Do you have evidence for this? In my experience, the non-mainstream left (by which I mean the various micro-parties to the left of the Labour parties) tend to suggest that the Soviets were 'state capitalists' who don't represent the reality of true Communism represents. They tend to have endless arguments with the Sparticans (sp?) who describe the communist states as 'deformed' (and hence fixable).
Anyone who's ever been involved with the far left would take a
very deep breath when asked a question like this. There are almost as many views on this stuff as there are far-Lefties, and my comment was my view, rather than a party line (not that I've been "far left" - by any standards other than American standards - for many years).
My point re. the left rejecting the reality of Communism is a pretty general one, though. Of course there are exceptions, but there are few people left in the world who would describe themselves, without qualification, as "communists". Fewer still who would hold out any hope for North Korea, or seek to defend the Soviet Union retrospectively. The remaining quasi-revolutionary leftists are not considered credible by many lefties, precisely because of their lack of concrete vision for what their marvellous post-revolutionary state would actually be like. This credibility gap on the hard left, coupled with the shift of centre-left parties towards the centre (or, in the case of the Labour Party in Britain, the right) has left many socialists disenfranchised.
There's actually no contradiction between the "state capitalist" argument and the "deformed workers' state" argument. Mainstream far-lefties (if that's not a contradiction in terms) would hold both opinions - the USSR and China would be "state capitalist" while North Korea is the "deformed workers' state". In any case, I'm not in 100% agreement with you concerning the definition of a "deformed workers' state". The general view would be that such a state was "fixable" through root-and-branch reform, effectively a new revolution, rather than tinkering. It would be necessary to destroy the party infrastructure, for one thing. And you'd have to be very optimistic indeed to suggest that these kind of states do not represent the
reality of communism. I can't give you statistics, obviously, but certainly I have not encountered many Marxists or "post-Marxists" who have much faith in this model. This was not the case 50 years ago, but it is now.
Again, do you have any evidence for that, other than Animal Farm?
Well, I'm referring to Socialists rather than Communists here. As someone perched on the left wing of the British Labour Party, I can point to the public utterances of others who share my views: try to find more than one or two positive statements about the Soviet Union by any semi-electable Socialists from the 20th century - certainly since the reality of Stalinism became public knowledge - and you'll be looking a long time.
As for the far left - for most of the late 20th century, the far left was split between "Tankies" (i.e. supporters of the USSR, so named for their solution to everything: "send the tanks in"), and Trots (followers of Trotsky, who loathed the USSR and whose hopeful motto was "Neither Washington nor Moscow, but international socialism!"). The latter far outnumbered the former, and the only Tankie still doing the rounds politically right now (in Britain) is the lamentable George Galloway. So the anti-USSR voice comprised centre-lefties, the Labour left (which would have included Orwell, if he was that easy to pigeonhole) and the Trots. This would represent the vast majority of left wingers, and this was the logic behind my comment. It was only ever tools-of-Moscow like the Communist Party of Great Britain, and its equivalents elsewhere, who were apologists for Stalin and his successors.
I'm wondering if you could expand on that idea. Was the USSR really the best attempt to date to make Communism a reality and that the way they did it was the only practical way it could be tried? I'm curious because academic Communists often complain that "true" Communism has never been tried and I've wondered if they should perhaps think about why that is.
See, I'm anti-communist, and I can only give you my take on this. Which is that communism, by its very nature, requires authoritarianism, and as someone who finds authoritarian politics distasteful at the very least, I can't imagine a Communist state which I would find acceptable.
But what constitutes the "reality of Communism" is a separate question from whether the USSR represented the "best attempt to date" to establish a Communist state. An academic Communist complains about the Soviet Union because it was ideologically impure, and soon became a distorted parody of "true" Communism. I would argue that even a "true" Communist state
established by revolutionary means would be impossible to sustain without the kind of violence and authoritarianism I find so revolting. This is why I mentioned Marx - his view was that the failure of capitalism would lead to socialism, which would then evolve gradually (and naturally) into communism.
Transforming a capitalist state into a communist state overnight is a doomed enterprise: history would seem to agree. This is also the main reason why "true Communism" has never been attempted. "True Communism" is not a state which can be
imposed on the public. I think it's best understood as a Utopian vision - at best - rather than a battleplan, which is why I'm a reformist rather than a revolutionary (that and the fact that I'm not a 16-year-old poseur). However good one's intentions, if one found oneself in the vanguard of a Communist revolution, it would not be long before the tanks came out. That's just the way it is. Communism is bad news for everyone.
I think a lot of modern communists would point to Cuba as the closest thing yet to a successful Communist state. Now, Cuba is not quite the hell-hole it's portrayed as in US propaganda, but I wouldn't want to live there myself. And if they're honest, neither would its most enthusiastic supporters. This tells you something, right?
