# Posted 10:52 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

JOSH ASKS, "Can you name a single Communist government that was not a totalitarian dictatorship?" First of all, yes. Second of all, that's the wrong question to ask.

While short lived, the Commuist governments of Guatemala in the 1950s and Czechoslovakia in the 1960s were not totalitarian dictatorships. For the definitive account of Jacobo Arbenz and Guatemalan Communism, see Piero Gleijeses' book, Shattered Hope.

While some revisionists have sought to argue that Arbenz was never a Communist, Gleijeses shows both that he was and that he went to certain lengths to hide that fact from both domestic and international audiences. However, Gleijeses also shows that Arbenz was an aggressive social reformer who did more for the Guatemalan poor in his few years in power than the rest of Guatemala's governments did ever.

In addition, Arbenz was a democrat, who won the presidency in free and fair elections. Moreover, he did not move to prevent further elections that might have brought the opposition to power. Of course, Eisenhower had no interest in promoting democracy, and thus ordered the CIA to overthrow Arbenz, thus ushering in three decades of brutal dictatorship which resulted in the the death of tens of thousands of innocent Guatemalans.

While I am not as familiar with the Dubcek/Swoboda government in Czechoslovakia, I will tell you what I learned from John Gaddis, a historian who has never been accused of exaggerating the merits of Communism. While Dubcek and Swoboda were not elected, they began to grant Czechoslovakians rights which were unheard of in the Communist bloc. Their reforms culminated in the legendary Prague Spring of 1968 and the brutal Soviet invasion which brought it to an end.

While Dubcek and Swoboda had no interest in resisting Soviet control of the Warsaw Pact, they did advocate "Communism with a human face". There was no chance, however, that the Soviets could remain passive in the face of living proof that their Communism lacked the humanity of its Czech variant.

What the tragic history of Guatemala and Czechoslovakia illustrates is that there were few opportunities for a better Communism to flourish in a world divided by the Cold War. The brutality of Communism was a result of the conscious decisions of brutal individuals such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and their violent avant garde. While I value economic freedom enough to reject Communism out of hand, it is foolish to write off all Communists as no different from Stalin.

This brings me to Josh's second point, that he has no idea who I'm thinking of when I say that there were many idealistic Communists who fought for social justice. I mentioned the role of Communists in 19c. Europe, but Judith Weiss at Kesher Talk has reminded me of the critical role played by Communists in the American progressive movement of the interwar era. As Judith notes, according to

a new book about civil-rights activist Anne Braden, from the turn of the century up to WWII, if you thought segregation and Jim Crow were wrong, if you thought women should be able to get birth control and credit in their own names, if you didn't think Modern Art was the harbinger of social chaos, and if you wanted to find others like yourself and maybe even do something to further your ideals, you ended up hanging out with Communists. That's where the action was. Although its flawed ideas and the application of those ideas by fanatics led to economic ruin and enormous human-rights abuses which I have no desire to whitewash, Communism was at its core an ideology of human rights at a time when social inequalities were vast and many still believed in the divine ordination of social and gender heirarchy.

I can provide some independent confirmation of Judith's point, since in my course on American with the legendary David Montgomery, we learned about the critical role of Communists in organizing America's industrial unions.

All this should demonstrate why Josh's question about whether or not there have been good Communist governments is the wrong question to ask. Governments were not the only forum in which Communists were active, so to judge them according to their political record alone is counterproductive.

On a final note, I'd like to respond to Josh's belief that I am "conflating Communism with all Marxism". First off, Josh's distinction is valid, since there are many scholars who work within a Marxist analytical framework but are not Communists. Yet as far as I know, political movements based on Marx's ideas have referred to themselves as Commuist rather than Marxist. After all, he didn't call it "The Marxist Manifesto".

(1) opinions -- Add your opinion