What happened when socialists took the state? This theme is Part 2 of the three-part series on enacted socialism, and it studies the revolutions that seized power in the twentieth century, the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, North Korea, the Eastern Bloc, and the Indonesian party that was destroyed before it could, and asks what became of them. It holds two facts together that the usual stories keep apart: these societies achieved things capitalism had not matched, mass literacy, universal healthcare, industrialization, the defeat of fascism; and they also built camps, silenced dissent, and, at the worst, presided over famine and terror. The school takes no verdict on whether they were “really” socialist. It asks instead what in this record is worth carrying forward and what must never be repeated, and it insists the room decide for itself. It follows Origins at the moment the movement becomes a government, and it leads into the final part of the series, Socialism and National Liberation.
A note on balance
This is the most contested theme in the school, and it is built deliberately to argue with itself. Every lens gathers defenders and critics, and labels each source’s standpoint: Marxist-Leninist alongside Trotskyist, anarchist, and market-socialist; solidarity advocacy alongside the testimony of exiles and the revolution’s own dissidents. The furthest defender poles (Losurdo and Ludo Martens on Stalin, Kim Il Sung’s Juche in its own voice, the Deprogram podcast) are included as positions to argue, explicitly flagged, not endorsed. Nothing here is offered as the school’s position, and no source is offered as the last word. A facilitator’s job is to keep the argument open and honest. See the facilitator guide and the note on method in the experiential lens.
How to use this theme
This folder organizes resources by lens. See the Pedagogy document for what the lenses do and why they are structured this way.
- Experiential: What is your experience with this? What does the room already know?
- Historical: How did this come to be?
- Theoretical: How do we understand and analyze it?
- Practical: What is happening on the ground and what are people doing about it?
- Liberatory: What would it mean to overcome or transform this?
A session does not need to use all five lenses. Because feelings run high here, this theme is often better as a group’s later theme than its first, after some trust has been built.
Anchor questions
These questions have proven useful for opening up this theme. They are starting points, not a script.
- What were you taught about “communist countries,” by whom, and to what end?
- What did the USSR and China actually achieve, and at what cost?
- Was the Soviet Union socialist, a degenerated workers’ state, state capitalism, or a new class society? Does the label change what you conclude?
- How did revolutions meant to free workers end with secret police? Was that fated, or a road taken?
- Can there be socialism without democracy? Did any of these societies have either?
- How should a socialist here relate to China or Vietnam today, with solidarity, criticism, or both?
- What in this whole record would you carry forward, and what would you refuse to repeat?
Recommended sequences
Suggested arcs for groups new to this theme. Adapt freely. Every session opens with a check-in and closes with reflection (see the pedagogy document). Because the theme divides rooms, name that at the start and hold the ground rules firmly.
Single-session entry point (2 hours). Open experiential: what people were taught about “communism,” and any family memory of these societies. Watch a short piece together and read a few pages of Alexievich’s Secondhand Time aloud, letting the contradictions sit. Close on the last anchor question: what would you carry forward, and what would you refuse to repeat? See the single-session template.
Six-week study circle. Week 1 experiential: our own inheritance, and testimony from every side (Alexievich, Mandelstam, the North Korea and Yugoslavia films). Week 2 historical: the Russian and Chinese revolutions and how they changed under siege (Reed, Fitzpatrick, Hinton, Mobo Gao). Week 3 historical: the wider socialist world, Vietnam, Korea, the annihilated Indonesian party, the Eastern Bloc revolts (Kolko, Cumings, Roosa, Bevins, Harman). Week 4 theoretical: what kind of society was it, and could it have been planned (Trotsky, Cliff, Djilas, the Mises to Cockshott calculation debate). Week 5 the Stalin question and the Yugoslav alternative, held openly. Week 6 practical and liberatory: China and Vietnam today, the reckoning with the crimes, and what is worth carrying forward. See the six-week template.
Weekend intensive. Compress the arc into a Friday-through-Sunday structure, with Saturday on history and theory and Sunday on the living debates over China and the lessons of the collapse. A screening of The Act of Killing or The Death of Yugoslavia works well on Saturday evening, with time to decompress after. See the weekend-intensive template.
Related themes
- Origins: Dialectics, Marx, and the Workers’ Movement is Part 1 of this series and supplies the reform-versus-revolution argument these revolutions put to the test.
- Imperialism and the Global System frames the blockades, wars, and sanctions these states lived under, and the US role in the Indonesian and other counter-revolutions.
- The State, Strategy, and Power carries the theory of the state and the debate over taking power that this theme tests against the record.
- Anarchism, Mutual Aid, and Prefiguration holds the libertarian-socialist critique of the party-state and the memory of Kronstadt.
Status
First pass across all five lenses, and it may be a while before there is a second. It is built for viewpoint balance. Known gaps: China from the inside, Vietnam and Laos today, and the Central Asian and Mongolian experiences. If you have run a session on this theme, consider contributing back what you used and what you learned.