Op-Ed Contributor - 20 Years of Collapse - NYTimes.com - The Diigo Meta page

• 10 Nov 09
  

  dan maertens

  • The new anti-Communism provides a simple answer to the question: “If
    capitalism is really so much better than Socialism, why are our lives still
    miserable?”

    
    

    It is because, many believe, we are not really in capitalism: we do not yet
    have true democracy but only its deceiving mask, the same dark forces still pull
    the threads of power, a narrow sect of former Communists disguised as new owners
    and managers — nothing’s really changed, so we need another purge, the
    revolution has to be repeated ...

  • the newly born anti-Communists don’t get that what they are denouncing as
    perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism
  • 6 more annotations...

  • • One can also argue that, when the Communist regimes collapsed, the
      disillusioned former Communists were effectively better suited to run the new
      capitalist economy than the populist dissidents. While the heroes of the
      anti-Communist protests continued to dwell in their dreams of a new society of
      justice, honesty and solidarity, the former Communists were able to ruthlessly
      accommodate themselves to the new capitalist rules and the new cruel world of
      market efficiency, inclusive of all the new and old dirty tricks and corruption.
      

    • A further twist is added by those countries in which Communists allowed the
      explosion of capitalism, while retaining political power: they seem to be more
      capitalist than the Western liberal capitalists themselves. In a crazy double
      reversal, capitalism won over Communism, but the price paid for this victory is
      that Communists are now beating capitalism in its own terrain.

    • When people protested Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the large majority
      of them did not ask for capitalism. They wanted the freedom to live their lives
      outside state control, to come together and talk as they pleased; they wanted a
      life of simplicity and sincerity, liberated from the primitive ideological
      indoctrination and the prevailing cynical hypocrisy.

    • As many commentators observed, the ideals that led the protesters were to a
      large extent taken from the ruling Socialist ideology itself — people aspired to
      something that can most appropriately be designated as “Socialism with a human
      face.” Perhaps this attitude deserves a second chance.

    • he had the courage to speak out passionately against Joseph McCarthy’s witch
      hunts. “I believe profoundly,” he wrote, “that in the struggle against
      Communists and their organizations ... we cannot and should not resort to the
      methods and forms employed by the Communists.” His warning to Americans: to
      fight Stalinism in such a way was to court the danger of starting to resemble
      their opponent.
    • “I Chose Justice.” He devoted himself to finding less exploitative forms of
      collectivization and wound up in Bolivia, where he squandered all his money
      trying to organize poor farmers. Crushed by this failure, he withdrew into
      private life and shot himself in 1966 at his home in New York.
• 09 Nov 09
  

  Novica Nakov

  What these belated anti-Communists fail to realize is that the image they provide of their society comes uncannily close to the most abused traditional leftist image of capitalism: a society in which formal democracy merely conceals the reign of a wealthy minority. In other words, the newly born anti-Communists don’t get that what they are denouncing as perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism.

  zizek capitalism communism article nyt

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