Socialism vs. Liberal Democracy

Michael Kuznetsov sent me the following in regard to my post "Private Life in Stalin's Russia":

Lawrence:

I would like to share with you the following material.

Terrible things in America have been deliberately ascribed to Socialism.
Why!?

Quote:

“California passed a law regulation equal treatment of sexual orientations in schools that eliminates gender distinctions entirely. You cannot refer to mother or father or biologically being born male or female. Under this law various titles such as Prom King and Prom Queen must be available for either gender. Students can also choose to use the restroom of whichever gender they identify with, not the gender that they are. The schools can no longer teach sex education without teaching about homosexuality, bi-sexuality and sex change operations. Finally, if you are a parent in California, you better be careful what you teach your children. If you are caught instructing you children that homosexuality if wrong, sinful, abnormal or unacceptable, you can now be charged with a criminal offense.”

“Governmental control and regulation of our lives, choices and beliefs at this level are absolutely unacceptable. What will be next? What freedoms must we surrender in the name of political correctness, environmentalism, toleration, appeasement or for the good of the State?”

End of quotation.

Source:
http://www.judgingtruth.com/2008/01/25/no-socialism-to-see-here-move-along-move-along/

Michael Kuznetsov’s comment:

All this sounds terrible!
But what connection might it have to SOCIALISM?
None in the least!

I was born 59 years ago in the USSR - a socialist country, as you know - and I have lived all of my lifetime here. We Russians have never even heard about such abomination as gay parades, and other vomiting things of the kind. Since the Stalin's era, of course, we have been taught that homosexuality is wrong, sinful, abnormal and absolutely unacceptable.

So, you should not confuse real socialism with the present-date liberal leftist trend in the West which is Trotskyite in its core.

Michael

Lawrence responds:

I don’t agree with the “Judging Truth” blogger that you reference. He says he doesn’t trust Wikipedia but then he trusts it. He seems to be assuming Socialism can be nothing other than the worst excesses of the Stalinist period; whereas the Welfare States of Europe are Socialistic to a large extent, that is the people have voted themselves many Socialistic entitlements, and yet they have retained Liberal-Democratic freedoms.

And I take a reverse view of such matters as the gay pride business. I see this as one of the liabilities of Liberal Democracy. If you allow everyone to do as much as he or she wants as much as possible, then you end up allowing some people to engage in license. Acts that would have been proscribed in a simpler period in the U.S. (I was born 74 years ago and lived through such periods) are now being “allowed” because the legal vehicles for prohibited them have been largely eroded.

In some earlier note, I discussed this sort of thing as a major weakness in Liberal Democracy. Nations that are less liberal, such as China, can prohibit such license. People engaged in acts that are reprehensible in a moral sense, that offend nothing other than common decency can be prohibited in China, but not here in the U.S. or in most other Western Nations. So when Bush and earlier presidents urged China to extend expand human rights in their country, China can look across the Pacific and see where this advice could lead. It is easy for any President to look about in our nation and see good things, but it is also easy to look about in our society and find evidences of the excesses you describe.

Can we in the West learn to control our excesses without giving up our right to free speech, free assembly, freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, etc? I am guessing, perhaps ‘hoping’ is a better word, that we will eventually find ways to control our more licentious elements without sacrificing our important freedoms.

But we have learned in the West that Socialistic controls of industry and service aren’t as efficient as leaving these matters in the hands of free enterprise. Stalin was never able to “plan” in such a way that he could compete economically with the U.S. who allows entrepreneurs to do whatever they think will make them money. We have more inventions, better technology, more new money-making schemes in Liberal Democracies than can be produced in Socialistic Nations that want to plan economic development in 5-year segments. So at present we are taking the bad with the good. We are richer here in the U.S. than any other major nation. And Liberal Democracies are richer than societies with other forms of government. But yes, there are aspects of socialism that are good, and Liberal Democracies are voting to incorporate these good aspects of socialism into their societies. I am thinking here of medical, retirement, and unemployment protection, but there can be others and I have no objection to them as long as a society can afford to pay for them. French voters went a bit too far in providing entitlements for themselves. France has had difficulty paying for them, but French leadership has not made much headway in reducing them to something more affordable.

Here in the U.S. we have recently seen that we have allowed Corporate Executives and Banking enterprises too much freedom. Our leaders are not smart enough to know when such enterprises are heading in a dangerous direction, but after the fact they make laws so such dangers can be avoided in the future. I am inclined to accept the views of the experts who say we are acting quickly enough to keep this “economic recession” of short duration and that it may be essentially over by the end of the year. But that is only here in the U.S. Western European nations and others such as Japan seem to be taking similar steps. Japan has more of a history of saving than we do in the West and so may take a bit longer.

We can acknowledge that we are having a serious economic recession in the world, but will societies such as your own which previously lived under more stringent economic management decide to go back to the old Marxist-Leninist planning? I think not.

Re: Feral Dogs at the River

Someone questioned me about the possibility of searching out the owner of the Boxer – also about my use of the terms "purebred" and "feral":

Actually, there is a way to "know" that a dog is "pure bred." Various breeders and some owners are obtaining genetic information about their dogs nowadays. Quite a lot is known about the canine genome. One of the reasons for seeking this information is to check on, and either avoid or prevent the passing on of genetic disease. But I recall reference to one lady (on a Cesar Milan program) obtaining genetic information of a mixed breed dog that had in its adulthood become aggressive. One of the mixes was Akita, which wasn't evident by looking at the dog. I don't recall the "markers" that distinguish the various breeds but presumably the experts who are making money doing DNA tests for dog fanciers do.

And no, I have no proof that the dog I saw at a distance was a purebred Boxer, but if it were mixed-breed, why would someone go to the trouble of docking the tail? This is a normal procedure for several breeds and they do it when the pup is young; so while it is possible, I would be surprised if this dog I saw wasn't pure-bred; which doesn't say a huge amount. "Back yard breeders" produce pure-bred dogs.

And down at the river there aren't any nearby houses to inquire at. North of the river is a finger from of the San Jacinto Mountains. A couple of miles up the river, to the north is the Soboba Indian Reservation. South of the River are various enterprises: something that has squared off large areas for water. I recall hearing this is some sort of "reclamation project." At one time I saw a worker with a couple of dogs, but usually no one is there. At another place is a huge nursery enterprise. People who are probably migrant farm workers from Mexico or further south work on it. None of them that I have seen has a dog. East of the nursery a mile or so is an old property where the owner has a couple of dogs, and years ago these dogs barked at us from a distance, but he kept his dogs at his property.

The nearest housing community is perhaps a mile south of the river. It is a gated upscale trailer park for retired people. Typically such people are allowed only small dogs weighing 35 pounds or less. Beyond that is a tract of houses, and while there is nothing to prevent a dog from making its way from that community north to the River, I can't imagine what its incentive would be.

In the past I have seen evidence that people who decide to abandon their dogs, sometimes do that at the river. Our local animal shelter will destroy an animal in a week or two if it looks as though it can't be placed and there is no evidence that anyone is looking for it. People who leave animals at the river may be assuaging their consciences with the hope that someone came along and rescued them, or that they learned to live happily with a pack of feral dogs.

Others find a likely looking neighborhood and abandon their dogs there. We have rescued four such dogs since we've lived in San Jacinto. We didn't keep any of them, but we did find homes for them. It is difficult, but possible. I suspect though that had the old dog I referred to followed me back to my Jeep, I would not have been able to find a home for it.

As to my ambivalence about the use of the term "feral," as you can see from the above, I cannot be sure how long a given dog has been at the river. The dogs I saw may have been there only a short time. My girls and I have been going to the river quite a lot recently and have never seen those two dogs before. This could mean that they came west from the Indian Reservation, or it could mean that they came East or North from mountainous regions, but it could mean that they were recently abandoned there.

I have seen dogs down there running in packs who were as skittish of us as a pack of coyotes, but the dogs we saw yesterday, especially the older one, didn't behave in that way. I most often use the term "feral" to refer to dogs we see down there, but I don't know how feral anymore than I know how purebred.

Georgia and Russia

Michael commented on "Georgia and the Orthodox Civilization" as follows. I respond to his comment below:

Lawrence,

Although it seems to be not exactly in tune with your topic here, but let me share with you some of my recollections about Georgia.

That country was named, as you know, in the list of the so-called "Oppressed Nations" within the USSR.

Have you ever been yourself to the "oppressed" Georgia (Gruzia) in the Caucasus?
I myself have been there several times in the 1970s – 1980s, mostly by sea.

Once, in 1989, I happened to travel to the Georgian town of Poti by train. The rail road was laid along the beautiful Black Sea shores. We passengers enjoyed watching the magnificent brine just a few yards from the right windows of our sleeping car, while the left windows provided us with a view of an endless row of two- or three-storeyed impressive palaces, each being surrounded with a huge orange orchard.

As I was travelling across that part of the country for the first time, I was surprised to see such a great number of small sanatoriums (as I thought those to be) stretched in an endless row along the seashores.

My more experienced fellow-travelers told me that those were not sanatoriums, but private houses of common Georgian peasants.

I have never seen such luxurious two- or three-storeyed palaces anywhere in Russia to be in private possession of common peasants!

In fact, the Russian Empire, as well as its successor the Soviet Union, was a kind of a REVERSED EMPIRE.
In every normal empire it is always the Centre that sucks resources from the Colonies.
While in the USSR everything was reversed -– the "colonies" used to suck resources from the center –- that is from Russia proper.

Out of all the 15 Soviet Republics then in the Soviet times Georgia (Gruzia) was the richest one. The "Georgian" (Gruzin) was a code word for a "rich man" among the Soviets.

The Georgians used to sell us Russians their oranges at a price 10 times higher than cost. For example a kilo of Russian peasants' potatoes was usually sold at 20 kopecks (cents), while a kilo of Georgian oranges at 2 roubles (dollars), the cost of both products being approximately equal.

Which is why the living standard in Georgia was at least 4 - 5 times higher than that average in the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (the core of the USSR).

Now that Georgia has "liberated" itself from the Russian "oppression" and become an independent state, we buy oranges from Morocco at a NORMAL just price, and the living level in Georgia has become 4 times lower than that in Russia today.

Of course, oranges are a luxury and potatoes a basic staple diet. No doubt.
What I want to say is that the both products' prime cost was approximately equal, which means that while the Russian peasant had to spend as much time and efforts to grow, say, a tonne of potatoes, as his Georgian counterpart did the same to grow a tonne of oranges, the latter appeared to be much more privileged regarding his income.

A few words about the inter-ethnical relations in the Soviet Union. I cannot remember any feeling of disdain for the minorities.
We Russians had never regarded the Georgians, Uzbeks, Tatars, and all the other non-Russian peoples that were living within our common country as our "slaves" or "captive nations". Never!
On the contrary, they used to be privileged in this or that way. I know the Americans call a practice like that the "affirmative action".

I must admit, however, that we Russians regarded the borderlands' autochthonal peoples as our "junior brothers" because they were unable to do all what we Russians could do, for example, to design, to build and to launch a spaceship, etc.

Yet, this attitude of ours to the non-Russians –- as to our junior brothers –- implied no contempt.
Simply put, it was a clear understanding of their abilities, a sober assessment of what can be entrusted to our junior brothers, and what not.

For example, a Uzbek shepherd was not expected to pilot a jet plane.
As simple as that, and nothing more.

Thus, I can safely assert that there was no racial hatred in the Soviet Union.
At least on our Russian side.

Michael


Lawrence's response to Michael:

Interesting comments, Michael. No I have never been to Georgia, but my former father-in-law was Georgian. His family fled political difficulties in about 1905. His older brother was born in Georgia but he was born in the U.S.. His family belonged to the Molokan Church in Kerman California. The eldest brother inherited the family farm. My father-in-law (who raised mink) had been ostracized in a mild way (prevented from being a member of the church) because he married a Swede and because he wouldn’t wear a beard. I recall some event, probably a wedding at a Molokan church. The women were shunted off to one side and the men would rhythmically stomp their feet on the hardwood floors of church.

Interestingly, my former wife always referred to herself as Russian and not Georgian. I accepted that at the time. It was easy since Georgia was one of the SSRs, but perhaps her father’s family found it easier to call themselves Russian than try to explain the difference between Georgia the nation and Georgia the American state.

I had a good friend I worked with in Engineering (at McDonnell Douglas and Boeing) by the name of Eugene Orloff. He was born in Russia and was heavily involved in a Russian Orthodox Church in Los Angeles. He designed the spires for their building. They had a building, but many of the old timers (including Gene) didn’t think it was a sufficient building until it had spires. I once asked him what he knew about the Molokan religion and I gathered he didn’t know very much, just that it was a sect that he thought heretical.

Gene had very strong opinions. When his family fled Russia during the Revolution, it was into China and into Japanese captivity. He hated the Japanese. Years ago I bought a Toyota and he was very upset with me.

When the chief priest (I don’t recall his exact title) of the Los Angeles Russian Orthodox Church he belonged to died, Gene believe he would be declared a saint because of some miraculous occurrences that had surrounded the priest’s body. I never heard how that came out. It reminded me of Alyosha’s priest in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

Just one quibble to what you wrote above. I quite agree that a Uzbek shepherd could not fly a jet plane, but if you took the child of that Uzbek shepherd and gave him a first-class education, he would very likely be able to fly a jet plane, if that was his interest. Modern studies in genetics, I think especially of work done by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, demonstrate that there is no significant difference, genetically, in the various peoples of the world. Take the most primitive people of the world and educate them properly, and they will be able to do anything people from a more advanced society can do. I am not speaking here of tradition. Tradition provides an impediment that may in the event prevent such an accomplishment.

Or to put it another way, referencing the age-old “Nature versus Nurture” debate, nature may provide the Uzbek shepherd with the intelligence to become a jet pilot, but where is he going to get the nurture?

And I quite agree about the “colonies” “sucking life” out of an empire. Perhaps the British Empire was able to make India pay, but most colonies were an eventual drain. India certainly wasn’t “paying” when it rebelled against the British and sought independence. The French also discovered that they could no longer afford their colonies in South East Asia and North Africa. In fact Britain seems on the road to even further fragmentation. Ireland sought independence, and there is an independence movement in Scotland. Nothing would be lost, it seems to me, if that were to happen. But Scotland and Wales already have as much independence as they need, it seems to me. Catholic Ireland is another story.

Lawrence

Feral Dogs at the River

The sky over the river was overcast; one couldn’t see the tops of the mountains, but it was just another good day for my Ridgeback girls to run and chase rabbits. I expected Ginger (who will be 6 in May) to especially appreciate the coolness, but I couldn’t tell that she chased Sage (who will be 4 in May) any more or less than when it was warmer.

At one spot the girls discovered some poop they investigated enthusiastically, and I scolded, “don’t touch it,” and was answered by some darks barking from the brush. We all stopped what we were doing and looked in the direction of the barking. As we moved along, in a clearing about 50 yards away, we saw two dogs, one of which was a Boxer. From its docked tail and appearance I assumed it to be pure bred. It was much larger, nearly twice the size of the other dog who was a mixed-breed of some sort.

“Okay,” I said to the girls, “let’s go,” and we went on with our walk. The girls showed not the slightest inclination to charge into the clearing to check these dogs out. Sage wouldn’t anyway, but Ginger when she was younger wouldn’t pass up any opportunity to try and get these dogs to play. Perhaps she has matured.

So off we went, but as we did I thought over what had happened. The feral dogs, if that’s what they were, seemed to be guarding something. My imagination went to work: What if some off-roader had a heart-attack and his dogs were guarding him? So I made sure, on the way back we went by the same spot. The dogs were right where we last saw them.

I approached the clearing, and my girls went out in front of me. Earlier, when I wanted them to leave these dogs alone, they were content to go on with me, but now that I seemed bent upon confronting these feral dogs, they were more than willing. We moved slowly forward. The feral dogs ran a few steps toward us and barked threateningly. We kept moving forward. I yelled, “is anyone there? Are you okay?” No one answered.

I have to admit that my two girls did look a bit spooky as they approached these dogs. Their hackles were up and they looked menacing. The Boxer had enough and ran away. We never saw it again, but the mixed-breed dog stayed. It looked extremely old, at least much older than my girls, but it seemed healthy enough. I would guess its weight at somewhere around 40 pounds. Ginger sniffed it cautiously. Sage then decided she might need to go into her “guard-dog mode,” and started barking as though she were working her way up to go after it, but I told her “it’s okay Sage. Don’t worry.” And she quit barking.

But I still wondered what these dogs were guarding; so I walked toward the spot where I first saw these dogs. At this point the mixed-breed dog came after me. I pointed my Cesar-Milan finger at it and said “Hey!” and it stopped. What they had been guarding, or at least interested in, was a dead animal. It was a bit mauled so I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a dog, but I think it was a coyote. I didn’t want to provoke the mixed-breed dog further by turning the dead animal about to see exactly what it was. By this time Ginger sniffing the mixed-breed dog, and he seem content to let her. Sage kept her distance. I walked about looking for the Boxer but couldn’t see it.

Just to test and see that perhaps this dog was recently used to people and might want to come with us, I called it and invited it to follow us, but it didn’t want to leave its spot. Did these two dogs team up and kill the coyote? If so; what did they plan to do with it? Do feral dogs eat coyotes? I don’t know. I saw no evidence anyone had been eating this animal, but such evidence could have been on the underside; I don’t know.

I considered the possibility that this was a little buddy, a dog that had been killed by something else and the two “feral” dogs we saw were guarding its body. Its feet were small and seemed about the size of the coyotes I had seen. Its ears were erect. Its body was about the size of coyotes, but some domestic mixed-breed dogs could look like that as well. Perhaps someone had dumped his 3 dogs at the river and one of them had been killed. The other two might hang about, especially if they had lived together all their lives. But if they were that devoted, why did the Boxer run off?

I probably won’t learn the solution to that feral-dog mystery, but I was pleased by the behavior of my girls. When I wanted to go on, they did too. When I wanted to go where the feral dogs were, they didn’t argue but moved toward them. When Sage looked like she wanted to crank things up a notch, she backed down when I asked her to. Oh yes, when I had seen all I wanted to and said, “okay, girls, let’s go,” Sage was eager to move ahead and was out in front of me, but after a moment I looked back and saw that Ginger was trying to get that old feral dog to play with her.

“Dog-gone-it Ginger, let’s go!”

Stalin's view that Capitalist apples will inevitably fall

We are so used to hearing that Liberal Democracies don’t fight against other Liberal Democracies that we forget that Marx and Lenin once taught that Capitalist Countries were always going to fight against each other. All Communists (by this term I mean those who believed in Marxist-Leninism) had to do was wait for the apples to fall.

Let us return to the first few years of the Cold War, of the practice of “Containment.” Stalin had been functioning in accordance with Communist doctrine. He was poking here and there but he had no intention of provoking a serious war with the USSR. In fact he had contrary worries. While he had no intention of starting a war with the U.S., he thought the U.S. might be planning a war with him. The U.S. didn’t know that’s what he thought. The U.S. without just cause continued to believe almost until the USSR fell, that it was at a disadvantage and that the USSR had the military upper hand.

But Stalin knew how to play the game of Realpolitik. When Truman demanded that Soviet troops leave Iranian Azerbaijan in 1946, he pulled them out. He wasn’t going to risk nuclear war for Azerbaijan. And when the U.S. seemed as though it might eventually get tired of flying supplies into Berlin and push through on the land militarily, at least that’s what he thought might happened, he ended the Blockade. When Kim il Sung asked Stalin’s approval to invade South Korea; however, he gave he gave it. After all, Acheson had just announced that Korea was beyond the U.S. sphere of interest; so the risk was minimal.

But no sooner had the North Korean forces moved south than the U.S rushed a force from Japan to help defend the South. It is true that Korea at the time wasn’t in the U.S. sphere of interest, but Japan was, and Japan had always considered Korea as a buffer against China. If the U.S. let Korea fall to the Communists that would have seriously strained Japanese-American relations. And at the time, we mustn’t forget, most in the West, at least most of those with influence, believed that there was a “Communist Conspiracy” headed by Stalin in Moscow. They believed that he was pulling the strings. And at a very superficial level this idea had some plausibility. Stalin did after all give the go ahead to Kim Il Sung, but what happened after that was a shock to Stalin.

As a result of the Korean war, the “Communist Conspiracy” theory gained more credence in the West. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization founded in 1949 was given impetus as a result of Kim Il Sung’s invasion of 1950. Also given strength was the idea that Western Germany should be rearmed. Stalin had lost considerable ground after World War II, and he saw it. Yes, he had the Eastern Bloc nations but they were no advantage in the way that the Western Nations in NATO comprised an advantage for the U.S. The Eastern Bloc nations were a drain on the USSR’s resources. The European nations were self-supporting.

Kissinger on pages 495-6 of Diplomacy writes of Stalin’s political strategy at this point in time: “. . . Stalin’s approach was particularly obtuse, because he wanted to avoid giving the slightest hint of weakness to an adversary that was in the process of basing its policy on positions of strength. His goal was to indicate that he wished to avoid a confrontation without appearing to shrink from it. Stalin’s pretext was a view put forward in a highly theoretical book published several years earlier by the economist Yevgenii Varga. The author had argued that capitalist systems were becoming more stable and that war among them was therefore no longer inevitable. If Varga was right, the strategy Stalin had pursued since the 1920s – of playing the capitalists off against each other – would no longer work. The capitalists, far from fighting east other, might go so far as to unite against the socialist motherland, a possibility foreshadowed by the creation of NATO and the Japanese-American alliance.”

Well of course! Varga seems to have presented the obvious. Liberal Democracies don’t war with Liberal Democracies. But we forget that the Communists back then didn’t understand “Liberal Democracy.” They were caught in a Marxist-Leninist time warp that thought only of the old “Capitalist” nations that Marx and Lenin first criticized. Perhaps Stalin understood that his world had changed, but he couldn’t very well let on that one of the key assumptions of the Communist process had been undermined by the transition of “Capitalism” to “Liberal Democracy.”

So Stalin countered this argument of Varga’s “with an elaborate essay of his own entitled ‘Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.,’ which was published in October 1952 . . . . In his article, Stalin reconsecrated the true communist faith as he had promulgated it in 1934, 1939, and 1946, to the effect that, far from becoming more stable, capitalism was facing an ever-accelerating crisis:

‘It is said that the contradictions between capitalism and socialism are stronger than the contradictions among the capitalist countries. Theoretically, of course, that is true. It is not only true now, today; it was true before the Second World War. And it was more or less realized by the leaders of the capitalist countries. Yet the Second World War began not as a war with the U.S.S.R., but as a war between capitalist countries.’”

COMMENT:

Kissinger goes on to tell us that this was Stalin’s largely ineffective attempt to assure the West that he was going to continue to be content to let the Capitalist apples fall from the tree, that is, that he had no intention whatsoever of launching World War Three. The ongoing collapse of Capitalism was progressing on schedule just as Marx and Lenin had predicted.

We here in the U.S. don’t think of ourselves as being just another Capitalist nation like Nazi Germany. In fact, from our current perspective, we see commonality between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. We, or course, aren’t being influenced (unless we are die-hard radical leftists like Bernardine Dohrn) by Marxist-Leninist ideology. We see that the Liberal Democratic governments have worked many of the bugs out of our social systems, the bugs that Marx thought so poisonous that the proletariat would rise up against these nations. Even beyond that, some post-war European peoples have voted themselves entitlements that would amaze Marx, if not Lenin, and probably have caused him (could he have known) to abandon his project.

Now it is not the Capitalistic countries that have to worry about an angry proletariat revolting, it is the former Communist countries’ leaders worrying about economic competition. They are busy working the bugs out of their system; which we might simplify in a cynical way by saying their desires are to make their nations enough like Liberal Democracies to make them economically competitive without forcing them to abandon their power. Which is interesting, for what they ended up with far more resembles the Capitalist nations that Marx and Lenin railed against than a modern-day Liberal Democracy.

Limited Responsibility

There was the consideration

Of duty, surely. I needed

To be there, and when the storm

Furiously assaulted,

We were buttoned up,

Seeing it through six-inch

Glass. I was below

Giving full vent to my

Curiosity. Thus, when it

Tilted us into the sea,

I slid to the nether end.

We were equipped, you might

Say, so what was there to fear?

Nevertheless there was

A necessity to be there

Instead of in my study

Back at home. I had

A vague contribution

To make to the righting

Of circumstances and

The successful return to port.

Still, had they fully listened,

They would have heard my

Warning and been secured

At a field far inland.

This was the calculated risk

Brought to fruition,

But not without its own

Solution; which I could

Provide as well. I sighed.

They would always see things

Differently, and I would

Never be willing to take

Command. We would

Probably get back safely anyway.

The Containment Policy and the Radical Left

Kissinger in his chapter entitled, “The Success and the Pain of Containment” discusses several assessments of it. Churchill didn’t like it and thought we should issue an ultimatum while we still had the atomic upper hand. Walter Lipmann (a “realist”) thought it wouldn’t work because the world’s nations were too muddled and untrustworthy. John Foster Dulles (a Conservative) thought the containment policy too passive. Henry Wallace (a radical Leftist) thought the containment policy too aggressive.

On page 468 of Diplomacy, Kissinger writes, “A product of America’s populist tradition, Wallace had an abiding Yankee distrust of Great Britain. Like most American liberals since Jefferson, he insisted that ‘the same moral principles which governed in private life also should govern in international affairs.’ In Wallace’s view, America had lost its moral compass and was practicing a foreign policy of ‘Machiavellian principles of deceit, force and distrust,’ . . . Since prejudice, hatred, and fear were the root causes of international conflict, the United States had no moral right to intervene abroad until it had banished these scourges from its own society.

“The new radicalism reaffirmed the historic vision of America as a beacon of liberty, but, in the process, turned it against itself. Postulating the moral equivalence of American and Soviet actions became a characteristic of the radical critique throughout the Cold war. The very idea of America’s having international responsibilities was, in Wallace’s eyes, an example of the arrogance of power. The British, he argued, were duping the gullible Americans into doing their bidding: ‘British policy clearly is to provoke distrust between the United States and Russia and thus prepare the groundwork for World war III.’

“To Wallace, Truman’s presentation of the conflict as between democracy and dictatorship was pure fiction. In 1945, a time when Soviet postwar repression was becoming increasingly obvious and the brutality of collectivization was widely recognized, Wallace declared that ‘the Russians today have more of the political freedoms than they ever had.’ He also discovered ‘increasingly the signs of religious toleration’ in the U.S.S.R. and claimed that there was a ‘basic lack of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.’”

p. 469: “In a curious reversal of roles, the self-proclaimed defender of morality in foreign policy [Wallace] accepted a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe on practical grounds, while the Administration he was attacking for cynical power politics rejected the Soviet sphere on moral grounds.”

“Wallace’s challenge collapsed after the communist coup in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade, and the invasion of South Korea. . . .”

COMMENT:

Though Wallace’s challenge may have collapsed back in the late 40s and early 50s, his arguments have been perpetuated virtually unchanged by Leftists who haven’t improved upon them. Each new radical left generation invents Wallace’s ideas anew. Reading certain of Wallace’s comments is like reading Chomsky, and yet their ideas are logically flawed, or perhaps it would be better to say logically awkward and inadequate.

Kissinger is very gentle with Wallace by saying he came out of the Populist tradition. I see him as having been influenced by Marxist-Leninist ideology. There is something terribly inconsistent, to a Conservative American, about someone who criticized America morally in 1950, but praised the Soviet Union morally. In order to make logical sense of Wallace’s position one needs to get past or overlook what Stalin was actually doing and look ahead to what he hoped to eventually achieve.

How long could the radical left hang on to a belief in the altruistic goals of Stalinist Russia? The history of the radical left in France is extremely interesting. I have been reading through a series entitled “New French Thought,” published by Princeton. The French embraced Communism after World War II. To be “Right Wing” in France back then meant that you were a Vichy or a Fascist. So most people, or at least most intellectuals, were Left Wing and had a great fondness for Communist Russia. They embraced the altruistic ideal of Communism even if they didn’t embrace all the practical steps that were taken in a Communist nation. But as time went on, the French radicals fell away from Communism for the same sorts of reasons Wallace was discredited in America. The severity, brutality and violence in Stalinist Russia seemed unconscionable to more and more Leftists and many of them, while not willing to call themselves Conservatives, began looking for alternatives.

I mentioned an inadequacy in the reasoning of the Radical Left. Assuming that they embraced the altruistic ideal of Marxist-Leninism, they would be consistent in contrasting the “ideal” of Liberal Democracy with the “ideal” of Communism, but they didn’t. They gave Stalinist Russia a pass on its ongoing brutality and violence because of that altruistic ideal. Whereas they were not willing to give Liberal Democracy a pass on the inequities and injustices found in Western societies. If we compare the inequities in the societies of the West and the USSR during any point in the Cold War the brutality and violence is far worse in the USSR; so the Radical Left could not argue, validly, a precise “moral equivalence.” But they could argue something like this: Yes, things may be temporarily worse in the USSR than they are in the US, but the USSR is progressing toward an altruistic goal; whereas the US is not progressing toward anything. It has already achieved its ultimate condition. There is nothing beyond what it presently is; therefore, one must support and approve of the “progress” in the Soviet Union rather than the current conditions.

If we take the trouble to convert the Radical Left’s positions into coherent arguments then it is possible to deal with their issues. Consider the matter of Communists’ “altruistic goals.” In the writings of Lenin, Capitalism is implacably opposed to the proletariat such that the only recourse the latter has is revolution. But that didn’t turn out to be true. In Western societies we have evidence to the contrary. All the mysterious steps toward their altruistic ideal (that the Radical Left could not define) have been taken (at least all that have been identified) through the processes available in Liberal Democracies. The proletariat in Liberal Democracies have voted themselves all the practical benefits Marx and Lenin argued could only be acquired through revolution. And if there are some further practical benefits that would enable it to more closely approach an altruistic ideal, it can vote itself that benefit as well.

So, I ask the present day Radical Left, what are the altruistic goals you think can only be achieved through Revolution?