How Communism Succeeds

I've been reading a lot about Cold War history as of late. Right now I'm in the midst of reading The Coldest War by James Brady, which covers the Korean War. The book spends a lot of time discussing the politics of the era, which valuable because the era receives little coverage in popular history. Much of the political discussion is focused on Mao's revolution in China. I've read about the Chinese Civil War before so none of the information is new to me, but for some reason reading about it in The Coldest War got me thinking about the strategies employed by communist revolutionaries.

Communism has a solid track record for winning revolutions. Russia was the first major one. After that countries started falling to communism like dominoes. China, North Korea, and Vietnam are probably the most well known to Americans. But East Germany, Poland, Afghanistan, Hungary, Romania, and many other countries experienced notable periods of communist rule. How did these revolutions succeed? During these revolutions, contemporaries often credited the Soviet Union with every communist victory. Even people today will often give the Soviet Union all the credit. But it wasn't as simple as that. In fact many revolutions, including Mao's in China, succeeded with little to no meaningful support from the Soviet Union.

Communism's success can be credited to several factors. It's tough to rank these factors from most to least important. They all play off of each other so I will discuss them in no particular order. The first factor is the sales pitch. Communism blatantly steals a page from anarchism by promising a stateless society. The difference between the two schools of philosophy is that communism claims that there is a need for a state to guide people into statelessness. The second factor to communism's success is the target of the sales pitch. Unlike many philosophies, communism doesn't target the wealthy, elite, or powerful. Communism as describe by Marx targets the workers, which he calls the proletariat. Post-Marx communist revolutionaries followed this theme but with slight variations. Mao targeted the peasants. Since China was still a feudal society at the time, there weren't a lot of proletariat around. Today's communists, especially here in the United States, target minority groups such as non-whites and transgender individuals in addition to works. The theme is targeting the downtrodden.

Targeting the downtrodden is an effective strategy because in almost every society the downtrodden are the majority. Not only are they the majority, they have often have little to lose and much to gain. Remember the state I mentioned previously? It has a specific form. It's supposed to be a dictatorship of the proletariat. In other words, after the communist revolution concludes, the revolutionaries will go from being the downtrodden of society to ruling it. The prospect of being in charge is especially enticing to somebody who has spent their life under the boot of a system. This is a page that communism stole (and constantly denies) from Christianity. Early Christian missionaries targeted the downtrodden too. For example, it become especially popular amongst slaves. Whereas many if not most religions at the time offered slaves little or nothing in terms of an afterlife, Christianity promised even the lowly slave an afterlife of paradise. Promising great things to those who have nothing is a great way to create true believers. Another factor of communism's widespread success is that many of those who fight for its cause are true believers in the philosophy.

I don't remember the exact podcast or episode, but Dan Carlin of Hardcore History fame and Daniele Bolelli of History on Fire fame discussed the differences between fascism and communism. One major difference was how the two dealt with European colonies. Fascists typically worked with the colonizers. Communists instead favored the colonized. While both philosophies ended in death and destruction for basically everyone living in a colony, communism enjoyed the benefit of offering the majority, the colonized, hope. This rhetoric is alive an well with today's communists who discuss decolonization in an attempt to attract indigenous peoples to their cause.

Creating true believers figures into another factor of communism's success. Communist revolutionaries rely on tactics that reflect their initial lack of resources. These tactics are often viewed as weaknesses to those steeped in modern military theory. But the fact that communist armies reliably defeat large state armies argues otherwise. If you study communist revolutions, you quickly realize that communists don't rely on traditional European (and European descendants like the United States) military tactics. Instead they engage in what European military tacticians refer to as irregular warfare. The opening salvo from a communist army isn't even from weaponry. Instead they first target the societal structure upon which the opposing military depends. Agitprop, a term combining agitation and propaganda, is the practice of using propaganda to create agitation in society to encourage infighting. Infighting creates instability and thus weakens the overall society. It is only after the societal structure has been weakened that communist armies typically engage in actual fighting.

The fighting methods of communist armies are where the true believers are most valuable. The conditions under which communist revolutionaries fight are often deplorable. Hunger, cold, and life on the run are the norm for communist revolutionaries. This is because communist armies typically remain mobile and rely on low technology. Remaining mobile makes it difficult for state armies to engage on their terms. State armies like decisive battles on large battlefields. These are battles where high technology like tanks, artillery, and aircraft are most effective. The weakness of high technology is that it's dependent on supply lines. Tanks, artillery, and aircraft are worthless without a constant supply of fuel and munitions. Furthermore, the soldiers who operate those weapons require food, water, medicine, clothing, etc. The larger the army, the greater the supply requirements become. Small infantry units like those typically employed by communist armies have much more modest supply requirements. In addition to that, true believers are more willing to suffer under conditions like hunger, especially if they were already suffering from those conditions before becoming a communist revolutionary.

One reason the United States and Republic of Korea forces got their teeth kicked in by Chinese forces during the Korean War is because their supply lines were stretched too far. MacArthur wanted to take the entire Korean peninsula quickly and pushed his forces to move as fast as possible. The Chinese forces, which had already entered Korea unbeknownst to MacArthur and those in his staff, were happy to let the United States forces move ahead unopposed until they reached the Yalu River. By then the forward forces were far ahead of their supply lines. Compounding that was the fact it was an especially brutal winter, which hindered the performance of high technology weapons like tanks. At this point the Chinese army hadn't become an established state military and still relies heavily on their civil war tactics. Using low technology weapons like mortars and rifles and relying on terrain to hide from American surveillance planes, the Chinese were able to fight effectively even in the brutal winter conditions and blunt much of the United States' technological advantage. Despite being a much lower tech force, the Chinese were able to push the United States into negotiations to end hostilities.

This post has already become much longer than I intended so I'll stop here. My hope is that anybody reading this is able to walk away with a slightly better understanding of revolutionary tactics in general. The factors described in this post aren't exhaustive nor are they exclusive to communism. They're effective for anybody willing and able to use them. I also hope that anybody reading this is better able to recognize these factors when they're being used. A careful eye may reveal that these factors are in play today and being used to manipulate people both online and off.