Today, there are aspects of this phenomenon that the Left is carrying out in the USA. The mobbing that social media makes possible, the institutions calling out individuals for wrong think & not going with the proscribed leftist creed on gender theory, politics & racial diversity. At the moment, our saving grace is that we have 50 different governments (the states) and people can vote with their feet and to some extent they are. Enough people have left Commie New York & California to the extent that they have lost representatives in Congress. And yes, our forefathers were great for having established such a system.
In reading the sections of this essay that focus specifically on the trajectory of the Soviet Union, I can't help but wonder if the existence of the United States had the opposite effect on the USSR that we tend to ascribe:
Typically, we learn in the West that the perpetual economic and military competition with the United States through the decades-long Cold War exhausted its resources, highlighted its inefficiencies and fatal flaws, placed its productivity under constant stress, which accelerated dissent and ultimately collapse. That the US "won" the Cold War, by nothing more than keeping the USSR in a constant state of existential crisis demanding overwork of a broken system.
Reading this essay, one wonders if it would have crumbled much sooner if it did not have the US as an ideological rival against which to stabilize its ideological currents- because what else was the USSR if not the Communist bulwark against the capitalist edifice of the United States, its mirror image in all things, against which all good Soviets can at least agree upon?
Corporatism, Communism, and Wokeness are the same three headed beast. Only Americans have forgotten the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because we are stupefied with technology and our vanity. It is great folly to dismiss the horrors Central Europeans suffered under Soviet Communism. Now that we have our own platforms, communism is somehow cool. Communism only deals with our earthly desires and has no answer for the bigger questions like why are we here. Napoleon was the hero of the French Revolution. ‘General Rule’ was that: “No social revolution without terror. Every revolution is, by its nature, a revolt which success and the passage of time legitimize but in which terror is one of the inevitable phases. “Vanity” said Napoleon, “made the Revolution; liberty was only a pretext.” The terror of COVID is now settling in as apart of our society and pivots are being made. The study of communism and the corporate mindset are noble pursuits in coming to your own conclusions about the current regimes. The human nature of our Uncle Joes. If interested, I highly recommend the author Victor Sebestyen, his books on Soviet Communism dissects the communist mindset and nature. "Twelve Days the Hungarian Revolution 1956" is a great starting point. Rob is my first paid Substack subscription. Really dig the newsletter, nice work!
I am curious to know from which Berlin work the quotes are drawn. Are they from his "Six Enemies" lecture series? I would suspect that he might have attributed too much sincerity to the Soviet revolutionaries in their Marxist-Leninist ideological beliefs. Being a brilliant intellectual, his faith in the power of ideas is understandable. However, most people feign ideological zeal in the pursuit of narrow self-interest. Social concerns take a backseat to their acquisition of wealth and status.
Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago suggests that, to the contrary, many Soviets were well aware of the cynicism and cruelty of their totalitarian system. NKVD agents did not always purge individuals because of their ideological impurity; but, because they had heard a rumor and they had quotas to fill. One might have been sent to gulag simply because an agent took a fancy to your wife.
It seems that the majority of citizens in the Soviet Union lived in terror most of the time. The going philosophy being "You today, me tomorrow" or "Better your hide than mine, so screw you."
Probably the best explanation of the social dynamics of the Soviet Union incorporates both Berlin and Solzhenitsyn's perspectives.
Question, how is this communist artificial dialectic different than our current situation: “the political Gnosticism of the liberal imperium” as per Professor Deneen.
Answer, it is not different. It’s the same thing, using the same mechanisms for controlling people. An oligarchy is controlling through intimidation while they rape and pillage our society. The same minus the executions.
Today, there are aspects of this phenomenon that the Left is carrying out in the USA. The mobbing that social media makes possible, the institutions calling out individuals for wrong think & not going with the proscribed leftist creed on gender theory, politics & racial diversity. At the moment, our saving grace is that we have 50 different governments (the states) and people can vote with their feet and to some extent they are. Enough people have left Commie New York & California to the extent that they have lost representatives in Congress. And yes, our forefathers were great for having established such a system.
In reading the sections of this essay that focus specifically on the trajectory of the Soviet Union, I can't help but wonder if the existence of the United States had the opposite effect on the USSR that we tend to ascribe:
Typically, we learn in the West that the perpetual economic and military competition with the United States through the decades-long Cold War exhausted its resources, highlighted its inefficiencies and fatal flaws, placed its productivity under constant stress, which accelerated dissent and ultimately collapse. That the US "won" the Cold War, by nothing more than keeping the USSR in a constant state of existential crisis demanding overwork of a broken system.
Reading this essay, one wonders if it would have crumbled much sooner if it did not have the US as an ideological rival against which to stabilize its ideological currents- because what else was the USSR if not the Communist bulwark against the capitalist edifice of the United States, its mirror image in all things, against which all good Soviets can at least agree upon?
Corporatism, Communism, and Wokeness are the same three headed beast. Only Americans have forgotten the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because we are stupefied with technology and our vanity. It is great folly to dismiss the horrors Central Europeans suffered under Soviet Communism. Now that we have our own platforms, communism is somehow cool. Communism only deals with our earthly desires and has no answer for the bigger questions like why are we here. Napoleon was the hero of the French Revolution. ‘General Rule’ was that: “No social revolution without terror. Every revolution is, by its nature, a revolt which success and the passage of time legitimize but in which terror is one of the inevitable phases. “Vanity” said Napoleon, “made the Revolution; liberty was only a pretext.” The terror of COVID is now settling in as apart of our society and pivots are being made. The study of communism and the corporate mindset are noble pursuits in coming to your own conclusions about the current regimes. The human nature of our Uncle Joes. If interested, I highly recommend the author Victor Sebestyen, his books on Soviet Communism dissects the communist mindset and nature. "Twelve Days the Hungarian Revolution 1956" is a great starting point. Rob is my first paid Substack subscription. Really dig the newsletter, nice work!
Are we talking about communism or wokeness here?
I am curious to know from which Berlin work the quotes are drawn. Are they from his "Six Enemies" lecture series? I would suspect that he might have attributed too much sincerity to the Soviet revolutionaries in their Marxist-Leninist ideological beliefs. Being a brilliant intellectual, his faith in the power of ideas is understandable. However, most people feign ideological zeal in the pursuit of narrow self-interest. Social concerns take a backseat to their acquisition of wealth and status.
Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago suggests that, to the contrary, many Soviets were well aware of the cynicism and cruelty of their totalitarian system. NKVD agents did not always purge individuals because of their ideological impurity; but, because they had heard a rumor and they had quotas to fill. One might have been sent to gulag simply because an agent took a fancy to your wife.
It seems that the majority of citizens in the Soviet Union lived in terror most of the time. The going philosophy being "You today, me tomorrow" or "Better your hide than mine, so screw you."
Probably the best explanation of the social dynamics of the Soviet Union incorporates both Berlin and Solzhenitsyn's perspectives.
This is fantastic and hair-raising the USSR and Maoist China histories seem to be repeating themselves in the US today.
Question, how is this communist artificial dialectic different than our current situation: “the political Gnosticism of the liberal imperium” as per Professor Deneen.
Answer, it is not different. It’s the same thing, using the same mechanisms for controlling people. An oligarchy is controlling through intimidation while they rape and pillage our society. The same minus the executions.