In 'Portraits from Memory' Bertrand Russell writes of his trip to the Soviet Union in 1920.
In the Marxist philosophy, as interpreted in Moscow, I found, as I believe, two enormous errors, one of theory and one of feeling. The error of theory consisted in believing that the only undesirable form of power over other human beings is economic power, and that economic power is co-extensive with ownership.
Russell lived in a country where 'economic power' had absolutely nothing to do with the power to rob, kill, rape and enslave- in other words, wealth had no means to translate itself into power of the only sort which had prevailed over vast expanses of Eurasia. No doubt, there were economically productive agents here and there- some of whom might enjoy private opulence- but their position was as precarious as that of the Jews in thirteenth century England. Sheep currently sheared for wool might, the very next day, be butchered for the Boyars' feast which, if strong drink had flowed copiously, would end with the torture and killing of the shepherds by way of after-dinner entertainment.
Ownership is only meaningful where 'Civil Society' has countervailing power over the Crown and where the propertied class can put down, using their own armed retainers, any threat posed by brigandage or jacquerie.
In this theory other forms of power military, political and propagandist are ignored,
Hilarious! Lenin & Trotsky ignored military and political power. They had no concept of propaganda. The fact is, Lenin was a Solicitor who proposed drastic changes in the rules regarding the conveyancing of real property. Trotsky, on the other hand, was an Actuarial Scientist who worked out a scheme for National Insurance.
and it is forgotten that the power of a large economic organization is concentrated in a small executive, and not diffused among all the nominal owners or shareholders.
But that small number of executives will sit on the boards of different enterprises and financial institutions. They will be closely connected with politicians and civil servants and, more likely than not, themselves own or control the newspapers and magazines which shape public opinion. In Soviet Russia, all these functions would be concentrated in the hands of Commissars appointed by the Politburo.
It was therefore supposed that exploitation and oppression must disappear if the State became the sole capitalist, and it was not realised that this would confer upon State officials all, and more than all, the powers of oppression formerly possessed by individual capitalists.
Russell was very naive. He had picked up the one attractive feature of the Soviet system- viz. its feasibility. Eurasia could be very effectively ruled by the methods of Ivan the Terrible, provided the Churches were suppressed and the Tyrant never developed a conscience. Stalin had escaped many times from Tzarist prisons. His Gulags were a thousand times more efficient than anything the Tzars could boast of.
The other error, which was concerned with feeling, consisted in supposing that a good state of affairs can be brought about by a movement of which the motive force is hate.
A good state of affairs is that there is a single Tyrant who will, sooner or later, torture and kill his own murderous minions. A bad state of affairs is where there is no tyrant and thus everybody is torturing and killing everybody else from the highest possible motives.
Those who had been inspired mainly by hatred of capitalists and landowners
there were plenty of such people in England. What was lacking was hatred of the Crown because Britannia still ruled the Sea and its Empire was growing, not shrinking. Also, 'Asiatics' hadn't kicked Britain's ass in 1905. By contrast, Portugal got rid of its Monarchy because it had to give up its claims to a goodly chunk of South Africa. National humiliation is what feeds a murderous hatred for the Crown or the Powers that be.
had acquired the habit of hating,
which no phlegmatic Briton would not consider superior to a habit of slobbering all over everybody and everything.
and after achieving victory were impelled to look for new objects of detestation.
Churchill put it best when writing of Trotsky-
He had raised the poor against the rich. He had raised the penniless against the poor. He had raised the criminal against the penniless. All had fallen out as he had willed. But nevertheless the vices of human society required, it seemed, new scourgings. In the deepest depth he sought with desperate energy for a deeper. But—poor wretch—he had reached rock-bottom. Nothing lower than the Communist criminal class could be found. In vain he turned his gaze upon the wild beasts. The apes could not appreciate his eloquence. He could not mobilize the wolves, whose numbers had so notably increased during his administration. So the criminals he had installed stood together, and put him outside.
Russell won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Churchill got it in 1953. I suppose, the truth is, had Russell been a Harrow man, he'd have ended up as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Hence came, by a natural psychological mechanism, the purges,
to concentrate power
the massacre of Kulaks,
to get rid of 'Pugachevism'- i.e. the threat of a jacquerie. It must be said Soviet 'de-Cossackization' fundamentally changed Eurasia. But a Kulak might always turn into a Cossack- as might a Khazak. Stalin, a Georgian, ensured all such threats were eliminated. Russell simply couldn't see why Russians might consider this outcome, if not desirable, then vastly better than the alternative in that, at least, the hope of evolving into a modern nation state with a stable Civil Society was held out.
and the forced labor camps. I am persuaded that Lenin and his early colleagues were actuated by a wish to benefit mankind,
Eurasians. That's why they could find support in Buddhist Mongolia and amongst 'jadidi' modernising 'Tartar' Muslims.
but from errors in psychology and political theory they created a hell instead of a heaven.
No. They created a state strong enough to exceed that of Nicholas I in terms of power and influence. I suppose it will be the Chinese who will unify Eurasia and finally and fatally turn the tables on Europe.
This was to me a profoundly important object lesson in the necessity of right thinking and right feeling if any good result is to be achieved in the organization of human relations.
Organization is graph and game theoretic. It has nothing to do with feelings or ideologies. The question is whether the thing is 'robust'- i.e. incentive compatible under perturbation and exogenous shocks- and how big the allocative and dynamic efficiency trade-offs are relative to actual or potential rivals.
After my brief visit to Russia, I spent nearly a year in China, where I became more vividly aware than before of the vast problems concerned with Asia. China at that time was in a condition of anarchy;
because Sun Yat Sen was a nice guy- unlike Lenin & Trotsky. Suppose there had been a capable military leader whom he could rely on, he would not have let Yuan Shikai take power and crown himself Emperor. That couldn't last. Indeed, nothing could till Mao waded through a sea of blood and gained absolute power.
and, while Russia had too much government, China had too little. There was much that I found admirable in the Chinese tradition, but it was obvious that none of this could survive the onslaughts promoted by Western and Japanese rapacity.
China's problems had always been internal. Now they have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, they can overtake the West. If they don't, it will be because of some internal problem or, to be brutally honest, because Xi's successor has Xit for brains.
I fully expected to see China transformed into a modern industrial State as fierce and militaristic as the Powers that it was compelled to resist. I expected that in due course there would be in the world only three first-class Powers America, Russia and China and that the new China would possess none of the merits of the old. These expectations are now being fulfilled.
Russell was a true prophet though he spoke sixty years too soon. I wonder what a Chinese person of my age would think of his essay 'On why I am not a Communist'. Would he feel that China's current prosperity and rising power compensated for the sufferings inflicted by Mao?
IN RELATION to any political doctrine there are two questions to be asked: (i) Are its theoretical tenets true?
No. They are strategic or conventional. Britain does well under a monarchy but it isn't true that monarchy is the best form of government for Britain. We have been fortunate in having good monarchs but, it could also be said, that if the people are good, the monarch will seek to be good.
(2) Is its practical policy likely to increase human happiness?
No. This is a naive type of Utilitarianism. Happiness or sadness are not political questions. Public finance, however, is political. Practical policies which contribute to rising National Income are a good thing. On the other hand, reckless spending is likely to cause the markets to take a dim view of the country's future. Investment will fall.
For my part, I think the theoretical tenets of Communism are false,
Russell means Marx's economic theory. However, there was a strategic aspect to this. The alternative to Marxism was the type of workers' ownership and control advocated by Lassalle. Here the State provides funds to workers' collectives who organize themselves and produced goods and services sold through the market. The problem here is that there is no common political agenda to unite the proletariat. What the Labour party in the UK or the Social Democrats in Germany had was the opportunity to ally with Trade Unions and gain political representation. In the Soviet Union things were different. There, the industrial proletariat could be used to subjugate and extract surpluses from the agricultural hinterland. China didn't have a big industrial proletariat but copied Soviet tactics by first deluding the peasants that they would get ownership of the land before collectivizing that land and using famine as a weapon against them.
and I think its practical maxims are such as to produce an immeasurable increase of human misery.
This could be said of any economic theory. There's a good reason it is called 'the dismal science'.
The theoretical doctrines of Communism are for the most part derived from Marx. My objections to Marx are of two sorts: one, that he was muddleheaded; and the other, that his thinking was almost entirely inspired by hatred. The doctrine of surplus value, which is supposed to demonstrate the exploitation of wage-earners under Capitalism, is arrived at:
(a) by surreptitiously accepting Malthus' doctrine of population, which Marx and all his disciples explicitly repudiate;
I suppose Russell means 'the iron law of wages'. But unrestricted immigration would have the same effect as Malthusian population growth. In any case, there may be a 'social minimum'. People may find it repugnant to pay less than that. What is morally acceptable in a Society does place constraints on it. These may be unhelpful constraints- e.g. the notion that the indigenous people should be spared the indignity of manual labour. I recall reading of an Earl who refused a Dukedom because he said that Society considered it indecent for the younger sons of a Duke to earn their own living even in one of the learned professions. Thus, by gaining promotion in the peerage, the belted Earl would be put to great expense.
(b) by applying Ricardo's theory of value to wages, but not to the prices of manufactured articles.
Profit makes up the difference between the cost of production and the sale price. Marx wrote at a time when it did seem that manufacturers were raising their profits by getting workers to put in more hours. This 'sweated labour' was a genuine problem and gave rise to 'repugnancy markets'- e.g. situations where factory girls or shop girls had to resort to prostitution in order to have enough to eat. Meanwhile, intense competition was driving down the price of manufactured goods. Russell himself shared the horror felt by others of his class at this sort of exploitation. The solution was industry-wide agreements to pay a minimum wage and reduce working hours. Otherwise, competition would drive the good and decent employer out of business while the bad and cruel employer gained market share. Competition can be a good and salutary thing, provided there are rules to the game. If there are no rules, competition can be wasteful and destructive.
He is entirely satisfied with the result, not because it is in accordance with the, facts or because it is logically coherent, but because it is calculated to rouse fury in wage-earners.
Marx condemned the Luddites and those who thought money should be abolished. The question was whether legislation to regulate 'repugnancy markets' and collective bargaining (i.e. Trade Unions) could ameliorate the lot of the working class. Speaking broadly, the answer was yes but 'structural' problems remained- e.g. falling productivity in Britain's coal industry. With hindsight, the German system was better. It appears that, for Sociological reasons, the relationship between employers and workers was much more fraternal in Germany and this may be the reason they could have 'growth and stability' pacts such that the pain necessitated by 'structural adjustments' was more equitably distributed.
Marx's doctrine that all historical events have been motivated by class conflicts is a rash and untrue extension to world history of certain features prominent in England and France a hundred years ago.
Russell's grandfather showed that one could be born in one class and yet have deep sympathy for another. I suppose, Russell was living up to ideals long cherished in his family.
His belief that there is a cosmic force called Dialectical Materialism which governs human history independently of human volitions, is mere mythology.
Nothing wrong with a bit of mythology.
His theoretical errors, however, would not have mattered so much but for the fact that, like Tertullian and Carlyle, his chief desire was to see his enemies punished, and he cared little what happened to his friends in the process.
The Kaiser's chief desire seems to have been to see his cousin, the King-Emperor, spanked, sent to bed without any dinner, and deprived of his Empire in India. He little cared what happened to all the other crowned heads of Europe.
Marx's doctrine was bad enough, but the developments which it underwent under Lenin and Stalin made it much worse.
Stalin may have been horrible but he raised Russia to a greater pinnacle of power than any Tzar. China, which America had wanted to bring to Christ, had turned to the Kremlin. All over Asia and Africa and Latin America, young people were eagerly converting to the Marxist creed. Even the Americans suffered a serious 'Red scare' while half of the British Secret Service was revealed to be in the pay of the KGB.
Marx had taught that there would be a revolutionary transitional period following the victory of the Proletariat in a civil war and that during this period the Proletariat, in accordance with the usual practice after a civil war, would deprive its vanquished enemies of political power.
By killing them and taking their property.
This period was to be that of the dictatorship of the Proletariat. It should not be forgotten that in Marx's prophetic vision the victory of the Proletariat was to come after it had grown to be the vast majority of the population.
In Marx's time, it was thought that the best soldiers would be husky yeomen from the countryside. The American Civil War showed how railway trains and machine guns could tilt the balance in favour of the weedy factory worker. War had been industrialized. The Boer War showed that the farmer could be despoiled of his crops and his livestock. If he joined a commando unit, his wife and children would be sent to concentration camps where they would die like flies. The Jacquerie had ceased to be a threat to the State. Indeed, Stalin was a greater 'Stationary bandit' than Genghis or Atilla- who weren't stationary at all.
The dictatorship of the Proletariat therefore as conceived by Marx was not essentially antidemocratic.
Nothing is.
In the Russia of 1917, however, the Proletariat was a small percentage of the population, the great majority being peasants.
The peasants didn't like the factory workers. They were aghast when they heard the St. Petersburg Soviet wanted to enforce a 40 hour week. They firmly believed that factory workers were idlers and drunkards who hadn't done an honest day's work in their lives.
It was decreed that the Bolshevik party was the class-conscious part of the Proletariat, and that a small committee of its leaders was the class-conscious part of the Bolshevik party. The dictatorship of the Proletariat thus came to be the dictatorship of a small committee, and ultimately of one man Stalin.
So, Communist autocracy replaced the autocracy of the Tzar. Sadly, assassination was not able to temper this new autocracy. However, it must be admitted that repression became much more efficient under Stalin.
As the sole class-conscious Proletarian, Stalin condemned millions of peasants to death by starvation and millions of others to forced labor in concentration camps.
Few who have read the luminous pages of Tolstoy, in his final phase, can fail to be moved to tears of laughter contemplating the fate of the humble moujhik. Incidentally, the Finns had a big famine in the 1860s. Malthusian problems create a tolerance for Malthusian solutions. Also, it is better to kill the peasants at your own leisure rather than wait for them to rise up.
He even went so far as to decree that the laws of heredity are henceforth to be different from what they used to be, and that the germ plasm is to obey Soviet decrees but not that reactionary priest Mendel.
To be fair, the guy had attended a Seminary and Lamarckian ideas were popular at that time.
I am completely at a loss to understand how it came about that some people who are both humane and intelligent could find something to admire in the vast slave camp produced by Stalin.
Joan Robinson admired Mao's Cultural Revolution. I suppose 'humane and intelligent' people are like Goethe's Faust. What is demonic, they consider daemonic- i.e. the workings of human genius of a highly individualized type.
I have always disagreed with Marx. My first hostile criticism of him was published in 1896.
The same year that Bohm-Bawerk's 'Karl Marx and the Close of His System' came out. Russell was in closer touch with German speaking savants than many of his contemporaries. His mathematical brain could easily grasp the new(ish) Marginalist theory. I don't think he read Hilferding's attempt to defend Marx.
But my objections to modern Communism go deeper than my objections to Marx. It is the abandonment of democracy that I find particularly disastrous.
His own family had contributed much to the growth of democracy in Britain. The question is whether Russia or China could be ruled in that way.
A minority resting its power upon the activities of a secret police is bound to be cruel, oppressive and obscurantist.
But chaos might follow if that minority is put to the sword.
The dangers of irresponsible power came to be generally recognized during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but those who have been dazzled by the outward success of the Soviet Union have forgotten all that was painfully learned during the days of absolute monarchy, and have gone back to what was worst in the Middle Ages under the curious delusion that they were in the vanguard of progress.
The fact is, British people felt warmly towards 'Uncle Joe' because their own liberty was threatened by Hitler. Irresponsible power is dangerous but not having power may be entirely fatal to a nation. Communism was attractive when it did 'catch-up growth' more particularly in the matter of guns rather than butter. It remains to be seen whether Europe will rearm so as to fight in Ukraine.
There are signs that in course of time the Russian regime will become more liberal. But, although this is possible, it is very far from certain. In the meantime, all those who value not only art and science but a sufficiency of daily bread and freedom from the fear that a careless word by their children to a schoolteacher may condemn them to forced labor in a Siberian wilderness, must do what lies in their power to preserve in their own countries a less servile and more prosperous manner of life.
This means raising general purpose productivity. Even tyrants are less likely to send a person who pays a lot in tax to go pick oakum in prison. As for children, they might tell teechur you don't like Gays or that you vote for the Donald and thus ruin your life. Get your own back by pretending the kid is actually a middle aged Romanian midget.
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