Criticism of communism
A diverse array of writers and political activists have published criticism of communism, such as:
- Soviet bloc dissidents Lech Wałęsa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Václav Havel;
- Social theorists Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Ralf Dahrendorf, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Karl Wittfogel;
- Economists Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman;
- Historians and social scientists Robert Conquest, Stéphane Courtois, Richard Pipes, and R. J. Rummel;
- Anti-Stalinist left wingers Ignazio Silone, George Orwell, Saul Alinsky, Richard Wright, Arthur Koestler, and Bernard-Henri Levy;
- Novelist and Philosopher Ayn Rand; and
- Philosophers Leszek Kołakowski and Karl Popper.
Most[citation needed] of this criticism is on the policies adopted by one-party states ruled by Communist parties (known as "Communist states"). Critics are specially focused on their economic performance and human rights records. Some writers, such as Courtois, argue that the actions of Communist states were the inevitable (though sometimes unintentional) result of Marxist principles;[27] thus, these authors present the events occurring in those countries, particularly under Stalin and Mao, as an argument against Marxism itself. Some critics were former Marxists, such as Wittfogel, who applied Marx's concept of "Oriental despotism" to Communist states such as the Soviet Union, and Silone, Wright, Koestler (among other writers) who contributed essays to the book The God that Failed (the title refers not to the Christian God but to Marxism).
There have also been more direct criticisms of Marxism, such as criticisms of the labor theory of value or Marx's predictions. Nevertheless, Communist parties outside of the Warsaw Pact, such as the Communist parties in Western Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa, differed greatly. Thus a criticism that is applicable to one such party is not necessarily applicable to another.
Economic criticisms of communal property are described under criticisms of socialism.
