Communism was an ideal for me. But above all an education system: […]. I was therefore educated and raised as an idealist communist, in the sense that Thomas More, Campanella, Charles Fourier or Saint-Simon understood it, who mean a lot to me. But this communism was perverted and betrayed by the leaders of the Party. The reality I observed did not correspond at all to the ideals of communism.

Finally, to prevent the ascendance of a resurgent far right, we need to get past our red hangover and recognize the pros and cons of both liberal democracy and state socialism in an effort to promote a system that gives us the best of both. Like the sudden collapse of communism, the days of liberal democracy may be numbered, and the West could soon face its own equivalent of November 9, 1989. Twentieth-century communism failed because the ideals of communism had been betrayed by the leaders who ruled in its name. When the reforms came, they came too late: ordinary people had already given up on the system. Today, democratically elected leaders too often betray the ideals of democracy and those who are calling for reform may also be too late. Citizens across Europe and the United States have lost faith in the system, and global capitalism's final crisis could be just around the corner. Perhaps in this moment of dramatic rupture, we will have the opportunity to rethink the democratic project and finally do the work necessary to either rescue it from the death grip of neoliberalism, or replace it with a new political ideal that leads us forward to a new stage of human history.

Imported from the USSR, the communist ideology justified the assault against civil society, against political and economic pluralism; it justified the annihilation of the democratic parties, the destruction of the free market, extermination by assassination, deportations, forced labor, and the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people. Behind the mask of "socialist humanism" lay concealed the most profound contempt for human beings as individuals.

From the outset in 1917, the Communists believed in a utopian ideology, extreme, organised violence, atheism, a redefined place of the individual that served to reject Enlightenment precepts, and the rejection of preceding Russian history. During the Civil War and the 1920s, the Orthodox Church was crushed, with the slaughter of tens of thousands of priests and monks, and the desecration and destruction of churches, monasteries and the tombs of saints. The real and spiritual landscapes of Russia and the psychological life of the people were transformed as a consequence. Communism in its own way therefore constituted a major civilisational challenge to the notion in Europe and North America of a 'Western Civilisation', whether or not articulated explicitly in this fashion. This civilisation owed much to Christianity and placed considerable weight on liberalism and toleration. From this perspective, Communism, drawing both on a reconceptualisation of Russian authoritarianism and on a new, totalitarian ideology and practice, posed a counter-civilisational challenge with its own precepts, aims, methods and anticipated outcomes.

Second, Communism is based on ethical relativism and accepts no stable moral absolutes. Right and wrong are relative to the most expedient methods for dealing with class war. Communism exploits the dreadful philosophy that the end justifies the means. It enunciates movingly the theory of a classless society, but alas! its methods for achieving this noble end are all too often ignoble. Lying, violence, murder, and torture are considered to be justifiable means to achieve the millennial end. Is this an unfair indictment? Listen to the words of Lenin, the real tactician of Communist theory: ‘We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, lawbreaking, withholding and concealing truth.’ Modem history has known many tortuous nights and horror-filled days because his followers have taken this statement serious.

The Communist dream of a great new "one world" of the future is based on the belief that a regime of violence and coercion under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would permit the establishment of a society which would produce a new order of men who would acquire the habit of observing what Lenin called the "simple fundamental rules of every-day social life in common." The fallacy of this hope lies in Communism's perverted interpretation of human behavior. It assumes, on the basis of Dialectical Materialism, that if you change things outside of a man this automatically compels a change on the inside of the man. The inter-relation between environment on the outside and the internal make-up of man is not to be disputed, but environment only conditions man, it does not change his very nature. For example, just as men will always laugh, eat, propagate, gravitate into groups and explore the unknown, so likewise they will always enjoy the pleasure of possessing things (which alone gives pleasure to sharing); they will always possess the desire for individual expression or self-determination, the ambition to improve their circumstances and the motive to excel above others. These qualities are inherent in each generation and cannot be legislated away nor ignored.

Perhaps communism may even have been a viable solution to the problems of the unequal distribution of wealth that characterized the industrial age, if all of the hypothetically oppressed were good people and all of the evil was to be found, as hypothesized, in their bourgeoisie overlords. Unfortunately for the communists, a substantial proportion of the oppressed were incapable, unconscientious, unintelligent, licentious, power mad, violent, resentful, and jealous, while a substantial proportion of the oppressors were educated, able, creative, intelligent, honest, and caring.

First, Communism is based on a materialistic and humanistic view of life and history. According to Communist theory, matter, not mind or spirit, speaks the last word in the universe. Such a philosophy is avowedly secularistic and atheistic. Under it, God is merely a figment of the imagination, religion is a product of fear and ignorance, and the church is an invention of the rulers to control the masses. Moreover, Communism, like humanism, thrives on the grand illusion that man, unaided by any divine power, can save himself and usher in a new society.... Cold atheism wrapped in the garments of materialism, Communism provides no place for God or Christ.

(…) I disagree with the commonly accepted opinion that real communism would be the realization of Marxist ideals and that it would be imposed on the masses, against their will, their desires and their interests, by a handful of people. ideologues resorting to force and lies. Communism is not only a political regime that can be transformed by an order from above, it is a social organization of the population. A Soviet Union was formed, not in accordance with the Marxist project nor at the whim of Marxist ideologues, but by virtue of the objective laws which govern the organization of a large mass of population into a completed social organism. It is the result of a historical creative process in which millions of people took part. (…) p. 13

The publicly propagandized aims of communism are vaguely liberal. One can read the Daily Worker every day for a year without finding any clear exegesis of Communist principle. Like Hitler, Communists, outside their own ranks, promise all things to most men, denouncing only ‘monopolists’ ‘imperialists’ (and failing to provide a glossary for their meaning of these terms), opposing race discrimination, child labor, etc.

Contrary to generations of western progressives, it was not Russian backwardness or mistakes in applying Marxian theory that produced the society that Lyons observed. Similar regimes came into being wherever the communist project was attempted. Lenin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Ceausescu’s Romania and many more were variants of a single dictatorial model. From being a movement aiming for universal freedom, communism turned into a system of universal despotism. That is the logic of utopia. If 1984 is such a powerful myth, one reason is that it captures this truth. Yet there is a flaw in Orwell’s story, which emerges in his picture of the all-powerful interrogator. The dystopia of perpetual power is a fantasy, and so is O’Brien. Soviet torturers were sweating functionaries living in constant fear. Like their victims, they knew that they were resources that would be used up in the service of power. There was no inner-party elite safe from the contingencies of history.

Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power. Twenty-first century market-capitalism, American style, will fail for the same reasons. Both are edifices constructed by the human intelligence, undone by human nature.

The communist theory is that a world war is inevitable; that in that war, if they play their cards well, the democracies will be lined up against the fascist dictatorships, and that the result of the war will be the triumph of Communism all over the world. Their chief program now is to get the democracies so lined up.

Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil, but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power. Twenty-first century market capitalism, American-style, will fail for the same reasons. Both are edifices constructed by human intelligence, undone by human nature.