‘Now That Red Is Dead’

Powers joins countless other pundits in gloating, “Marx had his chance in the Soviet Union . . . . It didn’t work.” He crows that capitalism is vindicated by the partial adoption of it by Soviet and Chinese leaders. These claims respectively disregard a vital fact and make a disputable assumption:

First, the system proposed by Marx could not have failed in the Soviet Union because it was never put into effect there.

Nothing resembling a government of and by the proletariat--that is, the whole working class--which Marx considered the indispensable vehicle for the building of communism, has ever existed in the Soviet Union. Instead there has always been, in more and less obnoxious forms, a government of and by the party bureaucracy, implausibly claiming to rule on behalf of the proletariat. Lenin arguably had his chance in the Soviet Union; Stalin certainly had his chance; but the authentic followers of Marx were subordinate under Lenin and exiled or exterminated by Stalin.

Second, Powers and his myriad soul mates simply assume, without a minute’s deliberation, that the course of partial capitalism chosen by the Soviet and Chinese leaders is the best practical alternative to rigid, suffocating bureaucratic collectivism. The question of what alternative is best is inseparable from that of what result one wishes to see achieved. Yes, elements of capitalism are best suited to the principal aim of the Soviet leaders, which is to get the workers to be more productive without ceding them any large portion--let alone the preponderance--of power. (A reserve army of unemployed, for example, can be a marvelous incentive.)

If, however, one is in favor of dismantling all exploitative ruling classes, be they capitalist or collectivist, and building in their stead authentic socialism--democratic management by all the workers--then the admixture of capitalism with the Soviet or Chinese systems is hardly the best program of reform, if indeed it’s reform at all.

Of those who, like Powers, hold that the Sandinistas don’t have the support of their people and rely on secret police to hold power, I ask: How do the Sandinistas get away with having an armed civilian militia twice the size of their army? And of those who join him in the more sweeping and percussive claim that “the left is dead,” I ask: Why then does the United States government, with every new moon, spend $42 million in open aid, and undisclosed millions more on CIA operations, to keep the left at bay in tiny El Salvador?

SKYLER WILLIAMS

Covina