Why Did Third Worls Socialism Fail - Term Paper Example

WHY DID THIRD WORLD SOCIALISM FAIL? Introduction The word Socialism dates back at least to the early nineteenth century. Socialism is an ideology with a belief that a society should exist in which popular collectives control the means of power, and therefore the means of production. However the basic idea of socialism have changed over a period. Although it is a political term, it is related to the working class, created through either revolution or social evolution, with the purpose of building a classless society. It has also increasingly become concentrated on social reforms within modern democracies. In Marxist theory, it also refers to the society that would succeed capitalism, and in some cases develop further into communism. Marxism and communism are both branches of socialism. Historically, the ideology of socialism grew up hand in hand with the rise of organized labor. The socialist groups shared characteristics such as focusing on general welfare rather than individualism, on co-operation rather than competition, and on laborers rather than on industrial or political leaders and structures. They did not generally think in terms of class struggle, but argued that the wealthy should join with the poor in building a new society. "Socialist" ideologies tend to emphasize economic cooperation over economic competition. All advocate placing at least some of the means of production -- and at least some of the distribution of goods and services -- into collective or cooperative ownership. History of socialism The early socialists were utopians. They developed visions of ideal societies based on material equality, in which humans co-operated in production for the benefit of all without the need for material incentives, and in which the state was abolished in favour of a system of self-government. The emergence of socialist ideas in Britain and France, and later in Germany and Italy, was a consequence of the industrial revolution. In these countries, the development of manufacturing industry, and related industries such as coal-mining and the railways, produced an industrial working class, referred to by socialists as the proletariat- workers who had nothing to sell but their labour. The misery of the industrial workers in the unregulated economies of the early 19th century provoked anger among many observers, and the formulation of socialist principles was an attempt to devise a way of producing wealth without such crude exploitation. Socialism gained popularity among the working class itself, and, from the mid-19th century onwards, workers formed the backbone of the socialist movement. Socialist economics All socialists agree that a socialist economy must be run for the benefit of the vast majority of the people rather than for a small aristocratic, plutocratic, or capitalist class. In the mid-nineteenth century, when socialism first arose, many political ideologies of the day were frank in supporting the interests of elite classes. There is general agreement among socialists and non-socialists that a socialist economy would not include private or estate ownership of large enterprises; there is less agreement on whether any such enterprises would be owned by society at large or (at least in some cases) owned cooperatively by their own workers. Among the few self-described socialists who dispute these principles are the leadership of the Communist Party of China, who claim to remain socialist, even while the continuing Chinese economic reform explicitly includes the concept of privately-owned large enterprises competing on an equal basis with publicly-owned ones. The adoption by China of this essential characteristic of capitalism is a principal reason why, outside and inside of China, few people (socialists or otherwise) consider present-day mainland China and its ruling party to be, in any meaningful sense, socialist. It has been claimed, both by socialists and non-socialists, that the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc had socialist economies, as the means of production were owned almost entirely by the state and the bulk of the economy was centrally controlled by the Communist Party acting through the state. However, many other socialists object to that label, because the people in those countries had little or no control over the government, and therefore they had little or no control over the economy. The aforementioned socialists argue that these societies were essentially oligarchies; some would call them state-capitalist, Stalinist, or as some Trotskyists would say, "degenerated workers states". Trotskyists contend that Stalinist economies fulfilled one criterion of a socialist economy, in that the economy was controlled by the state, but not the other criterion, that the state must be in turn democratically controlled by the workers. Many non-Marxist socialists would agree with the general outline of this argument, while perhaps dissenting from the statement that state control of the economy is one of the criteria of socialism. Marxism and the socialist movement In Germany, liberalism suffered a terrible defeat in the failed revolution of 1848, and this gave rise to a new strain of socialist thought, articulated by Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow and, to much wider recognition, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848). Marx and Engels developed a body of ideas which they called scientific socialism, and which is more commonly called Marxism. Marxism contained both a theory of history (historical materialism) and a theory of society. Unlike the utopian socialists, Marx confronted the question of power, and formulated theories regarding the practical way of achieving and running a socialist system. He believed that capitalism could only be overthrown by means of a revolution, to be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", which was capitalism); Marx believed that the proletariat was the only class with both the means and the determination to carry the revolution forward; unlike the utopian socialists, who often idealised agrarian life and deplored the growth of modern industry, Marx saw the growth of capitalism and an urban proletariat as a necessary stage towards socialism. In Marx's theory, "socialism" referred to the stage of history and class structure immediately following the revolution, in which power would pass to the proletariat. According to Marx, once private property had been abolished, the state would then "wither away," and humanity would move on to a higher stage of society, "communism." This distinction continues to be used by Marxists, and is the cause of much confusion. No Marxist, for example, ever claimed that the Soviet Union was a communist society, even though it was ruled by a Communist Party for 70 years. The name of the party is not meant to reflect the name of the social system. Third World Socialism Throughout the 1980s major changes in development policy took place in several Third World socialist countries (Utting). During hundreds of years America was "the new world", and naturally, Europe became "the old world". Both the old and the new world became industrialized and rich. The term "the third world" has been used for much of the world outside the industrialized and rich western world, but especially for nations which are not industrialized at all. The meaning of "the third world" has changed a lot over the last 40 years, and the concept is probably antiquated, as most of the really poor countries have evolved very much when it comes to health and the number of children per family, education, etc. In countries like India and China the living standard and the wages are quickly getting into same range as in the western world. This means that "the third world" has changed in character a lot over the last half century. Today only a bunch African states and Afghanistan qualify as really poor, un-industrialized countries, classical third world countries. Cuba, is an example of a third world country which has been communist since 1959. Another example of socialism in the third world can be found in the Mexican constitution of 1917 that has been given the title of the first modern socialist constitution because of its social content. The constitution prescribes an activist state that will ensure national autonomy and social justice. It guarantees the right to organize, as well as an eight-hour workday, and provides for the protection of women and minors in the workplace. It mandates that the minimum wage "should be sufficient to satisfy the normal necessities of life of the worker". In addition, Article 123 clarifies the right to strike. But none of this amounts to a guarantee of public or worker ownership of the means of production. Finally (at least for purposes of our brief survey) the term may evoke a socialism of the land, centered on the demand that land ought to be taken from holders of title and given to the workers who till it, and that natural resources that can't be widely distributed ought to belong to the nation. In this sense, one might view Gamal Abdel Nasser as paradigmatic third-world socialism, both in his agrarian-reform legislation and in his seizure of the Suez Canal. Many countries in the third world have adopted the social democratic variant of socialism, with capitalism and religion still allowed to have a lot of influence, but the constitution is democratic, and the people have the power. The revisionist, and reformist socialism has had a lot of success in shaping the global political field of today. One could argue that the period Marx calls the dictaturship of the proletariat is what has happened over the last one hundred years, when politics, formally representing the people, has taken over, step by step, the ultimate power from the rich and the church. But we do not yet know how to handle that power, and financial interests or religion are still allowed to control or influence the democracy in many countries. We have not found out how to give each individual a maximum of freedom, we still use the money system to control the individuals. We have to find a way to organize our world without the tools of capitalism, and find out how to give ourselves, everybody, a good standard of living and a maximum of personal freedom (Wikipedia Encyclopedia). Failure of Socialism in the third world The disarray, destruction and decay are the logical legacy of the application of the collectivist ideal. This ideal included three ideas: the theory of a planned economy, the belief in collective or group rights, and the notion of socialized or state-provided social services. The Planned Economy The primary goal of most socialists has been the desire to replace private property and a market economy with state ownership and a centrally planned economy. Capitalism, it was claimed, besides being an inherently unjust system, was economically inefficient and wasteful. Wise and intelligent men, serving the common good, could more rationally plan what goods and services should be produced, where and how they should be produced, and to whom and in what amounts they should be distributed than if these matters continued to be left to the decentralized decisions of profit-motivated private individuals. Earlier in this century, the Austrian economists demonstrated that socialist planning would fail. Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek showed clearly and irrefutably that when private property was nationalized and market competition eliminated, economic irrationality would result. In a market economy, the way people convey information to each other about the products they wish to demand — and the value they place on the various resources that can be used in alternative ways to make those goods — is through the price system. But with the elimination of private property, people are no longer able legally to buy and sell; and with no free-market buying and selling, there can be no competitively formed market prices. And without market prices, the most well-intentioned planners are clueless about what goods people actually want or what are the least-cost methods of producing what the consuming public actually desires. The arguments of the Austrian economists against socialism have been proven correct in every country in which central planning has been instituted. Whether it has been in Russia, Cuba, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Poland, or Mongolia, wherever the planning model has been imposed and has supplanted the market economy, economic disaster has occurred. The types and varieties of goods and services produced by the state have borne no relationship to the types and varieties of goods and services actually demanded by "the masses" in these people's republics. Store shelves have been empty of the things people wanted; and they have been stocked with what no one desired. Resources and labor have been misallocated and wasted. And the customers, who are "always right" under capitalism, have been reduced to a life of long lines at state-retail stores and to a daily hunting for the essentials of everyday life in these socialist paradises. The only avenues for everyday survival and subsistence in the centrally planned societies have been bribery of the bureaucrats who have controlled access to the meager supply of goods ad the shadowy world of illegal black-market transactions. Collective or Group Rights For the advocate of socialism, the idea of individual rights has been a bourgeois prejudice and deception. For socialists, human relationships in society are defined and determined by class relationships and antagonisms. The idea of individual liberty has been considered a smoke screen to blind those who are exploited and oppressed from understanding the "true" nature of the social order. It was for this reason that Martyn Latsis, a senior officer in the newly founded Soviet secret police, said in 1918 that, in judging the guilt or innocence of an accused, "the first questions that you ought to put are: To what class does he belongs What is its origin? What is his education or profession? And it is these questions that ought to determine the fate of the accused." An extension of this view in the Soviet Union was the idea that rights and privileges did not reside with individuals but were determined for the individual on the basis of his national or ethnic origin. In each Soviet subject's internal passport has been a line specifying his nationality, e.g., Russian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Uzbeki, Tartar, Jewish, etc. And this collectivist categorization determined the individual's life opportunities in terms of access to education, employment, residence, language usage and political advancement within the Party structure and the bureaucracy. One's personal fate has been determined by the accident of one's parentage and place of birth, as well as one's ideological "political correctness." The legacy of this national and ethnic collectivism can be seen in the civil wars that now plague the territory of the former U.S.S.R. Having lost (or never had a chance to acquire) any conception of individual rights, the various nationalities fight over their group rights to land, statehood and resource control. In Estonia and Latvia, large Russian minorities are denied political and economic rights. In Moldova, the Moldavian majority has been fighting the Russian and Ukrainian minorities. In Georgia, it is the Georgian majority fighting the Ossetian and Abkhazian minorities. In the north Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia, it is the Ossetians fighting the Ingushians and the Russians clashing with the Ossetians, Ingushians and the Chechens. Elsewhere in Russia, the Tartar and Yakut minorities demand separate statehood to have nationalist control of the oil and diamonds that are on their respective territories. And the years-old war between Armenia and Azerbaijan continues over the disputed region of Nagarno-Karabakh. Nationalized Social Services Since the socialist conception of capitalist society was that production for profit by those who privately owned the means of production always meant that the real or true needs of the people would never be fully satisfied, the socialist plan called for the state to provide medical care, guarantee all levels of education, provide employment for all, and assure every one a decent place to live. But with nationalization of these social services came politicization and economic inefficiency. Once it became the state that was responsible to supply and distribute these services and opportunities, it became the state which determined who had access to diem, in what quality and quantity and according to what criteria. For all levels of education, acceptance into the schools of lower and higher learning has depended upon a family's political connections and whether one's national or ethnic group had already had its quota for entry filled for that type of school. Housing has been allocated on the basis of one's Party status and the importance that the state assigned to the particular profession to which one happened to belong. Medical care and hospitalization have been equivalently allocated and provided on the basis of Party position and professional standing, as well as personal connections and bribery. And there have been "special stores" for the purchase of food and clothing on the same basis. At the same time, since it was the central plan that determined the production and distribution of these services, rather than market-oriented profit, those who have provided them in the bureaucracy were merely concerned with fulfilling the assigned targets of the plan. Medicines of the simplest kind, which anyone in the West takes for granted and which can be bought in any quantity in any pharmacy in the West, are practically nonexistent in Russia. With no private owners to be concerned with the maintenance of industrial, agricultural and residential facilities and buildings, the entire industrial, housing and infrastructure is in a state of advanced decay (Richard M. Ebeling). Imperialism leading to uneven development kept socialism confined only to countries in the periphery while countries in the metropolis, belying the hopeful anticipation of Marx and Engels and the expectations of Lenin and his comrades, came close to, but never succeeded in, achieving the breakthrough to a socialist revolution. As a result, socialism, wherever it had come into being, remained Encircled. Throughout its entire brief history, resulting in an ossification of the centralised bureaucratic structure from which there was no escape other than through a collapse of the system itself. Socialism defined, to a significant extent, the contours of human civilisation advance in the 20 century and left an inerasable imprint on all its aspects. Capitalism restructured itself in the aftermath of the second world war, through Keynesian demand management ushering in to an unprecedented boom, through political de-colonisation removing the moral stigma of being an oppressor of other nations from it, and through the diffusion of a degree of development to certain pockets in the third world, such as East Asia, which appeared to belie the Sixth Congress thesis that development of the third world could occur only through socialism. These changes, together with the experience of the very horrors of the second world war, contributed to the passing of the revolutionary conjuncture of the period 1913-1950. While we have a renascent imperialism today and the moral stigma associated with oppression and stagnation is once again beginning to adhere to capitalism, portending the beginning of yet another possible revolutionary conjuncture, the fact remains that this would not be a return to the earlier conjuncture. Lenin always teaches us that concrete analysis of concrete conditions is the living essence of dialectics. Just as he authored Leninism as Marxism in the era of imperialism, it falls on our collective shoulders to define the contours of the socialist revolution in the present conjecture. Therefore, there is no going back. We can stand on Lenin, s shoulders to see the future but we cannot see it through Lenin’s eyes (Yechury). Socialism's failure in the former Soviet Union and in the other socialist countries stands as a clear and unquestionable warning for others. Government planning brought poverty and ruin. The idea of collectivist class and ethnic group-rights produced tens of millions of deaths and a legacy of civil war and conflict. And nationalized social services generated social decay and political privilege and corruption. Works Cited Utting, P. “Economic Reform and Third-World Socialism: A Political Economy of Food Policy in Post-Revolutionary Societies”. 1 Jun 1992. London. 11 October 2005. . Wikipedia Encyclopedia. “Socialism”. 15 October 2005 . Yechury S. “Socialism Today: Challenges”. People's Democracy. 01 February 2004. Vol. XXVIII. No. 05. 15 October 2005. . Richard M. Ebeling “The Failure of Socialism and Lessons for America, Part 1” March 1993. Freedom Daily. 14 October 2005 . Read More