In response to my earlier post, Volokh on USSR, in which I related my experience as a student with some of my liberal classmates defending the USSR, a reader offers a predictable response:
Now, I can remember, from my college days, a number of campus radicals of various stripes (Spartacists, RCP’s, even, ridiculously enough, self-proclaimed anarchists) who spewed this sort of drivel from time to time, but I do not recall any “liberals” making such statements; indeed, I recall that the prevailing view was that Soviet Communism, as a system, primarily focused on who would be putting the boot in whose neck at any given time, and had simply failed as a viable economic system. Indeed, if one were to publicly hold oneself forth as a liberal (by, for example, working for a Democratic candidate) in the presence of the aforementioned radicals, one could count on a deluge of invective describing oneself as a traitor, fascist, lapdog and worse. . . .
As a matter of further confusion, I fail to understand, as a logical proposition, how one could on the one had identify oneself as a liberal (meaning a capitalist who believes in a significant degree of governmental regulation of industry and the provision of social programs by the government) while simultaneously endorsing communism; a communist is, by definition, not a liberal. As Mr. Barnett insists this is nonetheless the case, can he point us to written examples of liberals (not Marxists, Maoists, etc.) expressing in writing a preference for the Soviet system?
There are a number of responses. The most obvious is that this was personal narrative of my experience growing up. Perhaps the reader did not experience this reaction because he did not challenge the USSR, proclaim his support of capitalism, or defend the US, in the presence of some of his liberal friends. If they were not provoked, they might not have revealed these sentiments to him. Who knows why he did not experience what I did from some of his liberal friends?
But we don’t have to travel down memory lane. My son’s college-age friend who expressed regret that communism in Cuba would end with Castro’s passing is not a ‘Spartacist, RCP or self-proclaimed anarchist.’ He is just an intelligent but deluded liberal like those of some of my classmates from grade school through law school. That these expressions of sympathy were not put into writing does not make them any less real.
I should also add that I was deliberately careful in my original post to attribute this to some of my liberal friends, though I can assure the reader that it was enough that I came to expect these responses and needed to develop counter arguments to meet them. There is no question that many hard core liberals, especially liberal politicians such as Truman, Kennedy and Humphrey to name just three, were also anticommunists–indeed leading anticommunists who did indeed take grief from radical leftists. These politicians needed not only to be elected by a generally anticommunist public but also to govern in the midst of the cold war and there is no doubt they were truly anticommunist. But I was speaking of ordinary liberals without such responsibilities, not sparticists, who while supporting these politicians nevertheless in private conversation and debate would articulate exactly the sentiments I related earlier: Although perhaps a bit behind in material things at present, the USSR was a more fair and just society reflecting a value judgment by its people that placed equality above consumerism and the accumulation of needless riches. Who was to say that its people were not happier than ours (implying without actually asserting that they were)? And they either doubted the abuses of power known to exist there, or excused it as necessary temporary expedients on the path to a potentially better society–just the way so many liberals today cut Castro the slack they would never cut a noncommunist tyrant.
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