The Dangers of the Far Right vs Far Left
Should communists be feared as much as fascists in the West?
Among right-wingers in the US it is popular slippery slope type of argument, that goes something like this: If a socialist is elected to power then a Stalin style communist hellhole with gulags follows next.
It is a tired argument, devoid of any evidence, despite claims to the contrary. I will explain why in this article. Every time I cover this topic somebody will fail to actually read the argument properly and get the confused idea that I somehow advocate communism. I don’t and if that is your takeaway from the article then you have misread it. I am a strong supporter of democracy. Democracy to me goes before all other ideological concerns.
One of my political role models is Einar Gerhardsen. He was prime minister in Norway for a whole 17 years. Postwar Norway was very much defined by his leadership. Gerhardsen was a strong supporter of socialism. He led the Norwegian labour party while it was still a democratic socialist party. When Lenin won the revolution in Russia, he traveled to Russia by train to congratulate him. For a socialist the victory seemed like good news. But as soon as Russia proved to remain a dictatorship, he turned his back on it. For Gerhardsen democracy was non-negotiable. Gerhardsen had survived concentration camp in Germany against all odds. The experience made him strongly oppose any form of totalitarianism.
It didn’t matter that the ultimate goal of communists was the same as for democratic socialists. In fact the Norwegian labour party began a relentless purge of communist sympathizers from their party and ran surveillance of communists in Norway. In fact they probably went too far, even if it was never like McCarthyism in the US.
Bottomline is that I am a Gerhardsen style socialist. Democracy will always come first. And I know for many capitalist fanboys that is actually not the case. Many capitalism fans were happy to overthrow democratic socialist Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran, and democratic socialist Salvador Allende in Chile. Many libertarians I have talked to have said they would prefer a capitalist dictatorship over a democratic socialist state. I think this is important to hammer home, because especially in the US there is an ingrained belief that being an advocate of capitalism equals freedom and democracy while socialism equals totalitarianism.
Fascism is a Danger to Democracies, Communism Isn’t
Communism only ever took power in poor undemocratic countries. Rich democracies in contrast have never experienced communist takeovers. However rich democracies have suffered under Fascism, Nazism and other extreme right ideologies. In the cases where parties with socialist or communist ideologies have taken power in democratic elections this has usually led to social democracy. We’ve seen this in e.g. Scandinavian countries.
If we look at developed countries overtaken by fascist in the 1920s and 1930s the list was quite staggering: Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Greece, Japan, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Look at my earlier article for details:
The point to understand is that socialists turned to armed revolt when a democratic path was not an option. Whenever socialists have been allowed to run for elections they have stayed true to democracy. The same cannot be said of fascists. They have overthrown democracy every time they had a chance.
What About Gulags?
The Gulags did not represent a new cruelty by Soviet socialism, but rather a continuation of a limited form of serfdom, practiced in Czar Russia. The US applied the same sneaky approach to perpetuate black slavery after the civil war, using the convict lease system.
Revolutions Are Bloody and The Nazis Killed More People
The numbers shown for communism suggests they were the worst. However a lot of the numbers regarding the Soviet Union was inflated for propaganda purposes. Recent analysis suggest the Nazis killed more people than Stalin:
Today, after two decades of access to Eastern European archives, and thanks to the work of German, Russian, Israeli, and other scholars, we can resolve the question of numbers. The total number of noncombatants killed by the Germans — about 11 million — is roughly what we had thought. The total number of civilians killed by the Soviets, however, is considerably less than we had believed. We know now that the Germans killed more people than the Soviets did.
A point often overlooked is that Hitler managed to kill more than Stalin, despite the fact that he gained power without bloodshed through a peaceful, democratic takeover. Communists fought an oppressive regime to gain power, which mean it was a bloody affair. That is not an attempted excuse for communists. This has happened with all revolutions, regardless of ideology.
The people who started the French revolution had liberal democracy as their ideology, yet Robespierre of the French revolution is famous for his reign of terror.
Double Standard In Associating Atrocities with Socialism
The horrors of Stalin and Mao are blamed on Socialism. Yet the extermination of native Americans is not pinned on capitalist democracy. It has been claimed the British Empire was responsible for killing 35 million Indians. Yet once again capitalism is not saddled with blame for this.
The British let 1 million Irish die in the potato famine, others were forced to emigrate, causing the country to lose upto a quarter of its population.
The deaths in the potato famine can actually be tied to capitalism, in particular libertarian ideology. The belief was that government should never intervene in markets. Thus the UK government did nothing to stop the famine.
Conclusion
We must reject the attempt to associate democratic socialism with communist dictatorships. The historical record does not support the claim that socialists are anti-democratic. However history suggests we must be on the guard for right wing extremism in democracies.
Why do I care about this a lot? Because right-wing extremists usually gain power by convincing moderate conservatives that socialists is a bigger danger. Hitler never gained a full majority. He relied on support from conservatives and German industrialists to gain power.
Thus the lie that the far-left and the far-right are equally dangerous is used as a tool by the far-right to gain power. In a polarized political landscape rich capitalists will decide that a right-wing dictatorship is better than a left-wing dictatorship. The flaw in their reasoning is that elected socialists have never created dictatorships.
It could be argued that modern day Venezuela is an exception to this rule. But it is also not a normal country. Since independence the country has had 20 coups or coup attempts. And these coups have been predominantly right-wing. The left-wing coups have been far fewer and typically established democracy, while right-wing coups have established dictatorships.
So even if we used Venezuela as a datasource to make claims about left-wing and right-wing politics, the right still comes out looking the least democratic.
The mass murder and displacement of Native Americans were undeniably imperialist atrocities committed in the name of expansion and resource acquisition. While these acts were often intertwined with the economic interests of settlers and colonial powers, labeling them purely as capitalist atrocities overlooks the overtly imperial and state-sanctioned policies driving the violence. In contrast, if one wants an example of how capitalist motivations morphed into oppressive systems after formal slavery ended, the convict lease system post–Civil War in the United States is perhaps more directly relevant.
Ultimately, one of the fundamental differences between liberal democracy and communism is the emphasis on individual rights and freedoms. Liberal democracies, at least in principle, protect personal freedoms and encourage pluralism—though they may fall short in practice. Communism, as historically implemented, has often allowed totalitarian governments to intervene in virtually every aspect of life indefinitely, subordinating individual liberty to a perceived “collective” good. While each ideology can be corrupted, the core values of liberal democracy tend toward preserving the individual, whereas many forms of communism have subordinated the individual to the state, often with brutal consequences. Not sure you have rebuked this component in your piece.