Kind: captions
Language: en
and the outcome here is a horrific
man-made famine not a natural disaster
not bad Harvest but a man-made famine as
a result of then the compulsion that
gets used by the Soviet state to extract
those resources cordoning off the area
not allowing staring starving people to
uh to escape um you put very well some
of the the implications of this case
study in in how things look in the
abstract versus in
practice um and those phenomena were
going to haunt the rest of the
experience of the Soviet Union um the
whole notion that up and down the chain
of command everybody is falsifying or
tinkering with or prying the statistics
or their reports in order not to look
bad and and not to you know have
Vengeance visited upon them um reaches
the point where nobody in spite of the
pretense of comprehensive knowledge
right there's a a a state planning
agency that creates five-year plans for
the economy as a whole and which is
supposed to have accurate statistics all
of this uh is founded upon uh a
foundation of sand a deliberate plan to
bring class conflict and bring Civil War
and then heighten it in the countryside
um does damage and not least of that is
this phenomenon of a negative selection
those who have most Enterprise those who
are most entrepreneurial those who have
most self-discipline those who are best
organized will be winnowed again and
again and again uh sending the message
that mediocrity is comparatively much
safer than Talent Hitler and himler
envisioned permanent war on the Eastern
Front not a peace treaty not a
settlement not a border but a constant
moving of the border every generation
hundreds of miles east in order to keep
winning more and more living
space and with analogy to other
Frontiers to always give more fighting
experience and more training in
aggression to generation after
generation of German soldiers in terms
of nightmarish Visions this one's right
up
there the following is conversation with
vas ludus a historian specializing in
Germany and Eastern Europe he has
lectured extensively On The Rise the
rain and the fall of Communism our
discussion goes deep on this the very
heaviest of topics the Communist
ideology that has led to over 100
million deaths in the 20th century we
also discuss Hitler Nazi ideology and
World War II
this is Alex Freedman podcast to support
it please check out our sponsors in the
description and now dear friends here's
veas L
vicious let's start with KL Marx what
were the central ideas of Marx that lay
the foundation of Communism I think
there were several key ideas that Marx
deployed that were destined to have such
an impact and in some ways they were
actually kind of contradictory um on the
one hand uh Marx insisted that history
has a purpose that history is not just
random events uh but that rather it's
history we might say with a capital H
history moving in a deliberate direction
history having a goal uh a a a a
direction that it was predestined to
move in um at the same time in the
Communist Manifesto uh Karl Marx and his
colleague Friedrich Engles also
suggested that there was a role for
special individuals who might uh even
history was still moving in this
predetermined Direction might give it an
extra push might play a heroic role in
that process and I think that these two
ideas added together the notion that
there is a science of Revolution that
suggests that you can move in a
deliberate and uh and meaningful
rational way towards the end of history
and the resolution of all conflicts uh a
total liberation of the human person uh
and that moreover that was inevitable
that that was pre-programmed and
destined in the in the order of things
when you add to that the notion that
there's also room for heroism and the
individual role uh this ended up being
tremendously powerful as a combination
um earlier thinkers uh who were
socialists had already dreamt of or
projected Futures where all conflict
would be resolved and human life would
achieve some sort of perfection Marx
added these other elements uh that made
it far more powerful than the earlier
versions that he decried as merely
utopian socialism so there's a million
questions I could ask there but so on
the utopian side so there is a
utopian component to the way he tried to
conceive of his ideas yeah absolutely I
mean first of all one has to stress
markx would have gotten extremely upset
at this point in the conversation
because because to call someone a
utopian was precisely to argue that
you're not scientific you're not
rational you are not laying out the iron
laws of History you're merely hoping for
the best and that might be laudable but
it was fundamentally
unrealistic uh that said hidden among
Marx's insistence that there are laws
and and structures uh as history moves
through uh class conflict modes of
production uh towards its ultimate goal
of a comprehensive final Revolution that
will see all exploitation overthrown and
people finally being freed from
necessity um in in smuggled in among
those things are most definitely utopian
elements and there they come especially
at the end in which Marx U
sketches the notion of what things will
look like after the revolution has
resolved all problems uh there vagueness
sets in uh it's clear that it's a
blessed State that's being talked about
um people no longer exploiting one
another people no longer subject to
necessity or poverty but instead
enjoying all of the productivity of
industrialization that hither to had
been put to private profit now uh
collectively owned and deployed the
notion that one will be able to work at
one job in the morning and then engage
in Leisure activity or another yet
another fulfilling job in the afternoon
um all of these all of this free of any
contradictions free of necessity free of
the sort of ordinary irritations that we
experienc in our ordinary lives that's
deeply utopian the difference was that
Marx charted a route towards that
outcome that was uh that presented
itself as cuttingedge science and
moreover having the the the the full
credibility that science commanded so
much especially in the 19th and early
20th century so there is a long journey
from capitalism to Communism that
includes a lot of problems he thought on
once you resolve the problems all the
complexities of human
interactions the friction the problems
will be gone to the extent that they
were based on inequalities and on uh um
man's exploitation of man uh the result
was supposed to be a uh a resolution of
all of this uh and inevitably when you
talk about the history of Communism you
have to include the fact that this often
tragic and dramatic history produced a
lot of jokes jokes that were in part
reactions sometimes to the ideological
claims made by people like Marx and one
of the famous jokes was that what's the
difference between capitalism and
communism and the joke's answer was
capitalism is the exploitation of Man by
man and communism is the exact
opposite yeah you you actually have
electron humor I love it and you deliver
in such a dry beautiful way uh okay
there's again a million questions so you
outline a set of contradictions but it's
interesting to talk about his
view for example uh what was Marx's view
of
History uh Marx had been a student of
Hegel uh and Hegel as a German idealist
philosopher had uh announced very
definitively that history has a purpose
history is not a collection of random
facts uh and as an idealist he proposed
that the true movement of History the
true meaning of History what made
history history with with a capital H
something that's Transcendent and
meaningful was that it was the working
out of an idea through different
civilizations different stages of
historical development and that idea was
the idea of human Freedom so it was not
individuals or great thinkers alone
making history and having an impact it
was the idea itself striving to come to
fruition striving to come to an Ever
more perfect realization uh in the case
of of of Hegel In This Very Prussian and
German context he identified the
realization of Freedom also with the
growth of the state because he thought
that governments are the ones that are
going to be able to deliver on laws and
on the ideal of a a state of the rule of
law in
German uh that was a a a noble dream um
at the same time as as we recognize from
our perspective uh state power has been
put to all sorts of purposes besides
guaranteeing the rule of law uh in our
own times what Marx did was to take this
this characteristic insistence of Hegel
that that history is moving in a
meaningful and discernable way towards
the realization of an idea and flipped
it on its head Marx insisted that Hegel
had so much that was right in his
thinking but what he had neglected to
keep in mind was that in fact history is
is is based on matter so hence d itical
materialism the dialectical referring to
things proceeding by clashes or conflict
towards an Ever greater realization of
some essential idea and so Marx adapts a
lot of ideas of of Hegel you can
recognize entire rhetorical Maneuvers
that are uh indebted to that that
earlier training but now taken in a in a
very uh different direction what what
remained though was the confidence of
being on the right side of history and
there are few things that are as
intoxicating as being convinced that
your actions not only are right in the
abstract but are also destined to be
successful and also that you have uh the
rigor of science backing you in your
journey towards the truth absolutely I
so uh angles when when he gives the
grade side eulogy for his beloved friend
Marx um claims that Marx is essentially
the Darwin of History the Darwin of
History he that he had done for the
world of politics and of uh um human
history what Darwin had done with his
theory EV of evolution understanding the
hidden mechanism understanding the laws
that are at work and that uh make that
whole process meaningful rather than
just one damn thing after
another what about the sort of famous
line that history of all existing
societies is the history of class
struggles so what about this conception
of history as a history of class
struggle well so this was the motive
force that KL Marx and angles saw
driving the historical process forward
and it's it's important to keep in mind
that class conflict doesn't just mean
revolutions revolts peasant uprisings uh
it it's it's sort of the the totality of
friction and of clashes conflicts of
interest that appear in any society and
so Marx was able in this spirit that he
uh avowed was very scientific to
demarcate stages of historical
transformation primitive communism in
the prehistoric period Then moving
towards what was called State slavery uh
that's to say the early civilizations
deploying uh human resources and
ordering them uh by all powerful
monarchs uh then private slavery in the
ancient period and then moving to
feudalism in the Middle Ages and then
here's where where Marx is able to
deliver a pronouncement about his own
times seeing that the present day is the
penultimate the next to last stage of
this historical development because the
feudal system of the Middle Ages and the
dominance of the aristocracy has been
overcome uh has been displaced by the
often heroic achievements astonishing
achievements in Commerce and in World
building of the middle class the
bisi uh who have uh taken the world into
their own hands and are engaged in uh
class conflict with the the the class
below them which is the working class or
the proletariat and so this sort of this
sort of conflict uh um uh also by the
way obtains within classes so the
Bourgeois are going to be gravediggers
Marx announces of their own Supremacy
because they're also competing against
one another and um members who don't
survive that competition get pressed
down into the subordinate working class
uh which grows and grows and grows to
the point where uh at some future moment
the inevitable explosion will come uh
and uh a a swift Revolution Will
overturn this last this penultimate
stage uh of human history and Usher in
instead the dictatorship of the working
class and then the abolition of all
classes because with only one class
remaining everyone is finally unified
and without those internal
contradictions that had marked class
conflict before the dictatorship of the
working class is an interesting term so
what is the role of revolution in
history so this in particular for Marx I
think is a really key moment which is
what makes that such a good question in
his vision the Epic narrative that he's
presenting to us us
Revolution is key it's not enough to
have evolutionary change it's not a
question of compromises it's not a case
of of bargaining or balancing interests
Revolution is necessary as part of the
process of a subjugated class coming to
awareness of its own historical role and
when we get to the proletariat this this
uh uh uh working class uh in its
entirety to whom marks assign
this uh this epic Promethean role of
being the ones who are going to liberate
all of humanity a class that is
universal in its interests and in the
sort of role in Salvation history that
they'll be playing in this in this
secular framework uh they need
Revolution and the experience of
revolution in order to come into their
own because without it you'll only have
half-hearted compromise and something
less than the Consciousness that they
then need in order to rule to administer
and to play the historical role that
they're faded to have how did he
conceive of a
revolution potentially a violent
revolution stabilizing itself into
something where the the working class
was able to rule that's where things
become a good deal less detailed in his
and anglo's accounts the answer that
they proposed in part was this is this
is for the future to determine so all of
the details will be settled later um uh
I think there was a lied to this was a a
tremendous confidence in um some very
19th century ideas about how Society
could be administered uh and what made
for orderly
Society um in a way where uh if the
right infrastructure was in place uh you
might expect Society to kind of run
itself without the need for uh
micromanagement from above and hence we
arrive at at Marx's tantalizing promise
that at there will be a period where
it's it'll be necessary to have
centralized control and there might have
to be as he puts it despotic inroads
against property in order to bring this
revolution to pass but then afterwards
the state because it represents
everybody rather than representing
particular class interests that are in
conflict with other classes the state
will eventually wither away so there
won't be need for it now that's not to
say that that pure stasis arrives right
or that the stabilization equals being
frozen in time it's not as if that is
what things will look like but instead
the big issues will be settled and
henceforth people will be able to enjoy
lives of as he would consider in
authentic freedom without necessity
without poverty uh as a result of this
uh blessed State that's been arrived at
despotic inroads against property
did he elaborate on the despotic inroads
dispossession dispossession of the uh of
the middle classes and of the bis in his
model humanity is never standing still
right so he'd probably argue in this
Dynamic vision of how history unfolds
that there's there there's always
conflict and it's always moving
propelling history forward towards its
predestined ending um in the the way he
saw this
climax uh was that
as things did not stay the same the
condition of the working class was
constantly getting worse and hence their
revolutionary potential was growing and
the at the same time the expropriators
the Bourgeois were also facing
diminishing returns as they competed
against one another with more and more
wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer
hands and more and more elements of what
had been the middle class detached from
the ruling class and being pressed down
into the the working class uh for for
Marks this is really a key part I mean
it's a key part of this whole ratchet
effect that's going to produce this
final historical explosion and in in
German the word given to that process
was
F which is very evocative aland means
misery so it's the growing misery when
this gets translated into English uh the
results are never quite as evocative or
satisfactory the words that get used are
emeris or popularization meaning more
and more people are being turned into
poppers but for Marx that prediction is
really key and even in his own lifetime
there were already hints that in fact if
you look sociologically at the really
developed working classes in places like
Great Britain or Germany that process
was not playing out as he had expected
uh in fact uh although there have been
enormous dislocations and tremendous
suffering in the early chaotic sort of
wild west stages of of capitalism and of
industrialization there had been reform
movements as well and there had been
unions which had sought uh to carve out
uh rules and uh and agreements with
employers for how uh the conditions
under which workers labored might be
ameliorated moreover
the middle class rather than dwindling
and dwindling seem to actually be
strengthening and growing in numbers the
appearance of new kinds of people like
white collar workers or technical
experts so um already in Marx's own
Lifetime and then especially in what
follows Marx's lifetime uh this becomes
a real problem because it it uh it puts
a a stick into the spokes of this
particular historical prediction can you
speak to this realm of ideas which is
fascinating this battle of big ideas in
the 19th century what are the ideas that
were swimming around here yeah yeah well
um
the to describe the 19th century as sort
of an age of ideologies is very apt
because um Europe is being racked and
and and uh um and being put through the
ringer of
nationalism uh demands for uh
self-expression of peoples who earlier
have been in Empires or under
monarchical rule demand to redraw the
map um the tremendous transformations of
the Industrial Revolution meant that in
in the course of about a generation you
would have seen the world around you
change in ways that made it entirely
unfamiliar you'd be able to travel
across the landscape at speeds that have
been Unthinkable when you were a child
so it's it's enormous change and and
demands for yet more change and so it's
a great mix of ideas ideologies the old
the new religious ideas religious
revivals as well as demands for
secularization um and stepping into all
of this are marks and angles together uh
in what has been called I think with
Justice one of the most important and
influential intellectual Partnerships uh
uh of History uh they were very
different men uh they were both German
by origin um uh Marx had uh trained as
an academic he had married the daughter
of a baron uh because of his radical
ideas uh he had foreclosed or found
himself cut off from a possible academic
career and went the route of radical
journalism angles was very different
angles was the son of an industrialist
and the family owned factories in
Germany and in England so he was most
definitely not a member of the
proletariat that uh he and Marx uh were
celebrating uh as as so significant in
their future historical role there were
also huge differences in character
between these men Marx when people met
him they were astonished by his energy
and his dynamism they also saw him as a
man who felt determined to dominate
arguments he wanted to win arguments uh
and uh was not one to uh to to settle
for compromise or a Middle Road um he
was uh disorderly in in his personal
habits uh we might mention among other
things that he impregnated the family
made uh and didn't uh didn't accept
responsibility for the child um he was
also uh not inclined to uh undertake
regular employment in order to support
his growing family that's where angles
came in angles essentially from his
family fortune uh and then from his
journalism afterwards supported both
himself and the Marx family uh for
decades
and so in a sense um angles made things
happen uh in in the in the mysterious
way that friendships work the very
differences between these men made them
formidable as a dynamic duo because they
balanced off one another's
idiosyncrasies and turned what might
have been fals uh into potential
potential strengths British historian
ajp Taylor always has a lovely turn of
phrase even when he's wrong about a
historical issue uh in this case he was
right he said that um angles had charm
and Brilliance Marx was a genius and
angles saw himself as the definitely the
junior partner in this relationship but
here's the Paradox without angles uh
pretty clearly markx would not have gone
on to have the sort of lasting
historical impact in the world of ideas
that he had just a throwing in the mix
there's interesting characters swimming
around uh so you have
Darwin he has a I mean it's difficult to
to to
uh to characterize the the level of
impact he had even just in the religious
context they challenges our conception
of who we are as humans uh there's
n who's also I don't know hanging around
the area on the Russian side there's
DKI so it's interesting to ask maybe uh
from your perspective did these people
interact in in a space of ideas to where
this is relevant to our discuss disc or
is this mostly uh isolated I I think
that it's part of a great conversation
right I think that in their Works um
they're reacting to one another I mean
Doo's uh thought ranges across the
condition of modernity uh and he
definitely has things to say about
industrialization I think that they
react to one another in these oblique
ways rather than always being being at
each other's throats uh uh in in direct
confrontations um and that's what makes
the 19th century uh so um so compelling
as a story just because of the sheer
Vitality of the arguments uh that are
that are taking place in in ways big and
small what we should say here when you
mentioned Karl Marx maybe the color red
comes up for people and uh they think
the Soviet Union maybe China but they
don't think Germany necessarily it's
interesting that I mean Germany is where
communism was supposed to happen that's
right and so can you uh maybe speak to
that tension yeah yeah absolutely I mean
this is uh this is definitely a factor
in the entire history that uh that we're
referencing um Marx and Engles never
really shed their identity as Germans um
many of their
preconceptions uh even those traces of
nationalism that they had within
themselves even as they were condemning
nationalism as a as a fraud against the
working class um uh their clearly their
entire formation had been affected by
their their German background uh and
it's very true as you point out that
Germany is intended to be the place
where these predictions will play out
also in Britain also in France also
eventually in the United States but it's
a uh you know it's it's Germany by
virtue of be its central location and
then its rapid development uh um later
than Britain or France in
industrialization um give it this
special role in in Marx's worldview and
so um it it's a lasting irony or a
central irony of this whole story that
when a government establishes itself
that claims to be following Marx's
prescriptions and realizing his vision
it happens in the wreckage of the
Russian Empire a place that was did not
match the requirements of being IND
industrialized developed well on its way
in this historical process um and nobody
knew this better than the Bolsheviks
Lenin and his colleagues um had a keen
sense that what they were doing exciting
as it was was a gamble it was a risk
because in fact the revolution to really
take hold had to seese power in Germany
and that's why in immediately after
taking power uh they're not sure they're
going to last their their hope their
their their promise of Salvation is that
a workers Revolution Will erupt in
Germany defeated Germany in order to
link up with the one that has been
launched in this unlikely Russian
location uh and henceforth uh uh uh you
know great things will follow that do
Hue to Marx's historical uh uh Vision
the last thing to mention about this is
that uh this uh predominance of Germany
in the thinking uh of of uh Marx had two
other Reflections one was that uh German
socialists and later Communists
organized in order to fulfill Marx's
vision and they produced something that
leaves other uh westerners in
awe uh in the late 19th century and
that's the building of a strong German
Workers movement and a Social Democratic
Party that Social Democratic Party by
19112 uh is the largest party in German
politics by vote and there's the
possibility they might even come to
power without needing radical revolution
uh which again also goes against Marx's
uh original vision of their the
necessity for a revolution um workers
around the world uh or rather um radical
socialists look with admiration and awe
at what the Germans have achieved and
they see themselves as trying to do what
the Germans have done the final point is
um growing up during the Cold War One
thought that well if you want to
represent somebody as being a communist
that person has to have a Russian accent
because Russia after all the uh the
homeland of this form of government the
Soviet Union uh uh that must be the the
point of origin before the Bolshevik
seize power in order to really be a
serious radical socialist you needed to
read German because you needed to read
Marx and you needed to read kowsky and
you needed to read Bernstein and other
thinkers in this tradition and uh it's
only after the Soviet seizure of power
that uh that this all changes so there's
lots of marks of that phenomenon which
is why the clash between nationalism and
communism in uh Germany is such a
fascinating aspect of history and all
the different trajectories it could take
and we'll talk about it but if we return
to the 19th century you''ve said that uh
Marxist Chief rival was Russian
Anarchist uh Mel
bakunin uh who famously said in
1942 quote the passion for Destruction
is also a creative passion so what kind
of future did bakunin uh Envision well
bakunin in some things agreed with Marx
and in many others disagreed uh he was
an anarchist rather than uh hueing to uh
the sort of scheme of history that that
Marx was proposing so he did see
Humanity as fighting a struggle for a
better way of life he envisioned as your
quote suggests that Revolution and uh
sheer confrontation and overthrow of the
existing state of things not compromise
was going to be the way to get there but
his vision was very different rather
than organizing conspir uh
conspiratorial uh uh and hierarchical
political movement bakun and envision
that the ties would be far looser that
both the Revolutionary movement and the
the future state of humanity would grow
out of the free association the
anarchist thinking the free association
of individuals who rejected hierarchical
thinking in their relations with one
another rejected the state as a form of
organized violence and rejected
traditional religious ideas that he saw
as buttressing hierarchies so bakunin is
part of a broader movement of socialists
and anarchists who are demanding change
and envisioning really fundamental
transformation but his particular
Anarchist Vision steers him into
conflict with Marx and he makes some
prophetic remarks about the problems
with the system that Marx is proposing
you should add to this that the very far
uh the very fact that Marx uh is a
German by background and bakunin is
Russian kind of adds a further
nationalist or or element of ethnic
difference there bakunin uh warned that
a sort of creeping German
authoritarianism might insinuate its way
into a movement that hewed too closely
to having hierarchies in the struggle to
overthrow hierarchies and uh you know
his Anarchist convictions were are not
um uh not in question here they let him
into conflict with Marx and and Marx
railed against him denounced him uh and
eventually had him expelled uh from the
the
international one of the things though
that also makes bakuna so significant is
bakunin is the first in a longer series
of um approaches between anarchists and
Communists where they try to make common
cause and you have to say that in every
case it ends badly for the
anarchists because uh um the the
Communist Vision in particular
especially in leninist version uh argued
for discipline and a tightly organized
professional revolutionary movement The
anarchists Who sought to make common
cause with uh uh Communists whether it
was in the days of the Russian
Revolution or the Russian Civil War uh
or whether it was uh then in the Spanish
Civil War the anarchist found themselves
um uh targeted by uh the Communists
precisely because because uh of their
skepticism about what turned out to be
an absolutely key element in the
leninist prescription for a successful
Revolution if you can take that tangent
a little bit uh so I guess anarchists
were less organized yeah that's my
definition
yeah why do you think anarchism hasn't
been uh rigorously tried in the way the
communism was if could just take a
complete sort of tangent I mean
in one sense we are living in an anarchy
today because the the nations are in an
anarchic state with each other but why
do you think sort of there's not been an
anarchist Revolution well I I I think
that probably some Anarchist would beg
to differ right they would see uh um
communes in Spain uh uh during the
Spanish Civil War as an example of
trying to put Anarchist ideas into into
place bakunin um you know flitted from
one area of unrest to another hoping to
be in on finally the founding of the
sort of free communes that he had in
mind uh you know another key point in
all of this is that anarchy means
something different to different people
as as a term and so when you point out
quite correctly that you know we have an
anarchic international situation that's
kind of the Hoban model of the war of
all against all where man is a wolf to
man generally except if you're talking
about uh NE ists in uh in in the Russian
revolutionary tradition uh anarchists
see Anarchy as a blessed State and one
where finally people will be freed from
the distorting influence of hierarchies
traditional beliefs uh um subjugation
inequalities so for them Anarchy uh
growing out of the liberation of the
human being is seen as as a positive
good and and peaceful now that's at odds
with the the prescription of someone
like bakun for how to get there uh he
sees overthrow as being uh necessary uh
on on the route to that but you know as
we point out um uh it's uh absolutely
key to this entire Dynamic that to be an
anarchist means that your efforts are
not going to be organized the way a
disciplined and tightly organized
revolutionary movement would be yeah
it's an interesting stretch that a
violent revolution will take us to a
place of no violence or very little
violence it's a it's a leap it's it's a
leap um and it it kind of it points to a
phenomenon that um would have enraged
Marx and uh would have been deeply
alienating to others in the tradition
who followed him but that so many
scholars have commented on and that's
that there is a religious element uh you
know not not a a vowed one but a kind of
hidden religious or secular religious uh
element to Marx's Vision to to the
tradition that follows Marx um and you
know just think of the correspondences
right Marx himself as kind of a
positioning himself as a savior figure
whether that's a Prometheus or a Moses
who will lead people to the promised
land the uh apocalypse or the end times
is this final Revolution that will usher
in a blessed final State a Utopia which
is uh equivalent to a secular version of
Heaven uh there's the the working class
playing the role of uh Humanity in its
struggle to be
redeemed um and and Scholar after
scholar has has pointed this out um uh
Reinhold neore back in the 1930s had an
article in the Atlantic magazine that
talked about the Soviet Union's
communism as a religion Eric fuggin a
German American Scholar uh who fled the
Nazis and and relocated to Louisiana
State University uh and and and wrote
Toms about the new phenomenon of
political religions in the modern period
and he saw um Fascism and Nazism and uh
the so and and Soviet communism uh as uh
as bearing the stamp of of political
religions
meaning ideologies that promised what an
earlier age would have understood in
religious terms um fergin called this
the escaton and said that uh these end
times the escaton was being promised in
the here and now being made imminent uh
and he warned against that saying the
results are likely to be disastrous so
that's actually uh a disagreement with
this idea that uh you know people
sometimes say that uh the Soviet Union
is an example of an atheistic Society so
when you have atheism is the primary
thing that underpins the society this is
what you get so that's what you're
saying is a kind of uh rejection of that
saying that there's a strong religious
component uh to Communism a hidden
component one that's not officially
recognized I mean I I think that um you
know I had a chance to witness this
actually uh when I was a child my family
uh I grew up in Chicago to a Lithuanian
American family and uh my father who was
a mathematician got a very rare
invitation to travel to Soviet Lithuania
to the University of vus to meet with
colleagues and um at this point journeys
of more than a few days or a week were
very rare to the Soviet Union for for
Americans uh and uh the result was that
um I had Unforgettable experiences
visiting uh the Soviet Union in bv's day
and among the things I saw there was a
museum of atheism that had been
established in a church that had been uh
uh um ripped apart from inside and was
meant to uh meant to kind of embody the
official stance of atheism and um I
remember being baffled by the museum on
the inside because you would expect
exhibits you would ex expect something
dramatic something that will be
compelling and instead there were uh
there was some folk art uh from the
countryside showing bygone beliefs there
were some lithographs or Engravings of
the Spanish Inquisition and its Horrors
and that was pretty much it uh but as a
child I remember being um reproved in
that museum for not wearing my
windbreaker but instead carrying it on
my arm which was a very disrespectful
thing to do in an official Museum of
atheism um when I was able to visit the
Soviet Union later uh for a language
course in the summer of 1989 one of the
obligatory tours that we took was to
file reverently past the body of Lenin
outside the Kremlin in the mausoleum at
red square and communist mummies like
those of Lenin earlier Stalin had been
there as well uh communist mummies like
Mau or hoi Min um really I think uh
speak to a blending of earlier religious
sensibility reverence for relics of
great figures almost saintly figures
uh so that even what got proclaimed as
atheism uh turned out to be a very
demanding Faith as well and I think
that's a contradiction that uh that
other Scholars have pointed out as well
yeah it's a very complicated sort of
discussion when you remove religion as a
as a big component of a society whether
something like a framing of political
ideologies in religious ways is the
natural consequence of that we hear
nature abhorring a vacuum and I think
that there are there are pces in human
character that long for transcendental
explanations right that it's not all
meaningless uh it's uh in fact there's a
a larger purpose and I think it's not a
coincidence that such a significant part
of resistance to uh communist regimes
has in part come from on the one hand
religious Believers uh and on the other
hand uh from uh disillusioned True
Believers in communism who uh find
themselves uh undergoing a uh an
internal experience of just of revulsion
uh finding that their ideals uh are have
not been followed through on so this
topic is one of several topics that you
eloquently describe as contradictions
within the ideas of uh Marx so religious
there is a kind of religious adherence
versus uh also the rejection of
religious Dogma that he stood for uh
we've talked about some of the others
the the tension between nationalism that
emerged when it was implemented versus
what communism is supposed to be which
is global so globalism um then there's
the uh thing that we started talking
with is individualism so you know
history is supposed to be defined by the
large collection of humans but there
does seem to be these singular figures
including Marx himself that are like
really
important um geography of global versus
restricted to certain countries and uh
you know tradition sort of you're
supposed to break with the past yeah the
communism but then Marxism became one of
the strongest traditions in history
that's right that's right I think that
the that last one is is especially
significant because it's it's deeply
paradoxical I mean trying to outline
these contradictions by the way is like
subjecting Marx to a the sort of
analysis that Marx subjected other
people to which is to point out internal
contradictions things that are likely to
to become pressure points or cracks that
might open up what's supposed to be uh a
completely um uh set and durable and
effective uh framework um the one about
tradition uh you know Marx points out
that the need for revolution is in order
to break with the Traditions that have
hemmed people in this earlier earlier
ways of thinking earlier social
structures uh and uh and and to
constantly renovate and what happens
instead is um a tradition of rad IAL
rupture emerges and that's really tough
because imagine um uh the last stages of
the Soviet Union where
um Keen observers can tell that there
are problems that are building in
society there are discontents and
demands that are are going to clash
especially when someone like gorbachov
is proposing reforms and things are
suddenly thrown open for discussion um
the very notion that you have the
celebration of
revolutionaries uh and the Bolshevik uh
Legacy at a time when the state wants to
enforce stability and uh an order that's
been received from the prior generation
think of bv's time for instance um all
of that is a especially volatile mix and
uh uh unlikely to work out very durably
in the long run I would love to sort of
uh talk about the works uh of marks The
Communist Manifesto in Das Capital what
can we say that's interesting about the
manifestation of his ideas on paper well
the first thing to note obviously is
that uh those two works are very
different DUS Capital uh is an enormous
multivolume work that that Marx worked
at and only got the first volume out
because angles begged him to stop
revising please just finally get it into
press and then the rest angles had to uh
actually reconstruct out of notes after
uh Mark's
passed away uh it's a huge work by
contrast the Communist
Manifesto uh is uh a brief pamphlet that
ended up affecting the lives of many
millions worldwide uh in spite of its
its comparative brevity um The Communist
Manifesto moreover is also something of
the nature of having a delayed fuse you
could say because uh when it first
appears amid the revolutions of 1848
that sweep across Europe uh the work is
contrary to what people often believe
the the that pamphlet did not cause the
Revolutions of 1848 many of which had
National or liberal
demands uh the voice of Marx and angles
was barely to be heard over the den of
other far more prominent actors it is
however in the aftermath that this work
takes on tremendous significance and
becomes popularly read and properly
distributed it's especially the uh the
episode The the bloody episode of the
Paris commune in
1871 which comes to be identified with
Marx even though it was not Purely
Inspired by Marx alone nor were all of
the communards devoted marxists it's the
identification of this famous or
inFAMOUS episode in in urban upheaval
that really leads to uh um worldwide
notoriety for Marx and attention uh to
those works and they're very different
in form uh Das capital is intended to be
the Origin of Species of its uh realm of
economic thought and and represents
years and years of work of of Marx
laboring in the British Museum library
uh working through statistics working on
little bits and pieces of a larger uh
answer to Big historical questions that
he believes that he's he's arrived at
its tone is different from that of the
Communist Manifesto which is a call to
Arms it announces with great confidence
what the scheme of History will be but
rather than urging that the answer might
be paity and just waiting for history to
play out in its pre-ordained way it's
also uh a Clarion call to make the
revolution happen uh and uh in is
intended to be a a a pragmatic practical
statement of of how this is to to play
out and you know starts in part with
those ringing words about a a ghost or a
spectre haunting Europe the Spectre of
Communism which wasn't true at the time
but decades later most definitely is the
case is there something we could say
about the difference between marxian
economics and Marxist political ideology
so the political side of things and the
economics side of things so I I think
that Marx would probably have responded
that uh in fact those things are
indivisible uh it the
analysis uh as sort of the purely
theoretical uh is uh certainly can be
performed on any economic reality that
you care to mention but the imperatives
that grow out of that imper that e
economic analysis are political um Marx
and and Engles um emphasize the unity of
the and practice so it's it's not enough
to dispassionately analyze uh it's a
call to action as well because if you've
delivered the answer to how history
evolves and and changes uh it obligates
you right it uh it uh it demands certain
action um you sometimes hear from
undergraduates that they've heard from
their High School history teachers that
that Marxism was just a theoretical
construct that was an the idol
production of a philosopher who was um
not connected to the world and was never
meant to be tried in practice Marx would
have been Furious to hear this uh and
it's almost heroically wrong uh as a
historical statement because Marx
insisted that all previous philosophers
have theorized about reality What Now is
really necessary is to change it so um
you could you could say that in the
abstract a Marxist Economist can
certainly use Marxist theoretical
framework uh uh to compare to a given
economic reality uh but Marx would have
seen that as incomplete and as deeply
unsatisfactory there's kind of a
footnote to all of this which is that
even though Marxist dialectical
materialism grounds itself in these
economic realities and the political
prescription is supposed to flow from
the economic realities and uh and and
and be
inevitably uh growing out of
them in the Real History of communist
regimes you've actually seen periods
where the economics becomes detached
from the politics and I'm thinking in
particular of um the new economic period
uh early in the history of the Soviet
Union when Lenin realizes that the
economy is so far gone that you need to
reintroduce or allow in a limited way
some elements of private Enterprise just
to start getting Russia back on course
in order to have the accumulation of
surplus that will be necessary to build
the project at all and that's there are
many Bolsheviks who see the new economic
program as a New Economic Policy as a
terrible compromise and and a betrayal
of of their ideas but it's it's seen as
necessary for a short while and then
Stalin uh will will wreck it entirely or
consider for that matter uh China today
where you you have a a dominant
political class the Communist Party of
China uh which is allowing Economic
Development uh and private Enterprise as
long as it retains political control um
so some of these elements already
represent divergences from what Marx
would have expected and this is this
points to a really key problem or
question for all of the history of
Communism it has to do with it being a
tradition
in spite of itself and that could be
expressed in the following way an
original set of ideas is going to evolve
it's going to change because
circumstances change what elaborations
of any Doctrine whether it's communism
or a religious Doctrine or any political
ideology what
elaborations
are natural stages in the evolution of
any living set of
ideas or when you reach the point where
some shift or some adaptation is so
radically different that it actually
breaks with the tradition and that's an
insoluble problem you probably have to
take it on a case-by Case basis it
speaks to issues like the question that
gets raised today like is China in a
meaningful sense a communist country
anymore um and there's a there's a
diversity of opinion on this score or
you know if you're looking at the
history of communism and you look at
North Korea which now is on its third
installment of a dynastic leader from
the same family who rules like a god
king over a regime that calls itself
communist is that still a form of
Communism is it an evolution of is it a
complete reversal
of I tend to want to take an
anthropological perspective in the
history of Communism and to take very
serious
iously those people who avow that they
are communists and this is the project
that they have underway and then after
hearing that AOW uh I think as a
historian you have to say well let's
look at the details let's see what
changes have been made what continuities
might still exist whether there's a
larger pattern to be discerned here um
so it's a very very complicated history
that we're talking about let's step back
to the end of the 19th century and the
beginning of the 20th century and let's
Steelman the case for communism let's
put ourselves in the shoes of the people
there not in this way we can we can look
back at what happened in the 20th
century why was this such a compelling
notion for millions of people uh can we
make the case for it well clearly it was
a compelling case for millions of people
and and part of this story has to do
with uh overall has to do with the faith
conviction stories of uh of people
sacrificing themselves as well as their
countrymen uh in a cause that they
believed was uh not just legitimate but
uh demanded their total obedience I
think that throughout the early part of
the 20th century uh late 19th century
early part of the 20th century so much
of the compelling case for communism
came from the confidence that people in
the west more generally placed in
science the notion that science is
answering problems science is giving us
solutions to how the world around us
Works how the world around us can be
improved um some varieties of that and
like watch the quotation mark science
were crazy right like phenology
so-called scientific racism that tried
to divide Humanity up into uh discret
blocks uh and to manipulate them in ways
that were allegedly scientific or
rational so there were Horrors that
followed from uh those invocations of
science but its Prestige was enormous
and that in part had to do with uh the
uh lessening grip of religious ideas on
intellectual Elites more generally
processes of secularization not total
secularization but but processes of
secularization in in Western industrial
societies um and the sense that here's a
doctrine that will allow allow escape
from
Wars brought on by capitalist
competition poverty and economic cycles
and depressions brought on by capitalist
competition uh the
inequalities uh of societies that remain
hierarchical and class-based uh and this
claim to being cuttingedge science I
think allows people like Lenin
to derive immense
confidence in the prescription that they
have for the future and that
paradoxically the confidence that you
have in Broad Strokes the right set of
answers for how to get to the Future
also allows you to take huge liberties
with the tactics and the strategies that
you follow as long as your ultimate goal
remains the one sketched by this this
master plan so um you know ultimately
some of the predictions of someone like
lennin that that once Society has
reached that stage of the dictatorship
of the of the
proletariat the notion
that governments will essentially be
able to run themselves and the model he
had in mind oddly enough was Swiss post
offices being in Swiss Exile must have
impressed him so much with the
orderliness and the sheer discipline and
rationality of a Swiss post office and
he thought why can't you organize
governments like this where you don't
need political leaders you don't need
Grand Visions you have procedures you
have bureaucracy which does its job in a
way that's not alienating but simply
produces the the greatest good uh you
know when you think of the experiences
with bureaucracy in the 20th century
once hair stands on end to have you know
the the the comparative
naive uh on display with a prediction
like that but it deres from that
confidence that it's all going to be
okay because we understand we have the
key we have the plan to how to arrive uh
at this this uh this final uh
configuration of humanity yeah the
certainty of Science in quotes and the
goal of Utopia gets you in trouble but
also just on the human level from um
from a working class person
perspective from the Industrial
Revolution you see the growing
inequality wealth inequality and there
is a kind of you see people getting
wealthy and combined with the fact that
life is difficult life in general life
is suffering for many for most for all
if you listen to some philosophers and
there is kind of a a powerful idea in
that the man is exploiting
me and that's a populist message that a
lot of people resonate with because to a
degree it's true in every system and so
before you kind of know how these
economic and political uh ideas manifest
themselves it is really powerful to say
h