Communism As A Side Effect of the Transition To Capitalism

2007.10.25   prev     next

Communism, and its cousin heavy socialism, are dead. And they’re not coming back. We’re witnessing the end of that phase of human history. When the last holdout states, e.g. Cuba and North Korea, are finally worn down to zero, then that’s it. It’s gone for good.

Why do I think so? Simple. Communism, or something very much like it, was an unavoidable side-effect of the transition to capitalism. In this view, humanity went through three phases with respect to tolerating the rich:

Phase 1: Ignorance — Prior to the advent of modern communications and travel, most people throughout the world were ignorant of just how spectacularly plush some individuals’ lives were, and so were able to tolerate this inequity simply by not really knowing about it.

Phase 2: Communism — During the 1800s and 1900s, growing technologies in communications and travel made it possible for large numbers of people to discover these huge inequities. Generally, however, they discovered them later in life. After spending their formative years in a state of ignorance (not unlike Phase 1), they then found out just how rich some people are, and just how much good that wealth does for their comfort and enjoyment of life. This led to severe resentment and outrage, and created the intellectual environment in which a movement like communism could blossom.

Phase 3: Common Knowledge and Mass Affluence — Today, thanks to much more mature communications and travel technologies, and to the fact that people today grow up with those technologies already in place, the extreme wealth of the lucky few is common knowledge, and most people know about it as far back as they can remember. They may still resent it to some degree, but not with the intensity necessary to foment effective backlash against capitalism. Further, mature technologies bring the best products and artistic creations to the general public at an affordable price, resulting in what Dinesh D’Souza dubs “mass affluence” — a society in which most of the fruits of prosperity are enjoyed abundantly by most of the population.

So there you have it. Change is often stormy and problematic. The transition from historically limited communications and travel to widespread, rapid communications and travel — inexorable components of the dawn of capitalism — brought with it a horrendously ugly side-effect: communism and all its Hitler-dwarfing horrors. But it’s over now. The transition is complete. We can look back on communism in the same way that a mature, capable adult looks back on his tumultuous teens — a scarring but necessary phase in the growing-up of humanity.

And just as the functional adult, who is now doing more-or-less what his parents want him to do, will rarely admit that the anti-social anger of his adolescence was misguided — instead thinking warmly about how he would lash out again if he thought he could get away with it — so humanity will never really renounce its communist phase, but will always look back and wistfully recall that the injustice of extreme monetary inequality was once, however briefly and non-victoriously, opposed.