Communism: the God that failed? Or shall this God yet succeed?
For better or worse, Communism will last another 500 years.
There is a famous book about Communism, The God That Failed, that has essays from various writers who committed to Communism but then later renounced it.
But before we get into all of that, do you know the history of the movement? Here is a brief summary:
It starts with a man writing a book in Britain.
There is widespread discontent in Europe. The ruling class is seen as venal and self-serving.
In Eastern Europe, there arises an unusually charismatic speaker. Everyone who hears him speak immediately converts to the new cause. A broad revolution against some ruling elites takes shape.
For better or worse, the charismatic speaker is only in power for a few years and then he dies, leaving it to others to fulfill his dream.
Western norms are rejected in Eastern Europe. A new way of doing things emerges. Europe is split in two.
The Western ruling elites understand that their traditional privileges and powers are being challenged as never before. In a reactionary mood, they seek to intervene militarily to restore the Western way of life in Eastern Europe.
The combined military might of multiple Eastern Europe nations is far too great for the West to have any hope of easily defeating them. The largest nation in Europe, judged by both size and population, commits its entire military to defending the new social order in the East. The West is rebuffed.
An uncomfortable detente develops. While the Western powers would like to overthrow the various governments of Eastern Europe, so that Western norms can be re-established in the East, it is also understood that doing this through normal military action would lead to catastrophic losses. Europe is divided in two, and it remains divided for several decades.
Meanwhile, inside of Eastern Europe, there is turmoil among the conservative and radical wings of the movement. Some idealists want to continue forward with a complete overturning of pre-existing social norms. But it is the most conservative factions of the movement who control the largest military powers. Those idealists who were hoping for a more complete social transformation are ruthlessly put down, many of them are killed.
Cultural change is everywhere, but especially in the West. New forms of sexual expression emerge. The question arises, who is allowed to marry who, and should this question be regulated by the government? Many couples live together for decades but they are legally unable to wed, nor enjoy any of the other protections that legal recognition might afford them.
As the decades go by, the idealism fades from the Eastern movement. The idealists grow old and die off. Sincere beliefs about a radical social transformation give way to a deeply cynical acceptance of a new ruling elite that is, in its way, just as abusive and selfish as the old elite, against which people’s grandparents had rebelled.
More than 140 years have now passed since the day that man published a book in Britain and set the whole movement in motion. And the idealism that was unleashed in the early days has completely burnt out. Only cynical careerists still believe that Eastern Europe should be separate from Western Europe, and they keep the division alive only because they personally profit from it.
Generational change allows for a thaw in relations. The new leadership of Eastern Europe apologizes to Western Europe and seeks to be reintegrated into the West. The entire rebellion now seems almost completely pointless, a waste of millions of lives and decades of time.
The movement is extinct. Everyone has renounced it. Search all of Europe and you will find, at most, a thousand fanatics who still hang on to the old dream. They are a subject of mockery, a bad joke that should have disappeared long ago, dinosaurs who forgot to die, dreamers lost in the memory of an earlier time.
A young man jots down a few thoughts about the widespread corruption of his society. He publishes these thoughts and the whole movement is suddenly reborn, vastly more powerful than ever before.
I am being cute here, and I understand that some readers might feel that I’m being far too cute. Still, on the theme that “Communism is the God that died” it is worthwhile to compare Communism to Protestantism, and notice the similarities:
It starts with a man writing a book in Britain. (John Wycliffe starts the Protestant movement with his essays in the mid 1300s. His essays are a big influence on the Czech reformer Jan Hus. Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels publish the Communist Manifesto in 1848.)
There is widespread discontent in Europe. The ruling class is seen as venal and self-serving. (In the 1400s, the Catholic Church is seen as corrupt, the priests are only interested in personal profit, they lack any authentic spirituality. In the 1800s the oppression of the working classes and people dreamed of a less exploitive society.)
In Eastern Europe, there arises an unusually charismatic speaker. Everyone who hears him speak immediately converts to the new cause. A broad revolution against some ruling elites takes shape. (Jan Hus or Vladimir Lenin)
For better or worse, the charismatic speaker is only in power for a few years and then he dies, leaving it to others to fulfill his dream. (Jan Hus or Vladimir Lenin — both die after just a few years leading the movement that’s gained power. In the case of Hus, the Western powers have him executed.)
Western norms are rejected in Eastern Europe. A new way of doing things emerges. Europe is split in two. (Although the Hussites are often considered a Czech movement, it’s been pointed out that in every major battle at least 25% of the Hussite troops were from the Polish-Lithuainian Commonwealth, which strongly supported the Hussite movement. The Hussite movement is best understood as a broad Slavic movement.)
The Western ruling elites understand that their traditional privileges and powers are being challenged as never before. In a reactionary mood, they seek to intervene militarily to restore the Western way of life in Eastern Europe. (In both cases, the West tried to take military action to stop the emergence of the movement in the East, and in both cases the West was militarily rebuffed.)
The combined military might of multiple Eastern Europe nations is far too great for the West to have any hope of easily defeating them. The largest nation in Europe, judged by both size and population, commits its entire military to defending the new social order. The West is rebuffed. (The Polish-Lithuainian Commonwealth was the largest nation in Europe during the 1400s, and the USSR was the biggest nation in Europe during the 1900s.)
An uncomfortable detente develops. While the Western powers would like to overthrow the various governments of Eastern Europe, so that Western norms can be re-established in the East, it is also understood that doing this through normal military action would lead to catastrophic losses. Europe is divided in two, and it remains divided for several decades. (After the Hussite Wars, an exhausted West stops trying to militarily intervene in the East. Likewise after World War II an exhausted West felt it lacked the power to fight the USSR.)
Meanwhile, inside of Eastern Europe, there is turmoil among the conservative and radical wings of the movement. Some idealists want to continue forward with a complete overturning of pre-existing social norms. But it is the most conservative factions of the movement who control the largest military powers. Those idealists who were hoping for a more complete social transformation are ruthlessly put down, many of them are killed. (From Wikipedia: “The wars eventually ended in 1434 when the moderate Utraquist faction of the Hussites defeated the radical Taborite faction.” And also the USSR suppressed movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.)
Cultural change is everywhere, but especially in the West. New forms of sexual expression emerge. The question arises, who is allowed to marry who, and should this question be regulated by the government? Many couples live together for decades but they are legally unable to wed, nor enjoy any of the other protections that legal recognition might afford them. (It is estimated that by the early 1500s more than a quarter of all priests in Germany were living with women who they treated as wives but who they were not able to marry. It is not until the 1500s that these priests become ministers and are able to marry their wives. Likewise, in recent times, we’ve seen dramatic changes in the laws regulating marriage and sexuality, especially with the formal acceptance of gay marriage.)
As the decades go by, the idealism fades from the Eastern movement. The idealists grow old and die off. Sincere beliefs about a radical social transformation give way to a deeply cynical acceptance of a new ruling elite that is, in its way, just as abusive and selfish as the old elite against which people’s grandparents had rebelled.
More than 140 years have now passed since the day that man published a book in Britain and set the whole movement in motion. And the idealism that was unleashed in the early days has completely burnt out. Only cynical careerists still believe that Eastern Europe should be separate from Western Europe, and they keep the division alive only because they personally profit from it.
Generational change allows for a thaw in relations. The new leadership of Eastern Europe apologizes to the Western Europe and seeks to be reintegrated into the West. The entire rebellion now seems almost completely pointless, a waste of millions of lives and decades of time. (In the late 1400s, Eastern European churches sought to reconcile themselves to the governance of the Pope in Rome. And after 1989, Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, and the nations of Eastern Europe re-joined the West.)
The movement is extinct. Everyone has renounced it. Search of all of Europe and you will find, at most, a thousand fanatics who still hang on to the old dream. They are a subject of mockery, a bad joke that should have disappeared but for some reason has continued to exist, dinosaurs who forgot to die, dreamers lost in the memory of an earlier time. (By 1510 there was not a trace of the old Hussite movement left in Europe. Likewise, by 2000 you could search the West and you would only have found a few fanatics who still believed in Communism.)
A young man jots down a few thoughts about the widespread corruption of his society. He publishes these thoughts and the whole movement is suddenly reborn, vastly more powerful than ever before. (In 1517, Martin Luther jotted down 95 Theses and posted them a church door for discussion. After that, Protestantism exploded across Europe, a far more powerful movement than anything the Hussites could have dreamed of.)
You get the point. From the start of Wycliffe’s career to Martin Luther in 1517 you have about 160 years. And from the publishing of the Communist Manifesto, in 1848, to right now, you have 175 years. We should consider the question, perhaps such a large scale cultural transformation needs a long time to fully emerge?
In particular, we should consider the possibility that the heyday of Communism is ahead of us, not behind us. For better or worse. I’m not saying this is good or bad. I’m simply saying this is likely.
No doubt there is some fundamental shift in meaning when a movement is a protest on the periphery of the West, versus later on, when a movement becomes a protest arising from inside the center of the West.
I would not push this analogy very far, other than to say, in 1505 a reasonable person would have thought the protest against corruption in the Catholic Church was a thing that belonged to the past, yet in 1517 it became clear it was a protest that belonged to the future. And likewise, to whatever extent Communism is meant as a critique of social and cultural relationships in the West, it is likely to be a large part of the future. For better and also for worse.
History doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes. I doubt the history of Protestantism can teach us much about the future of Communism, except in one way: the Protestantism of the 1400s essentially wanted a Catholicism stripped of greed and corruption, whereas the Protestantism of the 1500s was much more theoretical and brought about a more complete re-thinking of the theology of Christianity. And I suspect this will be true of the future of Communism: it won’t merely be a dream of the same old society freed of greed and oppression and exploitation, but rather, Communism in the future is going to entail a far more profound (and also abstract) re-thinking of the assumptions of our society.
I realize I’m on dangerous ice trying to make such bold predictions, but consider the evolution of sexuality in the 1400s and in recent decades. When it came to sexual practice, the Hussites stayed close to Catholic practice, whereas the Protestants of the 1500s brought about more substantial change: even Martin Luther at first insisted that he would never marry, but then was pressured to marry his wife, who he later fell in love with. And consider the modern era. In the 1800s and 1900s Communism did not rethink homosexuality, but instead carried on with existing Western prohibitions, and in fact enforced them more strictly than the West did.
The early Protestants (Hussites) simply wanted priests to recommit to the oaths they made to celibacy, but the later Protestants (of the 1500s) brought about a revolution in Europe’s practice of marriage, both for ministers and lay people. (And during its most radical phase, some sects developed interpretations of sexual expression that stood traditional theology on its head. For instance “Sex is sinful because of Original Sin but baptism washes you clean of Original Sin and therefore Sex is not sinful for the baptized.” The Anabaptists in Münster, 1532-1535, were described as sometimes engaging in orgies. The subject is covered well in the novel The Abyss, by Marguerite Yourcenor.) It is possible that Communism will be culturally experimental in the future in a way that it has not been in the past.
On Twitter I’ve seen a large number of people who are both trans and Communist. And I’ve seen some other people express frustration with this, what seems like a clash of beliefs. When I first read this tweet I agreed with it:
But now that I’ve thought about this, I’ve realized that the people who are reviving Communism are reviving it because they feel it is the best way forward to radically re-write old norms, including those of sexuality and identity. They explain themselves in this way:
Communism has a reputation for being totalitarian, though to be fair it was totalitarian in nations that had previously been totalitarian, such as Russia and China. Communist parties have existed in Western democracies for the last 80 years and have participated in democracy in a non-totalitarian way. Clearly a Communist movement can be forced to conform itself to a liberal system, so long as there are enough countervailing forces to ensure the survival of that liberal system, a statement that we can say about all extreme religious and political movements.
In this essay, I am not arguing in favor of Communism, but I am arguing against the idea “Communism belongs to the past.” It is likely that the heyday of Communism belongs in the future. It is certainly interesting to note that those who are doing the most to challenge traditional ideas of sexuality, sexual expression, and social identity all find it useful to work from an intellectual tradition that draws from the Communist traditions.
Both libertarian and authoritarian communism run counter to many of the things discussed on this blog. Not all, but many. I believe that the means of production in a democratic society need to be publicly owned to prevent the accumulation of wealth, but marxism, with its narrow emphasis on conflict, needs to be integrated into a larger theory of social cohesion that supports the institutions that maintain democracy, such as government, religion, and the family. Marxism is good at explaining revolutionary change and the 19th century descriptive social theory called “structural functionalism” is good at explaining the conditions that bring social stability. Many marxists explain crime and deviance as a symptom of capitalism, which is partly true, but a bigger factor is the loss family and community. If capitalism were the only culprit, then the rates of crime across countries would be more similar. Maybe these two theories should be combined along with other theories into a new perspective called “conflict functionalism”, which describes how different parts of society have at times hindered, and at other times contributed to, democracy.