Consequentialism and communism

“It is that the very same disregard for, or scepticism about, the rights of individuals, the same willingness to sacrifice individual lives for valuable goals (or even in the name of “progress” broadly conceived) has usually characterized communism’s enemies and competitors too.”

I would at the very least quibble with “the very same disregard for….”

As applied to Communism (it isn’t fair to say the same about all forms of socialism) it really doesn’t seem to be the very same kind of consequentialism. Or if it is the same ‘kind’ it is a vastly different degree of that kind of consequentialism.

Among communism’s opponents, there was a tension which was seen between defending ourselves against communism and the rights of individuals and citizens in general. That tension was much less evident, if present at all, in Communist countries.

I would argue that the philosophical tension didn’t exist in Communism–the rights of individuals and citizens in general as we think of them just don’t exist under Communism. But if you want to, I suppose you could argue that Communist countries are just MUCH further to the authoritarian side on some consequentialist spectrum. But if you want to make that argument, it doesn’t help to frame it as “the very same disregard”, because the degree of the disregard is so vastly different.

The difference between East and West Germany was very real and very stark for more than 40 years. And that was a very basic experiment–same country, different regime. The difference between the USSR proper and Western Europe was very real. The difference between China and Japan was very real. The difference between South and North Korea is very real. You would have to look very hard to find a case with even a close comparison. Maybe Pinochet’s first 2/3 in Chile (say 73-85 which were awful by Western standards) compared to Castro’s Cuba after his grip on power became more diffuse (say post 1990, after the fall of the rest of Communism). And frankly, you still have homosexuals and journalists in camps in Cuba.

Chris,

I’m not sure that consequentialism was the dominant philosophy of government virtually everywhere during the 20th century. Sure, no 20th century government would say that consequences of policies are morally irrelevant, but that’s hardly the litmus test for consequentialism. Everybody who’s not loopy thinks that consequences are morally relevant. What makes you think that consequentialism was a dominant philosophy of government?

Or are you just talking about in the academy?

and cf. bernard williams’ line about “government house utilitarianism”.

which of course stands refuted by the fact that it was never the official policy of any government house. and that’s a matter of public record.

“Further, your remark about of differences in degree puts me in mind of George Bernard Shaw’s remarks about haggling over the price.”

I’m sure it does, but that doesn’t make it pertinent. Degrees of difference really do matter in almost any non-academic exercise.

“The point of the post was not to say that East Germany and West Germany were equally bad, or anything remotely similar. It is perfectly possible for eastern and western consequentialists to produce different results because of different factual beliefs about what would maximize the good, not because of different underlying normative commitments.”

Yes that is perfectly ‘possible’ but you haven’t really done much to suggest that it is correct.

You call Western attention to individual rights ‘lip service’, but the record suggests that it was more than lip service. Western German citizens really did have more individual rights than East Germans. And my mention of ‘citizen’ is not particularly instructive. We can argue about how much nations ought to value non-citizens, but at the very minimum they ought to value their own citizens. Communist nations pretty much didn’t. I don’t see how you can dismiss that as: you’re clearly a prostitute now we’re just haggling over the price.

The point of Halliday’s argument is that Communism doesn’t even try to restrain itself by what we see as traditional tensions between government and individual. And that ends up really being awful for individuals.

And your 1979 quip about Cuba and homosexuality is grossly misleading. Public Scandal laws after that still allowed vicious government persecution of homosexuals in Cuba. Detention centers were set up for homosexuals with HIV and were mandatory in the 1980s (which would be after your 1979 date). Even as recently as 2004 the BBC was reporting formal crackdowns. (See also the documentary “Improper Conduct” for Castro’s treatment of gay men when he was at the height of his power).

The Fred Halliday piece seems to me to be badly flawed by his inability (or unwillingness) to define ‘communism’ to begin with. The inevitable result is that it ends up meaning ‘things I don’t like about stuff’ (whereas for the communist, it ends up meaning ‘things I like’).

Take this sentence.

‘As even sympathisers like Rosa Luxemburg realised in 1917 itself, it was bound from the beginning to fail. ‘

Now what Halliday means here is ‘Bolshevism’ which is of course a very different thing. As is rather well known, Luxemburg disliked Lenin and Leninism (for good reasons). And she certainly thought that Germany was not ready for a Communist revolution at the end of WW1. But it is simply false to say that Rosa Luxemburg thought that ‘it’ (by which Halliday means ‘Communism’) was bound to fail.

But then by the next paragraphy we are talking about the whole Communist tradition, stemming from Marx.

‘It is common, and somewhat too easy, for defenders of Marxism in the contemporary world to argue that Marxist theory and communist practice were divergent, and that, hence, the theory bears no responsibility for the communist record. If by this question is meant whether another Marxism, a more liberal or “genuine” or “democratic” one, or, if you incline in the other direction, a more resolute, militant, disciplined one, could have prevented the collapse of the communist states then the answer is no. ‘

So, in this reading, ‘liberal’ Marxism is a contradiction in terms.

But then, suddenly, in the paragraph after that….

‘There were certainly, throughout its seventy-year history, choices for the Soviet system:…’

So, we are back to talking about Leninism and Stalinism again.

If one reads through the article carefully one sees that in its concrete criticisms, it is aimed at Leninism and Leninism only. Now this is a critique common in the revolutionary left tradition (indeed, Luxemburg was one of the first to make it). But Halliday uses this to damn the entire Communist tradition.

Or to put it another way, with concrete examples.

Recently, revolutionary communists have been voted in in Nepal. Communists have also been voted in in Cyprus and Moldavia. Of course, there would have been a lot more communists voted in to power all over the world had the United States not ceaselessly and tirelessly worked to prevent such an event ever taking place.

The point is: Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao…terrible leaders, who produced terrible things: concentration camps, mass terror, genocide, you name it. But when communists come to power peacefully none of these things happen.

And yet Halliday would I think when this is pointed out use the ‘One True Scotsman’ argument and argue that ‘these aren’t really communist governments’.

Communists can’t win. When they are prevented from coming to power by the United States, it’s the ‘lesser of two evils’. When they come to power democratically and are then toppled by the US (Allende) the in question country is being ‘saved’ from Stalinism. And yet when such democratically elected governments win power, are not toppled, and yet do not turn into Stalinist regimes, ‘they aren’t really communist’!

Completely agree with the post: every political ideology (oh, fine, except the most radical brands of libertarianism) is consequentialist. Simple as that.

Chris @ 4,

If we’re talking solely about the academy, then yes, I definitely agree with you.

But you don’t seem to be talking solely about the academy. I’m just not sure if the politicians/governments you mention were consequentialists. Yes, Truman’s decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima was consequence *sensitive* (in that Truman presumably thought that not dropping the bomb would have disastrous consequences), but a consequence-sensitive ethic is not the same as a consequentialist ethic. “Avoid disasters” is not equivalent to “maximise the good”.

I don’t have a firm view on whether governments in the 20th century were consequentialist or not (I’m not enough of a historian), though I’d tentatively say that they were not and were rather consequence-sensitive deontologists of one stripe or another. In any case, it seems to me that you haven’t done the work here to establish that the governments (ie. not the academics, which I agree with you about) had anything other than a consequence-sensitive ethic.

(of course, I agree with you that Halliday’s criticism of 20th century socialism is hardly one that can be levelled exclusively at 20th century socialism)

Henri Vieuxtemps @ 13,

Nonsense. Consequentialists believe that the right action is that which maximises the good. Plenty of political ideologies don’t hold that to be true. Rawls, for example. Unless you think that Rawls was a lunatic libertarian …

CB: Since you are still talking about what ‘our governments believe’ perhaps I should try to make my point in a different way. First of all, ‘governments’ don’t believe anything. People gain political power and then they enact political policies. The broader the political power base and the more robust the tradition of democratic government in a society is, the more difficult it is to pass policy that has dire consequences for large numbers of individuals in the society. Yeah, you might be able to scare enough Americans into thinking the right thing for them is dire restrictions on their civil liberties, but it is a lot easier thing to do if the only people you have to convince is a few elites to whom those policies will not really apply. We can have a discussion as to whether or not seeing democracy as a good thing for this reason is consequentialist or not, but that is not really the point. If I were to try to sum up the best point that I think Halliday could make it is that violent revolutionary movements, especially those centered around ideologies rather than consensus, will tend to do really bad things if they come to power and a large part of that is because when your political movement is centered around ideological justification instead of democratic legitimacy it does not evince a lot of respect for individual rights. This is a critique that should be aimed at Leninism instead of, say, random communist parties willing to play by the rules of democracy, but it is still a valid point, I think. Maybe we shouldn’t call this consequentialism, because it sounds like something else to me. But I think it’s very relevant that democratic legitimacy is an important part of the western political tradition.

And why does Cuba get away with lots of things ‘because it could be worse’? If all what matters is legalizing homosexuality, why put pressure on Obama for gay rights?

PS: I think Rawls’ point was that one could allow consequentialism for some time – just like one could allow comprehensive doctrines up to some point – as long as some basic stuff was met democracy would prevail because it is what people wanted given enough education and enough free exchange of ideas

The Communist viewpoint rejects consequentialism in much the same way as Rawls maximin argument for the difference prinicple. In both cases, the crucial claim is that some consequences (outcomes for the worst-off, the achievement of socialism) are such as to trump all others (improvements in the welfare of those who aren’t worst off, casualties of the revolutionary process).

Certainly, given the actual consequences of Communism (however defined), its advocates don’t look like consequentialists in retrospect.

Monday, November 2, 2009

“THERE IS NO Freestanding Constitutional ‘Right Not To Be Framed.’ ” So states a brief filed by Iowa prosecutors hoping to persuade the Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit against them for allegedly fabricating evidence that led to the 25-year incarceration of two innocent men.

To me (a non-philosopher) any discussion of consequentialism and politics brings to mind Max Weber’s distinction between “ethics of responsibility” and “ultimate ends.” Statecraft inevitably involves violence, ethically compromising participants from Day One, and when one wields enormous power, refusing to further the public good in the name of a broader principle (e.g., Herbert Hoover’s inaction during the Depression) seems perverse. So I can understand why consequentialism is the de facto (if not always de jure) justification for state actions.

Chris @25: a politician might argue that disaster will ensue if we “tie the hands” of law enforcement.

But haven’t we (I mean human society) already had this discussion? Every society has rules about when an arrest is justified. Those rules are arrived at over the course of an open-ended collective conversation about how to balance the risk of failing to restrain law-breakers (ie, “tying the hands of the police”) against the risk of unfairly inconveniencing law-abiders (eg, by arresting them). Once we make that decision (and again, we do so by imagining and weighing consequences), we define the relevant “rights” accordingly. That’s how rights come into being, and they’re subject to redefinition if our collective expectation or evaluation of the consequences of having just those rights changes.

I think Sebastian is right, Halliday isn’t talking about consequentialism here. But, insofar as his arguments have force, again, they fail because they don’t make clear what he is arguing against.

‘“However, the greatest failure of socialism over its 200 years, especially in its Bolshevik form, was the lack of an ethical dimension in regard to the rights of individuals and citizens in general, indeed in regard to all who were not part of the revolutionary elite, and the lack of any articulated and justifiable criteria applicable to the uses, legitimate and illegitimate, of violence and state coercion.”’

This must mean, to make sense, ‘in its Bolshevik form’, not ‘especially in its Bolshevik form’ (although even then it’s highly arguable). It is simply false to say that ‘communism’ (let alone ‘socialism’) over the last 200 years lacks an ethical dimension, or that it does not have any criteria relating to the use of violence and coercion.

It’s true that some forms of Marxism has been highly critical of the doctrine of ‘rights’ but that’s a very different issue.

#27 Chris, I’ll try to restate with a consequentialist argument against revolution, taken from this old post.

Most attempts at revolution fail, leaving the participants and the oppressed worse off than before. Even where revolution is successful, attempts by the revolutionary party to hold on to power usually lead to reactionary dictatorship in short order. The French Revolution, the model on which Marxist analysis was based, lasted five years from liberation of the Bastille to Thermidor, and ten years to the 18 Brumaire seizure of power by Napoleon. The Bolshevik revolution lasted four years until the adoption of the New Economic Policy and seven years before Stalin’s rise to power. The successful revolutions have mostly been those where the ancien regime collapsed under its own weight, and where those who came to power did not try too hard to hold on to it when, inevitably, the wheel of public support turned against them.

A serious consequentialist would have taken the likelihood of failure, or of a Bonapartist reaction, before launching a revolution, and in fact most of those who adhered to a standard Marxist analysis drew the conclusion that revolution was premature in the Russia of 1917. The Bolsheviks (or more precisely the Leninists) were distinguished by their willingness to go ahead, regardless of the consequences.

38 – except that the original post(er) clearly included the West.

the rights of individuals and citizens in general as we think of them just don’t exist under Communism

In respect to some rights, as we think of them, that’s true. But then the opposite is also true – in respect to some other rights – as they think of them: the right to work, to medical care, a year of paid maternity leave, etc.

Different priorities, different definition of “the good”, that’s all.

I think Chris’ basic point is right, but would still want to insist on the specialness of what Weber describes as chialistic theories. Consequentialism was everywhere ascendant, and what many of us view as morally illegitimate sacrifices were everywhere imposed on some for the sake of future consequences… and yet, and yet.

Strange things happen to consequentialist calculations when one particular consequence is accorded nigh-infinite weight, or when the particular decisionmaking apparatus is itself treated as the relevant consequence. The first applied to some defenses of the Iraq war (John Quiggin’s right about that), and applies to some of Hobbes’ ideas. The second applies to some bad arguments in democratic theory. (“Democracy is good in utilitarian terms even if democracies reach bad utilitarian decisions, because democracy itself has lots and lots of utils.”)

But both applied to Bolshevism and revolutionary Communism, pervasively. Party rule was scheduled to bring about– someday– a state of affairs so massively desirable that no other consequences could be meaningfully put in the scales against it. And in the meantime party rule itself was the consequence to be valued, as the necessary instrument to the future state of affairs, so, again, nothing else could be meaningfully weighed against it.

The utilitarianism of the British civil service undoubtedly authorized the breaking of many eggs that a good rights-theory would not; and undoubtedly also authorized the breaking of more eggs than a fair and unbiased version of utilitarianism would. But it was not, it seems to me, committed to insisting that there could be no number of broken eggs that would make the omelet not worth making.

“But it was not, it seems to me, committed to insisting that there could be no number of broken eggs that would make the omelet not worth making.”

That would be British eggs, right?

Hence my “unbiased” proviso. No question: Indian and African lives were weighted at an immorally low value, and much lower than British lives. But they weren’t weighted at zero.

The immoral bias contributed to the Raj exporting grain from India to Allied soldiers during the war even after the Bengali famine had started. But they did stop eventually, and imported grain into India for a time to try to mitigate the famine. Had only British eggs counted at all, the policy wouldn’t have been reversed.

“Consequentialism was the dominant philosophy of government pretty much everywhere throughout the twentieth century.”

Like all sweeping historical claims, this one’s surely far too sweeping.

1. It’s a familiar point that, whereas Britain’s public political philosophy has tended to be consequentialist, that of the US has been much more rights-focused. Think how often in the US appeals to individual rights, e.g. to property, have been used to block proposals that were manifestly for the public good, e.g. health care reform or even just desegregation. More positively, think how appeals to the procedural rights of criminal defendants have been used to block proposals that were claimed to be in the public good. The idea that the dominant political philosophy of the US , at least domestically, has been consequentialist seems just wild. (This isn’t to say rights have always been upheld in the US, just that they’ve been central to the nation’s public philosophy and public political debates.)

2. Even for Britain, how much of its 20th-century foreign policy was consequentialist-driven? Take the decision to enter WWI. How much of it was a calculation of global consequences, and how much feelings of obligation to treaty partners (the duty to keep promises) or solidarity with the innocent victims of aggression (the rape of Belgium)? Again I think it’s a stretch to find consequentialism dominant. And the Dominions that followed Britain into the war weren’t being consequentialist; they were mostly acting just from loyalty to the mother country. (See the Canadian Leader of the Opposition who said that when Britain calls for Canada’s military aid its response should be “Ready, aye, ready!”)

3. Nor was academia dominated by consequentialism. In the 1930s and 1940s in Britain the leading moral philosophers — Prichard, Ross, Broad, Carritt — were all anti-consequentialists. Rawls ignored their views because he had an unfounded hostility to pluralist moral conceptions; to find his chief adversary he then went back to the 19th century and Sidgwick. But there was lots of philosophical anti-consequentialism between Sidgwick and Rawls, even in more-consequentialist Britain.

Certainly consequentialism was the political philosophy of communism and other deplorable political movements. But “of government pretty much everywhere throughout the twentieth century?” Pshaw!

i believe it was originally the motto of clan johnston, the ‘aye’ being scots dialect.

otherwise–carry on.

Chris, I think you have hit the nail on the head. It’s teleology* rather than consequentialism that is the problem here.

Admittedly, teleology can be viewed (as Jacob neatly puts it) as a version of consequentialism in which the end-state has effectively infinite weight. But the whole point of most critiques of consequentialism is the opposite, that consequentialists are willing to make trade-offs where other theories want to impose absolutes (rights, moral duties and so forth).

* I may be using this term the wrong way. What I mean is that history is seen as leading to some highly desirable end state, and that it is our duty to act to help bring this about (or maybe, as in Xian versions, so that we will be on the right side when the end state inevitably arises). Views of this kind seem to justify almost any crime.

Come to think of it, the rest of examples in 53 seem suspect as well: based on official rhetoric rather than analysis. At the same token a Stalinist could reply that Stalin’s repressions were too motivated by “feelings of obligation” and “solidarity”; not to mention “rights-focused” (say, the sacred right of all children to go to school, or something).

I don’t think it’s just the Great War that influenced Bolshevik attitudes: it was also the conviction that they and tens or hundreds of thousands of others were likely to be slaughtered if they lost. This was almost certainly true, as later demonstrated in Spain: but of course it leads people to terrible places.

I have to say I find Jacob Levy’s argument–that whatever you say about Western rulers’ disregard for human life they always placed some value on it, whereas Communists placed none at all–to be rather implausible. How did Professor Levy discover this astonishing psychological law?

And anyone who reads the Trotsky piece James Conran links to, rather than the single sentence he quotes, will see that it does not say that any means to the success of the revolution are permitted, whatever else it says.

“Just the same,” the moralist continues to insist, “does it mean that in the class struggle against capitalists all means are permissible: lying, frame-up, betrayal, murder, and so on?” Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means, we answer, which unite the revolutionary proletariat, fill their hearts with irreconcilable hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality and its democratic echoers, imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission, raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in the struggle. Precisely from this it flows that not all means are permissible. When we say that the end justifies the means, then for us the conclusion follows that the great revolutionary end spurns those base means and ways which set one part of the working class against other parts, or attempt to make the masses happy without their participation; or lower the faith of the masses in themselves and their organization, replacing it by worship for the “leaders”. Primarily and irreconcilably, revolutionary morality rejects servility in relation to the bourgeoisie and haughtiness in relation to the toilers, that is, those characteristics in which petty bourgeois pedants and moralists are thoroughly steeped.

These criteria do not, of course, give a ready answer to the question as to what is permissible and what is not permissible in each separate case. There can be no such automatic answers. Problems of revolutionary morality are fused with the problems of revolutionary strategy and tactics. The living experience of the movement under the clarification of theory provides the correct answer to these problems.

My impression is (from reading old novels and newspapers) that before World War II the idea that all people had rights was a distinctly minority position. It was more “some people” had rights in the small minority of countries in the world with traditions of parliamentary democracy, but the prevailing opinion was that most of the world’s other countries, including Germany and Italy, India and Africa, were not up to it and probably never would be. Therefore, all kinds of otherwise respectable people (in their own eyes) did not really absorb what was happening in Russia and Germany. And they closed a blind eye to conditions in the American South and South Africa as well. It was just the way the world was for them. The Bolshevics were not the only ones (in short) to think that liberal talk of rights and freedoms was a crock. (I do not believe they are a crock, personally).

67/68: I think you could argue that language like that is not likely to survive a revolutionary movement. It is too easy to push aside those leaders who are too soft to do what it takes when you have already embraced a strong end goal, as Levy points out earlier. The likelihood of a group of elites recoiling in horror at the consequences of their actions is reduced when the only philosophical objection they acknowledge with respect to a given means is so subjective and poorly aligned with natural human feelings regarding human suffering. Following along here, its surprising to me that folks are still willing to claim that there was no significant difference in degree between communist governments and western ones during the 20th century. It seems to me that after the horror of WW1, many western governments were, in fact, shocked at what had happened and took steps (if ineffectual) to prevent it from happening again.

I’m not really making any claims about what Trotsky would or would not have done if we in power. My argument is that there was no way that this ideal Trotsky could come to or remain in power in a revolutionary communist movement. If there is a course of action that will strengthen the party and a high human cost, nobody is actually going to accept the argument that it will ‘lower the faith of the masses in themselves’ as an argument against the policy. People will accept the argument that tons of people will die, but even ideal Trotsky rejects that as an acceptable argument. I don’t really care whether Trotsky’s memory is tainted by guilt with association of later communist’s actions. The argument that I wish to advance is that Trotsky did not have a vision for a sustainable or stable revolutionary movement.

Consequentialism becoming teleology as faith. Revolutionary logic is military utilitarianism, which is engaged but short sighted. Think of the US military’s emotion-based requirement for victory in Afghanistan. Not gonna happen. Similarly the reflexive response of the bourgeois leadership to the threat of communism was to imagine an idea as a disease.

The best defense against revolution was always more social freedom and more democracy. But the western leadership and more recently the US in particular has never ceased anti-democratic machinations against whatever plague, whether radical communism or radical Islam. We are not now a supporter of democratization in the middle east. A Palestinians is still maybe 4[?] 5ths of an Israeli in the popular imagination. And many base that on the argument that Israel is a state, as if a political entity were a moral or even Platonic one.
Also, a rights-based logic can be consequentialist but it’s also a consequentialist logic against individualism: of rights and concomitant obligations, not to the state as such but to others.

Of course, it’s possible to assume that Trotsky was just blowing smoke and wouldn’t really have been any different from Stalin in practice, too. Is there any evidence of that?

His actions as leader of the Red Army in the civil war, and the aggressiveness with which he was involved in coercive appropriation of food and agricultural products from the peasants, and his distrust of democracy w/in the party (at least at times) give us good reason to think he wasn’t the benevolent figure he’s sometimes made out to be. I don’t know that this licenses the conclusions that he “wouldn’t really have been any different from Stalin in Practice”, but there’s good evidence that he was willing and able to be extremely harsh in support of the revolutionary ideal.

One thing that annoys me about the Trotsky-would-have-been-as-bad-as-Stalin line is the appalling ignorance about the history of the Soviet Union it displays.

Sure- there’s lots of this, perhaps even more than the largely evidence-free claims often made that if only Trotsky had won, things would have been grand. (I’m not saying you’re saying this, Chris, just as I hope you’re not suggesting the other about me. Much of my view of the matter comes from reading histories of the era written by people not opposed to leftists views as such- Alec Nove, among others- and I think one can have an awfully pessimistic view about how things would have gone if Trotsky had won without being ignorant of the relevant history.)

But again, we are talking about a continuum where we offer a huge amount of leeway to communism. Is anyone arguing that Trotsky would have been better than Pinochet for example?

That reinforces Halliday’s point. If you offer speculative-Trotsky as a best case scenario for the Communist kind of system in Russia and actual-Pinochet as pretty much the worst case scenario for the Western kind of system in Chile doesn’t that say something about the systems? And maybe the fact that the Communist system seems to regularly let Stalins and Maos and Kim Il-sungs get power says something too.

Halliday suggests that the difference is found in the “ethical dimension in regard to the rights of individuals and citizens in general”. For Communists that isn’t a valid category, for Western governments it is a relatively strong one (though everyone agrees it isn’t singularly overpowering).

You interpret this as consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist, and suggest that Western and Communist governments were in reality both consequentialist. But that isn’t what Halliday is saying. If you insist on a consequentialist lens, he is saying that the Western governments pay a fairly high amount of attention to the individual rights of citizens in the consequentialist calculus, while Communists don’t. In retrospect, this difference seems to have had a profound effect on how things played out with the citizens of various countries.

Sebastian: If you offer speculative-Trotsky as a best case scenario for the Communist kind of system in Russia and actual-Pinochet as pretty much the worst case scenario for the Western kind of system in Chile doesn’t that say something about the systems?

Not the right comparison, I’d say. Chile had a vibrant civil society before Pinochet, which probably constrained his viciousness more than any Western fealty to individual rights. Russia had nothing of the kind. A better comparison might be to Guatemala, El Salvador, or Colombia under US-trained and -supplied military dictatorships.

But geo, Pinochet’s Chile is just about the worst example we have of the type. West Germany had external enemies, but it didn’t become East Germany. South Korea had external enemies but it didn’t become North Korea. (South Korea for the 15 years after the war might count as another worst case scenario for the Western model that ends up looking as good or better than the best case scenarios of the Communist model). Japan had two major external enemies, China AND the USSR, but it didn’t turn into anything like the USSR.

So we have a scenario where you have a tentative argument that the worst case Western scenario might be in the same zone as the very best case Communist examples. (I suppose the idea that Castro’s Cuba was better in general than Pinochet’s Chile is arguable if IMO wrong). But that just ends up reinforcing the fact that Western countries really did/do a lot better on individual treatment of citizens than Communist countries. And they also claim to take such things into account more than the near-zero level that Communist countries do.

Now I’m all for skepticism about government claims. But the record of actions is clear.

The fact that many Western countries did/do nasty things to other citizens isn’t really to the point unless you believe that Communist countries weirdly are vastly worse to their own citizens, but better to other country’s citizens than Western countries. But I don’t think anyone makes that claim.

Western countries really did/do a lot better on individual treatment of citizens than Communist countries. And they also claim to take such things into account more than the near-zero level that Communist countries do. Now I’m all for skepticism about government claims. But the record of actions is clear.

And yet Birger is sitting in a Hamburg cafe, defending the former communist country. “Most East German citizens had a nice life,” he says. “I certainly don’t think that it’s better here.” By “here,” he means reunified Germany, which he subjects to questionable comparisons. “In the past there was the Stasi, and today (German Interior Minister Wolfgang) Schäuble — or the GEZ (the fee collection center of Germany’s public broadcasting institutions) — are collecting information about us.” In Birger’s opinion, there is no fundamental difference between dictatorship and freedom. “The people who live on the poverty line today also lack the freedom to travel.” […]

As an apologist for the former East German dictatorship, the young Mecklenburg native shares a majority view of people from eastern Germany. Today, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 57 percent, or an absolute majority, of eastern Germans defend the former East Germany. “The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there,” say 49 percent of those polled. Eight percent of eastern Germans flatly oppose all criticism of their former home and agree with the statement: “The GDR had, for the most part, good sides. Life there was happier and better than in reunified Germany today.”

“we have a scenario where you have a tentative argument that the worst case Western scenario might be in the same zone as the very best case Communist examples.”

Uh no. The Bolsheviks were bad, but their White opponents were at least as bad. I’m curious to know what evidence there is that, as Chris B thinks, they would have been much worse than the Bolsheviks if they had won, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

The relevant comparisons are like to like. The South Korean/North Korean example is better for your case, though as you admit (I think), for the first decades South Korea was a pretty horrible example, and during the Korean War there’s not much to choose between the two sides.

Trotsky killed far more than Pinochet, but Pinochet in the context of the Russian Civil War would have been vastly worse than Pinochet coming after Allende. Now there’s a comparison that favors the left–Pinochet vs. Allende.

Geo, #18:

I suspect the question of the philosophical foundations (if any) of ethics has already been thoroughly argued on Crooked Timber.

Perhaps not. It is possible for an individual to be a consequentialist without necessarily also believing that worthy ends always justify any means used to achieve them. Most of the anti-consequentialist comments expressed thus far assume that a necessary connection exists.

I, for example, believe that the consequences of an act [or decision to not act] are the sole determinants of whether or not an act is moral or immoral, but I do not believe that the ends can always be justified by the means.

A simple test can be used to determine whether or not an act is moral or immoral: If everyone would benefit if everyone acted in the same way, then the act—or decision to not act—is moral. If everyone would be worse off if everyone were to act the same way, then the act/choice is immoral.

Killing a person who angers you is immoral because we would not all be better off if we were all to kill the people who anger us. Stealing is also immoral in most situations for the same reason. Lying is immoral in some circumstances because we would not all be better off if everyone also lied when facing the same circumstances. But lying would be moral in other circumstances because everyone would be better off if everyone were to lie for the same reasons.

So yes, the consequences always determine whether or not an action is moral, immoral, or neither, but only when those consequences pass the test of universality. Moral [immoral] behavior is behavior we would like to see everyone embrace [eschew], because we would all benefit if we all did. (A) Murdering your political opponents or (B) attacking countries you merely perceive to be a potential threat are immoral actions because we would not all be better off if we all murdered the champions of philosophies we oppose or if all countries attacked neighboring countries that they merely felt threatened by in some way.

Rights are not something that any person/group actually possesses. An individual/group possesses a ‘right’ only if everyone else agrees that they would be better off if they were to behave in a certain way re: the individual/group being granted the right.

Right?

“The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there,” say 49 percent of those polled.

Are these all people ‘young enough not to have experienced it as adults, or those who were in power at the time’? I don’t see how that can be true.

Anyway, without taking a position on the correctness of their views, it is interesting, is it not, that your convictions about the obvious superiority of life under capitalism, in terms of individual people’s lives, are not shared by the majority of East Germans?

“Are these all people ‘young enough not to have experienced it as adults, or those who were in power at the time’? I don’t see how that can be true.”

They don’t have to ALL be, they can mostly be.

“Anyway, without taking a position on the correctness of their views, it is interesting, is it not, that your convictions about the obvious superiority of life under capitalism, in terms of individual people’s lives, are not shared by the majority of East Germans?”

Since only 8% of East Germans agree with “Life there was happier and better than in reunified Germany today.” I would say tend to think it “not that interesting”. Hell you can get more than 8% of people to say that the world is flat or that the moon landing was faked.

But what about Greece under the junta vs. Yugoslavia?

Yeah, all this, it’s just a weak approach, it doesn’t explain much. Political economy is required.

China did much better than India and most particularly so under Mao. Under Mao, there was a significant number of preventable deaths due to the Great Leap Forward famine and some effects of the Cultural Revolution (though the latter were relatively minor). But the increases in health indicators drove up the life expectancy so significantly that thanks to the Maoist policies, literally hundreds of millions of people lived that would otherwise have died. As Sen pointed out, in 1979, at the start of the Deng reform period, the life expectancy in China was 14 years higher than it was in social-democratic India. That is a vast difference. The infant mortality that year in China was 37/1000; in India it was 120/1000. And so on.

It is important to emphasize that this irrefutably means that the policies under Mao c.s. had a net very positive effect in terms of lives. Many more people lived thanks to their policies than died thanks to their policies. Yet Sen, while he is aware of this, is not willing to draw the obvious conclusion that Communist economic policies work.

as well as the many death-squad equipped central American countries.

Guatemala comes to mind, in which the largescale massacre of political opponents and Mayans in general – this report suggests figures of over forty thousand people being directly victims of murder – was bankrolled by the Reagan government. The chief organisers of these murders are still active in Guatemalan politics today and do not seem to be in any danger of extradition to War Crimes Tribunals.

Going way back up the thread (not that it isn’t worthwhile to hash out what progressive thought about foreign policy should be), I think Hidari@9 makes a good point: Halliday’s definition of communism is unclear to me. But Chris B.@2 also makes a point that I’m surprised hasn’t been picked up by anybody that I can see. Communism–if by communism we mean Bolshevism and Leninism-Trotskyism–as I understand this, combines strict means-ends thinking by the revolutionary elite about policies to be imposed on the population without their consent with an elaborate theory concerning how policies shall be determined in order to produce desired results.

In the West, where few know the details of this theory and fewer think the theory is true, few think those policies will produce those results, but the policies still have to be accepted, and therefore I think it doesn’t look much like a consequentialist theory anymore from outside. At least it is hard to see what it has in common with ordinary consequentialism that might be actually persuasive to somebody.

We don’t have much of a line drawing problem. It takes quite a bit to argue that West Germany or pre-Thatcher UK ought to count as communist. And Nazi Germany is much more ‘other’ than of the West (note for example that it allied WITH the USSR against Poland and with clear view of being opposed to France and the UK at the beginning of WWII.) At this point we are approaching the argumentation sophistication of those who suggest that Nazism is clearly of the left because it has the word socialist in the title. Which is pretty thin stuff indeed.

Again, I’m perfectly willing to admit that if you take out all of the bad examples on the Communist side (USSR, China, North Korea) and exclude all of the good examples in the West (US, UK, France, West Germany) you can get to almost similar cases in the worst of the West and the best of the Communist. I just don’t see any reason why you would do that, and no one has even tried to defend an analytic reason why that would make sense. If the range on one side is 75-48 and the range on the other side is 50-15, it isn’t true that the two categories are essentially the same just because they share 2 points on the opposite extremes.

It’s also not necessarily true that communism and social democracy are opposed.

You’re a diabolical revisionist renegade, Hidari.

Had someone reported genuine statistics about infant mortality in China in 1979, he would have been shot.

This is an amusing attempt to hand-wave away the facts with unsubstantiated mythology demonstrating a complete unfamiliarity with the different periods of modern Chinese history, but that’s a Western estimate.

Bianca Steele, #105

Communism—if by communism we mean Bolshevism and Leninism-Trotskyism—as I understand this, combines strict means-ends thinking by the revolutionary elite about policies to be imposed on the population without their consent with an elaborate theory concerning how policies shall be determined in order to produce desired results.

I think the point has to be made that the means-ends thinking embraced by the Bolsheviks would also be embraced by virtually ANY successful group of revolutionaries whether or not they also are committed to advancing the interests of the working class. It is a certainty that the leaders of any successful right-wing coup would also embrace the same kind of expedient rationalizations.

It seems abundantly clear [to me] that no necessary connection between means-justifies-ends thinking and feelings of sympathy for underprivileged groups can be established.

So why this determined effort to suggest that a necessary connection exists without explaining how we get from A (sympathy for working class victims) to B (any means used, however horrible, to achieve the end is justified by its inherent worthiness)?

One plausible explanation: apologetics articulated by intellectual representatives of the privileged classes which seeks to demonize those who might feel inspired to advocate for the working poor.

Is there a better explanation?

@113, I think what he’s trying to address there is the competition between liberal and egalitarian ideologies. Right-wing and nationalist ones don’t belong, they are bad by definition.

It amounts to the familiar platitude: ‘communism is a great and noble aspiration, but unfortunately it just doesn’t work’. And in the framework of liberal ethics, the proof of this assertion is, of course, trivial.

James Kroeger@113

I meant to refer to the postrevolutionary period (ignoring any remaining questions in the case of the USSR concerning when it ended, or what it means to end, under the relevant theory). Though the innovation of the Bolsheviks as I recall was in separating the gaining of power by the party from the goals of the party, as political ends (and IIRC also separating the makeup of the party from the demographics of those whose interests were to be represented). I don’t think that’s what’s been meant by means-justifies-ends thinking here up to now.

‘I agree that the way people make moral judgments is universal, ie, by weighing consequences. ‘

Yes this is exactly right. The fact that all people, everywhere, think about and talk about moral issues, and make moral judgements, is a Universal. (As is the fact that all people, everywhere, make aesthetic judgements). That is what Nietzsche meant, when he called us (apparently), Man the Esteemer, or Man the valuer. That’s what we do as humans.

But the resulting judgements from this process vary from culture to culture, from person to person, and from era to era. There are no moral absolutes, as even a cursory glance at human history very quickly demonstrates.

It’s not that perceptions differ, it’s the realities themselves that differ. Reality of New York City has almost nothing in common with reality of, say, a small Tasmanian village.

PS:

facts or circumstances that would motivate non-toleration

In practice, that is. Not absolutely.

Henri Vieuxtemps: It’s not that perceptions differ, it’s the realities themselves that differ. Reality of New York City has almost nothing in common with reality of, say, a small Tasmanian village.Yes, environmental realities themselves differ, but human needs are universal and constant. Getting your need for food satisfied in Tasmania will require that you use means that are dramatically different from those embraced by New Yorkers .

Another thing that accounts for the different ‘values’ people embrace is the fact that some people are right and other people are mistaken (or both are mistaken) re: their perceptions of the best means to employ to get their needs satisfied.

Yet another complication that leads many people to believe [incorrectly] that ‘different people have different needs’ is the fact that many people confuse means-to-ends (e.g., money) with ends-in-themselves.

When these and other variables are accounted for, what you are left with is the observable fact that all humans being born with the same identical needs (because a need is something that humans can neither create nor destroy).

matthijs krul: what a superb rendition of the cold, hyper-rationalist slave-driver! orwell couldn’t have written it any better! bravo! bravo!

It only makes sense to criticize statistics if there are better ones available.

There’s perhaps something to this, but not too much, surely. For one, “better ones available” might not be easy to find out. For example, it turns out that public records available in the Soviet Union (reported in Pravda and the like) were much more accurate accounts of the Soviet economy and agricultural output in the 70’s and 80’s than were the US State Department’s (and the CIA’s) estimations. But, the State Department still has a policy of doing all of its own estimations and not using public sources. Now, maybe they did a better job on China than they did on the Soviet Union, but I’d want independent reasons to think that’s so before I gave much credence to their figures. (Maybe we have this- I don’t know about the particular case.) My point, though, is that when we know people have produced dodgy figures in the past, and might have some reason to do so now, then we have to be very careful using these figures even for estimations. And, when we know figures are dodgy, we have to have some way to account for that (and in which direction) before we can even use them as a starting point.

Henri, #128:

I don’t know if biological needs are important here at all; I believe it’s the social and socioeconomic needs and circumstances that define morality. For example: in a small tribe avoiding conception may be immoral (the Onan story in the bible), while in today’s China having more than one child is.

In the example you provide, Henri, the social need for more/fewer children is derived ultimately from the intrinsic needs that each individual experiences personally. It is a social need driven by [shared] perceptions of how the collective might benefit from informed decisions to either increase or decrease the community’s population. Different environmental variables lead to differing moral prescriptions.

So yes, it is possible for two different communities to develop opposite perceptions of how the members should behave with respect to [their reproductive activities], even though both communities are dealing with precisely the same needs. Homeostasis tells us that our need is not always to obtain more of a particular input.

Yes, there is complexity, but ultimately we are all dealing with the same needs. With perfect knowledge of all the environmental variables involved in our different circumstances, it would be at least theoretically possible for us to develop a moral outlook that would achieve an optimized level of need-satisfaction with respect to all of the members of society.

A difficult challenge? Indeed. As we know all too well from experience, it is not an easy matter to decide which pleasures in life must be given up in order for us to be delivered from addiction/obsession/impoverishment.

There’s another word for “consequentialism where one consequence is considered so important as to justify any cost:” deontology.

“If Soviet Communists all thought…”

You rely a bit much on the ‘all’ there, and in the ‘all’ spanning across more than 100 years. It is possible that after seeing 70 years of brutality in a row, they decided to back down from communism.

Again, we are talking about a range of behaviors. The point is that the range appears to skewed far to the ‘more brutal’ side of things for communist countries, such that it only barely overlaps with where the Western-style countries fall on the scale.

Your second paragraph exposes why the consequentialist/non-consequentialist frame that Chris put on the piece was a poor choice (and one not actually used by Halliday). The problem isn’t that Communist countries were hyper-consequentialist while Western ones were consequentialist-free paragons of pure moral reasoning. Halliday’s contention is that Western countries embraced certain moral/citizen rights ideas as something important to be weighed in the consequentialist calculation while Communism actively rejected many of those same categories. Doing so seems to not have benefited citizens very much.

Halliday’s contention is that Western countries embraced certain moral/citizen rights ideas as something important to be weighed in the consequentialist calculation while Communism actively rejected many of those same categories. Doing so seems to not have benefited citizens very much.

I have a lot of sympathy with this. It’s also an argument that has been made by many prominent Western Marxists and seems quite close to G. A. Cohen’s view. Note though that the USSR did not officially reject human rights and other citizen rights (see the Soviet Constitution or the UNDHR, to which the USSR was a party). In Robert Conquest’s words there was ‘a set of phantom institutions and arrangements which put a human face on the hideous realities: a model constitution adopted in a worst period of terror and guaranteeing human rights, elections in which there was only one candidate, and in which 99 percent voted; a parliament at which no hand was ever raised in opposition or abstention’ (quoted in wikipedia).