Thanks Juan for your post on prominent liberal economists defending the USSR. Another liberal has echoed my previous correspondent denying that liberals ever had a tendency to defend the USSR (for my original post click here):
Sorry, but your respondent’s reply seems very much closer to the truth than your more or less claim that liberals [I note your use of “some” but the tone of your post suggests you meant “many” at the very least, and that defending the USSR was an identifiable “liberal” position] tended to be apologists for the Soviet Union. As you say, we all live with our memories, but I recall no liberals of my acquaintance growing up in Brooklyn and on Long Island in the 1950s and early 60s who could be fairly called apologists for the USSR. Liberal in the Brooklyn and Nassau County of my youth meant unreconstructed New Deal liberal. And yes, the doings of the USSR, internally and internationally, were topics of discussion. On this one, I suspect your respondent is a lot closer to the mark than you are.
Well, as a Midwesterner I cannot speak for Nassau County–though part my experience was with a liberal roommate at Northwestern from Scarsdale and his pals from Westchester County–but I do suspect once more that this writer–who tells me he was himself a liberal democrat–rarely experienced the sort of arguments that conservatives heard from some liberals. Perhaps he did not even know any conservatives, so he did not experience the sorts of debates that provoked this response. Perhaps these arguments did not impress him as they did me given his solidarity with his liberal friends. Who knows?
Be that as it may, Bruce Ramsey of the Seattle Time, remembers defenses of communist regimes–including China and Cuba–exactly as I do, almost word for word. We are either both deluded in our recollections, this is an amazing coincidence, or the phenomenon was quite real and pervasive–again among some liberals:
Your memory of liberals is right. I am 52, old enough to remember liberals being that way. They were not Marxists, nor professional liberal spokesmen like Harry Truman, but ordinary emotional Americans who, on this subject, would go all nonjudgmental. Who were we to judge a China that kept everybody fed, or a Cuba that taught everybody to read? How can we say it’s better to live in a society with eight different brands of toothpaste? We can afford to live in a society that spends $XX billion a year on dog food and women’s cosmetics and chewing gum. The Chinese need to make sure everybody eats–and communism does that. Under Chiang they starved, under Mao they eat. Communism wouldn’t work here, but it’s the right system for them. A bit harsh maybe, but it’s better than starving. Besides, we had exterminated the Indians, enslaved the blacks, imprisoned the Japanese Americans. Who were we to get all high and mighty? What arrogance.
The general line was that any American who argued against communism in Russia, China, Cuba, etc., was failing to see it from their point of view. After all, they had chosen communism, had they not? And they must have had a reason for it. Let us respect their choice, because in their circumstances we would have chosen it, too.
I remember all that. It does not surprise me that people have forgotten it.
After 1989, everyone except a communist had been an anticommunist before. Just ask my liberal correspondents.
PS: In case anyone is wondering, I consider “liberal” to be an honorable word, and in The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law, I call the approach I favor the “liberal conception of justice.” For many years I called myself a “classical liberal”–which indeed I am–until I decided it was confusing some people and others thought I was obfuscating. Indeed, one of my complaints about modern liberals these days is that you cannot count on them to be as genuinely liberal as they used to be when you need them to be. But that is another topic.
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