The Communist Experience: A Personal Appraisal

Abstract

The period of Communism, centred upon the history of the Soviet Union since 1917, and of the countries of Eastern Europe since the late 1940s, which gave inspiration and hope to millions of people all over the world, has now ended in discredit and dishonour. There are still parts of the world--South Africa is an obvious example--where the name Communist Party still carries respect; but in Europe especially the name and the organisation are synonymous with economic incompetence and material ineptitude of a massive kind, together with the bitter political regimes of Stalinism. The disappearance of any credible alternative to capitalism in any part of the world today requires the most serious examination and analysis of the historical factors involved in the momentous events of 1989/1990. For someone like the present writer, who spent twenty-two years in the British Communist Party until 1956, the enquiry is not into the nature and character of Stalinism and the extensive deformations occurring in countries which called themselves socialist, because that exploration began seriously in the year of Khrushchev's speech, and has continued since. It is rather the survey of the period as a whole and of a sombre assessment of the future of socialism. 'Goodbye to All That' is the triumphalist cry of the enemies of socialism, but the hostility of the propertied classes everywhere has always been unrelenting. What we have to appreciate, however, is that cynicism towards the socialist project extends to very large numbers of ordinary people in the advanced industrial world, and that there is here a very serious discussion and debate to be revived and renewed. Such a debate cannot ignore the central problems of the contemporary world where a majority of the world's population remain in economic bondage, poverty and material degradation to whose conditions the industrialised sectors have always and continuously contributed.