Socialist Self-Criticism (Addressing the Dilemma of “Left-Wing” Regimes)
by Boris Rorer
In reading through online DSA forums and even for some reason Twitter feeds discussing politics there is a debate that continues to re-emerge in left wing discourse: how do we on the Left address the actions and politics of left wing regimes with terrible human rights records and/or failing economies without sounding like apologists for U.S. imperialism. Addressing the actions of such regimes, whether in Venezuela or Vietnam, as Leftists is further complicated when we’re dealing with right-wing apparatchiks and others who disingenuously weaponized what’s taking place in countries like Venezuela or China to diminish socialism as an alternative to capitalist chaos and rule.
I think it is past time that we admit that as yet we do not have a clear rebuttal to the cliché “what about Venezuela” question and that this is to our own detriment. No amount of mocking the right for bringing it up every time we make any argument in favor of any social policy, however disingenuous on their part or out of context, actually answers the question. The truth is there isn’t a quick talking point to explain the failures and point out the successes of a nation with such a long history of being colonized, interfered with and oppressed. Chavez made some monumental efforts to improve the country and Maduro is trying, probably less effectively, to continue this tradition. There is a powerful right wing oligarchy in that country always ready to interfere with support from the US and other imperial powers. On the other hand if we pretend that every problem in the Venezuelan economy is caused solely by US sanctions and their government is always blameless we start sounding like blind ideologues. There is corruption in the Venezuelan government and it serves no purpose to pretend that there isn’t. Regardless, a discussion beyond talking points is necessary.
Now as far as the other regimes like the USSR go, I’ve always believed we gain very little by pretending they were better than they were or that criticism of them is nothing but “Cold War propaganda”. It is true that a lot of the criticism was Cold War propaganda and was often exaggerated and spread for less than noble purposes. It is absurd however to conclude from this that all of the criticism is untrue, especially when so much of it comes from countless first-hand accounts of former Soviet citizens who have no connection whatsoever to the US State Department or any other vehicle of propaganda. We cannot build a movement or even a discussion on premises that anyone can disprove with a simple internet search. I strongly believe our socialist ideas and ideals are strong enough to withstand an honest look at the Soviet Union. In fact it should be the left that does it. The right does it to score points while were we are the ones who need to learn so as to build a better future without repeating the mistakes of the past.
As someone who has grown up surrounded by people who spent much of their lives in the USSR, hearing examples of theses countless first-hand accounts, I can say without hesitation that nobody I have ever met either here or in Russia wants to go back to the way things were. The constant demands of conformity and the pressure of watching what you say all the time are something once experienced and escaped are never again acceptable. Never mind the knowledge that there is always a chance of being arrested and sent away at the suspicion of disloyalty. Once people immigrated to the US they were free to have often heated political debates about events of the day. There were liberals and conservatives in regards to US policy. There were people more or less sympathetic to Yeltsin back in the days of Soviet collapse, and disagreements on many issues were common, but acceptance of the Soviet System itself was a line that was not crossed. Most people who lived through the Soviet system would not take an American fan of the USSR seriously. Now I am well aware that there is a lot of nostalgia for the past in Russia, with patriots demanding the return of Russia to superpower status and yes there are a lot of material conditions today that make people forget down sides or make bombastic public statements. The neoliberal policies of the 1980s left many people who were at least secure if not well off in complete poverty and precarity.
Because many of us on the left have lived our lives in the US surrounded by Americans and American propaganda it is understandable that as leftist we feel the need to push back against some of these arguments. We only hear discussions of the USSR or other “socialist” countries in the context of the incredibly simplistic culture war debate going on in this country posing capitalism versus socialism. In this arena we have every right to push back. Capitalism has one of the worst human rights records in history if we study it honestly. Its’ full scale today includes cobalt mines and sweatshops. If we remember it was birthed from the European imperialist project that funded its’ rise we see that we are talking about the most violent system in world history. But the culture war arena in which we reluctantly find ourselves arguing is also a spectacle for idiots where participants have no intention of learning and the logic of our arguments should not be based on winning in this arena. If we mean what we say about wanting to build a better world we have no choice but to face squarely the mistakes committed by those who have in the past held ideals such as ours.
There are two types of regimes we have to study. Those whose development was for the most part had more political space to develop and grow such as the USSR or present day China, and those Third World Nations who were never given as much of a chance at successes due to the interference of the imperialist world. (A caveat here that it may well turn out to be impossible to build a socialist country anywhere while capitalism still exists internationally but this does not change the fact that development of “socialism” in Russia and China was a lot more self-directed than anywhere in Africa or Central America). We cannot extrapolate exactly from the experience of The Soviet Union what the pitfalls and challenges would be in a socialist America but we can definitely learn lesson in the dangers of bureaucratization and centralization and the denying of basic democratic freedoms. We can also and must learn to resist temptations at curtailing freedom of speech and individual expression. The human spirit will always resist these infringements and a regime that learns to depend on them cannot hope to last long. We must never forget that as much as the Soviet Union claimed to advance much of what we as socialists find desirable as far housing, healthcare and pensions, it was the Soviet Union and its satellites from where people fled in mass and not the other way around. (And in fact the realities of housing and healthcare under the Soviet system were actually quite worse than what we today are striving for).
The other type of socialist experiments and the more common ones are the ones throughout the Third World and formerly colonized nations. These of course need to be judged by an entirely different standard. The rich countries of the North have spared no effort in destabilizing and destroying these experiments often leading to bloody coups and decades of mass murder and death squads. On one end of the spectrum we find Cuba who has had to resort to levels of authoritarianism in the past that we should not in theory find acceptable. It has become fashionable on the left to pretend that only wealthy landlords and supporters of the Batista Regime fled but this is easily disprovable and is insultingly dismissive of a large number of human victims of policies we ourselves would be fighting if enacted here. On the other hand this discussion is incomplete and dishonest without the mention of the decade’s long campaigns against the communist government by the United States. Not only has the economy been attacked by sanctions but actual terrorism has been carried out both as official US government policy and by CIA assets living in Miami and operating almost with impunity. If we remember how the US responded to the single terrorist act on 911 with not only two major wars but also the Patriot Act and imprisonment of innocent Muslims on the slightest suspicion we see that the US has no room to criticize any measures the Cuban government felt necessary to defend itself with. On the other side of the spectrum we see Bolivia where the right wing and the capitalist class were allowed to remain and live free. The current fascist coup and violence against the indigenous population can be seen as a pretty convincing argument for at least some measure of illiberal methods on the part of a newly socialist state to protect itself. From our vantage point as leftists in the heart of the empire the point is not to criticize or to excuse. We should not have to deny excesses or abuses of power but we should not issue blanket condemnations either considering it is our government that makes such things necessary. In fact none of our statements mean anything to anyone but us in any case. Thus our only proper course of action is to work strategically to entirely dismantle and replace the system here at home so that the rest of the world is allowed to pursue its own path without interference.
We cannot do this work of overthrowing empire without honestly looking at all of the mistakes of the past and it is long past time that we stop hiding from this. We should ignore all criticisms from today’s right if we are incapable of responding without twisting our own position into the opposite of theirs and creating our own absurdities. This is a waste of time. Instead we need to see where we have gone wrong for our own strategic purposes. This means building a socialism in the future that empowers workers rather than motivates them to flee and reject the entire socialist project as has happened in the past. This also means looking not only at the most extreme examples like the Soviet Union but also at periods of our own histories where some conditions resembled things that progressives are looking to win back. If we are working to strengthen labor we must also look at the corruption that was such common knowledge when unions were stronger. As we fight against weakening of government regulatory agencies we have to take an honest look at the endless string of legitimate complaints that used to come from ordinary people about bureaucratization and “red tape” that we tend to ignore because of the similar complaints coming from corporate actors looking to profit. In all areas were we have ever gone wrong and where our mistakes can be used against us we need to have an honest reckoning. We need to sweep through the past with a brutal self-criticism to strengthen our position in the future, not just against rhetorical criticism but so that actual material conditions we create with future victories do not turn the people against us.
