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Do not fill this in! === Memory and legacy === Criticism of communism can be divided into two broad categories, namely that [[criticism of Communist party rule]] that concerns with the practical aspects of 20th-century [[Communist state]]s,<ref name="Bruno Bosteels 2014">{{cite book |last=Bosteels |first=Bruno |title=The Actuality of Communism |date=2014 |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |isbn=9781781687673 |edition=paper back |location=New York City, New York |author-link=Bruno Bosteels}}</ref> and [[criticism of Marxism]] and communism generally that concerns its principles and theory.<ref>{{cite book |last=Taras |first=Raymond C. |title=The Road to Disillusion: From Critical Marxism to Post-Communism in Eastern Europe |date=2015 |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |isbn=9781317454786 |edition=E-book |location=London |author-link=Raymond Taras |orig-date=1992}}</ref> Public memory of 20th-century Communist states has been described as a battleground between the communist-sympathetic or [[anti-anti-communist]] political left and the [[anti-communism]] of the [[political right]].{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}} Critics of communism on the political right point to the [[excess deaths]] under Communist states as an indictment of communism as an ideology.{{r|Piereson}}{{sfn|Engel-Di Mauro|Engel-Di Mauro|Faber|Labban|2021}}{{r|Satter 2017}} Defenders of communism on the political left say that the deaths were caused by specific authoritarian regimes and not communism as an ideology, while also pointing to [[anti-communist mass killings]] and deaths in wars that they argue were caused by capitalism and anti-communism as a counterpoint to the deaths under Communist states.{{sfn|Bevins|2020b}}{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}}{{sfn|Engel-Di Mauro|Engel-Di Mauro|Faber|Labban|2021}} According to Hungarian sociologist and politician [[András Bozóki]], positive aspects of communist countries included support for social mobility and equality, the elimination of illiteracy, urbanization, more accessible healthcare and housing, regional mobility with public transportation, the elimination of semi-feudal hierarchies, more women entering the labor market, and free access to higher education. Negative aspects of communist countries, on the other hand according to Bozóki included the suppression of freedom, the loss of trust in civil society; a culture of fear and corruption; reduced international travel; dependency on the party and state; Central Europe becoming a satellite of the Soviet Union; the creation of closed societies, leading to xenophobia, racism, prejudice, cynicism and pessimism; women only being emancipated in the workforce; the oppression of national identity; and relativist ethical societal standards.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bozóki |first=András |date=December 2008 |title=The Communist Legacy: Pros and Cons in Retrospect |url=https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Communist-Legacy-Pros-and-Cons-in-Retrospect_tbl2_228979606 |website=[[ResearchGate]]}}</ref> [[Memory studies]] have been done on how the events are memorized.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kaprāns |first=Mārtiņš |date=2 May 2015 |title=Hegemonic representations of the past and digital agency: Giving meaning to 'The Soviet Story' on social networking sites |journal=Memory Studies |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=156–172 |doi=10.1177/1750698015587151 |s2cid=142458412}}</ref> According to [[Kristen Ghodsee|Kristen R. Ghodsee]] and [[Scott Sehon]], on the political left, there are "those with some sympathy for socialist ideals and the popular opinion of hundreds of millions of Russian and east European citizens nostalgic for their state socialist pasts.", while on the political right, there are "the committed anti-totalitarians, both east and west, insisting that all experiments with Marxism will always and inevitably end with the gulag."{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}} The "[[victims of Communism]]" concept,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Neumayer |first=Laure |date=November 2017 |title=Advocating for the Cause of the 'Victims of Communism' in the European Political Space: Memory Entrepreneurs in Interstitial Fields |journal=Nationalities Papers |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=45 |issue=6 |pages=992–1012 |doi=10.1080/00905992.2017.1364230 |doi-access=free}}</ref> has become accepted scholarship, as part of the double genocide theory, in Eastern Europe and among anti-communists in general;<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dujisin |first=Zoltan |date=July 2020 |title=A History of Post-Communist Remembrance: From Memory Politics to the Emergence of a Field of Anticommunism |journal=[[Theory and Society]] |volume=50 |issue=January 2021 |pages=65–96 |doi=10.1007/s11186-020-09401-5 |s2cid=225580086 |quote=This article invites the view that the Europeanization of an antitotalitarian 'collective memory' of communism reveals the emergence of a field of anticommunism. This transnational field is inextricably tied to the proliferation of state-sponsored and anticommunist memory institutes across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), ... [and is proposed by] anticommunist memory entrepreneurs. |doi-access=free}}</ref> it is rejected by some Western European{{r|Satori}} and other scholars, especially when it is used to equate Communism and [[Nazism]], which is seen by scholars as a long-discredited perspective.<ref name="Doumanis 2016">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yd8mDAAAQBAJ |title=The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914–1945 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2016 |isbn=9780191017759 |editor-last=Doumanis |editor-first=Nicholas |edition=E-book |location=Oxford, England |pages=377–378}}</ref> The narrative posits that famines and mass deaths by Communist states can be attributed to a single cause and that communism, as "the deadliest ideology in history", or in the words of [[Jonathan Rauch]] as "the deadliest fantasy in human history",<ref>{{cite news |last=Rauch |first=Jonathan |date=December 2003 |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/12/the-forgotten-millions/302849/ |title=The Forgotten Millions |work=[[The Atlantic]] |access-date=20 December 2020}}</ref> represents the greatest threat to humanity.{{sfn|Engel-Di Mauro|Engel-Di Mauro|Faber|Labban|2021}} Proponents posit an alleged link between communism, left-wing politics, and socialism with genocide, mass killing, and [[totalitarianism]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Mrozick |first=Agnieszka |date=2019 |editor1-last=Kuligowski |editor1-first=Piotr |editor2-last=Moll |editor2-first=Łukasz |editor3-last=Szadkowski |editor3-first=Krystian |url=https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=788051 |title=Anti-Communism: It's High Time to Diagnose and Counteract |journal={{ill|Praktyka Teoretyczna|pl}} |publisher=Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań |volume=1 |number=31, ''Anti-Communisms: Discourses of Exclusion'' |pages=178–184 |access-date=26 December 2020 |via=Central and Eastern European Online Library |quote=First is the prevalence of a totalitarian paradigm, in which Nazism and Communism are equated as the most atrocious ideas and systems in human history (because communism, defined by Marx as a classless society with common means of production, has never been realised anywhere in the world, in further parts I will be putting this concept into inverted commas as an example of discursive practice). Significantly, while in the Western debate the more precise term 'Stalinism' is used – in 2008, on the 70th anniversary of the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact, the European Parliament established 23 August as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism – hardly anyone in Poland is paying attention to niceties: 'communism' or the left, is perceived as totalitarian here. A homogenizing sequence of associations (the left is communism, communism is totalitarianism, ergo the left is totalitarian) and the ahistorical character of the concepts used (no matter if we talk about the USSR in the 1930s under Stalin, Maoist China from the period of the Cultural Revolution, or Poland under Gierek, 'communism' is murderous all the same) not only serves the denigration of the Polish People's Republic, expelling this period from Polish history, but also – or perhaps primarily – the deprecation of Marxism, leftist programs, and any hopes and beliefs in Marxism and leftist activity as a remedy for capitalist exploitation, social inequality, fascist violence on a racist and anti-Semitic basis, as well as homophobic and misogynist violence. The totalitarian paradigm not only equates fascism and socialism (in Poland and the countries of the former Eastern bloc stubbornly called 'communism' and pressed into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, which should additionally emphasize its foreignness), but in fact recognizes the latter as worse, more sinister (the ''Black Book of Communism'' (1997) is of help here as it estimates the number of victims of 'communism' at around 100 million; however, it is critically commented on by researchers on the subject, including historian Enzo Traverso in the book ''L'histoire comme champ de bataille'' (2011)). Thus, anti-communism not only delegitimises the left, including communists, and depreciates the contribution of the left to the breakdown of fascism in 1945, but also contributes to the rehabilitation of the latter, as we can see in recent cases in Europe and other places. (Quote at pp. 178–179)}}</ref> Some authors, as [[Stéphane Courtois]], propose a theory of equivalence between class and racial genocide.<ref name="Jaffrelot & Sémelin 2009">{{cite book |editor-last1=Jaffrelot |editor-first1=Christophe |editor-link1=Christophe Jaffrelot |editor-last2=Sémelin |editor-first2=Jacques |editor-link2=Jacques Sémelin |date=2009 |title=Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide |translator-last=Schoch |translator-first=Cynthia |series=CERI Series in Comparative Politics and International Studies |location=New York |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |pages=37 |isbn=978-0-231-14283-0}}</ref> It is supported by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, with 100 million being the most common estimate used from ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]'' despite some of the authors of the book distancing themselves from the estimates made by Stephen Courtois.{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}} Various museums and monuments have been constructed in remembrance of the victims of Communism, with support of the European Union and various governments in Canada, Eastern Europe, and the United States.<ref name="Ghodsee 2014">{{cite journal |last=Ghodsee |first=Kristen |author-link=Kristen Ghodsee |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=115–142 |title=A Tale of 'Two Totalitarianisms': The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism |journal=[[History of the Present]] |year=2014 |url=http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kristenghodsee/files/history_of_the_present_galleys.pdf |jstor=10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115 |doi=10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115}}</ref><ref name="Neumayer 2018">{{cite book |last=Neumayer |first=Laure |author-link=Laure Neumayer |year=2018 |title=The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=9781351141741}}</ref> Works such as ''The Black Book of Communism'' and ''[[Bloodlands]]'' legitimized debates on the [[comparison of Nazism and Stalinism]],{{r|Jaffrelot & Sémelin 2009}}<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kühne |first=Thomas |date=May 2012 |title=Great Men and Large Numbers: Undertheorising a History of Mass Killing |journal=[[Contemporary European History]] |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=133–143 |doi=10.1017/S0960777312000070 |issn=0960-7773 |jstor=41485456 |s2cid=143701601}}</ref> and by extension communism, and the former work in particular was important in the criminalization of communism.{{r|Ghodsee 2014}}{{r|Neumayer 2018}} According to [[Freedom House]], Communism is "considered one of the two great totalitarian movements of the 20th century", the other being Nazism, but added that "there is an important difference in how the world has treated these two execrable phenomena.":<ref>{{Cite web |last=Puddington |first=Arch |date=23 March 2017 |title=In Modern Dictatorships, Communism's Legacy Lingers On |url=https://freedomhouse.org/article/modern-dictatorships-communisms-legacy-lingers |access-date=5 August 2023 |website=[[Freedom House]] |language=en}}</ref> The failure of Communist governments to live up to the ideal of a [[communist society]], their general trend towards increasing [[authoritarianism]], their bureaucracy, and the inherent inefficiencies in their economies have been linked to the decline of communism in the late 20th century.{{r|Ball & Dagger 2019}}{{sfn|Lansford|2007|pp=9–24, 36–44}}<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Djilas |first=Milovan |author-link=Milovan Djilas |date=1991 |title=The Legacy of Communism in Eastern Europe |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/45290119 |journal=The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=83–92 |jstor=45290119 |issn=1046-1868}}</ref> [[Walter Scheidel]] stated that despite wide-reaching government actions, Communist states failed to achieve long-term economic, social, and political success.<ref>{{cite book |last=Scheidel |first=Walter |title=The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=2017 |isbn=978-0691165028 |chapter=Chapter 7: Communism |author-link=Walter Scheidel}}</ref> The experience of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the [[North Korean famine]], and alleged economic underperformance when compared to developed free market systems are cited as examples of Communist states failing to build a successful state while relying entirely on what they view as ''orthodox Marxism''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Scheidel |first=Walter |title=The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century |date=2017 |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |isbn=978-0691165028 |pages=222 |author-link=Walter Scheidel}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Natsios |first=Andrew S. |title=The Great North Korean Famine |date=2002 |publisher=[[Institute of Peace Press]] |isbn=1929223331 |author-link=Andrew Natsios}}</ref>{{page needed|date=June 2021}} Despite those shortcomings, [[Philipp Ther]] stated that there was a general increase in the standard of living throughout Eastern Bloc countries as the result of modernization programs under Communist governments.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ther |first=Philipp |url=https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10812.html |title=Europe Since 1989: A History |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-691-16737-4 |page=132 |quote=Stalinist regimes aimed to catapult the predominantly agrarian societies into the modern age by swift industrialization. At the same time, they hoped to produce politically loyal working classes by mass employment in large state industries. Steelworks were built in Eisenhüttenstadt (GDR), Nowa Huta (Poland), Košice (Slovakia), and Miskolc (Hungary), as were various mechanical engineering and chemical combines and other industrial sites. As a result of communist modernization, living standards in Eastern Europe rose. Planned economies, moreover, meant that wages, salaries, and the prices of consumer goods were fixed. Although the communists were not able to cancel out all regional differences, they succeeded in creating largely egalitarian societies. |author-link=:de:Philipp Ther}}</ref> Most experts agree there was a significant increase in mortality rates following the years 1989 and 1991, including a 2014 [[World Health Organization]] report which concluded that the "health of people in the former Soviet countries deteriorated dramatically after the collapse of the Soviet Union."<ref name="Ghodsee 2021">{{cite book |last1=Ghodsee |first1=Kristen |last2=Orenstein |first2=Mitchell A. |author1-link=Kristen Ghodsee |date=2021 |title=Taking Stock of Shock: Social Consequences of the 1989 Revolutions |url= |location=New York |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |page=78 |doi=10.1093/oso/9780197549230.001.0001 |isbn=978-0197549247}}</ref> Post-Communist Russia during the [[IMF]]-backed economic reforms of [[Boris Yeltsin]] experienced surging [[economic inequality]] and [[poverty]] as unemployment reached double digits by the early to mid 1990s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Scheidel |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Scheidel |title=The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=2017 |isbn=978-0691165028 |pages=51, 222–223 |quote=Following the dissolution of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and then of the Soviet Union itself in late 1991, exploding poverty drove the surge in income inequality.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Mattei |first=Clara E. |date=2022 |title=The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism |pages=301–302 |url=https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html |location= |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |isbn=978-0226818399 |quote="If, in 1987–1988, 2 percent of the Russian people lived in poverty (i.e., survived on less than $4 a day), by 1993–1995 the number reached 50 percent: in just seven years half the Russian population became destitute.}}</ref> By contrast, the [[Central Europe|Central European]] states of the former Eastern Bloc–Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia–showed healthy increases in life expectancy from the 1990s onward, compared to nearly thirty years of stagnation under Communism.<ref>{{harvp|Hauck|2016}}; {{harvp|Gerr|Raskina|Tsyplakova|2017}}; {{harvp|Safaei|2011}}; {{harvp|Mackenbach|2012}}; {{harvp|Leon|2013}}</ref> Bulgaria and Romania followed this trend after the introduction of more serious economic reforms in the late 1990s.<ref>{{cite journal |first1=C. |last1=Dolea |first2=E. |last2=Nolte |first3=M. |last3=McKee |url=https://jech.bmj.com/content/56/6/444 |title=Changing life expectancy in Romania after the transition] |journal=[[Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health]] |year=2002 |volume=56 |issue=6 |pages=444–449 |doi=10.1136/jech.56.6.444 |pmid=12011202 |pmc=1732171 |access-date=4 January 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Chavez |first=Lesly Allyn |date=June 2014 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335675821 |title=The Effects of Communism on Romania's Population |access-date=4 January 2021}}</ref> The economies of Eastern Bloc countries had previously experienced stagnation in the 1980s under Communism.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hirt |first1=Sonia |last2=Sellar |first2=Christian |last3=Young |first3=Craig |date=4 September 2013 |title=Neoliberal Doctrine Meets the Eastern Bloc: Resistance, Appropriation and Purification in Post-Socialist Spaces |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668136.2013.822711 |journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies]] |volume=65 |issue=7 |pages=1243–1254 |doi=10.1080/09668136.2013.822711 |s2cid=153995367 |issn=0966-8136}}</ref> A common expression throughout Eastern Europe after 1989 was "everything they told us about communism was a lie, but everything they told us about capitalism was true."{{r|Ghodsee 2021}}{{rp|192}} The right-libertarian think tank [[Cato Institute]] has stated that the analyses done of post-communist countries in the 1990s were "premature" and "that early and rapid reformers by far outperformed gradual reformers" on [[Lists of countries by GDP per capita|GDP per capita]], the [[United Nations Human Development Index]] and [[political freedom]], in addition to developing better institutions. The institute also stated that the process of privatization in Russia was "deeply flawed" due to Russia's reforms being "far ''less'' rapid" than those of Central Europe and the [[Baltic states]].<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Havrylyshyn |first1=Oleh |last2=Meng |first2=Xiaofan |last3=Tupy |first3=Marian L. |date=12 July 2016 |title=25 Years of Reforms in Ex-Communist Countries |url=https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/25-years-reforms-ex-communist-countries-fast-extensive-reforms-led-higher-growth#introduction |access-date=7 July 2023 |website=[[Cato Institute]]}}</ref> The average post-Communist country had returned to 1989 levels of per-capita GDP by 2005.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Appel |first1=Hilary |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PHhTDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA36 |title=From Triumph to Crisis: Neoliberal Economic Reform in Postcommunist Countries |last2=Orenstein |first2=Mitchell A. |date=2018 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1108435055 |page=36}}</ref> However, [[Branko Milanović]] wrote in 2015 that following the end of the Cold War, many of those countries' economies declined to such an extent during the transition to capitalism that they have yet to return to the point they were prior to the collapse of communism.<ref>{{cite journal |year=2015 |title=After the Wall Fell: The Poor Balance Sheet of the Transition to Capitalism |journal=[[Challenge (economics magazine)|Challenge]] |volume=58 |issue=2 |pages=135–138 |doi=10.1080/05775132.2015.1012402 |quote=So, what is the balance sheet of transition? Only three or at most five or six countries could be said to be on the road to becoming a part of the rich and (relatively) stable capitalist world. Many of the other countries are falling behind, and some are so far behind that they cannot aspire to go back to the point where they were when the Wall fell for several decades. |last=Milanović |first=Branko |author-link=Branko Milanović |s2cid=153398717}}</ref> Several scholars state that the negative economic developments in post-Communist countries after the fall of Communism led to increased nationalist sentiment and [[Nostalgia for Communism|nostalgia for the Communist era]].{{sfn|Ghodsee|Sehon|Dresser|2018}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ghodsee |first=Kristen Rogheh |title=Red hangover: legacies of twentieth-century communism |date=October 2017 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-6934-9}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |date=5 December 2011 |title=Confidence in Democracy and Capitalism Wanes in Former Soviet Union |work=Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project |url=http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/12/05/confidence-in-democracy-and-capitalism-wanes-in-former-soviet-union/ |access-date=24 November 2018}}</ref> In 2011, ''[[The Guardian]]'' published an analysis of the former Soviet countries twenty years after the fall of the USSR. They found that "GDP fell as much as 50 percent in the 1990s in some republics... as capital flight, industrial collapse, hyperinflation and tax avoidance took their toll", but that there was a rebound in the 2000s, and by 2010 "some economies were five times as big as they were in 1991." Life expectancy has grown since 1991 in some of the countries, but fallen in others; likewise, some held free and fair elections, while others remained authoritarian.<ref name=":22">{{Cite web |title=End of the USSR: visualising how the former Soviet countries are doing, 20 years on {{!}} Russia |date=17 Aug 2011 |first1=Mark |last1=Rice-Oxley |first2=Ami |last2=Sedghi |first3=Jenny |last3=Ridley |first4=Sasha |last4=Magill |url=https://theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/17/ussr-soviet-countries-data |access-date=21 January 2021 |website=The Guardian}}</ref> By 2019, the majority of people in most Eastern European countries approved of the shift to multiparty democracy and a market economy, with approval being highest among residents of Poland and residents in the territory of what was once [[East Germany]], and disapproval being the highest among residents of Russia and [[Ukraine]]. In addition, 61 percent said that standards of living were now higher than they had been under Communism, while only 31 percent said that they were worse, with the remaining 8 percent saying that they did not know or that standards of living had not changed.<ref>{{Cite web |first1=Richard |last1=Wike |first2=Jacob |last2=Poushter |first3=Laura |last3=Silver |first4=Kat |last4=Devlin |first5=Janell |last5=Fetterolf |first6=Alexandra |last6=Castillo |first7=Christine |last7=Huang |date=15 October 2019 |title=European Public Opinion Three Decades After the Fall of Communism |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/15/european-public-opinion-three-decades-after-the-fall-of-communism/ |access-date=15 June 2023 |website=[[Pew Research Center]]'s Global Attitudes Project |language=en-US}}</ref> According to Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker in their book ''Communism's Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes'', citizens of post-Communist countries are less supportive of democracy and more supportive of government-provided social welfare. They also found that those who lived under Communist rule were more likely to be left-authoritarian (referencing the [[right-wing authoritarian personality]]) than citizens of other countries. Those who are left-authoritarian in this sense more often tend to be older generations that lived under Communism. In contrast, younger post-Communist generations continue to be anti-democratic but are not as left-wing ideologically, which in the words of Pop-Eleches and Tucker "might help explain the growing popularity of [[right-wing populists]] in the region."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Pop-Eleches |first1=Grigore |last2=Tucker |first2=Joshua |date=12 November 2019 |title=Europe's communist regimes began to collapse 30 years ago, but still shape political views |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/12/europes-communist-regimes-began-collapse-years-ago-still-shape-political-views/ |access-date=20 August 2022}}</ref> [[Conservatives]], [[Liberalism|liberals]], and [[social democrats]] generally view 20th-century Communist states as unqualified failures. Political theorist and professor [[Jodi Dean]] argues that this limits the scope of discussion around political alternatives to [[capitalism]] and [[neoliberalism]]. Dean argues that, when people think of capitalism, they do not consider what are its worst results ([[climate change]], [[economic inequality]], [[hyperinflation]], the [[Great Depression]], the [[Great Recession]], the [[Robber baron (industrialist)|robber barons]], and [[unemployment]]) because the [[history of capitalism]] is viewed as dynamic and nuanced; the history of communism is not considered dynamic or nuanced, and there is a fixed historical narrative of communism that emphasizes [[authoritarianism]], the [[gulag]], starvation, and violence.<ref>{{cite web |last=Ehms |first=Jule |date=9 March 2014 |url=https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/7871_the-communist-horizon-review-by-jule-ehms/ |title=The Communist Horizon |website=Marx & Philosophy Society |access-date=29 October 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Ghodsee |first=Kristen |author-link=Kristen Ghodsee |year=2015 |title=The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QkJ5CAAAQBAJ&pg=PT18 |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |page=xvi–xvii |isbn=978-0822358350}}</ref> Ghodsee,<ref group="lower-alpha">{{harvp|Ghodsee|2018|ps=: "Throughout much of the twentieth century, state socialism presented an existential challenge to the worst excesses of the free market. The threat posed by Marxist ideologies forced Western governments to expand social safety nets to protect workers from the unpredictable but inevitable booms and busts of the capitalist economy. After the Berlin Wall fell, many celebrated the triumph of the West, cosigning socialist ideas to the dustbin of history. But for all its faults, state socialism provided an important foil for capitalism. It was in response to a global discourse of social and economic rights—a discourse that appealed not only to the progressive populations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America but also to many men and women in Western Europe and North America—that politicians agreed to improve working conditions for wage laborers as well as create social programs for children, the poor, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled, mitigating exploitation and the growth of income inequality. Although there were important antecedents in the 1980s, once state socialism collapsed, capitalism shook off the constraints of market regulation and income redistribution. Without the looming threat of a rival superpower, the last thirty years of global neoliberalism have witnessed a rapid shriveling of social programs that protect citizens from cyclical instability and financial crises and reduce the vast inequality of economic outcomes between those at the top and bottom of the income distribution."}}</ref> along with the historians [[Gary Gerstle]] and [[Walter Scheidel]], suggest that the rise and fall of communism had a significant impact on the development and decline of [[labor movement]]s and social [[welfare state]]s in the United States and other Western societies. Gerstle argues that organized labor in the United States was strongest when the threat of communism reached its peak, and the decline of both organized labor and the welfare state coincided with the collapse of communism. Both Gerstle and Scheidel posit that as economic elites in the West became more fearful of possible communist revolutions in their own societies, especially as the tyranny and violence associated with communist governments became more apparent, the more willing they were to compromise with the working class, and much less so once the threat waned.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gerstle |first=Gary |author-link=Gary Gerstle |date=2022 |title=The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era |url=https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-neoliberal-order-9780197519646?cc=us&lang=en& |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |page=12 |isbn=978-0197519646}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Taylor |first=Matt |date=22 February 2017 |title=One Recipe for a More Equal World: Mass Death|url=https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ypxw55/one-recipe-for-a-more-equal-world-mass-death |work=[[Vice (magazine)|Vice]] |access-date=27 June 2022}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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