It is hard to write this book review without overusing superlatives. Widely regarded as the inspiration for both 1984 and Brave New World, this book serves as the template for revolution in a dystopian world ruled by an all-encompassing police state. Written during the early years of the Soviet Union, it holds the dubious distinction of being one of the first (if not the first) books to be banned by the Communist Party.
I’ve been on a bit of a Soviet literature tear lately, and this book has been on my list for some time. I’m probably not the target demographic for most modern science fiction, but this book is so much more than that.
Plot
The translation conveys an enthusiastic, eager, albeit halting and fragmented tone. This accurately reflects D-503’s (the protagonist’s) hurried journal entries, which form the chapters of the novel.
The book is set in 2600 AD, just after the 200 Years War (a war to end all wars), which concluded with the formation of One State, a totalitarian regime where everything, including sex, follows a fixed schedule regulated by a complex network of bureaucracies.
Refreshingly, for a science fiction novel, the protagonist is not unhappy with the status quo—he embraces and enjoys it. The One State aligns with his ideals of order, method, and rationality. Everything changes when he meets and subsequently falls in love with I-333.
While both 1984 and Brave New World feature similar female characters, the sexual attraction of I-333 is but a small facet of her complex appeal to D-503. She represents a curve in his life of straight lines and right angles. She is a violation of the order he holds so dear, yet he finds himself irresistibly drawn to her.
Major Themes
The obvious metaphors of One State to the Soviet police state are compelling, as are D-503’s eulogies to their necessity and importance in daily life. This is a significant difference to most dystopian fiction that often reflects the downsides of dystopia but none of their motivating factors. Here we have the diary and journal entries of a true believer, we are treated with extensive philosophical insight into why One State exists and why it is good.
“The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.”
The idea that elimination of freedoms is the only way to rid man of crime is a recurrent theme in the book, of the many references to Christianity in this book, I found this to be the most compelling. Religion (and personal morality) only exists when there is freedom, without freedom there is no need for personal morality. Which is why One State was so successful, it obviated the need for religion, by eliminating all personal freedoms.
In the modern Western world, we often take it for granted that individual freedoms are the most basic right. This book asks the reader to challenge that idea substantively via conversations with I-333. One of the less understood ideas of communism is the importance of the collective, an idea almost incomprehensible to those educated primarily in Western philosophy. There is a scene in HBO’s Chernobyl where hundreds of workers scrape the top of the Nuclear plant of radioactive debris in what seems to be an irrational disregard for personal safety all for the greater good of the Soviet Union that captures this sentiment, this book re-iterates that theme across many different mundane freedoms, such as the right to privacy, right to procreate and the right to choose how to lead one’s life.
“We comes from God, I from the Devil.”
The above quote captures that sentiment better than the scene from Chernobyl does. It is interesting that Zamyatin chose this particular turn of phrase, but it corresponds to an idea in the Eastern Orthodox church that faith can only exist as a collective not as an individual.
When referring to belief in God, “I” is almost never used in the Orthodox Church. That is why there is no “I believe in God”, there is only “we believe in God”, in Orthodox prayer.
This theme often occurs in juxtaposition with another one, the contrast and similarity between religion and science. This is directly at odds with most of what we now experience in the West. Science and Individual Freedom are the core tenets of most modern societies, however, Zamyatin portrays these ideas as fundamentally in conflict with each other. To One State, science would measure every aspect of the human experience, and make cold blooded calculations of cost and benefit. And remove the benefit at any cost. What does it matter if one life is lost as long as the lives of countless others are preserved? Science allows us to measure everything, why not the human experience? Gradually the belief in the Science of One State obscures its rationale and assumptions.
“knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith”
And that a move away from the safety and comfort of rational science is a nightmare to him
“Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.”
In addition, to the philosophical metaphors the books is rife with references to mathematics in the form of the Taylor and Maclaurin series, which form part of the broader mathematical narrative that is woven around life in One State. This is still relevant almost a hundred years after the book was written, the desire to quantify and measure the human experience is something innate to those who seek to mimic how science is applied to other more tangible fields.
Summary
I left this book with a greater appreciation for the randomness and disorder inherent in human beings, and how that is our defining characteristic. Modern capitalist societies can benefit from redistribution through centralization and a stronger sense of community. However, this book offers valuable insight into the dangers of excessive centralization. The fact that the Soviet State remains the only large-scale implementation of communism and serves as the inspiration for One State is a humbling reminder that the economic Left is vulnerable to a complete lack of freedom, even when successful in achieving its overarching ideals. Often, the line between utopia and dystopia is blurred. It seems fitting that my next review could very well be Westad’s The Cold War.
It is perhaps better to start this article off by clarifying what it is not rather than what it is. First, this is not a comprehensive review of RFK’s policies and what he stands for (there are far better places to seek that information). Second, this is not meant to convince you to vote one way or another based on policy and beliefs (again, there are far better places for that too). So then what the blazes did I write this for? Well, the motivation for this article comes from multiple conversations with friends and family who want to know more about voting for independents in general and RFK in particular. Addressing issues such as,
“Is it a wasted vote?”
“Do I vote for RFK to make a point?” / “If we do not vote for Independents, then how will they ever win?”
I believe that these are important questions to ask and I hope to address them in this article. In order to answer those questions I will first explain the voting system in place and various strategies that can be used to win and election,
Differences between Parliamentary (such as the UK and India) and Winner-Takes-All Democracy (USA).
Splitting the vote - what it really means. Different kinds of potential RFK voters and why they matter.
Strategic Misreporting - why people who say they might vote for RFK might not actually vote for RFK but simply want you to vote for him.
As a recovering Game Theorist, I love to look at elections as “games” and therefore I will use the word “strategy” a lot. A strategy in this sense is an action (in this context voting for a candidate). In the game theoretic structure, we assume that a player (i.e. YOU) is playing to win. But what does it mean to win? In this context, winning means getting policies you care about enacted. I will also address a little, the issue of voting “to make a point” about the current system and why I feel like that is a bad idea. But for the most part, I assume that the reader, wants to get policies they care about enacted.
Equally important, I will assume that political parties have atleast some motivation to get elected. While getting elected is not the only motivation of political parties, it is certainly a very important one and allows us to separate out our strategies for voting for them.
Differences in Democracy
Perhaps the least understood part of this discussion is the inherent difference between Parliamentary democracy and Winner-Takes-All Democracy (this is technically called Representative Democracy, but I feel that the term obscures its meaning). Before understanding what you should do, it is perhaps worthwhile to understand what the system you are voting within intended for voters to think about. This could be quite different in both systems and have vastly different implications. Usually, the choice of system has more to do with the history and socio-cultural context at the time of setting up the democracy. It is very difficult to argue (vehemently, at least) for one over the other. But certainly, one should try to understand why a particular system was chosen and at least try to engage with viable strategies within that system.
For much of this article, I will consider hypothetical political parties, the first two are large and usually get most of the vote share, the independent is small. KH, DJT and RFK. KH, DJT and RFK (an independent). I will consider two hypothetical elections, one in a Parliamentary democracy and one in a Winner Takes All democracy.
Parliamentary Democracy
Consider candidates with the following vote shares and a seats in the “Parliament” in a hypothetical parliamentary democracy (number of seats won, in brackets).
KH : ( seats)
DJT : ( seats)
RFK : ( seats)
In a parliamentary democracy, KH narrowly wins the election. However, (and this is a big caveat), every time a decision is needed to be made, any one party would need to form an “alliance” with some or all of the other parties to reach the mark. This means that a significant number of independents need to be swayed in order to pass a law (by either side). By the same token, DJT’s influence is not insignificant as they need to sway just more (than KH) independents to pass laws they want. This system comes with a clear message to the voting population’s strategy, you can (and should, if you want to) vote for a party that is smaller than the other two and their voice will be heard at every vote. This system also comes with a clear disadvantage, you need to appeal to independents at every voting instance. This is particularly worse when you consider a situation like this,
KH : ( seats)
DJT : ( seats)
RFK : ( seats)
In situations like this, RFK can hold up legislation that almost of the country wants. Bear in mind, that bills in any democracy do not work in isolation, so RFK can hold up a super important bill (Free Childcare) that even their want in exchange for a bill that only their want (Bitcoin deregulation). There are two other future implications that are essential to understanding the Parliamentary system.
The first, is that representative democracies encourage a proliferation of independent parties. They do this to the extent that the word independent party loses all meaning, and there are just a large number of parties that cater to ever more niche demographics that can sometimes seem hilariously contradictory (Pro Environment, Pro Socialism) and (Anti Environment, Pro Socialism).
The second, is that “winning” in a representative democracy ends up being one of two things. You either get of the seats in parliament or you form a coalition that adds up to using various smaller parties. In such a coalition, parties will often “give up” a few of their essential ideas or concepts (Environment) in exchange for passing laws that support another (perhaps more important) essential idea (Socialism).
Notice, that voting for more and more independent parties does not lead to more diversity in voting ideologies, it just means that the reduction in diversity is left up to the party representative not the voters.
For example, say you voted for a pro-Environment, Pro Socialist party. Since they are a niche party they formed a coalition with a Socialist party and gave up on Environmental regulation. Now had you known the full result of the election in advance, you might not have wanted to give up on Environmentalism, you might have given up on Socialism instead. For instance, you could think, if I cannot live in a cleaner environment I might as well have free markets.
This paints a picture of a democracy that is very unstable. It is. Since the resolution or tolerance between conflicting ideas takes place at the parliament it is very difficult to gauge what issues are deal breakers for the voting population. But over time Parliamentary democracies tend to form major parties with a constellation of smaller parties that reflect minor interest groups. Governments are formed by one of the two major parties and a collection of smaller parties. We now turn to the other case.
To fix the issue of stability and to reduce the outsized influence of smaller parties, another form of democracy has been proposed that addresses these issues directly.
Winner Takes All Democracy
It is a bit complicated to show an exact example of representative democracy in the US, but this example is a pretty good representation. In this example, there is no parliament, there is just a president, who can do whatever they want for the length of their term. Consider the vote share example as before,
KH : ( seats)
DJT : ( seats)
RFK : (11 seats)
In this example KH, can pass all the laws they want. It does not matter that they do not have of the vote share. Notice, also that more people did not want KH to be in power. Potentially all of RFK supporters (more on this later) could have preferred DJT to KH had they known the results of the election before hand.
What are the implications of this kind of democracy?
First, notice that after the election the elected person is essentially a dictator. There is no need for any negotiation or working with any other parties. This is not a bad thing, since much of the confusion and instability of Parliamentary democracy is done away with.
Second, notice that there is a strong disincentive for other political parties to form since even at fairly high levels of representation you can end up with seats. Consider this example,
KH : ( seats)
DJT : ( seats)
RFK : ( seats)
While people who voted for KH might definitely consider voting for her again, some of the supporters of RFK might consider either :
Not voting at all - which is why voter turnout is such an issue in the US elections
trying to persuade DJT to accept them into their party and fight for change in some of it’s core values (maybe considering the environment more).
Summary of Differences in Democracy Styles
The key takeaway is that in both systems you have to eventually reconcile your differences to reach that mark. In the Parliamentary system you leave it up to the person you vote for, no matter how small their party is. But in the Winner Take All system, you have to do it yourself, or you risk coming away with nothing (hence the Winner Takes ALL!). Again, either way, some (or most) of your ideologies will be resolved to reach a decision.
Opinion : So What Should You Do?
Well, one thing is clear, since the US is a Winner Take All system you should reconcile your differences with the major parties and place your vote there. While it was not clear to me why this system was chosen in the US, it seems that the pressure of reconciling one’s differences is on oneself. This system is perhaps why we have a two party system in the first place. The motivation for a voter to vote for an independent is very low (but there is one situation in which it makes sense, more on that later) to the point that it has prevented the formation of more parties. Which is why it is ironic that many independents run on a ticket of plurality of opinion but do not actually advocate to change the actual voting system so that more political parties are motivated to coalesce around different combinations of ideas. But short of that, it is up to you to vote for a major party after giving up on some of your ideals.
Implications for Reconciling Differences
If you are reading this far it means you are at least considering voting for the major parties. One thing is clear when reconciling your differences, you need to figure out which party you would vote for if your top choice did not exist. Thus two kinds of voters exist,\
Where, means is that if you would vote for over . For instance, if after casting your vote for RFK and seeing he lost you would rather DJT won (had you known RFK would not have won), that means DJT is your second choice. Thus, imagine a world in which RFK lost and think about who you would have preferred. That is who you should vote for. Similarly, if you voted for RFK and DJT won, and you wished that you voted for KH, then your second choice is KH.
There is however, one (and only one) situation in which you should vote for RFK and that is the situation in which you are truly indifferent between DJT and KH. That is,IF, on the day after the election you truly do not care if RFK lost. I think that such candidates are likely to be of two kinds (and I do not think readers of this article are likely to be either).
Non-voters : They would probably have not voted any way. If you are going to vote if RFK was not running then this is NOT you.
Ideologically inconsistent : Since independents and RFK generally seek to appeal to both parties and therefor take centrist positions, it is not possible for someone to be truly indifferent between KH and DJT. For example consider the following policy positions, - RFK (Pro-Life, Pro-Environment) - DJT (Pro-Life, Anti-Environment) - KH (Pro-Choice, Pro-Environment)
If you really are indifferent between KH and DJT then you are indifferent between (Pro-Life, Anti-Environment) and (Pro-Choice, Pro-Environment). This is unlikely, since these are such salient issues, you would certainly have an opinion on which you would rather have. If you really are indifferent about such important issues you are not an ideological voter and are motivated by something other than getting policies you care about enacted. This could be someone who votes for RFK to “make a point” about the current system. But equally this could be someone who votes based on personality rather than someone voting on issues alone.
Strategic Implications
Interestingly, it is in the interest of the party that thinks they will lose to promote the independent candidate. Consider the following strategy by DJT,
Promote RFK as an independent (ask your donors to donate to him).
Appear as similar as possible to RFK (public appearances, phone calls etc).
Make sure that RFK is on the ballot in as many states as possible.
With this strategy it will be possible to make it appear like RFK is very similar to you but different enough from KH thereby ensuring that your vote base is intact but people will defect from KH.
Strategic Misreporting
There is another more complex issue that is known to occur in voting. The best way to understand it is to understand that people voluntarily disclose their voting strategy and that this strategy is never verified. Essentially you can say you are going to vote for any candidate and no one will ever know if you did or not. People misreport for a variety of reasons, including embarrassment, social pressure and privacy. With the rise in far right parties in Europe, people are less likely to admit that they voted for them. However, one of the most interesting reasons to misreport is for strategic reasons. Consider the following strategy,
You are a DJT voter and you know that RFK is more likely to take votes away from KH than DJT.
You tell people you are going to vote for RFK, this will encourage other people to vote for RFK.
This will make it more likely that KH will lose votes to RFK but not DJT.
Thus when discussing your voting strategy it is important to remember that a person whose second choice candidate is KH and whose second choice is DJT are fundamentally different people.
Conclusion
“Is it a wasted vote?”
Yes it is, for reasons above the American system expects you to reconcile your differences with the major parties and then cast your vote. If not, you will come away with either :
- your third choice candidate winning implementing policies that are objectively worse for you.
- you vote for an independent but the people telling you to do not (strategic misreporting).
“Do I vote for RFK to make a point?” / “If I do not then no independent will ever win?”
No you should not. The reason that independents do not win has more to do with the system than the fact that they do not get enough votes. Even if an independent ends up with very very high percentages of vote share they can end up with no representation. The system is inherently Winner-Takes-All, now you could ask, “why not change the system?” and that is a good question. Unfortunately that would need to be done by the major parties and they have no incentive to do so. But guess what, the best way to do that is to vote for a candidate from the major parties who has a policy of changing the voting system. Best of luck with that.
In the past many candidates have been independent and have garnered huge amounts of popular support (at the primary stage), but these candidates have inevitably joined either of the two parties. So what ends up happening is one of two things,
if the major parties think an independent is popular and risks a big chunk of vote share, they offer them a ticket.
if the major parties do not view them as a risk they ignore them and hope they do not take too much vote share. If they do take vote share this has the effect of penalizing the candidate who has less fanatical (nationalistic/ personality driven) supporters since they are more open to truly voting based on ideology.
I think that rank order voting is a good system to implement in the US, and advocating directly for that is a better strategy than voting for an independent. As I said, it is funny that independents do not directly advocate for this system, but it is likely that they are not able to get enough votes to be taken seriously.
Let us conclude with an example of rank order voting. In this voting system, instead of voting for candidates you express your preferences for all the candidates. And the candidate with the least points WINs. That is, not only do you care about how many ballots had your name at the top, but also considers how many people had you at the bottom. KH\succ DJT\succ RFK (1) KH\succ RFK\succ DJT (40) DJT\succ KH\succ RFK (1) DJT\succ RFK\succ KH (36) RFK\succ KH\succ DJT (15) RFK\succ DJT\succ KH (7)
This example proves the benefits of rank order voting since you can notice several things.
KH wins in both systems, if you have enough first place votes you are the winner pure and simple.
DJT’s loss was made worse by this system because of the huge number of people who had him at the bottom. This is not surprising for the people who had KH on top of their ballot. But because of the huge number of people who had RFK on the top of their ballot but DJT at the bottom of the ballot.
RFK is not as bad a candidate as it seems, even though he had only 22 first place votes, when considering his second place votes he is actually not a bad candidate.
In the rank order system you can use your third place vote to essentially veto a bad candidate, it essentially says this is who I prefer at the top (RFK) but I definitely don’t want my 3rd place candidate (DJT) I would rather have (KH). This essentially allows the two different kinds of RFK voters to express both their preferences.
There are few books that balance breadth with detail like The Cold War: A World History does. Spanning from 1945-1989, this book covers in , well researched, detail the events of the Cold War along with important historical context. Given that the Cold War is often framed variously as a duel of sorts between The West and The East, Communism and Capitalism, Democracy and Authoritarianism, this book is singularly unique in that it is almost perfectly devoid of opinion. In this sense it is the amateur historian’s dream. However, I will endeavour to color the subsequent sections with some of my reflections while providing references to things I have read in the book. This article should be read as opinion piece based on an extremely factual (bordering on bland) book. Having said that, I believe that my Reflection 4, is a fairly accurate representation of Westad’s epilogue of the book.
Reflection One: The Cold War was not an ideological battle
The Cold War is often summarized by the ideological tensions between the West and the USSR . These ideological tensions are then used to impute the motivations of each of the actors in the conflict. However, after reading this book, I realize that the Cold War was a much broader conflict involving more people and broader struggles than just Europe. Viewing the broader context of the Cold War it is difficult to ascribe purely ideological notions to the interventions by the West in various countries. Perhaps the greatest example of this would be the blatant support for (by the US) of two groups that are ideologically not aligned with either free market ideals or democratic ideals.
The Christian/ Democratic Socialists - understandably, this political leaning might be a contradiction in terms to most familiar with US politics due to the close ties between the Right and Christian groups. However, in Europe this is not the case, several parties exist, most notably in Germany. Angela Merkel’s party the Christian Democratic Union, which was formed by multiple splinter groups varying from Marxist/ Leninist groups to Social Democrat parties. These parties espoused fairly left leaning views and often had nothing in common with the West, other than a mutual dislike of Communism. Which, in the case of these parties, was more religiously motivated than anything else.
Dictatorships - Western support for dictatorships over democratically elected Leftist or Communist governments in various newly forming countries (more on this later). Saddan Hussein, Syngman Rhee, Ngo Dinh Diem to name just two among countless others. Some of these went on to establish the most brutal dictatorships that continued much after the Cold War. This was not obviously different to the promotion of dictatorships propped up by the USSR (Tito, Castro and Assad). Not to mention the support of royal families and theocracies in the Middle East over the promotion of true democracy.
Thus, expedience, convenience and prudence were the primary motivating factors for support of governments, not pure ideological motivations. An apologist would argue that such regimes were “better” than a Communist regime, given the 40 odd years of history for some of those regimes, I am not so sure that the USSR of Gorbachev was so much worse than the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, who ironically was deposed and executed during the Second Iraq War by the US.
Reflection Two: The Battlefields of the Cold War
There was nothing cold about the Cold War other than the often uneasy, but nevertheless, staged peace of Europe. On other battlefields both the US and USSR played out an often bloody game of proxy wars that resulted in millions of casualties. The world in 1945 was a strange and varied place and looks nothing like the world of today, to make sense of this, the book implicitly categorizes the world into five regions that differ in historical context, (subsequent interpretations are mine, not in the book),
Europe - Most commonly analyzed centre stage of the Cold War. Not much more can be learned about Europe by even a cursory review of the events of the Cold War (but some useful interpretations of the events following the cold war necessitate reflection 3, below)
Islamic majority countries of the Middle East and North Africa, these countries partly due to their proximity to Europe (and being battlefields for WWII) and partly due to their citizens fleeing Europe (Israel) were perhaps the first scene of tension between the USSR and the US, outside of Europe.
Non-Aligned Afro-Asian countries, many of these countries had been fighting for independence prior to the Second World War and as of 1945 were on the verge of independence. Thus in the years following 1945 many of these countries would be newly independent and looking for ways to shake off their colonial pasts and forge ahead into a more industrialized future. India, Ghana, Indonesia, Vietnam were such countries.
Latin America
China and its neighbouring states, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia (scenes of some of the more direct interventions by the US).
For 2 and 3, these countries were in the nascent stages of development and were seeking and forming governments for the first time. In the case of 2, these Arab countries were simultaneously undergoing a class struggle that made Communism especially attractive to members of those countries. Among the early claimants for power in these countries were often the revolutionaries themselves. These revolutionaries had a wide spectrum of ideological views, ranging from weakly pro-Western and pro free market to openly sympathetic to Communism. Early on the USSR often seemed unwilling to support all but the most ardent communists, the most likely cause of this is probably the lack of any economic incentive to do so and the lack of economic heft to pay the upfront cost of an intervention when an economic incentive did present itself. This did not prevent the US from often getting involved to preempt the formation of a Communist government by revolutionaries, by any means necessary. This tug of war led to an important distinction between 2, the Middle Eastern countries and the other post colonial countries, 3. In the case of the former Islamic theocracy arose. Often the radical Islamists labelled both the US and USSR as “devils” and strove to form Islamic countries heavily influenced by religious law. The outcomes for this were varied, either the West openly supported the prevailing dictatorship as in the case of Iran, or openly supported the dictatorship that, in turn, openly supported theocracy (as in the case of Saudi Arabia).
If theocracy was the “third option” that leaned to the West. Then Non-alignment was the “third option” that leaned to the East. India, Indonesia and Egypt formed the basis of the non-aligned movement. This movement defied the narrow definitions of the Cold War and formed the early basis of the emerging BRICS phenomenon that we see today. I will not go into further detail on this here, but the Non-Aligned Movement is, to me atleast, the best way to understand the Cold War and what it meant (and did not mean). It is perhaps also the one that is most relevant today.
In Latin America, the US played a vigorous role via the support for various governments, either via clandestine support or overt financial support. Often this had disastrous consequences such as Pinochet in Chile. In almost all cases at least some economic incentive can be attached. The Soviet Union (other than in Cuba) played the role of an active bystander. It is unclear if this was due to the absence of “true” Communism or because by the time Latin America became relevant certain structural weaknesses became apparent in the flawed economy of the Soviet Union and its satellites.
Reflection Three: The Uniqueness of China
“the communist revolution was a kind of cleansing: it might have used methods that were incomprehensible or even inhuman, but the revolution gave them the opportunity to immerse themselves in something bigger than the individual, something meaningful, something that would eventually set China right”
China and her neighbors deserve an article all to themselves. I do not wish to express any particularly controversial opinion here when I say that, the Cold War in the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and the subsequent atrocities and casualties that occurred there were more a face off between China and the West than the USSR. While it is a matter of historical record that the Soviets did get involved in the Korean War, it is very clear that they were far more reluctant to expand it into the mess it eventually became than were the Chinese.
While more cursory readings of history often place the Chinese firmly within the camp of Communism. It is my belief that Maoism and the unique cultural circumstances that led to Communism in China merit their own space on the ideological spectrum. It is truly difficult to fairly represent Maoism via a Western lens, the inherent weight-age given to individual freedoms in the West are meaningless when viewed in the context of China’s cultural revolution. Nothing exemplifies this more than the fact that China can be simultaneously argued to be both the most powerful Eastern bloc country left (if it can be indeed included in that bloc) while also being the least centralized (and with the largest free market) of any previously existing Communist country. In a beautiful twist of fate, my next book is On China by Henry Kissinger. Hopefully, I will have more insights to share on this then!
Reflection Four: Who “Won” the Cold War?
If Communism was such a good system, why are there no Communist countries left?
Any vigorous discussion of Communism on internet forums inevitably leads to this question being asked. And I think this book goes quite a long way in answering it.
Perhaps, first we must ask, who won the Cold War? The resounding answer must certainly be the European middle classes. While the often quoted answer is that the Free market won the Cold War, this is not obvious when we analyze the end of the Cold War. After the Second World War most of Europe lay in ruins, and the impressive victory of communism over the Germans inspired multiple people to genuinely believe that communism offered a road to prosperity that capitalism had not provided so far. This book reminds us that the while fall of Communism seemed imminent in the 80s, it was far less so in the early 50s and 60s. Life expediencies for Eastern Bloc were increasing, for perhaps the first time in their histories. The two wars in Europe and the economic depression that free market capitalism brought with it seemed to unfairly target the lower classes who seemed to bear a disproportionate share of the economic collapse and casualties of war. Thus Western Communism was healthy, alive and well, well into the 50s and 60s (definitely in France, Portugal, Spain and Italy).
When looking back after the Cold War however, the reason Communism did not take hold in Western Europe was because there was nothing to take over. Large social welfare programs, free healthcare and trade unions effectively gave many of the same benefits that communism promised. These were effectively under written by the US. These programs were often implemented by centre-left (Labour, in the UK) or outright left parties (French Communist Party). It unlikely that such programs could have even gotten off the ground without programs like the Marshall plan and the absence of technology transfer from the US. This makes me believe that the victory of capitalism of in Western Europe was effectively a truce, paid for by a huge cash injection to countries that have highly educated populations that require little to no assistance in setting up systems and processes of governance and do not have to deal with issues such as extreme poverty and decolonization. Which is perhaps why Third-World countries did not look to free-market solutions to provide reasonable paths to development. Thus the West much much more eager to claim victory in Europe, than on the other battlefields of the world.
The answer to why there are not many “purely” Communist countries in the world today is perhaps because the Communist revolution inspired changes in modern Western Europe that obviated the need for a more grandiose revolution. In a way, this “silent” revolution led to its demise and failure to capture the minds of Western Europeans, even though sympathies for it existed for much of the 20th century, and even till today.
Conclusion
This is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it. I am sure opinions will vary when reading this book. However, the added context of countries outside the European mainland makes it hard to view the Cold War as either “cold”, it was very much as bloody or violent as any other war, just no European lives were lost. Or that it was a “war” that was won or lost by a particular ideology. Like most things in history the answer is complicated. I particularly appreciated the importance ascribed to non-European issues, events and viewpoints. Eurocentric views of the Cold War are not only incomplete and lacking in historical veracity, they have led to two important foreign policy failures :
The rise of radical Islam, directly sponsored by the short-sighted funding of radical Islamic groups that initially fought Communism, but in turn established radical Islamic regimes much more brutal and oppressive than any Communist government. The lack of cognisance of these movements has led to a larger conflict which makes the Cold War seem almost manageable by contrast.
The lack of understanding of the BRICS movement in context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its future significance. The Non-Aligned movement referred to in Reflection 2, has taken on new relevance in light of the Ukraine conflict. For a short period after the Cold War, economics sanctions by the West almost certainly would mean economic ruin. However, the continued rise of BRICS has led to the formation of a very clear “Third Front”. This group of nations does not view the world in as black and white terms as before. And is unwillingly to take sides in battles it no longer views as relevant. It does so wile simultaneously maintaining economic and strategic relationships with both sides (Russia and NATO, in this case). In this way, most economic sanctions are toothless because of the existence of these large trading partners. India and China have both remained large economic and strategic partners for both Russia and the US since the start of the conflict. While India has enjoyed new strategic partnerships with the US due to its proximity to and adverse relationship with, China. While simultaneously buying weapons from Russia.
The us-and-them mentality that was so pervasive in the Cold War was due in large part to the way Western and Eastern Bloc governments spoke about each other. What should have been an ideological war often became a real one, in countries that could least afford it. These countries should have been free to choose their systems of government without outside interference (from either side). Let me conclude with this final quote that summarizes much of the Western approach to the Cold War,
“The moral certainties, the eschewal of dialogue, the faith in purely military solutions …the doctrinaire belief in free-market messages or the top-down approach to social ills.”
