In the intellectual capitals of Western Europe following WWII, particularly after Stalin’s 1953 death, the tide turned against Communism. The Marxist-Leninist ideology which had been so popular on the Left began to bleed adherents, especially after Khruschev’s secret speech, in which he denounced Stalin (Feb. 25, 1956). This put the seal of approval on the anti-Stalinist movement, but also proved to be an advance obituary for the Soviet Union itself, which collapsed in 1991.
As the severity of the USSR’s deficiencies became increasingly apparent even to its fans, some intellectuals began to wonder why their brethren had been so uncritically attached to defending Communism, with its false promises of progress. It was because too many of them, lured by Communism’s seemingly benign philosophy of equality and liberation, had turned a jaundiced eye to its horrors: the gulags and show trials, the repression, the false information, the purblind disregard of reality. Then too, Communism could boast of no achievements: the Soviet Union and its Eastern European client states lagged far behind the West in economic prosperity. Most of the world eventually rejected Communism as a realistic political/economic system. Even socialism—Communism lite—suffered in reputation.
Oakland officials and their progressive backers would do well to ponder this period of history. Communism was rejected because it didn’t work. Two generations of far-left thinkers finally realized they’d been wrong and were forced by reality to admit it. Even by the late 1950s in America, Communism was dying. As the newspaper of the Young Socialist League reported (April 21, 1958), “Thousands have left the Communist Party; together with other tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of sympathizers and friends, they seem to have melted away as a political force leaving the Communist Party itself nothing but a sectarian shell…”.
And yet there remained small cadres of Communists in America. Like debris scattered on a beach when the tide recedes, their remnants influenced a new generation of leftist revolutionaries into the 1960s and beyond. The Black Panthers, with their “revolutionary ambition and its communist politics” (in the words of the Marxist group, Red Flag), kept Communist ideas circulating on the left, promoted by a group that included Angela Davis, whose ideological “sisters” today include Pamela Price, Cat Brooks and Barbara Lee.
The lesson these individuals ought to learn from history is that it’s never too late to dismiss a bad idea. We should blame no one for subscribing to Communist or progressive ideologies when they’re young and idealistic. Most of us are guilty of that mistake. As Churchill is reported, probably erroneously, to have observed, “If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.” What are we to make of politicians who remain socialist-Communists into their 50s, 60s, 70s? Stubbornness begins to describe it, and intellectual opacity, compounded with a desire to remain relevant (and well-paid) for toeing the political line. Politicians continue to prop up the “sectarian shell” of progressivism even when it’s been hollowed out and eviscerated, as it has been. When we witness the destruction these ideologues in Oakland have wrought upon our city, we might turn to history to cheer us up: sometimes, unlikely as it may seem, profoundly mistaken people can see the light and change their minds.
Meanwhile, we might as well admit it: Oakland is an outlier among American cities. It’s one of the few places where radically misguided ideologues still cling to power. These politicians are the American Stalinists, desperate to hang onto the gears of society, threatened with obscurity and determined to bring about their racialized revolution before they die. They don’t realize that History has left them high and dry.
Steve Heimoff