Slavic Reductionism and Vacuous Participation

...Nevertheless, the fact is that most Western societies with a significant democratic socialist tradition are free, and where this is not thecase?as in Poland and Czechoslovakia—the reason has more to do with Soviet tanks than politics...

...Shafarevich emphasizes the Western origins of the ideology he despises, as if to prove that it is not purely an Eastern phenomenon...

...The results are not impressive...

...Shafarevich recognizes no essential difference between the medieval heretics, the millenarian sects of the Reformation, the Utopian philosophers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the 19th-century socialist theoreticians...

...What Shafarevich calls "chiliastic socialism," is "the link joining" the ancient and modern collectivisms...

...The great issues of freedom and totalitarianism that are correctly at the center of Shafarevich's thought (even if he addresses them wrongly), are overshadowed in Walzer's worldview by his need to establish enclaves of political intimacy in an impersonal society...

...Similarly, confronted with a socialist who opposed Bolshevism, Shafarevich resorts to questioning motives...

...Despite the countless crimes committed in its name, it continues to attract devoted believers for whom it offers the prospect of a world without contradictions...

...the new evil annihilates traditional culture and establishes a more efficient and comprehensive form of enslavement...

...This kind of tendentious reductionism enables Shafarevich to reject the impulse toward millenarianism in world history...

...It does suggest, however, that Communism is a tangible external menace to the West—not, as Shafarevich declares, a pervasive metaphysical force that has been seeking control of the human spirit for eons...

...Thus, Karl Kautsky's defense of democracy in his famous debate with Lenin is attributed to "the old fears of 'Russian dominance' in the International" and not to any genuine conviction...

...He doesn't deal with nonutopi-an, democratic manifestations of socialism, except to suggest that they are not socialist at all and therefore irrelevant to his argument...

...The recent Polish strikes suggest, in fact, that "social democracy" in the sense of a workers' movement for reform poses the greatest threat to Communism within the captive nations—more potent even than the Church, because it squarely challenges the legitimacy of the so-called workers' states...

...One wishes that Michael Walzer's collection of essays, Radical Principles: Reflections of an Unreconstructed Democrat, offered an antidote to this socialist blind spot, but unfortunately it does not...

...Wittfogel's point is not that present institutional forms are historically determined, merely that they are conditioned by history: Societies with a despotic past have proved more vulnerable to Communist dictatorship than those with a pluralistic tradition...

...in the face of a state whose power is unprecedented in human history...

...He is, to be sure, a proper democrat who is distressed that many on the Left do not show sufficient regard for democratic processes in their effort to change society...

...Socialism, according to Walzer, "remains the directing vision of the future...

...310pp...

...Walzer's writing is marked by a distinctly sophomoric quality, a perpetual yearning for something "fulfilling" and "meaningful" in political life...

...Radical Principles: Reflections of an Unreconstructed Democrat By Michael Walzer Basic Books...

...For him they all are part of a single, purposeful movement in world history—the cadres, as it were, of a global, ageless, monolithic socialist party...

...According to Shafarevich, this "constant factor in human history" has a "millenia-long tradition" stretching back to the ancient despotisms of Mesopotamia, Egypt and China, and is represented today by the various Communist states of the world...

...He regards politics not as a means toward an end but as an end in itself—a mode of living that imparts a sense of community and drama to a drab private existence...

...Its objective is to prove that socialism is a timeless entity whose ultimate goal is "the death of mankind...

...That "socialism" signifies many political systems and conflicting schools of thought should immediately raise questions about its usefulness as a unifying concept of politics...

...But because of those crimes, it also arouses fear and revulsion...

...The Communist states may trace their roots to Marx, but as far as Shafarevich is concerned the basic socialist ideology —opposition to the family, religion, private property, and individualism?was "forged over the course of thousands of years...

...15.00...

...A mathematician of international renown, Shafarevich was one of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's closest comrades in the Soviet dissident movement...

...This does not make them entirely innocuous, for they reinforce the belief that there is some viable alternative to existing democratic society, and that the main task before us is to try to bring it into being...

...He faults it for lacking an answer to the spiritual and moral crises of modernity—hardly a very harsh criticism, since democracy is held to be equally impoverished in this respect...

...Reviewed by Carl Gershman Resident Scholar, Freedom House...

...For some it means reformist social democracy, for others Utopian radicalism...

...In the hands of others less good-natured than Walzer, it can inspire dangerous attacks aimed at undermining democracy...

...If it remains for him the ultimate source, albeit vaguely defined, of meaning and purpose in life, one must suspect that it is a spiritual crutch more than a political ideology...

...Walzer's ideals are merely a pale reflection of the chiliasm that Shafarevich finds so threatening...

...Yet this concern produces no more than several sincere, gentle admonitions to the New Left, along with some advice about the wisdom of moderation...

...Vice Chairman, Social Democrats, USA No political idea in the modern world generates greater passion than socialism...

...One of those pieces is a summary of the present work, which contains a Foreward by Solzhenitsyn and is written from a Christian viewpoint reminiscent of Dostoevsky...

...This does not imply that Communism is identical with, say, the role of the Pharoahs...

...Walzer occasionally chides the radicals, but he is at heart a fellow-traveler who shares their belief in participatory democracy and identifies with the struggle for "local self-determination...

...No doubt it is possible to be anti-Communist as well as anti-Capitalist, but a fundamental orientation against capitalism—rather than for democracy—leaves little room for an ideological defense of the West...

...Shafarevich's unilinear concept of historical development cannot explain why his bete noire has been largely democratic in the West and totalitarian in the East...

...One can have faith in it or one can oppose it, but either way an outlook wedded to such an imprecise framework is unlikely to lead to a clear vision of reality...

...He draws upon Karl Witt-fogel's work to establish a parallel between ancient oriental despotisms and modern Communist states...

...He acknowledges, for instance, that the trade unions in the West have been responsible for great "achievements in social justice" over the last century, yet goes on to say that socialists condemned such "economism" although only Lenin's Bolshevik Party took this stand...

...Igor Shafarevich attempts to develop such an outlook in The Socialist Phenomenon...

...Western social democrats (and Russian Mensheviks, for that matter) overwhelmingly supported the union struggles and in many instances led them...

...Thomas More's Utopia, for example, is labeled a secular and rationalistic "evasive maneuver" on the part of those who failed in their direct assault upon Christian civilization...

...Unfortunately, he does not indicate how it directs present activity, or what kind of future it holds in store...

...For Walzer, Communism is simply a different, admittedly totalitarian strategy for rapid modernization, not a political threat to the West or an affliction for those who must try to survive under it...

...The answer lies in the false assumption of many socialists that our society is not so much democratic as capitalist, and as such must be struggled against instead of defended...

...Yet a corollary of Wittfogel's theory is that there is a connection between the multi-centered societies of the past and modern democratic states...

...At its least harmful, the notion dissipates intellectual energy that might otherwise be focused on the task of improving free society...

...Nor does it mean that the West is immune to Communism...

...The relevant question is why the Western socialist movement, which is oneaspectof democratic culture, hasof late been so weak and compromised in the face of the Communist threat...

...Third-World statism and Communist totalitarianism lay claim to the tradition as well...

...Marxism is seen as simply another maneuver, this time in response to opportunities created by "a series of labor disturbances in Europe...

...They collaborated on From Under the Rubble, a collection of essays about Russia's future...

...He considers the old and new identical in every respect except one: Communism alone has perfected the ability to enslave the human spirit...