Stephen Kotkin: evaluation

Transcript context

…There's ideology, but there's a very specific thing to these Marxist regimes. They might believe in class conflict and that you need this revolution and so forth. But there's also this sense that you cannot contradict the party, you cannot contradict the vanguard. Even in 1924, when Trotsky is getting condemned by the party, or whatever that was, he gets up to give a speech to the Party Plenum, and he says, “Look, for all of my thoughts, let there be no mistake that the party is always right and party discipline is always important.” So there's not only the sense where Mamdani would say, “Oh, I want these specific policies implemented” but there's also the sense that loyalty to the party, and eventually to Stalin even when it seems to contradict my understanding of socialism, is absolutely paramount. One way to explain that is that they were just genuinely afraid of Stalin and they thought this was antithetical to their understanding of communism. Another is that part of the ideology is this theocratic understanding that the party's always right, even if it seems like a single individual is manipulating it to their ends. Why is Marxism-Leninism especially so attractive to young people and to intellectuals? Why? We have this history, which is a bloody mess. Millions of people die, and they die because of the enactment of this ideology. How could people continue to adhere to an ideology like that during the murderous time period, and even more after the murderous time period when we can look at it dispassionately? Here's part of the answer. Young people are attracted to impatient, quick, total transformation of the world, eradication of war, eradication of social injustice. There's a simplicity to the ideology. It's a total package. It gets rid of everything bad if you just follow the precepts. Sure, things happen that shouldn't have happened. There are some surprises, there are some downsides. But are you pro-capitalism? Are you pro-imperialist war? Are you pro-landowners having all the land and the have-nots having nothing? There's this constant threat where if you contravene the ideology, you're in bed with the very evils that the ideology is trying to overcome. You become an accomplice in the persistence of the things that you're dedicated to overthrowing. It's not just that you're loyal to the party. You're loyal to the outcome that the party is dedicated to achieving. You know that there are going to be mistakes and costs and bad things will happen along the way, but is imperialist war better than that? No, the answer is imperialist war has got to be worse. The other reason, which is even deeper than that, is that Marxism-Leninism empowers the intellectual class and the lumpen-intellectual class. In a market system, you get to do what you want. You want to open up a family business, you want to take a loan and give it a try? You can do that. Nobody can stop you. It might be that it's hard to get the loan in some neighborhoods. It might be that the loan interest rate is… You've got to work much harder than you thought, etc. But you get to make the decisions. You get to decide what to do, when to do it. You can work for somebody else, you can put out your own shingle. In these kinds of systems, it's the intellectuals and the lumpen-intellectuals who make those decisions. They use the state as an instrument to overcome the injustices of the existing society. Again, the injustices are real. But that empowers them to be in charge. The beauty of Marxism-Leninism, and why what we used to call the Third World loves this, is that they get to be in power. It empowers them across the board. They get to make the decisions on the economy. They don't have to submit to elections. They don't have to have a mandate. They don't have to legitimate their rule beyond the ideological building of a new world, of overcoming injustice. What we see again and again is young people being impatient for evil to end, but also empowering themselves to be in charge. They love the state. They love the state as an instrument for social justice, social engineering. again is young people being impatient for evil to end, but also empowering themselves to be in charge. They love the state. They love the state as an instrument for social justice, social engineering. They love to empower themselves as the decision-makers because, after all, they're the intellectuals. They've studied the theory. They know better than others. Workers and peasants and the downtrodden, the lower classes, sometimes have false consciousness. They don't understand why, for example, we have an imperialist war. They get sucked in. Bread and circuses fool them. They have this false consciousness. But I know better, and I can be in charge. I can get us to a better place. Even along the way, bad things are going to happen. Some people who are innocent are going to die or be arrested. But this is the march of history. This march of history is to peace and justice. Who is going to stand in the way of that? Especially when it empowers you personally so that… You could never do this in the private sector. Nobody could afford you this kind of power in the private sector and in a decentralized political system, in a federalized political system where nobody accumulates that much power. Social engineering is always coercive, always coercive. The issue is how much of the coercion is necessary that we accept in the tradeoff to right some of the things that are obviously wrong.…

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