How Communism Failed in the Soviet Union and China: Economic Systems Explained (1990)

• published: 14 Feb 2014
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The state ideology of the Soviet Union embodied a number of different theoretical streams, originating primarily from within the Marxist ideology of socialism, but with some minor threads emerging from within the Russian revolutionary movement such as the ideology of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries or from within anarcho-communism such as Makhnovism. After 1921, Russian-developed social-democratic ideologies predominated within the ideology of Soviet communism. Subsequent to Stalin, some changes occurred in Soviet Ideology. Chief amongst these were Nikita Khrushchev's advocacy of developing quality in preference to quantity in Soviet development and the pursuit of peaceful coexistence; and the declaration of the Brezhnev doctrine. During the 1940s 1950s and 1960s numerous experiments were made in political or organisational issues within Soviet communist framework in Eastern European actually existing socialist states, though there was little systematic creative ideological work conducted by State-supporting mainstream Marxists, the dissenting Marxists tending to produce new ideological material outside of the Soviet communist traditions. However, Imre Nagy's humanist socialism and Alexander Dubcek's socialism with a human face were developments of Soviet communist ideologists. Towards the end, Mikhail Gorbachev introduced new innovations in political life which were perceived by some to indicate ideological change. In 1985, Gorbachev announced that the Soviet economy was stalled and that reorganization was needed. Initially, his reforms were called uskoreniye (acceleration) but later the terms such as glasnost (liberalisation, opening up) and perestroika (restructuring) became more popular. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism_in_the_Soviet_Union The Communist Party of China (CPC), commonly referred to as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Although nominally it exists alongside the United Front, a coalition of governing political parties, the CPC is the only party allowed to govern the PRC. Through this position the CPC maintains a unitary government and a centralized control over the state, military, and media. The legal power of the Communist Party is guaranteed by the national constitution. The current party leader is Xi Jinping, who holds the title of General Secretary of the Central Committee. The party was founded in July 1921 in Shanghai. After a lengthy civil war, the CPC defeated Republic of China Armed Forces and assumed full control of mainland China by 1949. The government of Republic of China retreated to the island of Taiwan, where it still holds power to this day. Both before and after the founding of the PRC, the CPC's history is defined by various power struggles and ideological battles, including destructive socio-political movements such as the Cultural Revolution. At first a conventional member of the international Communist movement, the CPC broke with its counterpart in the Soviet Union over ideological differences in the 1960s. The Communist Party's ideology was redefined under Deng Xiaoping to incorporate principles of market economics, and the corresponding reforms enabled rapid and sustained economic growth. The CPC is the world's largest political party, claiming over 82,6 million members at the end of 2012.[1] Since 1978, the Communist Party has institutionalize transitions of power and consolidates its internal structure. The modern party stresses unity and avoids public conflict while practicing democratic centralism. Following the death of Mao in 1976, however, the CPC under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping moved towards Socialism with Chinese characteristics and instituted Chinese economic reform.[4] In reversing some of Mao's "extreme-leftist" policies, Deng argued that a socialist country and the market economy model were not mutually exclusive. While asserting the political power of the Party itself, the change in policy generated significant economic growth.[5] The ideology itself, however, came into conflict on both sides of the spectrum with Maoists as well as progressive liberals, culminating with other social factors to cause the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests. Deng's vision for economic success and a new socialist market model became entrenched in the Party constitution in 1997 as Deng Xiaoping Theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism_in_china Image: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R77767 / CC-BY-SA [CC-BY-SA-3.0-de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons