" General ideas, general concepts, general principles, interpreted as absolutes rather than approximations, are mere kindling wood for a new conflagration. But of course we must use general ideas and general concepts. General words are necessary and natural - as long as those who use them understand that their generality is a convenience, bringing together certain phenomena for certain purposes, but not a monolith. We must keep a balance, and not allow these to get out of hand and take over. They must be our servants, and not our masters. In fact, as in all our arrangements, we must once again seek a balance. We must learn from experience, yet not believe we can see far into the future. We must take short views, but not too short. We must allow the state a role in social affairs, but not a dominance. We must grant the legitimate claims of nationality, but reject its extreme manifestations. This undogmatic type of approach has been among the essentials of the civic and pluralist culture. ... What does not need to be done needs not to be done - though, of course, there are things that need to be done, and situations so dangerous that quick and major action is required. But it is not enough to show that a situation is bad; it is also necessary to be reasonably certain that the problem has been properly described, fairly certain that the proposed remedy will improve it, and virtually certain that it will not make it worse. This requires thought, common sense, careful judgement, and above all no untested, or ill-tested, all-purpose solutions. All that sounds obvious and indisputable. It has not been the usual practice in the twentieth century. "
Nor, it turns out, has it been usual practice in the twenty-first.
For reading on my recent trip, I took historian Robert Conquest's powerful yet restrained polemic against ideology, Reflections on a Ravaged Century. Publishing this connected series of essays on totalitarian thought, its apologists, and attempts at inoculation in 1999, Conquest reminds us that the peculiar feature of ideologues is simply that they believe their higher purpose. Here he quotes from Norman Cohn1 :
" As with the chiliastic movements of centuries long past, modern revolutionaries have, as Cohn points out, claimed to be charged with the unique mission of bringing history to its preordained consummation. He notes of the earlier versions:And what followed then was the formation of a group of a peculiar kind, a true prototype of a modern totalitarian party: a restlessly dynamic and utterly ruthless group which, obsessed by the apocalyptic phantasy and filled with the conviction of its own infallibility, set itself infinitely above the rest of humanity and recognized no claims save that of its own supposed mission."
The Soviets, in the case relentlessly and knowledgeably examined by Conquest, actually believed what they said about world revolution and the perfectibility of man through socialism. When reality didn't match the rhetoric, it wasn't the ideology that had to be changed. Rather "reality" was redefined.
Or, in other, plainer, words, ideologues lie.
And not because they themselves happen to believe their lies as such, but because claiming and maintaining the power to mold the perfect society requires that everyone else believe that reality conforms to the ideology. Much of what remains desperately wrong with Russia stems from the poison of three generations of lies, seventy years of being unable to learn from experience. The following is from a letter of mine sent from Bosnia after having spent several weeks in formerly Communist countries and concerns my own observation of this theme:
" I do happen to believe in progress. Not only is it possible that the world get better, we can actively participate in that process. Evil, for me, is any system that takes people out of that adventure and renders them absent from history. The relegation of people to the status of parts in a machine, grinding through the years, no hope for a different life either in the present or in posterity is the particular nastiness of communism. Decades went by and millions of wasted lives fed a dream not of progress, but of perfection. And all attempts at perfection can be measured by the number of corpses piled up behind it. "
Conquest is best known as an anti-Communist historian of the Soviet Union. Despite what might seem like an ideological cast in his personal history, he makes a strong plea for acquiring a deeper historical awareness - especially the ability to wear another set of shoes, to see through another set of glasses, to pick at strange scabs and scratch different itches - as an antidote to ideology.
Conquest reserves most of his current ire for academics who fail to admit evidence into their theories, citing the nearly closed nature of academic hiring and the the love that intellectuals have for ideas in and of and for themselves. He, like so many of us, failed to note the rise of ideological think tanks, which are much more "closed" than any university. Yet every flaw in the academy he analyses, every tendency toward rigid policy prescription, and every bout of party-based paranoia is at least as true of the think tank environment as it is of the university.
I cannot help but think of Paul Krugman's recent reading of Kissinger (as told to Calpundit) and his realization that the Bush Administration means what it says. When the history of the radical left and its steps toward murderous excess causes some of us to look up from our newspapers and computer screens to take a closer look at our world and our leaders, frankly, I begin to shiver. In truth, I am not yet convinced that the Bush Administration is dominated by what Conquest refers to as an "Idea", though some elements within it certainly seem to be. However, a culture of outright lying, saying that which seems to be most expedient at the moment, combined with a persistent misinterpretation of facts in the service of ideological goals and a refusal to entertain even the slightest criticism (with self-criticism equally beyond the pale), is characteristic of a mindset that Conquest has warned us about before. We'd do well to actually learn from history for once.
. . .
1 Norman Cohn's Pursuit of the Millennium, about the rise of apocalyptic cults in medieval and Reformation Europe, is masterful, erudite, profound, and relevant. And so fascinating that you can hardly put the book down (or maybe that's just me?). All history should be written with this much thought and care.
Posted by Martial