Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
for the downtrodden majority (Marx
1975
; Carver
1991
). However its materialist
assumptions that the unequal power relationships are only due to class is flawed,
for differences also come from many other factors, such as gender and race. More
specifically, attempts to put Marxist ideas and the Leninist revisions into practice
after the 1917 revolution in Russia, and its imposition on eastern Europe and other
countries after World War II, were unsuccessful and brutal, despite their early ma-
terial successes. Despite the leveling of class differences, dictatorships with coer-
cive regimes emerged in these states resulting in millions of deaths from deliber-
ate or misguided policies. They also led to the loss of political freedom, personal
property, a limited production of goods—except in a few specialised cases—all of
which contributed to the collapse of communist rule in most countries by the late
1980s. Although China remains communist in principle it has managed to adapt to
the new industrial realities by becoming a major production centre, essentially via
state capitalism, and the 'factory of the world' for many products. However it still
maintains a centralised political regime in an increasingly wealthy, but still tightly
controlled society, with limited personal rights and with rapidly increasing inequali-
ties. Modern Marxists still argue all that these examples were distorted versions of
communist principles in the various attempts to create a new society based on a
redistributive principle of equality for all. However, knowledge of the experience of
these societal experiments, especially the absence of personal and political freedom
and the coercion of those who disagreed, led to the collapse of support in most de-
veloped countries for such transformative approaches to create a more just society.
By contrast, most western states adopted what amounted to incremental or
affirmative policies
from the mid-nineteenth century. These involved a series of
new programmes, often called progressive policies, since they aimed to improve the
conditions of life and work of the population. Certainly many similar policies were
also used in communist regime, but often inefficiently because of the dead hand of
government provision of all economic activity and with no incentives for working
hard. These redistributive programmes in most western societies were implement-
ed without losing either democratic freedoms or the basic capitalist system, with
the state becoming a provider, or an implementer, of the provision of some goods,
although the proportions vary drastically between states. At a national level increas-
ing growth and prosperity from the late nineteenth century enabled governments to
finance many progressive social programmes, ranging from universal education,
pensions, various poverty and unemployment benefits, increased police protection,
and in some countries, social housing, health care, or at least health care subsidies,
for the old and poor. In addition to these state actions, municipalities continued to
create safe water supplies and sewage disposal, enacted rigorous building standards
and land use policies that banned noxious factories from residential areas, as well
as providing a range of utilities and amenities such as parks, libraries etc. The size
and scope of these measures varied in different nations, while the democratic rights
that emerged took centuries, and often revolutions, to achieve. It was not until after
World War II that the measures had enough impact to create a major redistributive
impact, through what is now known as a welfare system. One of the blockages to the
development of this system came from a lingering attachment to the idea, especially
