Chapter 15: Major Experiments of the 20th Century

Before the IR, the nature and destiny of human societies always seemed to be subject to forces beyond the control of mortals. The IR, however, drastically changed conditions and people’s perception of things. Because of the enormous increases in productivity that resulted from advances in technology, the economic surplus expanded rapidly, and this, in turn, extended the limits of the possible and made numerous important social changes feasible. They also persuaded millions of people that things do not have to be the way they are, or the way they have always been: people have it in their power to change society and improve social conditions. All that is needed is the will, imagination, and a plan.

Reformers and revolutionaries alike have shared the conviction that social conditions can be improved. They have differed, however, in their goals and means by which they have sought to achieve them: revolutionaries have been more ambitious and ruthless while reformers have been more modest and will to work through democratic means (407).

Both have advocated and conducted massive social experiments that test the limits of what is possible in human societies. Some of these experiments have been successful, some have failed, and some have had mixed results (407-408).

Some Successful Experiments

The most important of these lessons has almost certainly been the demonstration that massive poverty and deprivation are not necessary when societies industrialize. Industrialization not only means substantially greater productivity of food and necessities, the new industrial technology also provides the means by which members of these societies can limit population growth and thus create the possibility of better living conditions for all. It is easy to forget that even in societies that are as productive as modern industrial societies, population growth can wipe out all the potential benefits of their economic gains, since anytime population growth equals or exceeds the growth in productivity, improvements in the standard of living are impossible (408).

Fortunately, birthrates declined substantially in every industrial society in the 20th century with the result that these societies have enjoyed striking advances in their standards of living. Thus poverty has a very different meaning in industrial societies today than it had in agrarian societies of the past: most who fall below the officially defined poverty line in today’s industrial societies enjoy a far higher standard of living than did the poor in traditional agrarian societies. The best indication of this is the greatly improved health of populations in industrial societies and their greatly increased life expectancies.

It is also noteworthy that societies in which political leaders have adopted a pragmatic ideology have generally fared better than those whose leaders have been dogmatic ideologues (408).

The pragmatic programs of the western democracies, while often badly flawed, have never created comparable disasters. The Great Depression of the 1930s was the worst disaster for which they have been responsible, but the millions who lost their jobs in those years were fortunate indeed compared to the millions who suffered and died in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Moreover, it is important to remember that as the magnitude of the economic disaster we call the Great Depression came to be evident, the leaders of the western democracies abandoned older policies and modified the institutional structures of their societies in ways that have prevented the recurrence of any comparable disaster since then. The relative success of these new, pragmatic policies serves as a reminder of another of the relatively successful social experiments in modern industrial societies: the creation of representative democratic governments (409).

A tragically flawed experiment

One of the great ironies of modern life is that as the conditions for the masses of people in industrial societies have improved, the level of dissatisfaction with existing social arrangements has tended to increase. During the last 200 years, no one has articulated this sense of dissatisfaction with existing social arrangements more powerfully or persuasively than Karl Marx (409).

Some Successes and Partial Successes

Despite a dismal record overall, Marxist experiments have enjoyed a few successes. The one most often cited is the virtual elimination of unemployment and inflation (412).

The Failures

Despite some limited success, Marxist experiments have proven a tragic failure, not only in the USSR and China, but in Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Ethiopia.

1. Economic Abundance and Affluence

Marx’s harshest criticisms of the capitalist societies of his day were directed at their failure to provide more satisfactorily for the material needs of ordinary working men and women (416).

2. Social Equality

One of the great appeals of Marxism has long been its promise of social equality. After the revolution, the institutional bases of economic and political inequality would disappear. Unfortunately, the abolition of private property and the reduction of wage differences failed to produce the happy transformation in human nature that Marx anticipated. One the contrary, freed from the fear of unemployment and lacking adequate material incentives, worker performance deteriorated and production stagnated or declined in Marxist societies everywhere (417).

If the achievement of greater economic equality proved difficult, greater political equality proved impossible. Contrary to Marx’s predictions, the state stubbornly refused to wither away. Instead, under Communism, governments grew steadily larger, more complex, and more powerful, and the gulf between Communist rulers and ordinary people steadily widened (418).

3. Freedom and Justice

The greatest failure of Communist societies has almost certainly been their failure to provide anything remotely resembling the tremendous freedom from constraints that Marx promised. Far from providing a greater degree of freedom for ordinary people, Marxists societies have become synonymous with political repression and oppression (418).

4. Environmental Disasters

No discussion of the failures of Communist regimes would be complete that ignored their record in the environmental area. The enormity of these disasters is directly attributable to the Communist system of governing. Because of the Communist Party’s long-standing policies of controlling the flow of information within the society and of suppressing even the mildest expressions of political dissent, no effective challenge to the policies responsible could ever be mounted until the final years of Gorbachev’s rule (421).

Western industrial societies have also been responsible for their share of environmental disasters, but there has been one important difference: in western democracies, leaders have not been able to remain indifferent to the environmental consequences of their policies (422)

5. Summing Up

Looking back at the many and massive social experiments undertaken by Marxists in the 20th century, it is impossible not to view them as failures. But they have not been merely failures: they have been extraordinarily costly failures, tragedies that have exacted an enormous toll in terms of human suffering. Not only have Communist societies failed to provide the wonderful benefits that Marx predicted, they have not even come close to providing the level of benefits that the western industrial societies have provided (422).

Lessons to be learned

One obvious lesson to be learned is that people should be distrustful of social theorists and politicians who promise too much (423).