A note from the former ČSSR (now Slovakia),
on the 20th anniversary of the Velvet revolution:

17. 11. 2009

Reakcia v diskusii na článok uvedený nižšie, alebo na stránkach OpenDemocracy. :: Reaction in the discussion related to the article, that I copy below, or to be found on the following extrenal link.

After seeing the "celebrational" programmes on TV, I must ask myself more than any other day: What world I'm living in? Dear people, as a person whose parents and friends lived in that system, and have the first hand experience, it is outrageous, how the history is being rewritten, how one-sided is its presentation to the upcomming generations. Hours of broadcasting without anyone from the former party members? Even the "murderer for sure" - on the court - has a right to be heard and to defend himself. There was not a single word from anyone from the former nomenclature. (And I heard very alternative narratives of the history of the "fall of the communism", but unluckily not in mainstream media.) 20 years after the "bad regime" fell, the TV is blind and deaf, just in the same way as it was then. The commemorative programme was just a long music-video, with lot of refined cutting and catchy songs - that put things in theonlyrightone perspective of nowadays...

I'm not making any illusions for myself (and it is outrageous to hear pseudopsychological ramblings about "ostalgie", or any kind of recolouring history in better shades) about the regime that was. You know what is surprising the most? When a western friends come to me and start express sorrow about our "tragic past". They tell me (us) how it was here, during communism, when we've lived here. Absolutely lacking any experience, not even context what was before, what led us to communism, how it internally and extrenally evolved and mainly how was life here, they just see it as a scene of Orwell's 1984. Btw, Orwell himself was sociallist and his works had enough inspiration in a "free world"...

Question to think: Couldn't it be, that what you saw in the media before 1989 in the West might be as biased and deformed as what was on a communist media of that time? How do you know, that you were the good ones, with free media and clear worldview? If there is just "the fence" or "the bars" and people on both sides, who is in the prison and who is free? One might answer that "by freedom to do things". But do not interchange "do things" and "buy things". Rather imagine a part of the world that disagrees with how the rest of the world plays (capitalism) and trying to play differently. Yes, we could buy things you could, but in the other perspective, we did not want to buy things, that were not produced and sold fairly, for fair wage for the workers, in the context of fair employer-employee relationship. Yes, that is just theoretical idea. But relevant one. If you think of it, how differently it could be achieved, than isolating oneself into the separate block? Yes it had a tragic dimension - not every one wanted it, people were killed because they disagreed and that is not to be relativised. But, could you - in the West - choose a different system? Oh, you could protest and speak about it and try - but were you heard? Communism persecuted other ideas, capitalism ignores it.

Now all media try to erase our memories. Communism was bad. We suffered. It was unbearable. Everyone feared. But the very simple truth is, that people lived their lives here. They fell in love, married, had sex, divorced, gossiped, ate, travelled, celebrated, went to exhibitions, museums,created art and watched art ... Yes, there was censorship, but why then, for example all the movies from that era seem more courageous, intelligent and freely speaking then the contemporary ones? And I know at least the culture of my country much better, then any westerner does. 

Let's see both sides. Our contemporary elite class of then-revolting artists says: "we had no right to speak", "the totality prohibits the free self-expression". I can oppose. The totality and its censorship is a point to relate to, it stimulates the non-first-plan ways of self-expression. It creates art, it forces a man to find the other ways of speaking "between lines".  Saying something not plainly, but in a metaphoric form.And it forced a viewer to search for hidden meanings. Now, we have no arts, just consumer products of "having fun". No art, as it cannot pay for itself. It is a bit bitter, but it can be perceived vene in this strange way.

I will not dare to justify political persecution and killings of millions. Just a few notes: Many of those self-proclaimed "political prisoners" were just people who were simple crimminals. Many of those "censored artists" were refused just because of the lack of talent, beacuse not all the censors (or those who gave state money) did not understand art. There were topics that were not discussed and now they are - and the topics that could be discussed, but today they are not, because they are not commercially attractive. Then, the party prohibited, now the market rejects. Then, you were banned to appear and criticise because you were "reactionary" or "contra-revolutionary" and now you are refused, because "no one is interested, people want to have fun, people want to hear different things". Then it was nomenklatura, now the media elite who decides what is convenient, wanted and necessary to say. Then we could not choose but one party, now we are able to choose in a ballot - but only from the parties give to choose from. I cannot choose the choice. Yes, by the law you can always come into the politics and change things - but you could come to the onlyoneparty even in communism and try to reform the system from within. Now, even if you can create your own party or enter existing one, really really realistically, you can not pass the sieve of the (dis)interest of the "independent" media (related to parties and owned by corporations) or climb up the established-parties' hierarchy without conforming to the its "ways"...

And in contemporary "democracy", after the elections, the parties finally fake that their representatives argue in media, but they do always the same policies. Left or right, conservative or liberal - they must do some pragmatic policies and mostly they steal for their own families and businesses and supportive lobbyists. It's one party, just pretending to be 2 or 5 or 100. Then, in communism, the propaganda was used, now the language of the commercials is much much much more primitive and stupid than anything that you watch from communist era. Archives do exist, please do search and watch it yourself! Then the news spoke of the "harvest in the coop", "imperialism of the west" and topped it with cultural folk event - now it speaks about some car crash, Iraq, but eventually bad harvest for the enterpreneurs, communism and terrorism and also shows some folk event or three happy newborn puppies. It is a mix of horrors of the world, political fiction, agriculture, common life and bucolic idyl - as it was even then. And moreover, we do not lack propaganda even now, now it is called "edification". Finally, if we close the accounting of the systems by not-to-be-forgotten killing of human beings, besides reading "Black book of communism", which I encourage you to read, please do read also "Black book of capitalism" and "Black book of collonialism"...

Many westerners, even intellectuals have still very deeply rooted and very secret distrust to the East. Slavian, Chinese, Muslem and other cultures. I'll speek rather only for the Slavs. You consider us half-barbars, that are never able to be democratic and moreover "normal". And only way to convince you, that we are "normal", is to be exactly as you, isn't it? The same economics, the same system, same culture, same entertainment, same second language, same consumerist way of life, same views and opinions...

I must say that I'm strongly opposed to how the "cultural differences" phrase is misused to justify oppression and murders. Like in muslem country, when some people are not allowed to live their own sexuality (and are killed in some countries, or forced to conform to man-and-wife family concept) - it is commented with a phrase - and unfortunately those are left-wing liberals who say it - "We cannot measure them by our democratic standards, their culture and concept of individual rights is different." Human rights are always and everywhere the same. Every man wants to live and love. The question is only how to arrange what is common to us. What is private and what is commmon? private is what affects oneslef. Social is what affects more than one. Sex is individual. Taste is individual. Choice of education is individual. But business relations, progress that can be achieved only by cooperation, environment and resources shared - - are not private, individual or privatisable affairs. Individual affairs to individual, common matters to society. Simple as that.

Having said this, back to the point. One thing is a system (or regime) - the social arrangement. Another is an economic. Let's separate communism (idea), communal or elected-commitee decisions (idea) and state capitalism (reality) and one-party dicatorship (reality). There is a part of the world, that tried to arrange things differently. It failed with the human rights. It failed maybe even with its own revolutionary ideas and goals. As the other side did too. (Think how Hayek justifies Pinochet, think other USA and Latin America right-wing dictators, think selling of the guns to the third world,...) West cannot forgive us that we tried our own way? Even while doing many horrid things, we did some good. At least we tried something new. Give us at least this little credit. We counter-balanced you. In this way, I would agree with the author of the article. 

The problem here is, that no one even tries to think in a more balanced way. Communism is like an metaphoric equivalent of "germ hysteria" of 1950s. (Think of the DDT and thalidomide kids.) No one dares to doubt the black-and-white or red-and-blue vision. But really, there was not Empire of Evil, as there was no Empire of Good.

The problem nowadays is that "communism" is reduced to a phrase, to a word. And the words are used in a manner, that is unspeakably monstrous. Economic, politic, emotional, personal, social - all is reduced to communism. Human right abuse - communism. Lack of food - communism. Stealing of the commons (there was a private property in CSSR reality, as there was a state or common property) - was certainly the fault of communism. Murders of jealousy - communism deteriorated human relationships... But wait. Communism is an idea - ideology - that has its definition. Robbery, murders, not being able to stand to the ideas - are something different. Robbery is robbery. Murder is murder.It is not communism.

The tragic consequence is, that many of our people now hate "communism". They do not hate that people were persecuted, killed, sent to lagers, that people steal, or deceive, or propaganda/edification was used to shape their minds. They hate just a word "communism", not the concrete concepts of evil deeds. You can still kill, steal, use propaganda - if you do not call it communism - it is ok. And that is dangerous.

If a man suffers a medical trauma, when he accuses others as the causers, he is not considered as "already healed". In therapy, healthy is a state described by rational analysis, being able to see things in a more balanced way (what was bad and what good was brought by the event) and maybe even forgiving. Our society is brainwashed to see communism (or whatever it was) era as plainly bad. And so, we are still sick with communism. Not because it happened, but because we are not allowed to heal, to accept, to discuss in a serious way.  To say what was good and what was bad. And to prevent those bad things to repeat, not just prevent a word "communism".

Our elite of the 1989-revolution artists live 20 years of accusing, telling horrid stories and making low-style fun of communism. As we say (in other cases) "kicking into the dead corpse". That false courage after the battle might be even a reason, why communism still raises a sympathy - not a balanced one, but as one-sided as the antagonism directed against it. We, the nations of Eastern block could have an advantage. You, in the West experienced just capitalism. We experienced both - capitalism and communism. Whatever tragic, both experiences are valid and both have something to say, give some point of view. They happened because of something. Words like usury, exploitation, imperialism, corporate eldorado, (stupidity of) petty-burgeoise, class, worker - are still a valid words with vivid meaning. As communism, even capitlaism and pseudodemocracy has its "bad words"... and those above-mentioned are emongst them. Use them and you are ridiculised for life...

But it seems, we threw this experience of the other system, other way, at least that attempt, into the trash can. We were told and accepted, that "everything  we did was wrong and now we have to do it right - like they do in the west". We've only returned 40 years back. We were made to think, that we had to start where we had stopped in 1948, before communist coup d'etat.

Communist did not win all the votes, but won a majority in those elections. Following consolidation of total power was surely organised by Moscow. And wasn't it West - on Jalta - throwing us to the Stalin's sphere of influence? ... In the beginning, many people participated on the post-war reconstruction and building of the progressive socialist futures with a candid verve. Some agreed, that the property of the wealthy capitalist (just owning, not working) created by those who really did the work should be taken - nationalised and used for the common good. From the point of view of the owner - if something you've built is taken away from you, it creates anger. But, you never build anything on your own. To build eneterprise, you must always have the helpers. The question (even for today) is - isn't it that common creation is to be common ownership? Can one own, what more than one have created? Can you own something that you did not create just yourself? Is it sufficient to pay just a wage for the work of others? Shouldn't you share the ownership of the product? And why, after the communism ended, the factories that were built during the communism commonly, were given to idnividuals? Isn't the privatisation as outraging as nationalisation? Some agreed that the property of the church accumulated in the middle ages by force had to be taken back by people - even a new generation of communism. Why these properties were given back to church in 1989, if it never achieved them fairly in the first place?

And the biggest pity: We missed a middle way. Respecting what is up to individual and being solidary as a society. Achieving progress as a mass, but preserving the diversity (of thought, faith, sexuality, love, relationships, opinions) as it is the only way how society can survive. Uniform society is bound to tragic end. Extremely individual society has already ended - as there is no society. Understanding the need of democratic choice, but as well responding to the hidden human necessity of leader, paternal/maternal figure. It is real (relevant) necessity - see the popularity of Putin, Stalin, Chomejni, Ahmadinejad, Pope, Kennedy, Bush or Obama - a hope for better life personalised in a cult of The One is ever present. The monstrous ways it realises is just a consquence of our incapability to fulfill this need in a positive way, in hearing - maybe - what's behinde this need.

I hope that future will be more balanced. Individual and social. Democratic and totalitarian (in good senses of words). Socialist with human face (as we demanded in Czechoslovakia in 1968) or capitalist with the human features as well. Conservative and liberal. Progressive and preserving. It's like taoism, it's absolutely natural, same as everything in the universe is. There is a day (it is necessary for life to happen) and there is a night (necessary for life to repose). Too much darknes and cold kills - as too much light and heat kills. There is no good blessed light and there are no forces of darkness (the most tragic heritage of monoteism). But it will be a bit shame, that we will be thaught this again by the West... We were there in 1989. Unable to see it.

Originálny článok na stránke :: Original article on the website Open Democracy.

What was communism? (Fred Halliday, 16 October 2009)

The twentieth anniversary of the fall of communism - as system, ideology and strategic challenger to capitalism - is an appropriate moment to assess its legacy. But this, says Fred Halliday, must discard triumphalism, and be rooted in an awareness of communism's history, its myths, and its relation to capitalist modernity.

Few occasions are more propitious for forgetting the past than moments of historical commemoration. Amidst fond recollections of the fall of the Berlin wall, and in a time of, at least temporary, improvement in relations between Russia and the west, few may spare a thought for what it was that ended two decades ago. On two issues history has given its ultimate verdict: the cold war, the third and longest of the three chapters that made up the great global civil war of 1914-91, will not return; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), as a multinational state and as a global ideological and strategic challenge to the west, is indeed dead. However, on a third component of this story - the worldwide communist movement - the verdict is, as yet, less clear.

Fred Halliday is ICREA research professor at IBEI, the Barcelona Institute for International Studies. He was formerly professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. He is a widely known and authoritative analyst of middle-eastern affairs who appears regularly on the BBC, ABC, al-Jazeera television, CBC and Irish radio. Among his many books are Revolution and World Politics: the Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power (Palgrave, 1999), The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics and Ideology (2005) and 100 Myths about the Middle East (2005)

This article is based on a more extended essay, "The Cold War: Lessons and Legacies", to be published in Government and Opposition (December 2009-January 2010)Communism, embodying the ideology and the social aspirations underlying the Soviet challenge, and the worldwide echo that challenge evoked remains to be interred. But to bury communism can only be done on the basis of recognising what it represented, why millions of people struggled for, and believed in, this ideal and what it was they were struggling against. It can also only be done when the legacy of this ideology and movement is assessed and not simply forgotten, or conveniently, and in violation of all historical evidence, dismissed as an "illusion". Judging from the politics and intellectual debates of today, neither those who celebrate the end of communism, nor those who are now articulating a radical alternative, have carried out such an assessment: between (on one side) the still resilient complacency of market capitalism and an increasingly uncertain world of liberal democracy, and (on the other) the vacuous radicalisms that pose as a global alternative, the lessons of the communist past remain largely ignored. And so, as they say, they will be repeated.  

A story foretold

The question of what kind of political and social system was communism, too near to allow of an easy perspective, has occasioned several candidate explanations. These include, in summary terms:

* a dictatorial tendency whereby revolutionary elites seized control of societies
* a flawed movement for the self-emancipation of the working class
* an expression of messianism
* a product of oriental despotism
* a failed developmentalist project.  

Communism embodied features of modern politics that should not be abandoned: a belief in mass participation in politics, a radical separation of religion and state, a promotion of the public, political and economic, role of women, hostility to inter-ethnic conflict, and an insistence on the need for the state to intervene in economic and social affairs. Joseph Stalin and Gosplan may have discredited a particular form of "planning", but the general application of rational scientific, managerial and political thinking to human affairs, the better to manage the future, is an entirely legitimate and necessary aspiration, not least in an age of resource-depletion and looming ecological crisis. Communism had no monopoly on these ideas - any tough-minded liberal could have supported them - and the interpretation given to these values was authoritarian, bloody, in some cases criminal. This does not mean, however, that these goals, democratically and humanely conceived, are not necessary parts of a contemporary politics.  

Yet it is essential to look, without ambiguity, at the failure of communism, and not avoid the issue that too many retrospective analyses have avoided: the fact that its failure was necessary, not contingent. This system, denying political democracy and based on the command economy, did not just fail because of a false policy here or there, let alone because classical Marxist theory was abandoned. As even sympathisers like Rosa Luxemburg realised in 1917 itself, it was bound from the beginning to fail.  

It is common, and somewhat too easy, for defenders of Marxism in the contemporary world to argue that Marxist theory and communist practice were divergent, and that, hence, the theory bears no responsibility for the communist record. If by this question is meant whether another Marxism, a more liberal or "genuine" or "democratic" one, or, if you incline in the other direction, a more resolute, militant, disciplined one, could have prevented the collapse of the communist states then the answer is no.  

There were certainly, throughout its seventy-year history, choices for the Soviet system: the "new economic policy" (NEP) could have been continued after 1928, there could have been a different trajectory in the middle 1930s if Stalin not Kirov had been assassinated, or Nikolai Bukharin had become party leader; if Nikita Khrushchev had not been ousted in 1964; if economic reform, of a kind Mikhail Gorbachev was to attempt after 1985, might have begun twenty years earlier. And so on.

As for the final period, the Soviet system could certainly have continued for another generation, if another Soviet leader, a conservative like Grigory Romanov or Viktor Grishin, had come to power in March 1985 instead of Gorbachev. But, in the longer run, neither prevailing Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU) ideology, nor (in my view) any variant of the Marxist tradition remotely related to 1917, could have saved, let alone developed that regime. It had reached a dead end; but that aporia, although contingent in timing and form, was inevitable sooner or later.  

A force in its time

The revolutionary-socialist movement was not, however, some mistake, some aberrant illusion: it was at once a global movement of collective purposive action, across all continents, and a product of the structural tensions within the development of capitalism over the past two centuries. It is therefore pointless to begin a critique of it by seeing it as something that could, in its negative and positive features, have been avoided - or as, neo-liberal orthodoxy would claim, something that was just some historical illusion.

True, it had its illusions; but so does the capitalist ideology which posits that everyone can become a millionaire, the newly fashionable "well-being" fantasy that the process of ageing can be halted or reversed, or the irrational belief in divine beings, and afterlives, that much of humanity still espouses and, in many societies, east and west, tries to impose on others. Moreover, like these fantasies, socialism was also an inevitability, as much as the other features of the development of capitalist modernity - be they democratisation and scientific change, authoritarian capitalism, inter-state war, or colonialism.  

For that very reason, the revolutionary-socialist movement was, in its very illusions and delusions, itself a creature of its times, and of some of the chimeras that beset those times, not least a belief in a "science" of human evaluation and action. That there were, and to some extent, remain elements in the Marxist tradition that contributed not just to the revolutions, but to the particular, bloody and criminal, record of these regimes is especially the case with regard to four central elements of the communist programme:

* the authoritarian concept of the state
* the mechanistic idea of progress
* the myth of "revolution"
* the instrumental character of ethics.

The four components

First, and as central to revolutionary Marxism as it is to the radical politics of the Islamic world, is the anti-democratic, Jacobin, theory of politics and of the "state": this, not the self-emancipation of the masses, or workers, or oppressed Muslims, is the core concept, indeed the core goal, of all modern revolutionary politics, secular or religious, from Lenin to Osama bin Laden.

Second, and equally central to modern revolutionary thought, is the supra-historical concept of "progress". Of course, it can, in certain ways, be defended: there has been progress in, for example, medical knowledge, or human wealth, or the development of capitalist democracy. This does not mean, however, that there is a destination of history, an "end" in the sense of a goal or telos, and of the kind implicit in most 19th-century thought. Even less does it imply that the pursuit of such a telos guides, or legitimates, political action and, in some cases, more than a few, the killing of people for being "reactionary".  

Third, and closely related to the myth of "progress" was the dangerous myth of revolution; not just "revolution", as a historical moment of transition, and a means of making the transition from one historical epoch to the other, but Revolution, indeed "The Revolution", as a historical myth, a cataclysm that was both inevitable and necessarily emancipatory.

Part of the rethinking of the socialist tradition has to be a re-evaluation of this myth, one almost as powerful and for sure as destructive in modern times as that of "nation". As with nations it is possible to make a distinction between what one may term "actually existing revolutions" (Russia, 1917, China, 1949, Cuba 1959, Iran 1979...) and the broader, ideological, myth: this latter myth, included within which was the idea of the 'irreversibility' of socialist revolutions, was shattered in 1989-91.  

The related myth, that somehow "Revolution" in the mythic sense remained possible within developed capitalism, was disproved long ago, arguably by the failure of the German revolution in the early 1920s, in my view in the failure of revolutions of 1848. What Marx termed "the sixth great power", in contrast to the five powers that dominated 19th-century Europe, became more and more confined to the semi-peripheral world. Yet the reality of revolutions as historical moments - inevitable and voluntaristic, emancipatory and coercive - is central to the history of the modern world. Not only did these revolutions transform the countries in which they occurred, but, by forcing the dominant classes in the counter-revolutionary states to reform, they in considerable measure transformed capitalism as well.

Fourth, underpinning these three ideas - "state", "progress", "revolution" - lay a key component of this legacy: the lack of an independently articulated ethical dimension. True, there was a supposedly ethical dimension - whatever made for progress, crudely defined as winning power for a party leadership, and gaining power for a, mythified, working class - was defended.

However, the greatest failure of socialism over its 200 years, especially in its Bolshevik form, was the lack of an ethical dimension in regard to the rights of individuals and citizens in general, indeed in regard to all who were not part of the revolutionary elite, and the lack of any articulated and justifiable criteria applicable to the uses, legitimate and illegitimate, of violence and state coercion. That many of those who continue to uphold revolutionary-socialist ideals, and the potential of Marxist theory, today appear not to have noticed this, that they indeed reject, when not scorn, the concept of "rights", is an index of how little they have learned, or have noticed the sufferings of others.  

History's verdict

Communism failed and was, given its internal weaknesses as well as the vitality of its opponents, bound to do so. However, it should not be forgotten that this attempt to escape the conventional path of capitalist development was for a time remarkably successful, not least in the ideological and military challenge it posed to the west but was in the end forced to capitulate, and to do so almost without a semblance of resistance. If nothing else, the communist collapse deserves careful study from the perspective of those who believe in elite-led or state-dictated social and economic development. This is certainly one "lesson" of communism. 

There is, however, another aspect of communism, of equal importance, that is too easily overlooked in triumphalist post-1989 accounts in the west. Communism was, as much as liberalism, itself a product of modernity, of the intellectual and social changes following on from the industrial revolution and of the injustices and brutalities associated with it - in the industrial revolution, whose early impact on the city of Manchester was described by Friedrich Engels so vividly in 1844, in the cycles of boom and slump that culminated in the 1930s, and in the violence of colonial occupation, exploitation and war. If Engels were to return today, to the shanty-towns of most Asian, African and Latin American cities, and not a few cities in the developed world, he would not be so surprised.  

The greatest achievement of communism may well turn out to have been not the creation of an alternative and more desirable system contrasted to capitalism, but its contribution to the modernisation of capitalism itself. No account of the spread of the suffrage, the rise of the welfare state, the end of colonialism, or the economic booms of Europe and east Asia after 1945 could omit the catalytic role which, combined with pressure from within, the communist challenge from without played.   Communism was not just a utopian project: it was a dramatic response to the inequalities and conflicts generated by capitalist modernity. The continuation of many of these same inequalities and conflicts today suggests that further challenges, of an as yet indeterminate nature, will result.

First comment:

Nick Cooper (nickcooper.com) 16 October 2009 - 7:23pm

The assertion that communism's "failure was necessary, not contingent" carries with it an implication that capitalism is not similarly doomed to fail, or at least failure is still contingent on something.

Similarly, saying that "the greatest failure of socialism... was the lack of an ethical dimension in regard to the rights of individuals..." carries with it the implication that capitalism has a better record on human rights issues.

Mr. Halliday seems to think that these implicit comparisons so clearly vindicate capitalism so as to not even to require proving. His last sentence "the continuation of many of these same inequalities and conflicts today suggests that further challenges, of an as yet indeterminate nature, will result" is a weak conclusion that places capitalism in the role of an adaptive system which meets challenges in its path towards success.

It is my belief that capitalism and communism are both subcategories of a coup by humans over the natural systems of the planet, characterized by overpopulation, looting resources and claiming domination over land. It has always been doomed.