Fall of Socialism: Tragedy of the Commons?

In summer of 1972, hitch-hiking through East Europe I met two lovely young women at the Marx-Engels Platz in East Berlin; they had just graduated from the Humboldt University. One thing led to another and three of us decided to travel together for a bit. While strolling the streets of Poznan in Poland I noticed that at lunch time restaurants were jam-packed with workers. They had plates full of large chunks of boiled pork, boiled potatoes or cabbage; and, large bottles of whiskey. And no one was in a hurry to leave! I asked my travel companions, what was going on? “Job security, you know”, was their response.

When asked what they will do now that they finished college, both told me that the government will soon assign them jobs and they were taking a break while waiting for the posting to come through. I asked if they had any choice in what job they wanted to do, the reply was that yes, but within limits. Then they educated me: “Look, since we were born, virtually all our needs have been taken care by the state. So, if the state assigns us jobs where we are needed, it is our obligation to follow, don’t you think?”

Once in their apartment in East Berlin, within walking distance from the Wall, looking through a western fashion magazine, Claudia, the more animated of the two, suddenly threw it down, yelling (I suppose at the editor of the magazine), damn your fashion, sex and freedom…It was frustration - she wanted freedom, fashion,.. I could tell…Her friend Anna sat quietly - this was not new to her, she told me.

About 20 years later, with tears in eyes watching on TV whisky soaked Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank of the Red Army declaring the end of the USSR, I was reminded of the workers in socialist countries enjoying extended lunch without fear of getting fired! The impact of unintended consequences turned out to be fateful. One is left to wonder if socialism’s ‘successes’ caused its ‘failure’. Having a bit of familiarity with the history of the USSR, especially about the struggle and sacrifice went in its creation, I was stunned by the absence of any resistance to the dismantling going on and the historical failure.

Socialist societies seem to have met the fate of the “commons” Garrett Hardin hypothesised in a much discussed article “The Tragedy of the Commons” published in the journal “Science” (New Series, Vol. 162, No. 3859; Dec. 13, 1968; Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science) why such systems cannot work. Meant to explain problems of governing collectively owned resources, especially natural resources, the implications for all such entities, small or large is inescapable. A socialist society is deliberately created by replacing private ownership of the means of production with collective ownership: it is a constructed commons. Simply put, Hardin’s hypothesis contends that if everyone is responsible for managing the commons, in effect, no one is. Furthermore, if everyone benefits from something, each will try to maximise his/her personal gain disregarding others’. ‘The tragedy of the commons occurs when individuals neglect the well-being of society in the pursuit of personal gain.’Is selfishness human nature? We recognise it as a product of complex combinations of biology (genetics), nature of society one grows up in, including families, schools, etc., and therefore changeable. However, apparently 70+ years of socialism was not sufficient to change what has formed over the long period of living in class divide, antagonistic social environment.

Hardin’s theory was not disproved but exceptions to it were identified and theorised by economist Elizabeth Ostrom. For her work she was awarded Noble Prize in 2009 - only woman to receive the prize in economics so far. From extensive field work, she demonstrated, for example that “When local users of a forest have a long-term perspective, they are more likely to monitor each other’s use of the land, developing rules for behaviour,” and thereby protecting the commonly held resource. Commenting on her work, economist Joseph Stiglitz said “Conservatives used the Tragedy of the Commons to argue for property rights, and that efficiency was achieved as people were thrown off the commons… Ostrom has demonstrated existence of social control mechanisms that regulate the use of the commons without having to resort to property rights” (see:http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-victory-of-the-commons). Incidentally, Hardin later agreed to Ostrom’s contention.

Especially in the USSR and in China, enthusiasm for the revolutions for a period immediately after were palpable; optimism pervaded, and that helped with facing the hardship of everyday living in a situation where material conditions -productive capability of these societies - were no match for the pent-up demand and ambitious expectations for improving the lives of ordinary people. In the sequence of social evolution, socialism is the next, higher stage; in real terms, better material conditions, i.e., better life & living conditions were implied and expected. What people actually experienced, especially since the 70s, lack of incentive, positive and negative seem to have been a recurrent problem leading to low productivity, shoddy quality of the products and indifferent or rude customer service. Stagnation of the economy, and allure of consumerism advertised next door by the competition did not make it any easier for the deprived. This eroded early enthusiasms; when the end came, people were tired and seem to find no reason to come to its defense.

What evolved in the socialist countries, essentially corroborated by Ostrom’s findings. She found that the commons succeed only when the beneficiaries are vested in its preservation and actively participate in doing so. Lack of public participation in managing the constructed commons became the Achilles’ heel in the socialist societies, where more often than not, party and the state apparatus decided what went on with very little input from the public.As pointed out by economist Nazrul Islam, even the trade unions had been reduced to trivial role in what was supposed to be a Workers’ State [see: What is after Capitalism? (in Bengali); published by Shamaj Gobeshona Kendro, Dhaka; 2016; p 49.]. Socialist democracy would have played a critical role involving citizens in the management of the state.

As long as (physical) being (genetic imperative, according to evolutionary biology) involve competition because of insufficiency of provisions, the dialectic of mutual dependence and alienation manifest as class struggle. But, if it becomes possible to eliminate the insufficiency, then the reason for the conflict is also eliminated and humans can become free. In capitalism Marx saw that potential, and hence the realistic prospect of transformation to the next higher stage, the constructed commons. Those who can make this potential into a reality are the producers of the needed provisions, the working class. He saw in them the leading role in the transition, because they stand to gain the most. However, they have to be aware of this historic role - have to develop class consciousness - before they can lead the transition.

A critical element in Marx’s view is the link between the predecessor and the successor stages in the social evolutionary process. He wrote “No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society” (Preface to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”; 1859). Before socialist society can be built, capitalist system has to mature and exhaust itself of any further potential for growth. That high level of productive forces is to become the basis of socialist economy under social ownership.None of the social revolutions which were or became purposed as socialist revolution comport with Marx’s criteria. The revolutions were justified, but not to create socialism.Yes, a lot of good was done for the people of those countries and a lot for countries engaged in struggles to free themselves from colonialism. The USSR invested a lot of resources to prop up the socialist bloc of the East Europe, Nevertheless, clearly, good will, hard work were necessary in social change, but not sufficient.

The Bolsheviks faced major problems right after assuming state power for ignoring the objective conditions (i.e., completion of capitalist development): utter lack of capital for investment needed to build up the industrial sector. Dependence on agriculture and collectivisation to do so lead to decline in productivity, leading to the New Economic Policy (NEP) Lenin introduced to allow some degree of privatisation. But it was abandoned when Stalin became the head of the party and the state. There was vitality in the economy for periods, but without the incentives (positive and negative), economy could not keep up with the increasing demand that showed remarkable similarity with what people in capitalist countries were buying. It appears that in a world dominated by capitalist rules, socialist economies have to adjust their ideology, as has been the case in China, after many years of state effort to boost production got tired of being inefficient and poor, and shifted significantly to private ownership of the means of production. Vietnam simply did not even start with any significant collectivisation, i.e., socialism, which the US feared most in that area and fought a war to stop it, sacrificed millions of lives!

Marx also observed that “The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life”.That is to say, social and cultural assets of the society ready for transition to socialism in accordance with Marx’s criteria also reaches a high level correlated to the level of the productive forces that also contributes significantly to the formation of the socialist society. High labour productivity, worker-discipline, work ethics, assimilation of democratic institutions and rule of law, etc., i.e., “…material conditions for their existence (have) matured within the framework of the old society…”(ibid)

In Socialist countries, institutions, cultures, and the ideology of (bourgeois) democracy, which had liberated other societies from the despotism and obscurantism of feudalism, ushering in what later became known as ‘modernism’, was in early formative stage. These could not become stronger without practice …but were not allowed to solidify for fear of the enemy that made its intent very clear right after the 1917 revolution. In a society with strong democratic traditions and active participation, disinvestment by the people in their commons might have been avoided.

Socialism is the first and only system that was theorised first and attempts at its application followed. There was no previous such system to emulate or learn from. Yet, the Soviet Union was able to meet many of the promises of socialism in the USSR under the most hostile environment. But the alternative of mobilising the society by engaging the citizens to counter the enemy though democracy was not on the agenda. At several gatherings of the communist/workers’ parties of the world since the fall, this has been the main topic of discussion, and the need for democracy not only for transition to socialism, for much more radical involvement of people in the management of the commons as well is getting a lot of attention (see: Susan Web’s report <http://peoplesworld.org/world-communist-parties-debate-strategy-for-the-road-ahead/>) . Contrary to popular belief, Marx was a strong advocate for democracy; he wrote, “Democracy is human existence, while in the other political forms man has only legal existence. That is the fundamental difference of democracy” [in “A Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Rights” (1844)]. But he aso criticised it for its bourgeois limitations and argued that the communists must work to improve it.  About free speech, a hallmark of a democratic society, Engels’ wrote:“We are not among those communists who are out to destroy personal liberty, who wish to turn the world into one huge barrack or into a gigantic workhouse. There certainly are some communists who, with an easy conscience, refuse to countenance personal liberty and would like to shuffle it out of the world because they consider that it is a hindrance to complete harmony. But we have no desire to exchange freedom for equality. We are convinced that in no social order will freedom be assured as in a society based upon communal ownership.” (Marx, Engels, et al., Communist Journal, 1847[13])

No doubt enemies of socialism played an important role in forcing diversion of resources from consumer goods to improve the standard of living to the military preparedness. But it is also a failure of not paying close attention to theory, subjectivism, over-zealousness, etc. While he was the greatest champion of revolution, Marx also cautioned the revolutionaries: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”(The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx 1852.).

Not surprisingly, “… circumstances existing already…” have gotten very complicated. As capitalism exhausts all of its possibilities, it is also exhausting the global and local environment of the ability to support life. In search of endless profit, it must produce commodities endlessly, which cannot be done without exhausting natural resources, including the assimilative capacity the planet has to neutralise harmful impact of pollutants generated in production and consumption phases. Yet it is incumbent upon socialist/communist movements to pay attention to Marx’s exhortation: “Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessor, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as bonipatresfamilias. (good head of household)” (Capital, vol. 3). It will surely make the task of constructing socialist society more difficult, but it would surely be more viable in a planned economy rather than leaving it up to the vagaries of capitalism. The issues in the debate over the “commons” vs. “privatisation” are essentially the same. Key ingredient is the involvement of people in managing their affairs: democracy; viability of socialist societies will depend on it.

Mohsin Siddique writes from Washington DC.