The Years since 1917 Entering the new century we take a farewell look at the last to try and grasp its overall significance. As a British commentator on international relations, Prof Fred Halliday has reminded us, it has been a century dominated by the triple processes of wars, revolutions and democratisation. And of these it is the rise and decline of historically constituted Communism that provides the date marks of 1917 and 1991 which best encapsulate the nature of what has been called the 'short twentieth century'. In those 70-odd years the greatest ever challenge to a capitalist form of modernity was mounted and defeated. Not only has the twentieth century been decisively shaped by this systemic confrontation (whose principal standard-bearers in the second half of the century were the US and Russia) but its consequences will continue to greatly influence the early decades of the coming century. Whether the defeat of what has been called the Socialist project is permanent or not, only the twenty first century can properly answer. Of course, Socialism was not congruent with Communism but nor was the former so divorced from the latter that it could avoid suffering in some significant way from its debacle. Currently, the dominant way of evaluating the history of this confrontation is to see socialism as a terrible mistake, an unfortunate detour which caused untold misery and should have been avoided but wasn't. Now that the age of 'socialist illusion' is over, the world can concentrate on the pursuit of capitalist prosperity, preferably tied to liberal democratic regimes and practices. So says the dominant 'common sense' as peddled everyday, here and abroad, by innumerable journalists, business people, etc. This view has the enormous advantage of whitewashing capitalism. However, this perspective is not only wrong but stupid. Socialism, both as a movement and as an ideology, was not a mistake or aberration but something that was historically unavoidable. It was not possible to have a capitalism over the last 150 years without a socialist reaction anymore than it was possible to have a capitalism over the last three centuries without exploitation, brutality, suffering, colonialism and imperialism. Socialism was a product of the inescapable and deep tensions and contradictions of capitalism itself; failings which not only caused great human suffering but gave rise to various movements and ideologies (of which socialism was easily the most powerful) to overcome these failings. Any casual or contemptuous dismissal of the historical relevance of socialism (whatever one may think of its future) necessarily leans into an equally casual dismissal of the existence or seriousness of the contradictions, faults and evils of capitalism itself. Actually existing Communism, as it emerged in different state forms between 1917 and 1991, was deformed in ways that made it very different from the ideal and hopes of millions of Communist and Socialist believers and sympathisers. Eventually, it was to collapse not so much because of the hostility of its most determined external opponents - liberal capitalism - as because of its internal failures, above all in the areas of political democratisation and economic efficiency. Nonetheless, historical Communism impacted upon the twentieth century in four profoundly important and positive ways. Fascism no doubt recognised liberal capitalism as an opponent which had to be defeated if a fascist empire was to be established. But it was Bolshevism that was its mortal enemy! Hitler's Nazism was unwavering in this regard. There could be a possible modus vivendi with the imperial ambitions and empires of Britain, US and France provided the first two accepted fascist domination of continental Europe and modifications of the colonial map elsewhere; and France its subordination in a German-ruled Europe. But Russian Bolshevism had to be not simply defeated but destroyed and eradicated permanently! Lebensraum for the Germanic peoples required expansion of space towards Eastern Europe. German dominance of Europe alone (leave aside its global ambitions) required the destruction of Bolshevik Russia. Not for nothing was the Germany-Italy-Japan alliance called, not just the Axis Powers, but also the Anti-Comintern Pact! At no time during the World War II did the German army have more than 23 divisions at any point on the western front. To destroy Russia it amassed a concentration of 252 divisions. The second-half of the 20th century would have been a different and much more ugly place were it not for this epochal triumph of historical Communism over European fascism. The second great, and again irrevocable, contribution of historical Communism was to the dismantlement of colonialism. Without the existence of the political and ideological alternative embodied in the existence first of the Soviet Union, then China and subsequently the 'socialist bloc', there was no way that decolonisation could have taken place so quickly, so relatively, smoothly or so comprehensively. It was a genuine enough tribute to this impact that many a third world newly independent country saw itself as 'naturally' inclined towards a socialist vision of its own future. The third important impact was with regard to development. The very existence of a systemic political-ideological rival to the West for so many decades after 1945, besides providing bargaining space for third world nationalist elites, meant that the US-led West was forced to pay serious attention to matters of growth and development in the periphery and to fear the wider repercussions of growing inequalities and frustrations there. The single most famous Western-prescribed charter for economic development for newly independent countries was, of course, Walt Rostow's Stages of Growth whose sub-title was called, revealingly, A Non-Communist Manifesto. Similarly, it is no coincidence that the geographical area where Communism's challenge to the US-led West was strongest - Far East Asia where the most bitter and bloodiest wars (Korean, Vietnamese and Kampuchean) against the US were fought - was also the region where the US and its most important Asian ally, Japan, politically and strategically invested the most to enable the emergence of an attractive alternative model of economic development. Finally, Communism's political-ideological challenge forced through the reformation of advanced capitalism itself. This social democratic form of the socialist project while it did not constitute an alternative to capitalism did have the great virtue of most effectively ameliorating some of its great evils. It is no coincidence that these last two effects of the Communist-Socialist challenge have not only proved ephemeral but have progressively withered precisely as the challenge itself first withered and then collapsed. This then is what we have at the close of the 20th century. A capitalism, triumphant as never before since 1917 over its principal socialist rival, is in both its practice and its vision for the future (a neo-liberal version of globalisation) more mean, miserly and contemptuous of the poor and defenceless than ever before. It is also and simultaneously more arrogant and smug about the ever rising scale of social and geographical inequalities in the distribution of wealth and income prosperity, health care and educational opportunities, of social, economic and political power than ever before. Its ideologues, of course, never tire of telling us, against all historical evidence and intellectual logic that 'there is no alternative' (TINA) to its particular market-worshipping, neo-liberal vision for the future. Possibilities of a qualitatively more humane future will be lost only if they are believed! Copyright 1999 The Hindustan Times |
