History, Propaganda and Hypocrisy

Among the most cherished rhetorical devices of contemporary right wing propaganda is the assertion that ''socialism has failed'', due to the experience of USSR style command economies. This assertion is most often conveyed via the illustration of of soviet atrocities. The underlying implication is that command economies developed through exponential suffering relative to their liberal counterparts. How realistic is this argument ?. Is communism quantifiably worse than capitalism ?. It seems counterintuitive to think otherwise in a society where we have become so accustomed to a one sided interpretation of history, however the facts provide an interesting counter-narrative.

In terms of human cost - communism is often said to have killed millions, statistics vary from source to source. Lets take one of the most damming condemnations of communism to date - the estimate provided in the ''Black Book Of Communism'' - (a favorite among neo-liberals). The Black Book puts the death toll at 100 million. It could reasonably be argued that the methodology employed by the Black Books authors is flawed - (For instance the 5000 people murdered in the Bulgarian White Terror. 15,000 in the German anti-communist purges. 6000 people in the anti communist Hungarian terror, 70,000 sent to concentration camps. 11,783 in the Finish Terror with 80,000 sent to concentration camps ect, are all ironically attributed to ''communism''. It also factors in all deaths caused by the US invasion of Vietnam ect. However lets just assume that the figure is accurate.

In his compilation - propaganda and the public mind, political theorist Noam Chomsky deals the above argument a devastating blow. Drawing on statistics provided by Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen - he notes that in India alone, the "democratic capitalist experiment" 1947-1979 has caused in excess of 100 million deaths due to famine. Chomsky points out that this figure is higher than the entire history of ''Communism'' everywhere - even compared to the exaggerated statistics provided by ''the black book''. Well, that's just India in the space of three decades. All of sudden the expression ''don't throw stones in glasshouses'' comes to mind. To factor in the deaths caused by European imperialism, the industrial revolution, the extermination of the native Americans (exceeding the number killed in the holocaust according to historian David Cesarani) - would prove quite a task. It begins to become apparent that the while the death toll from states designated as communist is quite high, the death toll of capitalist regimes if calculated would be much higher.

Numerous objections could be leveled against the above argument. Possibly contesting that capitalism isn't actually a single system, according to some there are ''numerous capitalism's''. Proponents of the notion that different capitalist systems have existed throughout history very often support their case by recourse to observation of mercantile practices under prior modes of economic organization. I will deal with the difference between capitalism, and prior economic systems (with capitalist characteristics) in another post.

Capitalism is a singular socio-economic model, nation states regulate the process of exchange in different ways, however the fundamental characteristics of the economic structure are the same. Furthermore, each national economy is tied into a globalized capitalist framework. Can the same rationale be applied to communism?. Can variations of communism be described as being part of the same basic model, in the same way as neo-liberalism and keynesianism are understood as being part of capitalism ?. This depends, for example the Chinese system under Mao was in many ways different from the Russian system under Khrushchev, however both sets of policy where predicated upon a standard centralized command model. Likewise Reagan's policy and Roosevelt's policy although quite different, rested upon the same economic structure. Libertarian and collectivist forms of socialism on the other hand advocate an entirely different economic framework, as such they cannot be understood as variants of command communism.

Another objection could be that its disingenuous to attribute deaths caused by famine to capitalism - well, if that's the case then the liberal condemnation of famine under communist regimes needs to be revised. The imperial acquisition, narco trafficking and slavery that funded the industrial revolution are much a part of capitalism as the famine caused by Maos policies are part of ''communism''.

History presents a complex version of events, state capitalism/state communism being guilty of many of the same crimes, conservatives who point to ''communist states'' as an example of social oppression very often do so under the illusion that ''capitalist states'' developed along a more humane trajectory.