As a progressive, red-green Loony lefty, I have always tried to be flexible in developing my political views in response to current events, domestic and international situations, and the advances of scientific knowledge. It is often difficult to categorise the so-called "main" parties on a simplistic right-left political spectrum; over the years I have formed informal networks and alliances with a range of different political organisations, and I have voted for candidates of nine different political parties at different times according to topical issues.
I have always been instinctively in favour of diversity and pluralism, ideally involving a wide range of different political parties in representing the people in parliament and in local councils, and the frequent input of people's views into the political process in between elections as well as at election time. I have also instinctively believed that the best way to build society, and to utilise the resources of the world in a beneficial and efficient way to the benefit of everybody, is to organise collectively, and to utilise the strength and advantages of collective and communal effort - rather than allowing a frenzied free-for-all in which the strong trample the weak, the clever exploit the vulnerable, and in which those without initiative or vigour are left to struggle for themselves.
It was therefore with some surprise to myself that I became interested in, and increasingly influenced by, the so-called "science" of Marxism from about 2005 until early 2009. As a result of books which I have read and meetings which I have attended, I have become more aware of the nature and structure of global neo-imperialism, and the way that the rich powerful countries are able to control, influence and exploit smaller and poorer countries which have a lower level of industrial or technological development. There is a substantial attraction to the vision of a future society in which differen nations of the world co-operate with each other on an equal basis, sharing resources fairly and without exploitation, and in which the people of each country have an active part in building their own systems for providing enough food, water and shelter.
However, I have increasingly come to question the whole basis on which this future utopia is supposedly going to be attained. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels made an invaluable contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the development of society, and the progress of the history of the world through successive stages. Each of these stages - ranging from primitive society, through slavery and feudalism, to modern capitalism, has been based on the economic necessity of the times, and the constraints of the technology which was available to people at the time. The theory goes that when modern capitalist society has reached an advanced stage - the stage of imperialism - there will be a crisis which will result in revolutionary upheavals and the replacement of capitalism by socialism. The difference between the socialist phase of development and all other stages is that it will be, for the first time, the majority of the population - the "proletariat" of the industrial working class in alliance with the peasantry - who will be in charge, in the form of a vanguard élite leadership of the Communist Party. This "socialist" society - the ideal embodiment or example of which is regarded as having been the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - would, however, only be a transitional stage before the withering away of the state, and the eventual emergence of an ideal "communist" society in the future, in which all resources are shared fairly, and in which all the necessary needs of the people - food, water, shelter, warmth, health, education, work and culture and so on - are produced rationally and efficiently according to scientific principles.
My problem is that I have not read, found, or been told any mechanism or process by which this future communist society is supposed to emerge. It would require the elimination of greed, the eradication of any temptations whereby some individuals might try to take more than their fair share of things, or sell it for a profit; it envisions a harmonious society in which all people are not only willing, but able, to work harmoniously and collectively for the common good, without any greed, tensions, crime, selfishness, theft, or big disagreements. There will always be such weak and exploitative people in any human society, and there will always be clashes of opinion between different national or linguistic groups of people with different cultural attitudes and priorities. Therefore there will always be a need for a police force to keep order, a civil service to administer and distribute material goods, a mechanism for determining individuals' fair rations of food and other goods, and an armed force to defnd the territory against other nations. In other words, there will always be the need for a "state" of some type. How, then, is the "state" going to "wither away", as Marx predicted? In 1852, Karl Marx wrote that his analysis of history had "proved that the dictatorship of the proletariat only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society," but, as has been pointed out by Archie Brown in his recent book "The Rise and Fall of Communism", he had 'proved' nothing of the kind.
I have been told that the socialist period of history occupies an "entire historical epoch" - whatever that means - but the lack of scientific logic about the final stage of communism seems, to me, to be the excuse for the continuation indefinitely of the interim stage of "socialism", in which there is a very strong state. Socialism in the period after the revolution is under a state of siege, in which there is supposedly an ever-present danger of wrecking by spies and saboteurs, and the restoration of capitalism by agents of the former overthrown hierarchy of capitalists, civil servants, army, police, religious figures and so on. Lenin himself wrote: "For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money; some movable property - often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management, knowledge of all the customs, methods, means and possibilities of management, superior education, close connections with the higher technical personnel, incomparably greater experience in the art of war, and so on, and so forth." This may be true, and there may indeed be the need for a determined struggle to prevent restoration of the old régime - but it has been used as an excuse for the excessive manifestations of purges and political repression in Communist countries - such as the USSR in the 1930s and China in the 1960s - in which mere dissent on political matters was equated and conflated with treason, and in which a large number of innocent people were persecuted, displaced or dispossessed. There is considerable academic debate about the true extent of Stalin's purges of 1936 to 1938, but the number of victims was very large whether it was 682,000 people or whether it was several million. There must have been very many innocent people who were caught up in the frenzy of suspicion and prosecutions of the time, and it is too naive to believe that every one of the victims was executed for real crimes after due process of law. The continuing existence of the USSR under Khrushchev and Brezhnev for a further thirty years after the death of Stalin, without the need for extensive purges or executions, shows that dissidents could be sidelined or marginalised without being exterminated, and without labelling them as traitors. There was a long-term economic decline and stagnation of the Soviet economy (relative to Western countries), and there was a massive expansion of industrial and military development under Stalin, but the difference between the two was not enough to justify the millions of deaths.
The Communist Party is supposed to lead the country on behalf of the proletariat. Again, this is an excuse for a small clique of people to rule according to their own view of society, without sufficient scrutiny or accountability in terms of efficiency or correct adjustments to changes. In the real world, there is no reason to suppose that the material or cultural interests or wishes of the proletariat are somehow monolithic or united, or less diverse than the variety of interests of the bourgeoisie in a capitalist society. Why, then, are countries under Communist rule typically characterised by a manopoly of choice of candidates at election time? Why did the voters of the USSR and its satellite countries only (most of the time) have only one candidate, whom they could approve or reject? Why not a choice of two or three candidates for each position? Why not a plurality of different political parties, as well as the Communist Party? The power of the élite hierarchy of the Communist Party was maximised, and the input of the views of ordinary people was minimised to virtually zero. The nature of the "leading role" of the Communist Party was used as an excuse to exclude the people from power, and to uphold the power of a small leadership group, and not, as Marxist theory claims, as a vehicle for representing or articulating the real interests of the people.
Quite apart from these theoretical deficiencies in the theory of Marxism, there is ample evidence of the practical failures of the Eastern European countries to deliver the goods. Even though countries such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary prided themselves on building comprehensive health and welfare systems, the standards of these nevertheless fell behind the standards achieved by social democratic governments in capitalist countries such as West Germany and Scandinavia. It was these differentials which eventually led to the decline and collapse of popular support for socialist regimes in Eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. In the former Soviet Union, there has been a catastrophic cecline in public health and the living conditions of the poorest people, but there is no big appetite for the restoration of a Communist government. The restrictions on individual liberty, and freedom of organisation or expression, are too much of a price to pay for a general state of impoverishment.
The extent to which some Marxist-Leninists have expressed support for their beliefs, in spite of the shortcomings of Marxism in theory and in practice, the passion with which they have accumulated detailed knowledge of the sacred texts of the writings of Marx, Lenin and Stalin, and the certainty with which they quote passages from those writings rigidly without proper reference to real events, have given me a distinct impression that Marxism is more like a religion than a scientific source of truth. After a diversion during the last four years, I have returned to the belief that the most beneficial method of progress for the advancement of living conditions of ordinary people comes from gradual and cautious advances under progressive social democracy, in a pluralist multi-party context.