Yes, I’d also like to understand better the attraction of communism. Some off-the-cuff ideas:
It was harder to get good information about the Russian or Chinese communists during certain periods. (No Internet, fewer reliable journalists, less travel in each direction).
Non-communist countries were much more violent than post-WW2. There was more homicide and more violence that involved the state (e.g. violence in prisons, colonial violence, civil wars, interstate wars). Maybe the Soviet Union up to 1935 didn’t look radically different from non-Communist countries.
Economics was less developed and (possibly) fewer smart people had a basic grasp of the field. (Some good arguments against Marxist economics already existed but weren’t widely known).
The empirical evidence against command economies vs market-based systems was much less clear. (Modern concept of GDP was only developed in 1934!)
Non-communist countries were very conservative in some ways, e.g. rights for women and ethnic minorities, the special privileges given to the state religion, workers’ rights, availability of public education and training. Both the early Soviet Union and Communist China had some policies that were progressive relative to the status quo and to other non-communist countries.
Communists shouted about and valorized progress, modernization, industrialization, and science. (And the Soviet Union did industrialize pretty quickly and produce fairly impressive science and technology.)
Incidentally: Russell did visit the Soviet Union and came away with a negative impression. Keynes also visited and had a very negative impression. He was also in a position to evaluate Marx’s economics. Here’s Keynes’ view of Leninism taken from Wikipedia:
How can I accept a doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook [Marx’s Kapital] which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values.
Keynes’s view of Leninism seems similar to Russell’s, and may have been influenced by it. Here’s a quote from ThePractice and Theory of Bolshevism (published in 1920):
Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures. When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does so, if possible, by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. A full-fledged Communist is not merely a man who believes that land and capital should be held in common, and their produce distributed as nearly equally as possible. He is a man who entertains a number of elaborate and dogmatic beliefs—such as philosophic materialism, for example—which may be true, but are not, to a scientific temper, capable of being known to be true with any certainty. This habit, of militant certainty about objectively doubtful matters, is one from which, since the Renaissance, the world has been gradually emerging, into that temper of constructive and fruitful scepticism which constitutes the scientific outlook. I believe the scientific outlook to be immeasurably important to the human race. If a more just economic system were only attainable by closing men’s minds against free inquiry, and plunging them back into the intellectual prison of the middle ages, I should consider the price too high.
Economics was less developed and (possibly) fewer smart people had a basic grasp of the field. (Some good arguments against Marxist economics already existed but weren’t widely known).
Interestingly, the oldest of the bunch, Bertrand Russell, had been writing criticisms of Marx as early as 1896. In his lecture “Marx and the Theoretical Basis of Social Democracy” he provides several arguments against Marxist economics, concluding,
We have now discussed all the most essential points in Marx’s economic doctrines, and have seen that none of them, as a theory of what is, or of what necessarily will be, will stand a thorough criticism.
Yes, I’d also like to understand better the attraction of communism. Some off-the-cuff ideas:
It was harder to get good information about the Russian or Chinese communists during certain periods. (No Internet, fewer reliable journalists, less travel in each direction).
Non-communist countries were much more violent than post-WW2. There was more homicide and more violence that involved the state (e.g. violence in prisons, colonial violence, civil wars, interstate wars). Maybe the Soviet Union up to 1935 didn’t look radically different from non-Communist countries.
Economics was less developed and (possibly) fewer smart people had a basic grasp of the field. (Some good arguments against Marxist economics already existed but weren’t widely known).
The empirical evidence against command economies vs market-based systems was much less clear. (Modern concept of GDP was only developed in 1934!)
Non-communist countries were very conservative in some ways, e.g. rights for women and ethnic minorities, the special privileges given to the state religion, workers’ rights, availability of public education and training. Both the early Soviet Union and Communist China had some policies that were progressive relative to the status quo and to other non-communist countries.
Communists shouted about and valorized progress, modernization, industrialization, and science. (And the Soviet Union did industrialize pretty quickly and produce fairly impressive science and technology.)
Incidentally: Russell did visit the Soviet Union and came away with a negative impression. Keynes also visited and had a very negative impression. He was also in a position to evaluate Marx’s economics. Here’s Keynes’ view of Leninism taken from Wikipedia:
Keynes’s view of Leninism seems similar to Russell’s, and may have been influenced by it. Here’s a quote from The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (published in 1920):
Interestingly, the oldest of the bunch, Bertrand Russell, had been writing criticisms of Marx as early as 1896. In his lecture “Marx and the Theoretical Basis of Social Democracy” he provides several arguments against Marxist economics, concluding,
Perhaps some of his work outside of (mathematical) logic was worth reading or hearing then.