Communism's murderous idealism helped lead to its end

In the aftermath of the fall of Soviet communism, many Western intellectuals believe capitalism is the root of all evil. There has been a long tradition of such animosity among Western intellectuals who gave the benefit of doubt or outright sympathy to political systems that denounced the profit motive and proclaimed their commitment to create a more humane and egalitarian society, and unselfish human beings. The failure of communist systems to improve human nature doesn't mean that all such attempts are doomed, but improvements will be modest and are unlikely to be attained by coercion.

Soviet communism collapsed for many reasons, including the economic inefficiency that resulted in chronic shortages of food and consumer goods, and pervasive propaganda that routinely misrepresented the gap between theory and practice, promise and fulfillment. The political will of leaders behind the Iron Curtain diminished over time -- in part because of Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 revelations about Joseph Stalin's crimes but also because of their own experiences of the system's flaws. They no longer had the will to crush dissent. In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev allowed new revelations of the errors and evils of communism to be aired, further undermining communism's legitimacy.

The failure of Soviet communism confirms that humans motivated by lofty ideals are capable of inflicting great suffering with a clear conscience. But communism's collapse also suggests that under certain conditions people can tell the difference between right and wrong. The embrace and rejection of communism correspond to the spectrum of attitudes ranging from deluded and destructive idealism to the realization that human nature precludes utopian social arrangements and that the careful balancing of ends and means is the essential precondition of creating and preserving a decent society.

Hollander is a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an associate of Harvard's Davis Center of Russian and Eurasian Studies. His paper “Reflections on Communism 20 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall” is being published by the Cato Institute.

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