Abstract
This chapter briefly introduces the rest of the book in which five different psychological flaws are examined. Reasons are given for the choice of possible flaws and a number of warnings are sounded. There are major problems in answering any causal questions, such as what made communism dysfunctional in different ways, and today’s psychology is not always, perhaps not often, capable of giving definite answers to all the questions. If one finds that past communist society was defective in some way, one needs to consider whether it was defective because of the nature of communism or simply because the decision-makers got it wrong at the time.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Montefiore, Stalin.
- 2.
For example, Klicperova et al. (1997).
- 3.
For example, British accounts of meeting with the Russians during World War 2 often record their astonishment at how much alcohol was drank (e.g. Jenkins, Churchill).
- 4.
Ivanets and Lukomskaya (1990), Treml (1997).
- 5.
Peterson, Learned helplessness, Chap. 7.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Montefiore, The Romanovs; McKee (1999).
- 9.
Deci and Ryan (2000).
- 10.
For example, Maslow (1943).
- 11.
- 12.
Sève, Man in Marxist theory, p. 142.
- 13.
For two of the many alternatives, see Bandura (1988) or McClelland, Human motivation.
- 14.
For example, Meehl (1970); Allison, Multiple regression.
- 15.
Yerkes and Dodson (1908).
- 16.
One of the better known mathematical accounts of this phenomenon is contained in catastrophe theory. See Poston and Stewart, Catastrophe theory and its applications, or Thom, Structural stability and morphogenesis. It is also quite common for military historians to ascribe defeat or victory in an important campaign to an interactive effect of small changes. One campaign that has been regarded this way is the Battle of the Atlantic. See Gannon, Black May.
- 17.
Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, pp. 642–643. Fundamentals, pp. 287–289. For US central government response to the Global Financial Collapse, see Bateman (2010). For the proportion of US GDP that is spent by government see http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total_spending_chart (available on 26 November, 2015).
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Kemp, S. (2016). Possible Psychological Flaws in Communism. In: Was Communism Doomed?. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32780-8_5
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