The Rise and Fall of State Capitalist Dictatorships (2009)

Book Review from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Rise and Fall of Communism. By Archie Brown. Bodley Head. 2009. £25.

Archie Brown, an Oxford professor and expert in the subject, begins by defining his terms. By Communism (with a capital C) he means what existed in Russia and 14 other countries and which still exists in varying degrees today in five of them (China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba and Laos), characterised by the monopolisation of power by a Communist party, organised on rigidly hierarchical lines and severely disciplined, the state ownership of the main means of production and a top-down command economy. By communism (with a small c) he means the “self-governing, stateless, co-operative society” which the Communist parties proclaimed as their long-term aim – and which was Marx’s aim too (and also our, only and immediate, aim, even if we prefer to call it socialism).

Taking this into account, this 700-page tome is an objective account of the coming into being, history and demise in Europe of Communist (what we’d call state capitalist) regimes which he sees as the salient fact of the 20th century. Unfortunately for us genuine communists, apart from the suffering imposed on the workers of the countries concerned, this dragged the name of communism (with a small c) through the mud, so making the task of spreading the idea of a stateless, classless, moneyless society as the alternative to capitalism all the more difficult.

Adam Buick