China, in Vietnam, in North Korea – I
guess, Cuba.
Red China, of course, is probably the second largest economy in the world; I suppose that
both Marx and Chairman Mao are probably spinning in their graves as they contemplate the fate
of communism and the status of Red China as a major industrial and capitalist player.
So just some brief – just a brief survey of world communism in the 20th century; I'll
end it there.
Thank you.