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Title: The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism Int He Twentieth Century by Francois Furet, Deborah Furet ISBN: 0-226-27341-5 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: December, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.78 (9 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: He Was The King Of The Divine
Comment: *The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea Of Communism In The Twentieth Century*, the last book by that doyen of French historians Francois Furet, has our hero at cross-purposes: he is both to speak ill of an era where the PCF had some reason for existing and to validate what is of use in the contemporary EU arrangement. But the secret of this "world-history" is that it was rather obviously all too easy to write, as the events Furet is depicting relied rather heavily on "materiel" not available in *realite* form. In other words, this is the history of world Communism from *October* en passant to the folding of *World Socialist Review*: and the obviously inadequate sections on interregnum *Westpolitik* and the fall of the "Evil Empire" betray Furet's desire to be here completely quits with the question of the agent perspective. In fact, the greatest weakness of this book is Furet's gamely appreciating PCF "para-politics" (a subaltern culture growing up around those attempts to put Frenchmen squarely behind Stalin, which perhaps must be called the font of critical perspectives on the postwar Republics); in other words, Furet is again here attempting to do Chauvin one better and perhaps those weaned upon vector analyses of an infamous life will be all too thrilled by the results. In other words, a doorstop of a book -- containing carefully screened verandas.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Illusion We Hope Won't Be Repeated
Comment: Marx's experience in London....The latter part of the 19th Century in England was one of oppression and exploitation of the worker, many of which were children. Conditions were deplorable. Abuses rampant. Marx's response to this and his theoretical solution originated and evolved during this period in London. After this period ended due to public outrage, legislation and union movements, Marxist ideology was not modified by its' followers, but reinforced, with it's (outdated) concepts. After digressing from implementing (the doing of) Marx's major points they erroneously continued to advocate the motto and principles (the theory) of Marx's original critique.
This book by the Furets is not about communism's policies, practices, and affect on certain societies. It's about its' idea, ideology, and vision. This makes it compelling. Because in the future there may be some who claim that communism wasn't "interpreted," or "implemented" correctly. Hence, they may advocate a "new" or "more effective" form or version of communism again in the future. This book takes a look not only at the the origins, interpretations, and implementations of Marxist ideology, but the disastrous ramifications of it. In actuality, Marxism was and still is nothing but heuristic value, becoming as passé as Freud by 1900. Marxism, in its true form, has never existed beyond the political theory in the books of Marx and Engels. Over 100 million people died as the result of this vision, which was never brought to fruition. No one can honestly argue against historical fact that today in 2003, that the altered and diluted form of communism that was implemented imploded, self-destructing from within.
Two Main Communistic Ideas That Never Came Into Existence
1. Marx: "the state will whither away" = State Communism
Did the state dissolve because there was no need for it, as Marx theorized? He wrote that the "state would whither away," because there would be no need for it to exist. But in the Soviet Union, the state was the most ever-present, omnipotent, and omniscient facet of Soviet life. The Soviet government was a monopolistic corporation: controlling, owning, producing, surveying, imprisoning, legislating, decreeing, and supplying, everything. Some claim this was the "Soviet Interpretation." This is impossible because one cannot interpret what was never stated nor implied.
2. Was the communist party representative of the proletariat or the average person?
Membership of the communist party was a very small portion of the population. Those who rose to Apparatchick status had special privilege and practiced and received favoritism in many areas of life. This small group of elites dictated to everyone else what to read, listen to, think, study, and say. Consequences were severe. In addition, most communist nations were rampant with venal bureaucrats, corruption, internecine politics, self-interest, censorship, secret police, and control of the media. Citizens were not allowed to travel. Is this a society based upon equality? Of the proletarian, or "working man?"
Were there various interpretations or Marxist ideology?
The basic principles proposed by Marx (and Engels) were never applied in any of the communistic societies of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, or Cambodia. This makes it as a working, applicable ideology, even less credible. Marxism was never implemented in the real-world. It was an empty dish of critiques that was later filled with food of alien ideas. There is no documentation that Marxism has ever been practiced or has ever existed in recent world history (save agricultural communes).
Marx's critiques of capitalism were critiques and critiques only, offering only limited and vague general theoretical alternatives. These blanks would later be filled in by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Le Duan and Tito among others. Only a few of Marx's tenets, were practiced by communist nations (i.e., atheism, agricultural collectivization).
After the fall of communism, these nations have the audacity to ask for financial aid and business know-how from the United States in particular and and Western Europe and market-economy-based nations in Asia. What strong ideals these people have....
Rating: 2
Summary: The hero as sober (but brave) anti-communist scholar
Comment: The late Francois Furet informs us that this book is not a history of Communism, "it is a history of the illusion of Communism during the time in which the USSR lent it consistency and vitality." (x) The first third of the book first looks at the revolutionary passion and the First World War which made Bolshevism possible, then at the intellectual reaction to the revolution before 1933. The second half of the book deals with how Communism managed to obtain a powerful hegemony in the European Mind by taking the banner of anti-fascism. This was most undeserved, since the two ideologies, though genealogically distinct, were morally similar, and at times were even allies. But after Hitler's death, "During this period, Communism no longer had any open enemies in the West; they were hiding or were silent." (384)
This book has a number of flaws. It is very repetitive and it suffers from incompetent proofreaders. Bela Kun's Communist rebellion is placed in 1910, not 1919 (223). Victor Serge dies in 1974 instead of 1947 (514n14). John Lewis Gaddis' surname is turned into "Gassis," (548n6) while the dates of an essay by Mona Ozouf are moved a century ahead (552n43). Meanwhile interwar Yugoslovia and Romania are wrongly described as republics (58). More importantly, Furet makes sweeping statements about the intellectual climate of Europe based on little or no primary evidence. Statements such as "The Soviet Union was above suspicion" in 1945 (391), that in the sixties "the prohibition on anti-Communism at this time was as strict as ever," (493) and that on the eve of 1989 "anti-Communism was more generally condemned than during the heyday of victorious anti-Fascism" (497) are constantly reiterated. They are not sourced, they are not clearly argued, while the intelligentsia who support them are not clearly delineated, which is not surprising since all three statements are untrue. If they were true the French Communist Party would not have been completely excluded from power from 1947 to 1981. Nor would Communist parties in the rest of the NATO countries by all excluded from power and be, for the most part, marginal, despised and sometimes illegal entities.
Furet also does not deal with opposing arguments. He comments (166) that "There is nothing more incompatible with a Marxist-type explanation...than the unparalleled dicatorships of the twentieth century." Perhaps, but Furet does not discuss such authors as Trotsky, Carr, Deutscher, Neumann, Bauer, let alone the large neo-marxist scholarship of the present day who have sought to provide one. He uses Hermann Rauschning's memoirs to show Nazi sympathy for aspects of Communism (191-92), but Hitler's latest and most thorough biographer states that Rauschning's memoirs are very unreliable. Whether on the Spanish Civil War or the Nazi-Soviet Pact Furet ignores or is unaware of such scholars as Helen Graham, Geoffrey Roberts or Michael J. Carley.
When it suits his purposes he quotes socialist rhetoric by fascists and extreme right-wingers (163-67, 304-09). When it does not he ignores Francoist rhetoric about its fascist and totalitarian character to argue that it is safely "reactionary." (259-60) Nazism is called "anti-bourgeois," apparently for no other reason because of its constant calls for meritocracy (which one would think was a classic trope of bourgeois politics). He quotes David Schoenbaum's argument that Nazism led to a social revolution, but Ian Kershaw notes that this argument has been severly qualified by more recent research. Much is made of the complicity of intellectuals, but the acts of the Italian elites who voluntarily brought Mussolini to power are absolved "as the product of ignorance and incompetenece rather than of complicity." (176)
Fundamentally this is book that tells little about why Communism developed the way it did, or why so many French citizens supported it for so long. Ultimately it is the story of the heroic intellectual who rejected his Communist path and saw the light. Rather than read this self-serving account, scholars of Nazism and Stalinism should read authors such as Christopher Browning, Omer Bartov, Sarah Gordon, Terry Martin and Yuri Slezkine.
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Title: Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956 by Tony Judt ISBN: 0520086503 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: February, 1994 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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