38. Communism

[Music] A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exercise this specter. So begins the communist manifesto written in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Welcome to the rest of this history with me, Dominic Sambrook, well-known Marxist, and my sidekick, Wishi Washi Brickston, centrist liberal Tom Holland. Hello, Conrad. Hello, Conrad. So today we're talking about communism, the great political theory that dominated so much conversation in the late 19th and much of the 20th centuries. And actually looking back to when we were kids, communism and capitalism are locked in this genuine competition, so it seemed for the hearts and minds of millions of people. I mean, when you survey the world, the map, I can remember those maps from my childhood, the Soviet Union and all the satellite states, check us about here, Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, East Germany and so on. You had in Africa, you had places like Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, you had Afghanistan, Mongolia, of course, the People's Republic of China, which is still technically communist as our Cuba, Vietnam and Laos, but there's been a huge falling off since then. So do you think communism is gone or is it still with us? I think it's such a potent idea and it went surprise you didn't know why I think it's a potent idea. I can't wait for this. I think it has very, very deep roots and maybe we'll come to that. And I think that the guiding kind of ideal that it embodies, that all of humanity can be liberated, and that all of humanity can share in an equal justice, is one that has an obvious appeal. And I guess that when we talk about communism, we tend to mean the specific form that it has taken in the writings of Marx and then the way that it's evolved with Lenin and with Mao and through the ideological war of the 20th century, as you said. But I do absolutely think that, I mean, it's China, potentially the greatest power on the face of the planet, remains a communist state. So it's ridiculous to say that communism has gone the way of an innervert and tired, simply purely on the political level, but I think it also continues to have a huge influence on the cultural level. So I would say that probably the two most influential communist thinkers at the moment would be Antonio Grampsky, Italian in writing in the '30s, who argued that essentially culture is the way for social justice to be established. And that's been hugely influential in all kinds of ways that people understand the operation of culture. And I'd say Fras Fanon, the great Martinique francophone writer who has essentially kind of articulated a Marxist understanding of world politics with an emphasis on how colonized societies and the global South can fight back against what he casts as oppressive imperial domination. And I would say that both of those thinkers have a and that's colossal influence. I mean, I go so far as to say that actually in a way, you could say that Marxism is more influential at the moment in the United States than it is in China, discuss. That's interesting. That's an interesting argument. But they're both offshoots, aren't they, from the sort of the main trunk of communism, which we associate with Marxism. So there had been ideas about a communist society before. So Thomas Moin is but Utopia at the beginning of the turn of the 16th century has this vision of a society where people share property and an idealized sort of post-futal world. And the diggers in the English civil war. Well, but I mean, these are communist other kinds. They're kind of proto-Marxist ideas. You could argue, couldn't you? Can I? Do you want to bring in your book? Do you want to do your thing? I mean, everybody's waiting for this. I'm not going to mention my book, but I would say that the the the prototype of a communist society is the early church. I'm giving you a hard time, Tom, for no very good reason, because I actually find you very convincing on this. I genuinely think you're onto something. So go for it. So I think the prototype is the description of the early church in the act of the apostles, where it says that the apostles selling their possessions and goods gave to anyone as he had need. And there's an obvious echo there of Marx's famous dictum from each according to his ability to each of according to his needs. And essentially that posed a kind of challenge to Christians, which is, is this a kind of realizable ideal? Yeah. And it's hard to over-emphasise the degree to which in the Roman world, the rich and the powerful assume themselves to be morally superior to those who were poor. And Christianity represents a really profound challenge to that assumption. And in the fifth century, you start to get the notion of a kind of class war that is motivated by Christian doctrine. And there's actually a British thinker called Plaegius, who argues that humans can redeem themselves from sin through their own efforts. And this manifests itself in a kind of particularly radical Plaegin thought, with the idea that the whole of history is an expression basically of the war of the rich on the poor. And therefore, if you get rid of the rich, then you will have paradise on earth. And this gets opposed by particularly Augustine, the great father of the church, who says that humanity is fallen. We can't possibly realise heaven on earth. And so the best that can be hoped for is that the rich will continue to give to the poor. And I think that in essence, I mean, you could say that there you have communism against social democracy set up in the fifth century Roman Empire. Basically, Karl Marx and the Cadbury's family, the sort of philanthropist. Yes. Essentially. It's a chocolate magnet. Essentially. And Augustine's influence is obviously, he's the huge influence on the church. Plaegius gets branded a heretic. And so over the course of the church, it's history. There's an extreme anxiety about any suggestion that Christian teaching particularly in the Gospels, you know, woe to the rich, the last shall be first and the first will be last. These sayings of Christ should be put into social practice. But you do start by the, I mean essentially the reformation that it's radical fringes is an attempt to put that into practice. Although, of course, you have, you have Calvinists who think if you're rich and successful, that shows that God is smiling on you and that that actually being wealthy, being a wealthy, sort of merchant or something is a sign of God's favour, right? Absolutely. But on the very, very radical fringes, so even before the reformation with the Hussite rebellion, you have this amazing communist, I think it's the first attempt to realise a communist society in European history, a place called Table, which is named after a mountain in the New Testament. And knights and beggars all join up and start digging this huge great city. And they're doing it against the backdrop that God is going to judge the world and that paradise will be established on the earth. I mean, and you can see that that idea of trying to build a kind of a universal equality and that the New Jerusalem will be built on earth, you know, you can see that that's kind of waiting. Then you've got the anabaptists in Munster who try to do the same. You've got the diggers in the English revolution. And all these figures are influential on Marx. So the diggers are now in a, what's now a gated community over at Clea, isn't it? A way to stop broken. Stop broken. Yes. So let's fast forward a bit to the 19th century and the emergence of what people now think of as communism. And now I would argue that that's and a lot of sort of carcass and communists get very offended if you and very cross if you say this. But I would say it's so obviously a kind of political religion that it's barely worth arguing about. I mean, it even later on has icons and banners and sacred texts and and prophets and all the rest of it. But the interesting thing about Marx is that Marx is not from a, I mean, he's from a converted Christian background, but he's actually Jewish heritage, isn't it? But do you think Marxism is basic? I mean, you're obviously due to think everything is Christian, but you're, you're kind of, what's everything? We agree that fascism wasn't any remaining skeptical listeners that Marxism is basically religious. Well, I think that, you know, the thing, the famous phrase that you read out at the top of the show, a specter is haunting Europe, the powers of old Europe invented and totally launched exercise this specter. I mean, on the most basic level, Marx has, I mean, he's kind of like a gothic writer. He's haunted by vampires and no wolves and the language of Das Kapital is kind of shot through with the idea that there are super-girls and parasites and all that sort of stuff. Yes. But I think on the broader level, Marx takes for granted that the oppression of the poor by the rich and the powerful is wrong. But he doesn't want to say that this is a metaphysical position because that would immediately kind of lead him wandering into theological dimensions, into the dimension of kind of Christian thought. So he claims that it's all entirely scientific. Well, that's the key word, isn't it? The scientific nature of materialists, the historicists. So he sits in the British Library, number crunching the facts and lots of graphs, lots of tables. supposedly proving the inevitable fact that the doll of history is a class warfare and that it is predestined that the wealthy will be overthrown that a class as paradise will be established. And it seems to me that essentially the whole pretence of Marxism to be scientific is a kind of e-dipol attempt to deny its Christian heritage. Wow, that's a big word. And indeed it's Jewish heritage because fascinatingly one of Marx's ancestors was Rabbi Love who was famous Rabbi in 16th century Prague. Who according to legend fashioned the golem which was a kind of monstrous automaton, a kind of protef Frankenstein monster which is in a way a kind of sensational prefiguring of the relationship of the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. So there's all kinds of strange stuff swirling around there and I think the idea that it's scientific is one for the burzery. I mean what do you think you're a man? I think it's scientific. I think it's scientific in the sense that so many theories and ideas developed in the 19th century were thought to be scientific because it was an age obsessed with science. So it's the age of Darwinism and it's the age of new technology and the railways and all the rest of it. And so any new theory almost by definition is going to be sort of grounded in in a scientific language and whatnot. And science in this case it stands in for, I mean Marx is often talking about being on the right side of history. So this idea of the inevitable progress of history and it's a scientific law. I mean science sort of stands in for God doesn't it in this I think in this formula. So Walter Benjamin the great German sort of 20th century philosopher. He compared Marxism's kind of historical materialism as they called it. He compared it with another automaton the Turk which was this sort of supposed robot. There was actually a bit of a con created before it was sort of created in the 18th and the 19th century or something. And he sort of said, you know what's hiding under the the the pretence of all the machinery is actually theology. And is this sort of you know that's the that's Marxism's dirty little secret that is basically theology posing as a science. And I've always sort of thought that I mean I remember when I was at university meeting people who sort of said you know the age of 20 with all their years of experience of the world they would sort of say all I'm a Marxist. And I'd often say, well, how do you know how have you decided how at this sort of age where we basically know nothing and we're still reading lots of stuff. How do you know that this is the blueprint that explains the well. And of course that was a stupid question because I thought it was a political position but it wasn't it was a religious position. And I think that's a statement of religious identity I think rather than a sort of I mean that's obviously not always the case. There are people who are more skeptical Marxists but it's not necessarily always when people say there are Marxist is not often it's not always a sort of cognitively carefully developed position often it's inherited. And I know if you've read David O'Rhonovich's book about growing up in a Marxist sort of a million I mean Marxists in Britain in the post war years where Marxism where communism was a tiny thing they had their own dentists they had their own circles of friends they're there a newspaper they had their entire own view of the world was a closed system not unlike a religious cult and in many ways I think that's what it is. Well Gramsky was a great admirer of the Catholic Church and it's interesting that across particularly Latin America but but also in you know Catholic countries in in Europe really the kind of the battle between Roman Catholicism and communism is often a kind of it's a war between siblings and they're both closed systems. But once you once you buy into it then everything makes sense. Yes and I and I think also the other the other obvious parallel with with with Christianity is the way in which people get branded heretics and the way in which dogma and doctrine has to be adapted to fit changing circumstance. So Marxist Marxist philosophy is clearly bread of the very distinctive circumstances of the mid 19th century so the revolutions that are going on in 1848 in continental Europe which end up leading to his exile to Britain where he and Engels who is basically running factories in Manchester and going fox hunting or the weekend and things. So he has a kind of I view of the way in which the industrial revolution is impacting towns like Manchester cities like Manchester and and inflicting a pooling suffering and you know Marx says you know profits have to have be it he has a big beard and there you go no further proof needed but it's also it's it's fascinating I mean I think also that that one of the things that you get from both Marx and Engels. Oddly is almost no one writes more in with a greater sense of awe about the achievements of the bourgeoisie than Marx I mean he you know he he he the way in which he describes the achievements of bourgeois civilization it's restlessness it's it's kind of global reach it's potency. It's it's a stupid fine portrayal of the achievements of Victorian Britain and there is also a kind of weird sense in which if you look at you know it's not just Engels with his his fox hunting Marx is kind of you know I mean he's going on seaside holidays isn't he I think his the otherwise is great fun of the I think that was it because he went event that didn't he for the last fortnight of his life and last holiday and it rained every day and that's very pretty familiar in the 1950s yes yes so you got the specifics of Marx's circumstances and Engels and then of course you got the very different circumstances of revolution is like Lenin who can very very different world that's what I wanted to move to because of course the great irony when Marxism and the communism is that Marx thought exactly that all you're saying about him and the achievements of the bourgeoisie he one reason he likes the achievements of the bourgeoisie or by them is because they have the seeds of their own destruction in them so he thinks the more capitalism develops the more sort of magnificent it is the more quickly it will crumble it's the grave digger again that gothic quality that is very gothic expression isn't it it's the digging their own graves so he thinks it's going to the revolution is going to happen in some of like Britain or Germany you know the most advanced industrial civilizations and actually it happens in Russia which is the one place that he had thought would be leading the counter revolution he'd sort of seen all this counter the revolutionary potential in Russia so Russia does have two industrial citizens Peter's Bergen Moscow but otherwise it's a huge sort of agrarian giant full of peasants it's exactly the wrong place in many words in many ways the wrong place in many ways for communism to take route and the key figure here is Lenin because Lenin is the person who says well actually what you need you know it's not just you don't just need the course of history what you need is a revolutionary vanguard party that will take the levers of power at stage a coup grab power and then push this through whether people sort of basically whether people like it or not because it's acting in the course of history and then and I think right at the beginning of the I mean right from the outset when Marxism is put into practice you have basically violence and dictatorship and you couldn't have it otherwise I think also you you you you have the offer of elitism so yeah the genius of Marxist Leninism is that it it offers you I mean basically so the Marxism will appeal to people who who are very concerned with social justice who who who want equality across the world who want justice and what Lenin does is to to fuse that with the sense that you need a controlling elite and on the theme of communists in London I did a brilliant radio piece once about this this room above what's now a curry shop in white chapel where I think for about kind of a few weeks ago in those communist conference that going on you had Lenin Stalin trotsky razor lots and burglarsky xenophie of all kind of staying in this this one bedside always on it we're making amazing sitcom yeah yeah sitcom very good Stalin and so I think and I think that they that the brilliant irony that is is that that was where the Bolsheviks IE the the majoritariums the people in the majority was saying and I think the mention of it's where you know that the people in the minority must be staying in even smaller well I think I mean it's interesting you mentioned Stalin because Stalin kind of hangs over every discussion of communism because you know Stalin murdered millions upon millions of people and the question with someone like Stalin and what I find so fascinating is it's a star in an aberration which it Marxist will now often claim all Stalin was somehow some imposter he was a monster who somehow got his hands on the experiments and all got out of control or for example there's the alternative view which is I don't know if you read these monstrously big books by Stephen cock in this American scholar who's working his way through Stalin's life and he says no everyone's got Stalin wrong Stalin wasn't a mad man Stalin wasn't even necessarily a sadist or you know any of these things that we imagine he's not sort of traumatized by his child but he's none of those things Stalin is actually a very good Marxist he spent all his life in immersed in Marxist ideas he's written tons of incredibly tedious articles about aspects of Marxism in Bolshevik journals and actually the reason that he kills all these people is because he thinks that's the way to achieve the paradise that he's actually a good mark system. That's the thing that, you know, when he makes his decisions, that's what always drives him on. And they're actually, the violence is inherent and the killing is inherent because that's the only way you're going to achieve this good society. Well, I think that when you look at Stalin or Mao or indeed Hitler, you have to bear in mind that by their lights what they're doing, they're doing for the best. And that, you know, the idea of killing millions in the cause of bringing about some ideal Earthly Sitch is so monstrous to most of us that it takes such a gear shift that I think it's difficult to do that. But I agree. I think that Stalinism develops logically out of Leninism, which in turn is a logical attempt to adapt Marx's theory to, as you've said, the kind of unexpected fact that the revelations that have been Russia are not in Britain or Germany. But I also think Tom that by his nature, it has to be violent because there's always a confiscatory element in communism. You know, some people have to be brought down. And those people are never going to say, "Sure, have one my furniture." Have my second home, please take it. You know, there's always going to be a violence is inherent in it. And violence is in the language. I mean, Lenin's language was extraordinarily violent and Lenin, of course, famously said, "I used to like music and listening to nice songs and fluffy animals and nice books and stuff." But now I can't do that. I have to be harder than hard. Those things will weaken me for when I become dictator, when I have to kill people. And he's as good as his word. And I think in that, to that, the idea of there being a separation between this sort of cuddly Marxism that Lenin supposedly incarnates. And then the sort of the mass graves Marxism of Stalin, I think is a false image. Anyway, we need to take a break, Tom. Sorry. We need to take a break. The listeners are very keen to go and overthrow social conditions and collectivize agriculture. So I think we should let them do it. And we'll have a cup of tea. And then you can say what you wanted to say after the break. How about that? Are they not going to? They're going to go and listen to adverts, aren't they? Well, Marx would approve, I'm sure. All right. We'll see you after you've indulged some capitalist impulses. See you in a minute. Welcome back to the rest of history. On Thursday, we're offering that natural companion piece to today's discussion on communism. We're talking Elizabeth I with the historian Tracy Bourman. And here's an early warning for your diaries on the evening of Wednesday, the 21st of April. We are going to do something very exciting. We're going to do our first live episode of the podcast, live on the internet. And it's going to be all about assassinations Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Indira Gandhi, Tom will know that we talk about Julia Caesar. Not to anticipate, Tom. No, yeah, of course, very good. We'll post a link on Twitter that week. Everybody is welcome. So you can join the show and we'll be answering the questions live. You can throw your abuse status then and there's no effort to hide. It will be a lot of fun for everybody. Now, Tom, I cut you off and you wanted to say something unbelievably interesting about communism. Well, I, yeah, I'm believably interesting, but I'm going to combine it with the first of the many, many questions we've had. And this is from Duncan Hibberd where he says, is communism inherently totalitarian? I'm wondering about Lenin and Stalin. Isn't, isn't Stalinism essentially economically based? So it's about trying to reconfigure the economy. And once you do that, then inevitably, in a sense, you have to kind of seize control of every possible lever. There is no space left for anyone to do anything that the government isn't controlling. And that there might be, I don't know, other, I mean, I mean, Grampsky would be maybe an alternative form of communism that puts an emphasis on control of culture rather than not the economy. Okay. So I would say it probably isn't inherently totalitarian because it's not pluralist. If you're a communist, you don't tolerate, you can't really tolerate challenges. I think, and of course, Lenin's idea of kind of democratic centralism is that basically when the parties agreed, everybody must agree. And you can't have, you can't, you know, Marx and Lenin hated dissent or disagreement. I mean, they spent an enormous amounts of time trying to crush any sort of disagreement among their own kind of little group of schools. So I think it probably does have an inherently totalitarian bent. And I think Tom going back to what you're saying, Stalin thought that Russia needed rapidly to industrialize because he'd completely imbibed the kind of Marxist idea about the course of history that you'd become an industrial country and then you'd become a communist one. So he pushes that through, you know, and he demands total control, particularly, and it's mainly the collectivization of agriculture. I mean, that's what kills a lot of people at the turn of the 1930s. And he doesn't know what this is for a revenue. Yeah, because he needs to, he needs to, yeah, exactly. He wants to rapidly, rapidly industrialize. He wants to sell grain abroad. He wants to get people into the factories. He wants to cut out, he hates the idea of, you know, private ownership among the peasants, you know, the kulaks who have built up their own little small holdings. He wants to crush them, not because he's a, I mean, his latest biography would say, not because he's a mad monster, this sort of slavering demon, but because he's a Marxist, because he thinks that's what you do to get the good society. But he's a Marxist who has turned his back on a fairly fundamental proposition of Marx that this is something universal. I mean, he's pushing the idea of socialism in one country. He is, you're right. Yes. And so that, I mean, it's that, basically, that, I guess, once he's made that decision, once he's hitched his start of that idea, an awful lot then follows from that, because, yeah, immediately people in other countries are cast as enemies, and immediately the focus has to be on a kind of, I suppose, a kind of communist nationalism. The list of countries that you at the beginning of the program where you listed as communist didn't include North Korea. And I guess that, you know, it's a kind of monarchy, isn't it, with a dead rather like a couple? Yes. A kind of dead body presiding agent, which shows that there were kind of weird ways in which communism can evolve. But I mean, it's, it's a lot of the kind of the most monstrous crimes are where communism fuses with nationalism. So in Ukraine, for example, Stalin, the famine that Stalin causes there. I mean, obviously, if that had been in Russia, in closer to, if it had been just outside Moscow, you're right. I think there would have, yeah, there might have been a different kind of reaction to it. I mean, to our producer was hectoring me, hectoring is probably a bit harsh, but he was giving me a hard time. He said, you know, if Stalin is just a good Marxist, why does that, how does that explain the backlash against Stalin after his death in 1953? You know, Christchurch makes the secret speech in which he denounces Stalin's crimes. And then there's a sort of slight thawing in the Soviet Union. I mean, I think there's no doubt that Stalin became incredibly despotic. And that power corrupted as it were. But I think, you know, a lot of those people who are, I mean, there's an interesting question about how Marxist are the leaders of the Soviet Union after the 1950s or how much are they? I mean, in some ways, they're quite conservative. You know, they're no longer pushing sort of to create the New Jerusalem. They're defensive. They're what we have we hold, I think. And they're defensive. Yes. And they're defensive because of the role played by the party, which becomes a kind of elite. And if obviously, if you're in the party, you hold power. And if you hold power, then you want to keep hold of it. Yeah. So I think these are the weird things. These are people who in Red Square, every May, they stand there on the balcony, which is on Lenin's, on Lenin's tomb to go back to our St. Cuthbert analogy. They're standing above them sort of mummified body of Lenin. And all these people are parading past with pictures of great icons of Karl Marx. But Marx, if you saw those men probably wouldn't recognize them as, as, you know, his comrades because they're, he's always been an outsider, a radical, a journalist tilting against convention, whereas they are the ultimate defenders of convention, you know, Brezenev and all these sort of identicate gerontocrats in their sort of gray suits. I mean, these aren't people that Marx would sort of, I don't think he'd enjoy their company. And I guess you can say the same about China, where it's Marxism, Leninism with Chinese characteristics, isn't it? Yeah. So in China, again, that question of, of now, is it communist state, I mean, clearly formally it is, do the Chinese part, do the Communist Party in China, do they, are they communist? Do they believe it? I don't think they are. I mean, I think, you know, in the same way that you could possibly, well, it's an interesting one, isn't it, Tom? I mean, where people, Christians, you know, all these medieval monarchs, they believed that they believed they were Christians, I suppose. But, you know, did they, when they read about turning the other cheek and all that sort of stuff, it's hard for a rich, some of them passing through the eye of the needle and all that sort of stuff. So I mean, this is that I think it's probably the same thing, isn't it, with the, with the, the leaders of the Soviet Union, or indeed of the China, that they, they sort of fit, they think they believe it, but they don't live it. Maybe it's a distinction, I don't know. We should move on to another question. We should move on to Beatrice Mouse. There's that Beatrice Mouse. for those who say it hasn't been tried properly, isn't it's failure baked in, properly ends up with economic failure and tyranny. I mean, this is the stuff of a thousand social media arguments. Has it been tried properly or not? Do you think, Tom, it's been tried properly? Do you think it's been given a fair crack of the whip? - Well, I think to go back to the key perspective of Marx, it's about justice and it's about liberating people to fulfill their potential. And if you think of it in those terms, rather than in the supposed I'm clad economic laws that will make it happen and the whole kind of ideological apparatus that has been built up around it, I think that that ideal absolutely preserves its power. And to go back to what I was saying at the beginning of the program, I think that a lot of what is agitating people in the West at the moment is kind of recognisably bread of that matrix, I think. - So you, so you, so that's slightly a base of answer. You haven't said whether you think it has or hasn't been tried properly. - I think the assumption is because we've had communist states. - We won't have that. - There is such a thing as communism. But I think that if you think of it, again, perhaps again, a bit more like Christianity or something like that as an ongoing way of living and approach an ideal and attempt to shape your life by certain ideals, then I think that the idea of, I mean, and I know that of course Marx is talking about the fact that they will ultimately be a class of society. So that is baked into his perspective. But it's very telling, I think, that in his writings, he barely talks about it and even Lenin, I mean, he's obsessed with the dictatorship of the proletariat and you need the dictatorship of the proletariat to usher in what will ultimately be the classless state. It's just that it never arrives. So I guess the degree that the new Jerusalem will never be built on a, the classless society will never arrive. Yeah, failure is inevitable because it's not gonna happen because this is a theological myth. But I think that as a way of governing your life, clearly it provides meaning for people across the face of the planet and it continues to convulse and agitate the way that certainly British society, American society, European society is operating at the moment. I think that if you think of communism as a way of living rather than a inevitable endpoint, I don't think that that would be my take. You see what I would say Thomas, if even if you think of it as a way of living, if you look at all the regimes that proclaim themselves communist and there were quite a lot, I mean, we're talking about dozens. There are lots of examples of people where they've, they've taught capital, das capital in schools where they've had all the banners, where they've had the pictures of marks where academies have been devoted to this stuff, where they've really thought they were following it. And in every one, there's been repression violence. Yeah, I mean, there's a point at which you sort of say, well, maybe this isn't a coincidence. Maybe this is kind of baked into the project from the very outset. I think because of its anti-pluralist nature, because if you claim to have a monopoly on truth, and if you claim we are carrying out the will of history as all these regimes did, particularly from 1945 onwards, then you're always going to get into trouble because any form of challenge is illegitimate. Yeah, and I think the idea that there are iron-clad economic rules that have to be followed, even when they don't actually work. Yeah, it's a huge part of the problem, but on the broadest level, I think it is impossible to build Jerusalem on Earth. I think Augustine is right. I think that we are fallen. I hope you want to put it. Humans are not capable of living like that. And it's true of communists, it's true of Christians, it's true of Muslims, wherever you try and build, the ideal state without acknowledging the thought that humans are humans, the things are going to go wrong. You end up with disaster. Have you ever seen this stuff or read this stuff about Boris Yeltsin going to America? So Boris Yeltsin, I think, what is he then? He's a big figure, I think, and he's just been kicked out of the polybure, but he's still big in the Russian Parliament or being in Moscow party boss or something. Is he mayor of Moscow? Exactly, mayor of Moscow, I think he is. He goes off to visit NASA near Houston. And on the way, he says, I'd like to actually want to see what America is really like away from all the handlers. And they take, he stops in a place called Clear Lake, and he goes to a supermarket called Randalls. And there's pictures of him in this supermarket, inspecting the freezer cover and this and stuff. And it's just a kind of piddling little supermarket. And his ashen face, he is horrified. And he gets in his car afterwards, and all the people, his age, he didn't speak for 40 minutes or something. And he was so distressed. And he said, how we have failed, the Russian people, it's just abominable that Americans are living like this. And you know, Supermarkets and Russia, I've got kind of a dead dog in them or something. And that's it. And he's just, and it's astounding the extent to which even the kind of elite we're kind of living in a complete fantasy world. And the spectacle of what capitalism was actually really like was just this dreadful shock when they, when Yeltsin realized, is it Ray Canite propaganda that Gorbachev basically realized the game was up when he went to California and flew in a helicopter over, pay and look down at all the swimming pools or something. I don't know. That's a good idea. So I think certainly one of Ray, one of Gorbachev's key aides was when I got Alexander Yakovlev. He went to Canada and he became friends with Trudeau. And he was devastated by what he saw in Canada. You know, it was just like to see how ordinary people lived was because, of course, people were told that the only the elite lived like this, that in Russia, you believed that the kind of Western elite were selling a lie and that everybody was actually really downtrodden and miserable. And to get there, I think, for a lot, and the same with Oleg Gordievsky, actually, who we talked about with their Macintyre, the de facto. He too, he was in Copenhagen. And again, he was standing there thinking, we are the baddest. OK, OK. But I think you see, I think that's been reconfigured since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union. Because that spectacle of wealth, of course, was precisely what shocked Marx. And what you get in capital away from all the graphs and the figures is this sense of kind of molten anger at the way in which the prosperity of the bourgeoisie depends upon children's starving and people being affected from their homes. And I think more particularly people in distant colonies being worked to death so that the bourgeoisie can have sugar with their tea. And I think that actually today, the spectacle of Western wealth operates for many people in a similar way. And I think that that's a huge dynamic in the kind of understanding of global relations. The idea that Western wealth has been built on systematic exploitation. And so Lenin's idea that imperialism is kind of the last-- the ultimate manifestation of bourgeois civilization. I think that that still has an afterlife in contemporary culture. It definitely does. And it's very popular. The problem, though, that you have, if you're going to take that line, I think is how do you explain then the massive rise in life expectancy and living standards in Africa and Asia? So these-- Well, particularly Asia. But also in Africa too. I mean, the rise in life expectancy, for example, these never have so-- in many way, of course, because there are more people, there are more poor people than ever. But relatively speaking, the human race now lives longer. We live longer, much more comfortable, much more prosperous lives, insulated from the fear of early death or disease than any generation before us. I mean, that's come up, you're punishing the environmental cost, as we all know. But the problem is the exploitation of the poor argument. I mean, not everything is based on sweatshops. Anyway, we need to do some questions, Tom. Yes. And if there are any still left, this one is still left. We need-- they could probably outrage. Go on, ask a question. Here's one from Chek Archbold, who always comes up with good questions. What's the development of some sort of communist ideology inevitable in Europe? There were some communist-like movements before Marx, but if Marx had not lived, would something quite like Marxism have emerged? And that's great, isn't it? Because an awful lot of Marxists that certain things are inevitable. But someone like Marx is just epiphenomenal. He's just a bubble of froth on a heaving ocean. This is a bit like the question. I think we've debated before. Would the Beatles have-- John and Thorne had never met. Would there have still been the Beatles? There would still have been Marxism, clearly. Because Marx was building on Sassy Moore and Fourier and Robert Owen. And there were loads of-- Who the fuck is this guy? Yeah, Prudon, exactly. So there was back Union and there were other people who could have been maybe would have loomed larger than Marx. And then Marx was in many ways a genius. I don't think they can be any doubt of that. A man of enormous intellectual capability, which is why he became such a big figure. And he's a great self-promote on a great propagandist as well. And the communist manifesto is a great read. But there would have been. Don't you think there would have been some form of-- Yeah, I do. I think, however-- And again, not to say, go on my King Charles's head. I think that the hostility to religion might have been less. 'cause that. were many communist thinkers who were very keen on all that kind of Cloudy Fluffy, heavenly staffers. Right. So I think that's maybe the key thing that Mark's brought to the party. The producer is gagging for us to do Rick Hunter's question. I've got no why, but I mean maybe he's Rick Hunter or maybe he has something on him. So Rick Hunter, no offense Rick. Rick Hunter says, "If the men's chavix is about the men's chavix, if the men's chavix had launched the Russian Revolution instead of the Bolsheviks, how would things have played out? Was that ever a real possibility?" I would say, "No, it probably wasn't a real." Well, it would have been a completely different revolution. Tom, what do you think? Well, I think that the difference between Bolsheviks and men's chavix is essentially how brutally you're willing to be, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, it's basically how moderate, it's best to some extent. So I think, yes, so I think that a bunch of kind of, you know, centuries dads will never go back. That's a big, yeah. I don't think the men's will start to speak. We're never going to kick off the Russian Revolution. I mean, the Bolsheviks, the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks, you said, you said, the violence is baked in. And yet, the irony, right, the ambiguity is the Bolsheviks succeed because the one thing they offer is peace. Everybody else pretty much is arguing for Russia to carry on in the First World War in the summer of 1917. And the Bolsheviks make progress, particularly among the army, because they're the ones who are saying, "No, we'll have peace with Germany. We'll stop fighting straight away." And all their rivals are sort of shilly-shallying and saying, "Well, we're still committed to the Allies." So the Bolsheviks win by saying peace, but also they're prepared to be more extreme. They're always prepared to go further than anybody else. And so, of course, if anybody else had been, you know, if Karenski had stayed in power, then yes, the history of the 20th century would look, I mean, it would look very different, I think. Similar dialectic going on with Trotsky and Stalin. And Stalin ultimately wins out again because he essentially, I mean, weirdly, office, you know, peace and stability, whereas Trotsky is all about permanent revolution. Well, Trotsky is a loose cannon, isn't he? He's a complete loose cannon. And Stalin is the secretary. He is the boring guy in the meetings. He's got all done all the paperwork. I love the idea that both Lenin and Stalin are the kind of safe, stable. of all the Germans. Anyway, Liz J. Great question here. Would a non-Communist Russia have been able to resist and ultimately defeat Nazi Germany or was it the unique nature of being a communist state that allowed it to fight the war with such brutal force and disregard for human life? That's a great question. And you've just written a review of a book on Stalin's war, haven't you? I have. Very extraordinary book actually by Michael Schoen-Mekin. Number Mekin. He has this great idea. It's a brilliant central idea of, you know, let's instead of thinking about the war just about Hitler, we should think about it through Stalin as the key to the war, not Hitler. So, you know, Stalin, look at it through Russia's point of view. It's Russia that. Russia also invades Poland, Russia as well as at the Baltic States. You know, Japan is largely motivated by fear of Russia, so Russia allows you to tie together sort of the eastern, western theatres, the sort of Pacific and the European theatres of the war. But he also has this extraordinary argument, which slightly to me under. Well, faithfully under Minds book, which is that the Allies should have attacked Stalin as well as Hitler. So, we should have. Having declared war, well, Hitler about Poland. We should then have declared war on Stalin when Stalin went into Finland. We should have fought and defiant and defended Finland. He thinks that Britain and France, if we'd fought Stalin in Finland, that Roosevelt would have joined in, which I don't think he would, and that Mussolini would have joined in on our side as well. So, that would be a very different. Anyway, you're selling me off there. That was the Italian my fault, I sent you. It was. It was. to the top. without a talk. would a non-communist. russia. maybe not actually. I mean, the nature of communism meant that you could discipline and control millions of people. I say, you know, it's the idea of sacrificing people in the name of the greater good. That sort of came naturally to Stalin's commanders and there's sort of no step back rule that the Soviet commissar or sort of drumming into their offices. I mean, that feels very Stalinist. And, you know, military historians, people at Max Hastings, will say, you know, the Russians were prepared to do whatever it took and pay any price. You know, when British generals or American generals were a bit weedy about sacrificing their men, you know, the Stalin. Styleans generals knew that basically they didn't sacrifice their men, they'd be shot themselves. So, they were very effective in that sense. Wasn't the same thing going on with Napoleon's invasion of Russia, though. Well, yeah, that's the argument. And of course, and in the first world war, the Tsarist officers treated their men like absolutely. Yeah, they treated them a bit. Cannon fodder. Also, I mean, it's when the Nazis invade that Stalin slightly resurrects some of the old traditions of Russia. Also, he's. Yeah. He sends an icon up in a plane that flies around the city limits of Moscow. So, that's Stalin's much underestimated politician, because he's much more flexible than let's say Hitler is. He's canier than Hitler. And I think you're right about. There's always this. People often forget about Russia that as recently as the sort of mid to late 19th century, about 40 million Russians have been served, they're basically slaves. So, there's sort of violence and inequality was kind of. was baked into Russia. Stalinism or no-style anism. Okay. I think we've got time for one more question. Dolly. Do you want to do the space question? Yes. So, this is Richard Goldstein, and he asks, "If technology continues to rapidly improve, isn't a communist system inevitable for earthlings in a thousand years, if not a hundred years, when there is no barrier to material well-being, wouldn't competition dependent livelihoods become obsolete?" There's a lot of communism in science fiction. I love the fact that Richard Goldstein may not himself be human when he talks about earthlings. Yeah, there is. You're right. And there was a communist group called the "Positists". The "Positists" Dennis Healey complained about in his memoirs that he was being heckled. The "Positists" were supporting Tony Ben in the Labour Deputy Leadership Election of 1981. The "Positists" believe that because communism is the future, and because communism, because it's the future, and it's historically inevitable, communism is identified with technological modernity. The "Positists" believe that if there were any other civilizations in the universe, there were more advanced than that. They would, by definition, have to be communist. So they thought the revolution would probably be brought, and they still do think the revolution would probably be brought to earth by people of flying sources who will impress us with their communism, and then we'll convert it. We'll all become communists. I don't find that very plausible. And I don't find Richard Goldstein's argument very. I don't think it will become inevitable, actually. I think it goes against human nature. You brought up Tony Ben. Yeah. Who I learned from your book got stuck on the penis by a wasp. In the bath, I think. No, I think when he was gardening, it wasn't it. But kind of interesting parallel to Marx, who had a huge boil on his penis and wrote two angles about it. So there you go. Great hero. This is what happened. Here is a socialism left wing of the spectrum. When you get into that world, boils follow. Brilliant. Well, I think we figure of our podcasters. Time is the grave digger of our podcasters. I think this sort of hybrid analysis is precisely what is needed to close the conversation about Marxism forever. Well, time has been largely called on communism. It's been called on us today or a mind of the on Thursday we're talking about Elizabeth the first with Tracy Bourman. So you can't ever accuse us of having too narrow a field of interest on this podcast. Anyway, thank you for listening. Enjoy the revolution and see you soon. Bye. Thanks for listening to the rest is history. For bonus episodes, early access, ad free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. One of the darkest scandals of the modern era, a billionaire financier, powerful friends, hidden networks and questions that refuse to go away. Was Jeffrey Epstein a spy? I'm Gordon Carrera and I'm David Buklowski. And we're the hosts of the rest is classified, the intelligence and national security podcast from Gohanger. And we've just released a gripping new series investigating whether Epstein was linked to any spy agencies. And asking what those agencies might have known about him. Listen or watch now on Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.