WHY DID COMMUNISM FAIL?
I’ve spent decades trying to understand what happened to the “Communist” (although they are better describes as “Socialist”) experiments in the twentieth century, including having spent many years producing a podcast about the Cold War. And the answer to the question “why did the Communist countries fail” is, as you might expect, because you’re pretty smart – complicated. Not only complicated, but also it’s the wrong question because not all of them did fail. China, for example, is doing pretty great by most measurements, and still run by the Chinese Communist Party. In discussions about communism, people often forget about China or they go to great lengths to argue that China isn’t really a Communist country today – which is debatable.
This post is going to be my attempt to lay out the basic framework for understanding what happened to communism – and why it matters today.
TL;DR
The short version of the story is this:
- The major advantage Communism, as a socio-economic theory, has over Capitalism, is that a vision for a better world is central to its vision. Communism dreams of a world of peace, harmony and equality. Marx and Engels provided a broad, albeit abstract, vision for a communist society in their works, emphasizing the abolition of class distinctions, the communal ownership of the means of production, and the end of exploitation. Their vision was centred around a society where human potential could flourish once freed from the constraints of class oppression and material deprivation. Capitalism has no central vision for a better world. It simply assumes that things will just all work out in the end. The largest and longest- running Capitalist experiment, The United States of America, demonstrates the flaws in that assumption. The country has enormous socio-economic issues (economic depressions, huge wealth inequality, wars driven by greed, corruption in the political system, racism, violence, an inability to effectively deal with major threats such as climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic, etc) and doesn’t seem to be able to pull itself out of the tailspin of Late Stage Capitalism.
- We should think of the early Communist / Socialist countries, as flawed experiments, not as proof whether or not a theory of social co-operation can or cannot succeed. These early experiments had many problems, but so has capitalism over the course of its history. Like all scientific experiments, we should learn from what went wrong and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Imagine if someone in 1901 said the idea of people flying in aeroplanes was a “vain fantasy”. Oh wait, someone did – The Engineer-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy.
- The early experiments in Communism tried (for good reasons) to quantum leap their countries from being largely agrarian and illiterate societies, barely out of Feudalism (USSR, China) and/or Colonialism (Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea), over the Capitalist phase, and straight into a Socialist transitionary phase, which would lead to the Communism phase. This runs counter to the Marxist view of the progression of society, which envisioned Socialism as the phase to emerge out of an advanced Capitalism.
- The early experiments in Communism faced early civil wars, plus immediate, significant, and genuine threats of war and/or invasion from the much more economically and militarily developed Capitalist countries, as well as economic sanctions which blocked their attempts at rapid economic development. They were forced to spend enormous amounts of wealth and labour just to defend themselves against external threats. In some cases (USSR, Vietnam, North Korea) they did have to deal with invasions from foreign Capitalist enemies during the early years of their development, which lead to death and destruction of the meagre infrastructure they had to work with in the first place. They had no “Big Brother” they could turn to for economic and military support.
- The Capitalist countries did have the advantage of a Big Brother, The United States of America, which, due to geographic good luck, was not directly attacked during WWI or WWII, did not lose millions of its men and women in those wars, did not have its core infrastructure destroyed by bombs, and therefore emerged in the middle of the twentieth century as the global superpower. It was able to use its economic wealth to isolate the developing Socialist countries, both economically and militarily, and bleed them dry over the next seven decades, by bribing and coercing most of the world to join their economic and trading bloc. Capitalism largely succeeded due to geographic luck.
- The attempt by the early Socialist countries to use central planning to manage rapid economic development was hampered by the level of technology in the early twentieth century. They did not have the advantage of having the internet, smart phones, and satellites. Today, in the world’s most advanced countries, government and corporations use “centralised planning” every single day to manage their domestic and global affairs. Central planning requires sophisticated technology.
- Some of the early Socialist experiments were co-opted by psychopaths. Psychopaths are a problem everywhere – in every country, and in every organisation. They are defined by a strong drive for power and wealth, low levels of empathy, a high appetite for risk, and a superiority complex, which is often reinforced by early successes derived from the first three, which enables them to do things that most “normal” people aren’t willing or able to do. Psychopaths also rise to the top of Capitalist countries, but they are spread widely, as there are more opportunities to take advantage of, across government, business, religion, the military, the police, the legal system, etc. In developing countries, the opportunities for psychopaths to get wealth and power are more limited, so they tend to end up concentrating in government, the military and religion.
For those of you with an old fashioned attention span, let’s drill down in these ideas in more detail.
A Vision For Humanity
The 20th century witnessed unprecedented efforts to reimagine human societies. Socialism and communism—rooted in the revolutionary ideals of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels—promised to end exploitation, eliminate inequality, and create systems where resources were distributed based on need. Yet, history shows us that most attempts to implement these ideologies on a national scale encountered significant hurdles. These failures have often been used to dismiss socialist ideals entirely, but a closer examination reveals that the issues were far more complex, rooted in historical, economic, and geopolitical realities.
This post examines the reasons behind the struggles of 20th-century socialism, compares them to capitalism’s own failures, and explores the relevance of these debates in addressing today’s pressing global challenges.
Trying To Skip Over Capitalism
The starting point should be to clarify something at the outset. None of the countries that usually come up in these discussions – the USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, etc – were actually examples of “communism”. Communism was the stated goal of each country. It was an ideal, a vision for the future, a dream to work towards. But in Marxism, communism is the end point of a long journey, not the starting point. Those countries were trying to implement socialism, which is just a stepping stone on the journey to communism, or, as Marx called it, “a political transition period”.
“Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” (Critique of the Gotha Programme)
Marx and Engels believed that societies would transition from feudalism to capitalism, then through socialism (where the state managed the political transition period) and, finally, into communism (where the state is no longer required).
It was important for countries to go through capitalism in order to build out the required infrastructure (“material forces of production”) to allow for the socialist transition period. It was also important for the people to be literate so they could read and educate themselves.
“No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.” (Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy)
However, socialist revolutions in the 20th century often occurred in nations far removed from the advanced industrial economies Marx and Engels had envisioned. Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba—all significant examples of socialist experiments—were primarily agrarian societies before their revolutions. In these contexts, the necessary economic foundations for socialism were missing. Marx’s framework assumed that capitalism would first fully develop the forces of production, creating a strong industrial base and a politically active proletariat. Yet, in these countries, revolutions were often led by rural peasants rather than urban workers, and the economies were anything but industrialized.
For instance:
• Russia in 1917 was a nation devastated by World War I, with an economy heavily reliant on agriculture. The Bolsheviks inherited a country with little infrastructure to support industrial development.
• China in 1949 faced similar challenges, having endured decades of civil war, Japanese occupation, and economic stagnation.
• Vietnam and Cuba were even less industrialized, transitioning directly from colonial or semi-feudal systems to socialism.
Skipping the capitalist phase meant that these revolutions had to industrialise from scratch, a monumental task compounded by political and military pressures.
It’s important to point out that they didn’t just try to skip the capitalism phase just because they were in a hurry to modernise. There was a worldwide inherent distrust of capitalism in the early decades of the twentieth century, especially after the two world wars, which were seen by many to be the result of capitalist greed, and the Great Depression. The countries who tried to implement socialism had also had direct confrontations with capitalist countries who tried to exert control over each of them. The United States and the United Kingdom both invaded Russia shortly after the Russian Revolution in support of the Czars. The United Kingdom had forced its will on China during the Opium Wars and the United States sided with the Kuomintang during the Chinese civil war. The United States supported France’s colonial occupation of Vietnam during the First Indochina War. And the United States supplied Cuba with planes, ships, tanks, and other technology such as napalm, which was used against the rebels during the Cuban Revolution.
Centralised Planning Before Computers
In an attempt to move an entire country quickly forwards – to be ready for invasions by, or war with, the capitalist countries, and famines – these early socialist experiments attempted to use central planning to quickly modernise their countries and to manage the activities of hundreds of millions of people – decades before computers, the Internet and satellites. The population of the Soviet Union in 1920 was estimated to be about 135 million people living in over 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 square miles). In 1950, China had a population of 552.0 million people in approximately 9.6 million square kilometers of land.
While they aimed to drive rapid modernisation, their attempts often led to inefficiencies and terrible tragedies. Central planners lacked the real-time information that would have been required to manage such a large effort, leading to misallocation of resources. Factories produced goods that no one wanted, while basic necessities like food and clothing were often in short supply.
For example:
• The Soviet Union’s Five-Year Plans achieved rapid industrialisation but often at great human and environmental costs. Quotas were met on paper but ignored quality and usability.
• Mao’s Great Leap Forward in China attempted to transform the country’s agrarian economy overnight, leading to one of the worst famines in human history.
These inefficiencies were not inevitable but rather a result of the technological limitations of the time. Today, corporations and governments use modern technology to centrally plan their affairs every day. It isn’t that centralised planning is inherently a faulty concept, it was just impossible at the time.
Socialism Does Not Equal Political Repression
Many socialist regimes became authoritarian, concentrating power in the hands of a single party or leader. This centralization often led to political repression, surveillance states, and the erosion of individual freedoms. However authoritarianism is not inherent to socialism. There is nothing in the writings of Marx or Engel that suggest authoritarianism is required. On the contrary, they argue for the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, which they as a temporary phase of working-class rule, fundamentally democratic in nature, aimed at dismantling class distinctions and transitioning toward a classless, stateless society.
Unfortunately, every society has psychopaths. Experts suggest that between one and four percent of the population at any given time might score highly on the psychopath test. In every country, psychopaths gravitate towards opportunities for power. In the past they have become kings, dukes, popes, and prophets. In modern times, they often become corporate executives, politicians, military leaders, police chiefs… and kings, popes and prophets. We have not yet figured out how to prevent them from getting their hands on power in capitalist countries, and socialist countries weren’t any better.
However, because these socialist countries were less developed economically, there were fewer places for the psychopaths to find power, so most of them gravitated towards politics and the military. As the countries were all re-building after the destruction from long periods of civil and international war, these countries also had very few institutions that could protect them from having psychopaths rise to power.
In addition, these countries were constantly on a war footing from day one, with endless threats and attacks from external enemies and their attempts at overthrowing the socialist governments through spies and agents. This lead to the socialist states having to enact harsh measures to prevent destabilisation of their new governments. It’s worth pointing out that capitalist countries also enacted harsh measures against external threats during times of war, for example, McCarthyism in both the U.S.A.and the U.K., the Japanese internment camps in the U.S.A., etc, but these weren’t newly-established governments of extremely poor and developing countries, so their reactions weren’t as harsh.
The Economic Cost of The Cold War
Socialist countries faced intense external pressures, particularly during the Cold War. The United States and its allies sought to destroy socialism, employing economic sanctions, propaganda, and even military interventions. For example:
• The Soviet Union was forced into an arms race that drained resources from domestic needs.
• Cuba continues to endure decades of economic embargoes that crippled its economy.
• Vietnam faced catastrophic invasion and bombing campaigns during the war with the United States.
• North Korea also faced an American invasion.
These external pressures exacerbated internal economic challenges, making it nearly impossible for socialist economies to thrive. Unlike Western Europe, which benefited from American aid through the Marshall Plan, socialist nations received little support and were often isolated. Their ability to trade with the more developed countries was hampered, and their ability to invest in domestic infrastructure was limited by the need to maintain an arms race against a far more wealthy enemy.
Capitalism’s Failures: The Other Side of the Coin
While socialism’s struggles are often highlighted, capitalism is far from a flawless system.
A quick survey of capitalism’s first century demonstrates that it took a long time to stabilise and find its way.
In early capitalist societies, child labour became a cornerstone of industrial economies. The factory system, with its insatiable demand for cheap labour, capitalised on the vulnerability of children from poor families. Children worked in textile mills, coal mines, and other industries under hazardous conditions. In mines, children as young as five crawled through narrow tunnels hauling heavy loads of coal. Workdays often lasted 12-16 hours, six days a week, leaving children physically exhausted and deprived of education. Poor ventilation, exposure to dangerous machinery, and lack of safety measures caused frequent injuries and illnesses.
Slavery played a crucial role in the early development of capitalism, particularly in the Americas and Europe, as a source of cheap labor for plantation economies and industries. In fact, a large part of the financial strength of the capitalist West by the time of the Cold War can be attributed to its history of slavery.
Financial institutions like the Bank of England and insurance companies profited from underwriting slave ships and plantations. In the United States, slavery was integral to the Southern economy and a key driver of global trade. The cotton industry, powered by enslaved labor, supplied raw materials to British textile mills, fueling industrial growth.
The rapid urbanization driven by industrial capitalism created overcrowded cities with dire living conditions for the working class. Workers lived in cramped, poorly ventilated tenements often located near factories, exposing them to pollution. Lack of sewage systems led to outbreaks of diseases like cholera and typhoid. While industrialists and factory owners amassed wealth, workers faced subsistence wages and squalid living conditions.
The expansion of capitalism was deeply tied to imperialism, as European powers sought raw materials, markets, and cheap labor in colonized regions. Colonies supplied raw materials like cotton, rubber, and minerals, which were processed in European factories and sold back to colonial markets at inflated prices. Local economies were often destroyed as subsistence agriculture gave way to cash crops, leading to food insecurity. Indigenous populations were displaced, enslaved, or massacred. The Belgian Congo under King Leopold II is a harrowing example, with millions killed or mutilated in the pursuit of rubber and ivory profits.
Early capitalism operated without labor regulations, subjecting workers to inhumane conditions. Factory owners maximized profits by keeping wages low and demanding long hours from workers. Workers had no legal protections, no sick leave, and no recourse against abusive employers. These abuses spurred the growth of labor unions and socialist movements, which fought for better wages, reasonable working hours, and safer conditions. Strikes and protests were often met with violent crackdowns by state and private forces, highlighting the alignment of early capitalist states with business interests.
The rise of industrial capitalism brought about significant environmental destruction. Factories discharged pollutants into rivers and the air, turning urban centers into smog-filled, disease-ridden environments. The destruction of forests for agriculture and industry caused widespread ecological harm. The unregulated extraction of coal, iron, and other resources fueled industrial growth but left landscapes devastated.
And of course we could talk about The Great Depression of the 1930s, the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of Donald Trump and the billionaire class of politicians and other far-right parties around the world, endless wars fought to grow and maintain American hegemony, the inability to deal with climate change, and growing income inequality demonstrate that capitalism has its own systemic issues.
However western commentators don’t look at all of these historical issues and say “capitalism failed”. We just accept that capitalism has problems and hope that somehow, some day, someone will fix them. In the meantime, they just seem to grow. And this is partly because there isn’t a coherent vision for the end point of capitalism. There’s no utopian vision that everyone in capitalist countries is striving towards. There is no better tomorrow. Communism, for all of its struggles in the last century, at least has an articulated vision for a better tomorrow.
China’s Hybrid Model: A Unique Case Study
China’s economic success offers an alternative narrative. After Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping was able to restructure the Chinese socialist experiment. He had long realised that the CCP leadership had failed the people by trying to do too much, too quickly and with the wrong mechanisms. As he once said:
“These were not just Mao’s mistakes, they were all our mistakes. Many of us made mistakes; we lacked experience and had poor judgment.”
“Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China”, Ezra F. Vogel
He introduced market reforms while retaining state control over key sectors. This hybrid model lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and transformed China into a global superpower. While many people in the West seem to believe that China is no longer socialist, the CCP itself refers to its current economic model as “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”.
“Only by upholding socialism with Chinese characteristics can we bring together and lead the whole Party, the whole nation and the people of all ethnic groups in realizing a moderately prosperous society by the centenary of the CPC in 2021 and in turning China into a prosperous, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious modern socialist country by the centenary of the People’s Republic of China in 2049, so as to ensure the people greater happiness and the nation a brighter future.”
Xi Jinping: The Governance of China
China’s success in the last 50 years demonstrates that socialism didn’t “fail” as many people in the West seem to think. The Chinese socialist experiment took a while to find its way – and is still developing – as is true of capitalism.
A Scientific Perspective: Socialism as Experimentation
Drawing a parallel to scientific discovery, socialist experiments can be seen as part of an iterative process. Early failures in aviation did not discredit the concept of human flight; rather, they provided crucial lessons that led to eventual success. Similarly, the failures of 20th-century socialism could inform future attempts to create equitable systems.
Advocates argue that modern technology, combined with democratic frameworks, could address many of the issues that plagued earlier socialist experiments. Ideas like universal basic income, participatory budgeting, and worker cooperatives represent modern adaptations of socialist principles.
Conclusion: Rethinking the Debate
The debate between socialism and capitalism is not merely historical but deeply relevant to today’s global challenges. As the world grapples with inequality, climate change, and political instability, reimagining economic systems is more critical than ever. While 20th-century socialism struggled under the weight of its contradictions and context, its ideals continue to inspire movements seeking a more just and sustainable future.
Modern technologies, from smartphones to satellites and machine intelligence, allow us to plan and manage a better society in ways the twentieth century socialists could only dream of. The same technologies can also be applied to make it difficult for psychopaths to derail the transition to communism.
Rather than dismissing socialism outright, we should view its history as a source of lessons for building better systems in the 21st century.