Anti-anti-communism

Millions ofRussians and eastern Europeans now believe that they were better off undercommunism. What does this signify?

Kristen R Ghodsee & Scott Sehon

Kristen R Ghodsee is a professor of Russian and East EuropeanStudies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of Red Hangover: Legacies of 20th Century-Communism (2017).

Scott Sehon is a professor of philosophy at Bowdoin College, andthe author of Free Will and Action Explanation: A

Non-Causal, Compatibilist Account (2016).

2018-March-23

[T]he people whostruggle against what we call totalitarian regimes cannot function with queriesand doubts. They, too, need certainties and simple truths to make themultitudes understand, to provoke collective tears.’

Milan Kundera,The Unbearable Lightness of Being(1984)

The public memory of 20th-centurycommunism is a battleground. Two ideological armies stare at each other acrossa chasm of mistrust and misunderstanding. Even though the Cold War ended almost30 years ago, a struggle to define the truth about the communist past hascontinued to rage across the United States and Europe.

On the Left stand those with some sympathyfor socialist ideals and the popular opinion of hundreds of millions of Russianand east European citizens nostalgic for their state socialist pasts. On theRight stand the committed anti-totalitarians, both east and west, insistingthat all experiments with Marxism will always and inevitably end with thegulag. Where one side sees shades of grey, the other views the world in blackand white.

Particularly in the US, labour supportersand social liberals who desire an expanded role for the state hope to save thedemocratic socialist baby from the authoritarian bathwater. Fiscalconservatives and nationalists deploy memories of purges and famines todiscredit even the most modest arguments in favour of redistributive politics.

For those wishing to paint 20th-centurycommunism as an unmitigated evil, ongoing ethnographic and survey research ineastern Europe contradicts any simple narrative. Even as early as 1992, theCroatian journalist Slavenka Drakulić ‘worried about what would happen to allthe good things that we did have under communism – the medical care, the year’spaid maternity leave, free abortion’. As governments dismantled social safetynets and poverty spread throughout the region, ordinary citizens grewincreasingly less critical of their state socialist pasts.

A 2009 pollin eight east European countries asked if theeconomic situation for ordinary people was ‘better, worse or about the same asit was under communism’. The results stunned observers: 72 per cent ofHungarians, and 62 per cent of both Ukrainians and Bulgarians believedthat most people wereworseoff after 1989. In no country didmore than 47 per cent of those surveyed agree that their lives improvedafter the advent of free markets. Subsequentpollsand qualitative research acrossRussia and eastern Europe confirm the persistence of these sentiments aspopular discontent with the failed promises of free-market prosperity hasgrown, especially among older people.

In response, east European conservativeand Right-wing governments have created museums, memorials and days ofcommemoration to honour the victims of communism. In 2008, conservativepoliticians signed the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communismto increase educational efforts about the crimes of communism, followed by the2011 creation of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, a consortiumof organisations striving to promote their view of the 20th century in Europeanhistory textbooks: a view that equates communism with Nazism, as one of twototalitarianisms.

In Poland and Ukraine, democratic

governments have banned communist symbols, slogans and songs, and the Ukrainian

government forced name changes on villages and towns with nomenclature that

sounded too communist. In the most extreme case, the Ukrainians have legislated an official historyabout a recent past through which many present-day citizens have lived. If ajournalist tries to discuss any positive aspects of life between 1917 and 1991,the law allows the government to shut down the newspaper, magazine or blog, andcarries a potential prison sentence of five to 10 years. Free-market capitalismhas not brought freedom of the press.

In October 2016, the Victims of CommunismMemorial Foundation opened a new front in the battle for the public memory ofcommunism when they mounted seven billboards in the heart of New York City. Onhis Twitter feed, the executive director Marion Smith wrote: ‘Our ads exposingthe horrendous record of communist crimes just went up in Times Square.’ Thesebillboards informed passers-by: ‘100 years, 100 million killed’; ‘Communismkills’; and ‘Today, 1 in 5 people live under a communist regime’.

About a year later, Bret Stephens’s op-ed‘Communism Through Rose-Coloured Glasses’ inThe New York Timesattackedthe insistence of the ‘progressive intelligentsia’ on distinguishing betweenNazism and communism, and tarred the US senator Bernie Sanders and the UKLabour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn with the memory of Soviet atrocities.

Next, President Donald Trump declared that7 November would be a National Day for the Victims of Communism. The officialWhite House statement explained:

Over the pastcentury, communist totalitarian regimes around the world have killed more than100 million people and subjected countless more to exploitation, violence, anduntold devastation. These movements, under the false pretence of liberation,systematically robbed innocent people of their God-given rights of freeworship, freedom of association, and countless other rights we hold sacrosanct.

That there were real horrors is withoutdoubt. But why the urgency to insist that the history of 20th-century communismis one of ‘untold devastation’? Are these belated responses to the globalfinancial crisis, or delayed reactions to the electoral successes of Sandersand Corbyn? Or is it something else?

Of course, conservatives might insist thatthey are merely reminding people of the genuine flaws of communism, lest therebe any tendency to fall towards that path. They argue that communism must berejected in any form, for they fear that we might repeat the mistakes of theSoviet bloc. But given the extreme unlikeliness of the West’s return tocommunism in the 21st century, and the continuing nostalgia for state socialismin eastern Europe, it’s worth examining these anti-communist arguments closely.

Thoughtful observers should suspect anyhistorical narrative that paints the world in black and white. InThinking,

Fast and Slow(2011), the Nobel-prize-winning psychologist DanielKahneman warns of predictable cognitive flaws that inhibit our ability to thinkrationally, including something called ‘the halo effect’:

The halo effecthelps keep explanatory narratives simple and coherent by exaggerating theconsistency of evaluations: good people do only good things and bad people areall bad … Inconsistencies reduce the ease of our thoughts and the clarity ofour feelings.

Since nuance in the story of 20th-centurycommunism might ‘reduce the ease of our thoughts and the clarity of ourfeelings’, anti-communists will attack, dismiss or discredit any archivalfindings, interviews or survey results recalling Eastern Bloc achievements inscience, culture, education, health care or women’s rights. They were badpeople, and everything they did must be bad; we invert the ‘halo’ terminologyand call this the ‘pitchfork effect’. Those offering a more nuanced narrativethan one of unending totalitarian terror are dismissed as apologists or usefulidiots. Contemporary intellectual opposition to the idea that ‘bad people areall bad’ elicits outrage and an immediate accusation that you are no betterthan those out to rob us of our ‘God-given rights’.

In 1984, the anthropologist Clifford

Geertz wrotethat you could be ‘anti anti-communism’without being in favour of communism:

Those of us whostrenuously opposed the obsession, as we saw it, with the Red Menace were thusdenominated by those who … regarded the Menace as the primary fact ofcontemporary political life, with the insinuation – wildly incorrect in thevast majority of cases – that, by the law of the double negative, we had somesecret affection for the Soviet Union.

In other words, you could stand up againstbullies such as Joseph McCarthy without defending Joseph Stalin. If wecarefully analyse the arguments of those attempting to control the historicalnarrative of 20th-century communism, this does not mean that we are apologisingfor, or excusing the atrocities or the lost lives of millions of men and womenwho suffered for their political beliefs.

Their aim is not mere commemoration, but‘a world free from the false hope of communism’

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundationand other conservatives (we’ll call them the ‘anti-communists’) argue againstcommunism by making two separable points: (1) a historical claim about peopledying under communism that leads to (2) the conclusion that communism should berejected as a political ideology.

When the Foundation’s executive directorannounced the billboards, contrarian Twitter users immediately asked: ‘And areyou going to expose the horrendous record of slavery, murders, and all thecapitalism crimes too?’ East Europeans suffering from the severe downturn ineconomic growth after 1989 might ask this same question. Ethnographic researchon the persistence of red nostalgia shows that it has less to do with awistfulness for lost youth than with a deep disillusionment with free markets.Communism looks better today because, for many, capitalism looks worse. Butmentioning the possible existence of victims of capitalism gets dismissed asmere ‘whataboutism’, a term implying that only atrocities perpetrated bycommunists merit attention.

To properly understand the situation,let’s consider the argument today’s anti-communist campaigners more closely.They start with a historical premise – that regimes based on a communistideology killed 100 million people. They then infer a conclusion: communismshould be rejected. Their argument fails, for their historical premise isdubious, and their inference to the political conclusion is worse.

The source for this figure of 100 millionpeople killed under communist regimes isLe Livre noir du communisme(1997),published in English asThe Black Book of Communism(1999). Inthe introduction, the editor, Stéphane Courtois, used a ‘rough approximation,based on unofficial estimates’ to come up with a figure that approached 100million, a number far greater than the 25 million victims he attributes toNazism (which does not, conveniently, include those killed as a result of theSecond World War). Courtois equated communism with Nazism, and argued that the‘single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide’ had impeded the accounting ofcommunist crimes.

Painting the communists as worse that theNazis based on a questionable body count raises alarm bells

The Black Bookstokedcontroversy from its first publication in France. As soon as it hit theshelves, two of the prominent historians contributing to the volume, Jean-LouisMargolin and Nicolas Werth, attacked Courtois in the pages ofLe Monde.Margolin and Werth distanced themselves from the volume, believing thatCourtois’s obsession with reaching the number of 100 million led to carelessscholarship.

But quibbling about numbers is unseemly.What matters is that many, many people were killed by communist regimes. Wecould simply rephrase the anti-communist’s historical premise to read: statesgoverned under a communist ideology did many horrible things.

However, now we turn to the second andmore serious problem: the political conclusion does not logically follow fromthe historical point used as a premise. In philosophical terms, the argument isinvalid. An implicit step is missing. By way of illustration, suppose one said:‘Russian athletes are doping; therefore, Russian athletes should not be allowedin the Olympics.’ The premise does not entail the conclusion, for no connectionis asserted between doping and who should or should not be allowed in theOlympics. One needs an intermediate step, perhaps something like: ‘Any athletewho is doping should not be allowed in the Olympics.’ Now the argument isvalid, in the philosophical sense that its premises do at least imply itsconclusion, though one might still reject one of the premises.

Similarly, in their argument, theanti-communists have not explicitly asserted any connection between countriesdoing horrible things and their ideology warranting rejection. This does notmean that the argument is hopeless, but it means that there is an implicit stepmissing. What is that step? Perhaps they would fill in the gap this way:

Historical point:countries that were based on a communist ideology did many horrible things.

General premise:if any country based on a particular ideology did many horrible things, thenthat ideology should be rejected

Politicalconclusion: communism should be rejected.

Now the conclusion follows logically fromthe premises, and the premises look plausible.

But the problem for the anti-communists isthat their general premise can be used as the basis for an equally goodargument against capitalism, an argument that the so-called losers of economictransition in eastern Europe would be quick to affirm. The US, a country basedon a free-market capitalist ideology, has done many horrible things: theenslavement of millions of Africans, the genocidal eradication of the NativeAmericans, the brutal military actions taken to support pro-Western dictatorships,just to name a few. The British Empire likewise had a great deal of blood onits hands: we might merely mention the internment camps during the second BoerWar and the Bengal famine.

This is not mere ‘whataboutism’, becausethe same intermediate premise necessary to make their anti-communist argumentnow works against capitalism:

Historical point:the US and the UK were based on a capitalist ideology, and did many horriblethings.

General premise:if any country based on a particular ideology did many horrible things, thenthat ideology should be rejected

Politicalconclusion: capitalism should be rejected.

The obvious point: the anti-communismargument is no better (and no worse) than the anti-capitalism argument. Ofcourse, the anti-communists are not going to agree that capitalism should berejected. But unfortunately for them, the historical point istrue:the US, the UK and other Western countries are based on a capitalist ideology,and have done many horrible things. The only way to deny the argument is bydenying the general premise. But this is exactly the premise used in their ownargument, so the anti-communism argument collapses.

To avoid this problem, they might try adifferent general premise:

General premise:if any country based on a particular ideology did horrible things,and

if those horrible things are natural conclusions of the ideology, then thatideology should be rejected.

If this is the idea, however, they willneed to revise the historical point as well, or otherwise the argument would nolonger be valid. So we would have this:

Historical point:countries based on a communist ideology did many horrible things,and

these things are natural conclusions of communism.

General premise:if any country based on a particular ideology did horrible things, and if thosehorrible things are natural conclusions of the ideology, then that ideologyshould be rejected.

Politicalconclusion: communism should be rejected.

But now there is an analogous argumentagainst capitalism:

Historical point:the US and the UK were based on a capitalist ideology, they did many horriblethings, and these things are natural conclusions of capitalism.

General premise:if any country based on a particular ideology did horrible things, and if thosehorrible things are natural conclusions of the ideology, then that ideologyshould be rejected.

Conclusion:capitalism should be rejected.

Both arguments are valid, and the sharedgeneral premise is plausible. The defender of capitalism might protest that thehistorical point is not true: nobody should think that a belief in free marketsnaturally entails that internment camps or slavery are okay; such things are aperversion of the ideals of any reasonable capitalism.

Members of Ukrainian paramilitary groupsthat fought with the Nazis against the Red Army are now heroes

Fair enough. We will grant for the sake ofargument that slavery and the rest do not follow from the principles of AdamSmith and David Ricardo. But the historical point in the anti-communismargument is equally dubious. Where, for example, in the writings of Karl Marxand Friedrich Engels does one find that leaders should deliberately induce massstarvation or purges?

By contrast with both capitalism andcommunism, many of the most grotesque crimes of Nazismwerenaturalconclusions of their racist ideology. Nazi doctrine elevated German Aryansabove all other races, particularly Jews. The Second World War was an outcomeof the Nazi ideal ofLebensraum, and the Holocaust a directapplication of Nazi racial doctrines. The revised general premise does leadfrom historical facts about the crimes of Nazism to the uncontested conclusionthat Nazism should be rejected.

So far, we have been labouring to makewhat is – to those trained in logic at least – an obvious point: the rhetoricof the anti-communists does not amount to a successful argument. We thereforeshould consider the possibility that the anti-communists are not trying to makean argument; perhaps they are not trying to givereasons. Maybethey are simply appealing to emotion, hoping that the ‘pitchfork effect’ willmake it easy for them to render communism all bad all the time. But why? Andwhy now?

Here it is especially important to payheed to lessons from eastern Europe. In that context, public commemoration ofthe victims of communism has served both to allay rising criticisms ofcapitalism and to exonerate local histories of Right-wing nationalism. By law,members of Ukrainian paramilitary groups that fought with the Nazis against theRed Army in the Second World War are now heroes of Ukrainian independence.Might renewed anti-communist feeling also serve right-wing nationalism in theUS and western Europe?

When Trump attributed blame to ‘bothsides’ for the Charlottesville violence in August 2017, many Americans baulkedat the idea that ordinary people protesting white supremacy be designated themoral equivalent of neo-Nazis. But this was no accident on Trump’s part.Right-wing nationalists have a good reason to construct a looming godless bogeymanthreatening to take away our freedoms. A similar rhetoric can be found inGermany where the government has recently begun to equate the far-Righthooliganism of the neo-Nazis with the increasingly powerful Antifa movement,shutting down the website responsible for organising the massive G20 protestsin August 2017, and attempting to silence what they called ‘vicious Left-wingextremists in Germany’.

Defenders of the status quo stop atnothing to convince young voters about the evils of collectivist ideas

Conservative and nationalist politicalleaders in the US and across Europe already incite fear with tales of the twinmonsters of Islamic fundamentalism and illegal immigration. But not everyonebelieves that immigration is a terrible threat, and most Right-wingconservatives don’t think that Western countries are at risk of becomingtheocratic states under Sharia law. Communism, on the other hand, provides theperfect new (old) enemy. If your main policy agenda is shoring up free-marketcapitalism, protecting the wealth of the superrich and dismantling what littleis left of social safety nets, then it is useful to paint those who envisionmore redistributive politics as wild-eyed Marxists bent on the destruction ofWestern civilisation.

What better time to resurrect the spectreof communism? As youth across the world become increasingly disenchanted withthe savage inequalities of capitalism, defenders of the status quo will stop atnothing to convince younger voters about the evils of collectivist ideas. Theywill rewrite history textbooks, build memorials, and declare days ofcommemoration for the victims of communism – all to ensure that calls forsocial justice or redistribution are forever equated with forced labour campsand famine.

Responsible and rational citizens need tobe critical of simplistic historical narratives that rely on the pitchforkeffect to demonise anyone on the Left. We should all embrace Geertz’s idea ofan anti-anti-communism in hopes that critical engagement with the lessons ofthe 20th century might help us to find a new path that navigates between, orrises above, the many crimes of both communism and capitalism.