In fact, Communist China was not only showing the rest of the world how a country could have impressively high economic growth rates year after year, but was actually using some of the results of this growth to invest in capitalist countries, including the USA. This has been one of the great contradictions of recent years.
This is a book about contrasts and contradictions. It is a book about dream — communism — that for too many people became a nightmare. Millions suffered physical and psychological horrors in the name of what was supposed to be the construction of the fairest and most desirable type of society ever known to humanity.
While, formally, 5 Communist states remain, the 2 successful ones (China and Vietnam) are so largely because they have jettisoned many of the original basic tenets of communism and are in some important areas — notably the economy — already post-communist.
One of the contradictions in communism most frequently highlighted is that between the theory and the practice. While this is to some extent justified, it also needs to be borne in mind that, as with most concepts, there is no single theory of communism. Rather, there are numerous theories and variations on a theme — and some versions of the theory are more compatible with the practice than others.
First, however, it is important to note that — in the cases of Marx, Lenin, and Mao at least — the interest in communism was to no small extent the result of a profound alienation from the existing system and a desire for a better world.
Marx was fascinated by these various revolutionary situations, and believed he could discern patterns in historical development. These patterns were formed by reactions to events and developments; once the reaction had occurred, there were in turn reactions to this. Marx’s approach to history has thus been called a dialectical one, meaning that he saw history progressing through conflict, or the interplay between actions and reactions — while his conviction that there are identifiable laws to the march of history that has led many to label him an historicist, and his approach to history historical materialism. This last term requires explanation.
In their attempts to explain the nature of reality, philosophers are often classified as either idealists or materialists. The core of the first of these terms is the word “idea.” In this approach, the world around us comprises manifestations of concepts or ideas; it is the ideas that constitutes reality, not their worldly manifestations. The best-known idealist is the German philosopher Hegel. While Marx was heavily influenced and impressed by Hegel, he adopted a fundamentally different approach to reality. For Marx, the physical — or material (hence materialism) — world around us is reality, and our ideas and perceptions are determined by our relationship to that reality. How we see that world — how we interpret material reality — varies according to who we are, and when and where we live. For instance, one’s interpretation or conception of what a city is would be very different if one lived in New York in the 21st century from what it would have been to someone living in Florence in the 15th century or Athens in ancient Greece. But Marx believed that there was more than just temporal and geographic dimensions for explaining differing perceptions. In addition, he argued, a person’s position in society affects the way that person perceives the world. For example, the owners of a factory would see the factory in a different light from how a worker in that factory would see it. For the former, it might represent personal achievement, prestige, and high income; for the latter, it might represent alienation, and hard work for a meagre income.
He defines class in terms of a person’s relationship to the means of production; crudely, this means that most people’s class position is determined primarily by whether or not they own property, particularly property that can generate wealth.
Marx had said little about political parties, in part because they had not been as salient a feature in his day as they became in the 20th century. But Lenin believed that political consciousness of its exploited situation would be slow to develop in the Russian working class, and hence developed his theory of the vanguard party. Lenin argued that some people are much more politically aware than others, and should assume responsibility for leading society to socialism.
Lenin’s theory of imperialism is particularly relevant here because it ultimately led to the justification of a significant change to Marx’s approach — one that was subsequently used by revolutionaries in many part of the world to justify their seizure of power in situations Marx himself would have considered quite inappropriate. In a long analysis of the reasons for the outbreak of WW1, Lenin maintained that imperialism was “the highest stage of capitalism.” The world’s major empires had essentially divided up the world between them and, the only way individual imperial powers could now continue to expand in their search for resources, new markets, and cheap labor was to seize colonies from other imperial powers. Lenin saw this constant drive for expansion and profit as the basis of the conflict between major European powers that constituted the Great War. The relevance of this to the development of Communism is that Lenin used this theory to justify the Bolshevik takeover of power in Russia, despite his awareness that, according to classical Marxist analysis, Russia was not yet ready for a socialist revolution. He argued that Russia constituted the weakest link in a chain of capitalist countries; if the chain were to be broken at its weakest point, the whole edifice of international capitalism would collapse.
A final point about Lenin’s contribution to communist theory is that he drew a sharper distinction than Marx did between socialism and communism. Marx often used the terms interchangeably, although he did sometimes describe the former as the early phase of the latter. But Lenin was more explicit that the distribution of wealth under socialism was to be on a different basis from that under communism; whereas the guiding principle under the latter was to be “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need,” under the former it was to be “from each according to their ability, to each according to their labor.” This distinction has been used to justify sometimes significant differences in income in Communist states. Lenin also placed more emphasis than Marx did on the need of a strong state immediately following a socialist revolution, which subsequently played in to the hands of Communists in power.
Lenin died in January 1924, and a salient feature of Communist systems — their inability or unwillingness to introduce formal leadership succession arrangements — immediately became obvious.
Stalin’s image until then as a moderate compromiser was in marked contrast to that of Trotsky, who was seen as brilliant but often hotheaded and ruthless intellectual. Stalin’s conciliatory image was ironic since, once he had consolidated power, he emerged as one of the cruelest dictators in history.
Although it would be stretching a point to argue that 2 further features of Stalinism — high level of state terror and a personality cult — were part of communist theory, they did become salient features of Communist practice in many other countries.
Communist theory is ambiguous, often incomplete, and sometimes overtly contradictory. This is partly because the various theorists were writing at different times about different conditions and different personal situations; not being a political leader himself, Marx did not have to justify his actions — unlike Lenin, Stalin, or Mao. It is partly because they were sometimes interpreting the past, sometimes analyzing the present, sometimes discussing the near-to-medium-term future, and occasionally speculating on the long-term goal of a communist society. In part it is also because, like most theorists, they were not completely consistent throughout their lives. And in part, it is because they were sometimes writing from a more normative perspective (i.e. what should be), at other times from a more descriptive one (i.e. what is).
Marx himself mostly tended towards a deterministic interpretation of history, meaning that he believed history had to work its way through its various stages — the actions and reactions of the dialectic. While he believed that Communists could and should help to keep the pace of history change moving, Marx was wary of what might happen if they attempted artificially to accelerate it too much.
But the Russian populace was tired of WW1 and the various privations this involved, and Lenin’s simple but powerful slogan — “Peace, Land, Bread” — appealed to large numbers of Russians in both the cities and the villages.
Perhaps ironically, many of the senior Bolsheviks considered Trotsky too clever — and therefore potentially dangerous — to be the supreme leader. In contrast, Stalin had appeared to be more conciliatory; one of his leading biographer describes Stalin’s image at this time as “the man of golden mean.” Moreover, Stalin’s policy of Socialism in One Country held far more appeal to most Soviet citizens and Communists than Trotsky’s concept of permanent revolution.
Since it was to be built in one country, and since the rest of the world was basically hostile to that country’s system, he would have to construct his model using only domestic building blocks. It was in this context that the USSR introduced 5-year plans, industrialization, collectivization — and, eventually, the terror machine.
Opposition and criticism had by now built up at various levels in society, including the highest levels of the Communist leadership. But rather than retreat or compromise, Stalin now opted to deal with opposition in a manner that similar to that which Hitler had been using in Germany — the use of extreme arbitrary coercion against “enemies,” real and imagined. So was unleashed one of the darkest periods in the history of Communist power, the Stalin Terror.
But there is one other meeting that was crucial to the future spread of Communism, and to which the USA was not a party; this was a private meeting between Churchill and Stalin that took place in Moscow in October 1944. It was at this meeting that the notorious “percentage agreement” was reached; this agreement was crucial to the future of Eastern Europe.
The war had destabilized many countries in the region, and it was in this confusion that the Communists, who were typically better organized than many of their political rivals, were able to seize the reins of power.
Khrushchev finally secured his position after the defeat of the so-called “anti-party group” in June 1957, so that it had taken more than 4 years of struggle for the new leadership to emerge. This period was one of tension and upheaval in many parts of the Communist world.
Castro had not originally been a Communist, and certainly was not one when he led the revolutionary overthrow of the corrupt Batista regime in Cuba in 1959. But his conflicts with both Cuba’s own bourgeoisie and the USA led him to look for a powerful supporter; despite initial reluctance, or at least hesitation, Moscow soon agreed to back Castro, who declared himself to be a recent convert to communism.
The Great Leap also led to a temporary decline in Mao’s position; the once charismatic leader who had been so popular with so many Chinese peasants was now struggling.
On 21 August 1968, troops from USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland entered Prague. Communists were once again invading a Communist state on the grounds that they had a duty to impose control over it for allegedly threatening the international Communist movement; this approach now became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.
At roughly the same time as the new leadership team came to power in the USSR, Mao had begun to claw back his position in China. Having been sidelined to some extent in the early 1960s, he now made a renewed effort to become the undisputed senior leader again. It was in this situation that he unleashed the Cultural Revolution.
In many ways, the Cultural Revolution was the outcome of a power struggle, which in turn represented a clash of views on the best way to organize Chinese society. Mao maintained that China had become too bureaucratic and hierarchical, whereas Liu argued that it was necessary to have professionalism and hierarchy if the country was to progress in an orderly and efficient manner. The military and a new quasi-military group of young revolutionaries known as the Red Guards generally supported Mao, while Liu’s base was more in the party and the state bureaucracy.
However, Gorbachev soon realized that one of the major obstacles to economic reform was the central state bureaucracy, which had largely succeeded in blocking the implementation of major economic initiatives at least since Brezhnev and Kosygin had attempted to reform the economy back in 1965. Gorbachev believed that the most powerful weapon against a conservative, entrenched bureaucracy was the masses, so that he now adopted two further policies — openness and democratization. These encouraged ordinary citizens to speak openly about what was bothering them; Gorbachev hoped that their main target would be the bureaucrats.
Unfortunately, encouraging the masses to criticize the bureaucracy in Communist states could soon get out of hand — as Chinese leaderships had already discovered; Mao’s “Let a hundred flowers bloom” campaign in 1956-7 and Deng’s “Democracy Wall” policy of 1978-9 had both resulted in far more criticism of the Communist system than the leadership had anticipated. But unlike Mao or Deng, Gorbachev did not reassert central control when popular criticism went further than he would have preferred. They went far beyond just the contemporary bureaucracy; once the lid had been opened, almost any aspect of Soviet politics, history, and society became fair game for public debate. One of the most dangerous aspects of this venting of mass frustration was that nationalists in various parts of the Soviet Union took advantage of the new freedom to push for autonomy, and later independence.
Initially, Gorbachev’s approach made him very popular, both at home and abroad. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was symbolically highly significant, since it was seen by many in the Communist world as a sign that, at least, the Soviets really would allow countries to go their own way; the Sinatra Doctrine (named after the American crooner’s hit “My Way”) had replaced the Brezhnev Doctrine. When Gorbachev raised no objections to Hungarian and Polish proposals to introduce a form of pluralism into their systems, citizens throughout most of Communist Eastern Europe began to believe that they would at last be able to challenge their own Communist governments without having to fear a Soviet or Warsaw Pact invasion. One by one, starting with Hungary and Poland in 1989, the Communist systems of Eastern Europe collapsed.
As the vanguard, the Communist party was to play the “leading role” in the political system, while the state was responsible for passing laws and implementing these. Unfortunately, the party often in practice duplicated the roles that were supposed to be the responsibility of the state, resulting in a confused and opaque political process. While Communist leaderships were often aware of this, and warned against the party duplicating or substituting itself for the state, practice was often less clear cut than the theory of division of labor between the party and state. For this reason, it is appropriate to refer to Communist systems as party-state complexes.
Despite their different names, Communist parties were all structured according to the principle of democratic centralism. It is important to note which is the noun and which is the modifier here; the term stood for a form of centralism, not a type of democracy. In the last (1986) Party Statute of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, democratic centralism was defined as follows:
- Election of all leading Party bodies, from the lowest to the highest.
- Periodic reports of Party bodies to their Party organizations and to higher bodies.
- Strict Party discipline and subordination of the minority to the majority.
- The decision of higher bodies are unconditionally binding on lower bodies.
- Collectivity in the work of all organizations and leading organs of the party and personal responsibility of every Communist for the fulfillment of his or her duties and party assignments.
In practice, this set of principles meant that the centre took all the important decisions, which lower levels of the party were then to accept and implement unquestioningly.
The Party Congress was a large body — most had memberships in the thousands — that typically met only once every 5 or so years for a few days. Its tasks included approving the reports from smaller central bodies about how the country had progressed since the previous Congress; formally deciding on the general direction of the party and country over the next quinquennium; and electing the Central Committee. In practice, the members of the Congress were usually told who to vote for; this was not a body that challenged the smaller central agencies.
The Central Committee was much smaller than the Congress, typically numbering a few hundred members. It usually met twice a year on average, and for a day or two at a time. At those sessions, the Central Committee would discuss either a specific topic — perhaps the economy or foreign policy or education — or else a range of issues. The Central Committee was also responsible for electing the real centers of power in any Communist system, the Secretariat and the Politburo.
On one level, the Secretariat normally played the role that might be expected of a secretariat in any kind of system. Thus it would prepare the agendas for and provide information to the supreme decision-making body, the Politburo. Like any body that prepares agendas and provides information, the Secretariat enjoyed considerable power to influence decisions — both in recommending what issues were discussed by the Politburo and in deciding what information was provided to assist the Politburo members to reach their decisions. Indeed, it is testimony to the enormous power of the average party Secretariat that the person who was in almost any Communist system the leader was the First or General Secretary. Endorsing the point made above concerning substitution and duplication, many secretariats were structured in such a way that secretaries “shadowed” one or more ministers in the state machinery. One other task primarily performed by the Secretariat — administration of the nomenklatura system — will be considered below, since it was sufficiently important to deserve consideration in its own right.
Politburos were small bodies — usually between 10 and 25 members, depending on the country and period, and whether or not one includes only full (voting) members or also candidate (non-voting) members. Typically, they would meet once a week, or sometimes once a fortnight, and would make all the most important decisions for society.
One of the party’s primary tasks was to set goals for society. In theory, it was the party’s task to set long-term goals, such as industrialization or Communism. Increasingly, as the years went by, leaderships tended to focus more on short- and medium-term goals, such as the economic plan for the next year or the next 5 years.
But the party was also responsible for ensuring that the goals it set were reached — goal attainment. The party’s role in this was supposed to be largely supervisory, ensuring that state bodies implemented the tasks the party had set.
The 4th function of the party — recruitment — was arguably the most powerful weapon in the party’s armory for controlling society. This power was exercised above all through the nomenklatura system, an understanding of which is vital if one is to grasp how Communists kept control over society. The nomenklatura was a secret list kept by the Secretariats at each level of the party, and included all the posts at that administrative level considered important by the party. This list included not only positions within the party, but also in councils, enterprises, educational establishments, the police force, the trade unions, women’s organizations, youth organizations, the media, the military, and elsewhere. The party was to be directly involved in hiring individuals to or firing from what were identified as the most important posts on the nomenklatura, and was to be kept informed about such hiring and firing in the case of posts considered of secondary significance. While certain realities — such as the absence of limitless pools of appropriate people for a given position — mean that the party did not have an unlimited capacity to replace whoever it wanted in any important post in society, the nomenklatura system did provide it with enormous power to move people in and out of key positions virtually at will. The nomenklatura system was the party’s trump card.
It is an irony of history that parties committed to the eventual emergence of highly egalitarian societies were in many ways among the most elitist in the world. Not only were Communist intolerant of other parties — either banning them altogether as in the USSR or Romania, or else keeping them under strict control — but they also adopted an exclusive approach to party membership. This conundrum becomes easier to understand if Lenin’s notion of the Communist party as the “vanguard” is recalled. The party was never to include just anyone who wanted to join, but rather was to comprise the politically most aware members of society, those who best understood the logic of history and who would devote themselves to the achievement of first socialism and then communism.
A concluding point about Communist parties relates to Milovan Djilas’ claim that the constituted the ruling class. In that Communist parties did control society, the term ruling is unexceptionable. But since the classical Marxist notion of class is based on ownership (property), the term ruling class is on balance an inappropriate one for Communist systems. One the one hand, the Communists’ control of the means of production can be used as the basis for arguing that they did constituted a class. On the other hand, while senior Communists were typically wealthier than average citizens and had access to many perks, they did not formally own the means of production. Moreover, and with some notable exceptions, nor were they generally able to transmit their privileges to their children.
If the Communist party was to guide or lead society, the tasks of the state in Communist countries included passing and implementing laws, interpreting and applying those laws, and defending the country. It thus comprised the legislature, ministries, local councils, the courts, the police (including the secret police), and the military.
Some commentators have described Communist legislatures as parliaments, but this is in almost all cases misleading. The term “parliament” derives from an Old French word for to talk or speak, and in the English language usually implies a national political space in which discussions take place, as well as a legislature. But Lenin’s ban on factionalism within the Communist party was soon expanded into state structures, and free discussion was not generally a feature of Communist legislatures.
First, since Communists in general believed not in market economics but in state control of the economy, there were far more ministries dealing with economic issues than there are in capitalist systems. Not only were there ministries for each sector and branch of an economy, but often even for sub-branches (e.g. various types of engineering in the USSR). Moreover, since most Communists placed great emphasis on the need to have economic plans for future development, there was a state planning agency, equivalent to a super-ministry.
A key aspect of the rule of law is that the courts should be able to enjoy a high degree of independence from the more overtly partisan elements of the political system. No such expectation existed in Communist systems. The primary loyalty expected of courts was to the Communist system, not to the law. In practice, those brought before the courts were in most states usually assumed to be guilty, not innocent. And the notion that citizens would be able to appeal to a supreme court against unfair treatment by “the system” was virtually unknown.
The heads of the security police were typically very powerful, often having a seat on the Politburo: in fact, former head of the KGB Yuri Andropov rose to become the USSR’s supreme leader.
Given the essentially one-party and centrally directed nature of Communist systems, it might seem incongruous that they had elections. In order to understand the purpose of these, it is necessary to jettison Western notions of an election as an activity designed primarily to give voters a choice of candidates and parties for political office. Although several Communist states began to introduce elements of choice into their elections in the 1980s this was still ultimately under the control of the Communist party in the vast majority of cases. Thus even non-Communist candidates would almost always have been carefully scrutinized by the Communists before being permitted to run for office. Moreover, since the Communists usually had (unacknowledged) quotas for representation in national legislatures — by gender, class, ethnicity — there were several structural constraints on electoral freedom anyway.
So what was the point of Communist elections? First, several Communist states saw no problem in allowing voters in a limited (i.e. non-threatening) choice. Such choice as did exist was usually between types of personality — for example, between a younger, more dynamic but less experienced candidate and an older, less dynamic but more experienced and better-known one. Thus, voters did have an opportunity to express mildly conflicting preferences in some Communist states, albeit usually more so in local than in national elections. Moreover, some Communist states had turnover requirements, meaning that a certain percentage of parliamentarians or local concillors had to be replaced on a regular basis; elections were a way of achieving this that looked reasonably democratic.
Third, it must be remembered that the vast majority of Communist states had experienced little or no real democracy before the Communists took over, so that citizen experiences and expectations were different from those of citizens in established liberal democracies. Some Communists were genuine in their belief that elections were a way of education the mass population about political participation, even if this process was carefully controlled. Finally, elections were intended to assist in the legitimation of Communist systems — both to their own populations, and as a way of making it more difficult for anti-Communists in other countries to claim there was no democracy in Communist systems.
After all, national elections were for deputies to legislatures that rarely witnessed real debate. Moreover, all state agencies were officially subordinate to the Communist party anyway, and ordinary voters had no say over who their Communist leaders would be.
Two key features of a genuine civil society are that it organizes itself (i.e. it is not managed by the state), and that its existence is recognized — considered legitimate — by the state. In the absence of either or both of these variables, there is no real civil society.
They identify 6 salient features of a totalitarian system that can be summarized as a single chiliastic (i.e. geared towards long-term peace and happiness) ideology; a single mass party, typically led by a dictator; state terror; a near monopoly of mass communications; a near monopoly of weapons; and a centrally planned economy. It should be obvious that a number of these features applied to Communist systems. However, the extent to which they applied varied by time and place. It is therefore advisable to adopt a relativistic approach when using the term “totalitarian.” In other words, we can say that Country A was more totalitarian in the 1950s than it was in the 1980s, but still more totalitarian in the 1980s than Country B was.
Ownership in the countryside was more complex. Some farms were completely owned by the state, and hence were called state farms; the people working on these had similar conditions to their counterparts working in factories. Thus, they received guaranteed minimum incomes, irrespective of natural conditions, and were entitled to state pensions. A second type of arrangement was the collective farm. Whereas the state owned the land in collective farms, the machinery, buildings, seeds, animals, and so on belonged collectively to those who worked the land, the collective farmers. Their income was more variable, subject inter alia to the whims of the weather, and many were not guaranteed state retirement pensions.
Communists claimed that CPEs had several advantages over market economies. One was that they permitted conscious steering of the economy in whichever direction was considered most beneficial, and for rational distribution and prioritization — by sector, branch, region, class, and ethnicity. Another claimed advantage was that CPEs could produce stable, fair, and rational prices, based more on the cost of inputs (including labor) and use value than on what Communists saw as the whims of the market. A third putative advantage was that CPEs were able to resist external pressures, including from what is nowadays called globalization. A final claimed benefit of CPEs was that they were able to ensure full employment.
Much pricing in Communist economies was far from rational; it was not to any meaningful extent based on that cost of labor or usefulness, nor did it tell producers what was needed.
Similarly, the quality of goods was often poor because prices were not sending appropriate messages.
While full or near full employment might be seen as socially desirable, it often resulted in labor market distortions. Harsh as this might be on individuals, dynamic economies need flexible workforces, so that excessively secure workplace arrangements can work against the long-term interest of society. The fact that Communist economies sometimes experienced labor shortages in some sectors and branches while workers were underemployed or engaged in tedious work in others endorses this point.
The attempts to shield Communist economies form the international market compounded the problem of insufficient competition, with all the negative knock-on effects this had on quality, choice, and price.
But if it is accepted that Marx was generally more inclined towards determinism than voluntarism, then this argument that countries have to proceed through various stages of economic development and be predominantly industrialized and urbanized before they can be ready for socialism and communism means that the Chinese position can be defended. The growth and development of the Chinese economy since the late 70s has not only been impressive, but has also allowed it to make substantial progress towards catching up with the West.
People who have never lived under Communism often find it difficult to understand why there remains nostalgia for the Communist period among elements of the population in many countries. After all, the political system was in practice elitist and basically undemocratic, most consumer goods were in short supply and often of poor quality, and there had been a terror regime in many countries. In order to understand this nostalgia, it is necessary to explore some of the more positive aspects of Communist power, in particular its social welfare policies. But an understanding of Communist societies also requires consideration of some of the social cleavages in particular countries, and how Communists attempted to deal with these.
Healthcare systems in many Communist countries were highly corrupt, with patients knowing they needed to offer bribes if they were to receive high-quality and timely treatment. In a sense, this was an unofficial form of healthcare privatization. Contrary to what might be expected, most systems were also very hierarchical, with much better facilities available to members of the elite than to ordinary citizens; these were the so-called close facilities.
However, many people might prefer boring to unemployment. But from society’s perspective, the commitment to full employment discouraged efficiency, which contributed to the long-term decline of the most Communist economies from the 1970s onwards. Another negative aspect of Communists’ full employment policies as that citizens were not only guaranteed employment but also required to work. If an individual wanted to try their luck making a living as an artist, for instance, and was not an approved artist of the state, they were likely to fall foul of the authorities. And in many cases, especially in the years immediately following graduation from a tertiary-level educational institution, citizens were required to work in locations determined by the state, not of their own choice.
But the high percentages of female representation in Communist systems were achieved through having quota systems — unlike the situation in most Western systems, where seats are allocated on the basis of competitive elections.
As a country rich in natural resources, including oil, this arrangement — which was adopted in 1975 — suited the Soviet Union. But some of its resource-poor East European neighbors resented having the new system essentially imposed on them, especially when world oil prices came down and they were still required to pay the Comecon lagged (and hence higher) prices.
In June 1959, the Soviets broke a promise they had made to supply China with nuclear weapons, which Beijing saw as a major slight, and which encouraged Chinese ideologists to intensify their criticisms of the USSR. This reached a pitch in 1960, when the Chinese published a series of strongly worded articles in which they accused the Soviets of having renounced Leninism. The Soviets responded by abandoning a number of major projects in China, leaving bridges and building half-constructed. The Sino-Soviet rift was now very public.
Most empires exist at least in part to enhance the economic strength of the imperial power. But the Soviet Empire existed more for ideological and political reasons than for economic advantage. Indeed, parts of the empire — even of the inner empire — had a higher standard of living than Russia itself. Conversely, the fact that China did not seek to create an empire in the way the USSR did helps to explain its continued existence.
Basically, the theory states that oppression alone does not lead to revolution; if it did, there would be almost constant revolution in many parts of the world. Rather, it is when a leadership raises the hopes and expectations of the masses, which then run ahead of the capacity of that leadership to deliver — i.e. citizens become frustrated — that a revolution is most likely to occur. In many ways, this fits well with what happened in both the USSR and much of Eastern Europe, since Gorbachev raised expectations that then exceeded the Communist systems’ capacity to deliver.
Some Communist states were able to legitimize the political system on the basis of the charisma of a revolutionary leader, such as Lenin in the USSR, Mao in China, and Ho in Vietnam. But over time, more bureaucratic leaders came to power, so that charisma was no longer a possible source of legitimacy. Moreover, since Communist states did not respect the concepts of either the rule of law or democracy as they are commonly understood, they could not legitimize themselves on the basis of legal rationality.
Legitimacy was not in fact a major priority to most Communist states in the early years of Communist rule; coercion dominated legitimacy as the primary source of political power. As the decades passed, however, the gradual moves away from coercion in most Communist states saw many of them taking greater notice of the need to legitimize themselves to their own people. One way in which they sought to do this is on the basis of goal-rational legitimation. Communists claimed the right to rule — legitimacy — on the grounds that they knew best how to take society to socialism and then communism quickly and efficiently.
One other possible legitimation mode for the Communists was system performance, meaning that they would seek the right to rule by delivering what the people want.
In short, most Communist leaderships had by the 1980s essentially run out of legitimation possibilities. Since they had also by then largely moved away from the arbitrary coercion (terror) that had typified earlier stages of Communist rule, they had exhausted all their possibilities for claiming their right to rule and exercising power. They had reached the dead end.
The way the Communist authorities appealed to national pride before and during the 2008 Olympic Games represented a significant recent Chinese example of this.
It is worth recalling that Marx had argued that socialist revolutions will occur only in highly developed states. He also maintained that such revolutions would have to occur in a number of states — there would have to be an international revolution — if they were not to be defeated by those they were seeking to replace.