The Trotsky myth

Over at A Terrible Blogger is born, blogger rmangum has a post speculating about why Leon Trotsky's reputation has been so strong among so many Western intellectuals, given the ample evidence that the idealized image of a man who would have created a humane, non-repressive communist state if only he hadn't been outmaneuvered and exiled by Stalin is pure fantasy. He attributes this to the fact that Trotsky's image was far more intellectual than that of Joseph Stalin, making him easier for Western intellectuals to identify with.

I think there's something to that. It fits in with the Western intelligentsia’s attitude toward the crimes of Stalin- the Moscow Show Trials and purges of his own Party comrades like Kamenev and Zinoviev always loom much larger than horrors like the Ukrainian terror famine, even though the latter took far more lives. The famine killed millions of nobodies, peasants, whereas the Show Trials were directed at people Western intellectuals actually identified with and felt empathy for. There’s another reason I would place more emphasis on, however.

The state always disappoints, if judged according to its own promises and propaganda, and communist states tend to do so more dramatically than most. The Western Left always seems to be looking for a left-wing despot to idolize, but as a given tyrant’s crimes become harder and harder to hide or ignore admiring him becomes increasingly awkward and a new, less tarnished idol needs to be found. Stalin gave way to Trotsky, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Min, and the like; now it's Che Guevara. The advantage Trotsky has over most of these rivals is that – like Che Guevara- he was never a head of state, and thus offers far more open space to imagine what might have been.

The fact that he died violently- again, like Che Guevara- gives even more chance to ask, "What if?", as well as adding the sanctity of martyrdom and the romance of a life gloriously burning out instead of fading away. Death also saved him from living long enough to be associated with communism as it looked in its later days in Europe- dull, gray, crumbling, unromantic, uncool.

If we're knowledgeable of Trotsky and honest with ourselves about him and about communist regimes generally, we know that what might have been would have been horrible, but his lack of political power means that, unlike Joseph Stalin (or Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, etc.), there is no mountain of human corpses tied prominently, specifically, and unambiguously to him that can spoil our fantasy by forcibly directing our attention to his true nature. Instead, communists and communist sympathizers can use him as a blank canvas to paint their own dreams.

The Berlin Wall and the fruits of liberty

20 years ago as of Monday, the citizens of East Berlin penetrated the Berlin Wall and gained access to the West. The wall's physical destruction would not be completed for weeks, but its power was broken. My paternal grandmother was born in Germany, usually spent a few months out of the year staying with her sister in West Berlin, and had relatives who had escaped from East Germany. She lived just long enough to see the Wall destroyed before passing away in March 1990. One of her relatives gave me a piece of the Wall, which I still have.

At Econlog, David Henderson has a post about how he explained the event to his 4-year-old daughter back in 1989. I recommend the whole thing, but what jumped out at me the most was a brief aside. Recounting his discussion with his daughter about all the East Germans crossing the border for the first time, Henderson remarks in passing:

The media reported a few days later that the candy shops in West Berlin had sold out.

Something about this little detail was very striking to me. In my experience, most discussions of Communist oppression focuses heavily on a few specific areas, and above all on censorship and control of ideas. (Things that directly impinge on the psychological and material interests of intellectuals and journalists, in other words.) The material deprivation caused by Communism does get some attention, but much less. Acknowledgment of it, not surprisingly, mostly involves the striking, dramatic, and visual- people standing in line for hours to buy bread, the dull grayness of Eastern Bloc cities.

What doesn't get much attention is the day-in, day-out lack of things that make life in a wealthy country like the United States more pleasant for the great majority of the population. I do not use scratchy, sandpaper-like toilet paper. Barring natural disaster or freakishly cold winter temperatures, I take it for granted that water will come out of my sink's faucet when I turn the knob. If my shoes are worn out or my clothes are torn up, I'm confident that replacements will be readily available for me to buy. On Halloween, like the one that just passed, candy is so cheap and plentiful that children can go door to door asking to be given candy for free. and most households will cheerfully oblige them.

There are few things more revolting to me than the spectacle of some hyperprivileged Western leftist who enjoys a degree of wealth and material comfort that would be the envy of almost every human being who has ever lived pontificating on the evils of "greed" and "consumerism" and praising some oppressive, impoverished socialist hellhole for its superior spiritual values or sense of community or committment to "social justice" or whatever, and this is a big part of the reason why. The difference between a country with a comparatively free market and the sort of society they defend isn't just a matter of whether people have colossal gas-guzzling vehicles or plasma TVs or "McMansions" or the opportunity to buy, to use the sort of epithets anticapitalists like to trot out, "cheap junk" and "stuff they don't need." (It's depressing how much antimarket rhetoric boils down to whining that other people don't share your personal tastes and dressing it up as moral indignation.) It's about whether people beyond some small political elite get to enjoy the innumerable little improvements to their daily lives that free markets provide with such ease and abundance that we don't even stop to think about them.

Link round-up

Excellent post over at Knappster about the foolishness of the idea of a "citizens dividend" (welfare for everyone, basically) from a practical standpoint. The probable effects of the idea are so obvious that I'm frankly baffled how anyone who professes a desire to reduce the state could support it. Anyway, Thomas Knapp puts it more eloquently than I could.

This probably isn't of interest to anyone who isn't a metal fan, but Brian W. Doss has a great post over at The Verse about the suckiness of the mainstream media's coverage of the genre.

At his new blog Pro Libertate, William N. Grigg has a great new post called "The Madness That is War Patriotism." One of the best descriptions of America's post-9/11 madness that I've read.

While our rulers send SWAT team raids against unauthorized gamblers and seek to crush online gambling to save us from gambling addiction, Radley Balko relates this news story of a New York woman who spent six thousand dollars a day on the state lottery, fueling her gambling by embezzling over two million dollars from her employer. Another reminder that anti-gambling laws aren't about protecting public morals, they're about making sure the state gets all the swag.

At Lewrockwell.com, Eric Margolis has written a powerful remembrance of Stalin's victims. Worth reading, even if you already know the relevant facts.

Sad news: voice actor Tony Jay has died at 73. If you share some of my nerdly interests, you might remember his excellent voice acting from such games as Icewind Dale, Fallout, the Legacy of Kain series, and what is possibly my favorite game of all time, Planescape: Torment. Rest in peace.

From Brad Spangler comes this little gem. Just click the link and see.

Apologies for the fact that I have yet to produce that Alastair Reynolds review I mentioned a while back. I found George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones at a used book store, curiosity got the better of me, one thing led to another, and I kinda sorta…Well, all I can say is that you shouldn't become fixated on a four-thousand page fantasy series when you've got something else you were planning to read. Or if you were planning on getting anything else done. Or coming into contact with sunlight.

Thought for the day

Something occurred to me while reading the news about Castro's illness. I've thought for a long time that a lot of socialists were basically throne-and-altar reactionaries in Enlightenment drag Thus, I probably shouldn't be so surprised that communist states, those bastions of egalitarianism, have taken on the form of monarchies. Who rules North Korea? The previous ruler's son. When Castro became incapacitated, who did he put in charge? His brother. The fact that these two state's full names are the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" and the "Republic of Cuba" makes it all the more absurd. It's probably only a matter of time before Nong Duc Manh has himself declared Archduke of Vietnam.