The Red Flag: A History of Communism (3 page)

The modernization account is justly unfashionable, and many today stress the role of ideology. Some Communist parties did genuinely seek to develop their countries and, at times, attracted significant support. But few won an electoral majority, and Communist regimes often desired the total transformation and control of their societies; they could also resort to extreme violence to further their ends. However, ideology does not explain everything. It is clear that many Communists were not the cool-headed technocrats of the modernization story: the archives show that some lived and breathed Marxist-Leninist ideology, and many of their more disastrous policies were driven by a real commitment to it, not by pragmatic calculation. But, as will be seen, Marx’s ideas could be used to justify a number of widely divergent programmes, and Communists adapted Marxism to the specific conditions and cultures of their own societies. Also, we need to understand the specific contexts in which Communism emerged. War, sharp international competition and the emergence of modern nation states were especially important. We therefore require an approach that understands both the power of utopian ideas and the violent and stratified world in which the Communists lived.

Paradoxically, perhaps, the most helpful inspiration for new insights into Communism lies not in the contemporary but in the ancient world, and in the drama of fifth-century BCE Athens. Greek tragedies dramatized a set of fundamental transitions in human society – from a hierarchical order of fathers and sons, to an egalitarian community of brothers; from an aristocratic polity of kingly warriors, to a more ‘democratic’ one, in which all male citizens took part in politics and fought as equals in people’s armies; and from a fragmented society of clans and feuds, to one more integrated and governed by law.
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Aeschylus’
Prometheus
trilogy offers an especially striking dramatization of this journey from paternal to fraternal politics, and also from ‘backwardness’ to knowledge. According to Greek mythology, Prometheus, one of the old ‘Titan’ gods, stole fire from Zeus and the newly powerful ‘Olympian’ gods, as a gift to mankind. In so doing, he brought knowledge and progress to humanity, but at the cost of angering Zeus, who was intent on keeping men in their place and preserving the old order. Prometheus is harshly punished for breaching the hierarchy to help mankind: he is shackled to a rock in the Caucasus mountains where daily an eagle feasts on his ever-regenerating liver. In
Prometheus Bound
, the first and only surviving part of Aeschylus’ trilogy, four characters dominate the play: Power and Force, the servants of the tyrannical father-god, Zeus; Hermes, the messenger (and god of communication, merchants, tricksters and thieves); and Prometheus (literally ‘Foresight’), who is both a rational thinker and an angry rebel. Prometheus is presented sympathetically, transformed by Zeus’ intransigence and Hermes’ cowardice from a humanitarian into a furious rebel. He is determined to resist Zeus, even at the cost of unleashing terrible violence:

Prometheus and Zeus are still confronting each other as the play ends, although in the final part of the trilogy (which does not survive) Aeschylus probably showed his disapproval of Prometheus’ anger. It is likely that Prometheus made his peace with Zeus, and that both admitted their extreme behaviour.

In
Prometheus Bound
, then, we have a brilliant dramatization of the seemingly insoluble tensions between hierarchy and tradition on the one hand, and equality and modernity on the other. The play recognizes the appeal, and the dangers, of the Promethean message, especially to intellectuals in a repressive, archaic world; for whilst Prometheus does desire to help mankind, when opposed his anger can also ‘shake the earth to its very roots’.

The Communists can be seen as the heirs of Prometheus, but there were several elements to his legacy. ‘Communism’ literally means a political system in which men live cooperatively and hold property in
common, and it was originally a broad and diverse movement. Some Communists placed most value on Prometheus’ commitment to liberation. Coming from a more ‘Romantic’ Marxist tradition, they were more interested in human authenticity and creativity than in taking political power and building modern states. However, this outlook became increasingly marginal to the Communist tradition; it was Prometheus’ hostility to inequality and his commitment to modernity that came to characterize the mainstream of the Communist movement.
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But there was one aspect of Prometheus’ legacy Aeschylus did not explore: his anger at those ordinary men and women who rejected the ‘fire’ of knowledge and Enlightenment. Communists could be as angry at – and violent towards – the ‘backward’ peasants and religious believers who rejected their vision as they were towards lords and merchants.

It is not surprising that it is Aeschylus’ heroic but angry Prometheus who should have emerged as a key symbol of emancipation amongst the poet-critics of Europe’s monarchies – from Goethe to Shelley. But it was Karl Marx who embraced the Promethean metaphor most fully. For Marx, Prometheus was ‘the most eminent saint and martyr in the philosophical calendar’. He quoted his hero in the preface to his dissertation: ‘In sooth all gods I hate. I shall never exchange my fetters for slavish servility. ’Tis better to be chained to a rock than bound to the service of Zeus.’
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Marx went on to forge from Prometheus’ belief in reason, freedom and love of rebellion a powerful new synthesis that would be both ‘scientific’ and revolutionary.

Marx’s Prometheanism appealed to many critics of inequality, but it was especially compelling to the opponents of
ancien régimes
such as that of tsarist Russia. This paternalistic order presided over not only economic, but also political and legal inequalities, granting privileges to aristocratic elites and discriminating against the lower orders. It was also ideologically conservative and suspicious of modern ideas. By the nineteenth century it was increasingly evident that such stratified societies had created weak, divided states, which struggled to maintain their status in a world dominated by more unified powers. So, for some of the Tsar’s educated critics, the Promethean synthesis of liberation, modernity and equality promised to solve all problems at once: it would bring equality in the household, overcoming the patriarchal subjugation of women and the young; it would achieve social equality within the nation state, creating citizens in place of lords and servants; and it would
level international hierarchies as the revivified regimes developed sufficiently to hold their own abroad. At the same time, it would bring the latest discoveries of science to mankind and fortify the nation.

Russian conditions, and especially political repression, also helped to create the institution that would further the Promethean project: the conspiratorial vanguard party. Designed to seize power and forge ‘new socialist men and women’, the party’s culture encouraged the more repressive and violent elements of the old Prometheanism. The Bolshevik party’s quasi-religious desire to transform its members, and its Manichean division of the world into friends and enemies, combined with conditions of war to create a politics very different from that envisaged by Karl Marx.

It was this project, and the means of achieving it, that was to become so appealing over the course of the twentieth century, especially in the colonized and semi-colonized world, for it promised an end to the humiliating subjugation brought by European imperialism, whilst modernizing divided, agrarian societies. Revolution alone, many Communists believed, could destroy the imperialists and their local collaborators who were holding their nations back; planned economies would then propel them into modernity, finally giving them dignity on the world stage.

Once Communists were in power, Romantic ambitions were rapidly overshadowed by technocracy and revolutionary fervour, though in practice even these proved difficult to reconcile, and Communists tended to stress one or the other. ‘Modernist’ Marxism was an ideology of technocratic economic development – of the educated expert, the central plan and discipline. It offered a vision that appealed to the scores of technicians and bureaucrats educated by the new institutes and universities. ‘Radical’ Marxism, in contrast, was a Marxism of the mobilized masses, of rapid ‘leaps forward’ to modernity, of revolutionary enthusiasm, mass-meeting ‘democracy’ and a rough-and-ready equality. It could also be a Marxism of extreme violence – of struggles against ‘enemies’, whether the capitalists, the so-called ‘kulaks’ (rich peasants), the intellectuals, or the party ‘bureaucrats’. Radical Marxism came into its own during war or fears of war, and suited a military style of socialism, similar to the workers’ militias of the Russian revolutionary period, or the partisans and guerrillas of the post-war world.
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Each form of Marxism had its particular advantages and disadvantages for Communists. Radical Marxism could call forth deeds of
self-sacrifice, inspiring heroic feats of productivity in the absence of the market and money incentives. However, by encouraging persecution of ‘class enemies’, it could bring division, chaos and violence. It encouraged the persecution of the educated and expert, and its militant commitment to ‘Enlightenment’ alienated the religious and the traditional, particularly in the countryside. Modernist Marxism, in contrast, established the stability necessary to embark on ‘rational’ and ‘planned’ economic modernization. But it could also be uninspiring and, more worryingly for an ostensibly revolutionary regime, it created rigid bureaucracies ruled by experts.

Both of these approaches to politics had little purchase in the societies they sought to transform, and it was difficult to sustain them for long periods of time. Communists therefore soon began to seek compromises with broader society.
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Some became more pragmatic, seeking to combine central planning with the market, abjuring violence and embracing greater liberalism. This kind of Marxism became dominant in Western Europe in the later nineteenth century and, from the 1960s, was increasingly influential in Soviet-controlled Central and Eastern Europe. Others adopted a more ‘humane’, Romantic socialism. Still other Marxists, however, particularly in poor agrarian societies, took a very different course and inadvertently adapted Communism to the old patriarchal cultures of the past, whilst using versions of nationalism to mobilize the population. This form of Communism, developed by Stalin from the mid-1930s, began to resemble in some ways the hierarchical states the Communists had once rebelled against. As Cold War tensions lessened, the system became less military in style and more concerned with social welfare, but its paternalism and repressiveness remained. It was this system that Gorbachev sought to reform, and ultimately destroyed.

This book follows the history of Communism in its four main phases, as the centre of its influence shifted from the West to the East and the South: from France to Germany and Russia, thence further East to China and South-East Asia after World War II, and then to the global ‘South’ – Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and South and Central Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. It finally returns to Europe to trace the story of
perestroika
and Communism’s collapse.

The book concentrates on the ideas, attitudes and behaviour of the Communists themselves, although it also explores the experience of those over whom they ruled. I have organized it broadly chronologically, but not strictly so, as chapters are also devoted to specific regions. I have also devoted more attention to some parties and regimes than others – partly because their influence varied, and partly because I have tried to achieve a balance between breadth of coverage and depth. The book starts with the French Revolution, for it is here that we can identify, for the first time, the main elements of Communist politics, though they were yet to be successfully combined. It was, however, Karl Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels who showed the true power of a form of socialism that melded rebellion with reason and modernity. They also tore socialism from its nationalist, Jacobin moorings and, one hundred years after the French Revolution, announced its global ambitions with the foundation of the Second International of Marxist parties. And whilst its inaugural congress was in Paris, the real capital of Communism had moved to Berlin, the home of the International’s largest member – the German Social Democratic Party.

The second phase of Communism’s history – the Soviet age – began in 1917. Once the self-proclaimed ‘Third Rome’ of Christianity, Moscow was now to be the ‘First Rome’ of the new Communist world. But despite its universalist pretensions, Soviet Communism acquired an increasingly nationalistic, ‘patriotic’ complexion, and was yoked to a project of state-building and economic development – features that made it attractive to colonized peoples as Western empires crumbled. It was in this period that the totalitarian objectives of Soviet Communism – the ambition for the total transformation of individuals and societies – became so dominant, even if that goal was by no means achieved.

In its third phase Communism, now firmly allied with nationalism, spread outside Europe as European and Japanese empires collapsed in the years following World War II, and the United States tried to ensure that pro-Western elites took their place. Meanwhile, within Europe, Communism ossified into Stalin’s imperial order. Radical Communists throughout the world soon rebelled against both Stalinism and the West. The Trotskyists were the first, but after the War new Communist capitals began to rival Moscow – Mao’s Beijing and Castro’s Havana – and proselytized alternative rural Communisms in Asia, Latin America and Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. But by the mid-1970s guerrilla rebellion was being eclipsed by a much more urban, Stalinist Communism, especially in Africa.