Stalin, Mao, And The Cold War And There Are Still Communists? - The Willing Suspension Of Disbelief

Bob Muzelle proudly said that he was a Marxist. 'Not a Communist, mind you, but a Marxist.  There is a difference, you know'; but of course everyone knew that there was not.  The means of production, the proletariat, workers of the world unite, we will bury you, the politburo, and the KGB were all products of Marxism, just as much as Islam is at the root of Islamic terrorism. Bob was taking the meat out of the stew, being his old academic, precious self, and no one was buying it. 

Back in the days of Stalin and the Soviet Union Bob and his colleagues had looked the other way - or rather explained away the pogroms, gulags, and purges - by saying that the ends justified the means. The rot of capitalistic individualism was so deep that harsh measures were justified.  Yes, thousands of dissidents had been sent to Siberian labor camps, but this exile was only temporary until they realized the error or their ways, repented, and returned to society to fight with their comrades to continue the Revolution. 

Yes, the secret police often relied on extra-judicial measures to ferret out those who threatened the regime, but again such traitorous intentions could not stand in the way of the march to a just, equitable, and fair society. 

There was one aspect of the Soviet Communist state that was hard for Bob to explain - why was there a Berlin Wall? If the Soviet state was so utopian, so perfectly attuned to the aspirations of its citizens, so promising of a good life free from capitalist greed and the curse of individualism, why did citizens want to leave and why were they shot?

 

Although at first Bob stumbled - this one fact, the Soviet state as its own gulag was hard to explain - but he regained his balance and spoke eloquently about the idea of 'consolidarity' 

Who among us has not felt confined, limited by the rules and order of others? What child, what adolescent still immature without a fully developed sense of ethics, morality, and reason, has not fought against his parents?  Who has not chafed under the management of a disciplinarian, a manager with a broader vision of the company's objectives than any one worker?  Who has not balked at speed limits?  We all have, but in calmer, saner moments, we know that structure, limits, discipline and parameters is what makes society livable. 

The Soviets have only applied this principle to their people in the name of Revolution and a greater, more productive, more equitable society for all. 

Attempts to leave the well-ordered, promising, communal society behind is indeed an act of treason, an insidious statement designed to erode if not bring down the entire system.  The Berlin Wall is but a symbol of what I call 'consolidarity', the need to be one people. 

'Horseshit', said Hetherington Morgan, Bob's Yale classmate, descendant of J.P. Morgan and principal in the Wall Street bank founded by his forbears. 

Hatty Morgan was a BMOC - a Big Man on Campus - a scholar-athlete of good breeding, social grace, and sexual allure, and the elision from New Haven to New York was as smooth as silk. He joined the family bank, moved into a Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking the park, and within months was as successful and popular as he had been at Yale. 

 

It was this white, privileged entitlement that drove Bob to distraction. Why and how could a man with nothing but entitlement's graces become such a precious commodity?  Hatty was nothing but superficial gloss, gliding through life on his laurels, using other people's money to enrich himself, summer on the Vineyard or St. Tropez, be seen at the watering holes of the rich and famous.  While he, Bob, had substance, character, and a sense of moral purpose. 

'Horseshit', Hatty said again when he heard from a classmate at the Yale Club what Bob had been saying about him, and with that turned to other, more important things. Like the coming weekend in the Hamptons, the lovely Amanda Lodge and unimaginable delights with her.  Bob was an incidental bore. 

Bob used to walk by the Yale Club hoping to run into Hatty.  He had a speech already prepared, one laced with irony and a muted hatred for all he stood for; but when he saw him come out the door, arm in arm with a beautiful woman and step into a waiting limousine, he stopped cold.  He wanted to be Hetherington Morgan and there were no two ways about it. 

He had dated no one but wiry-haired Jewish girls from Brooklyn, daughters of old Socialists who still talked of Samuel Gompers, Brandeis, and LaFollette, girls who sat shiva and ate matzah balls and joined him for meetings in Avenue A tenements followed by grisly, oily love back on Bleecker Street. 

It was his own fault, he knew, choosing the path of righteousness over Gstaad and St. Barts.  He could have trod the same path - his family, while perhaps not of the same high pedigree as the Morgans wasn't chopped liver, and Yale was the great homogenizing milieu for opportunity and privilege.

Yet, here he was at an age when he should have a summer home, a padded retirement account, happy, well-placed children, an attractive wife, and a beautiful mistress, still plodding away at a Communist revival, snickered at, the joke of the party, the Commie, the Red, the never-say-die failed idealist who jumped to the defense of Stalin, Mao, Fidel, and every tinpot dictator in Africa who espoused The Movement. 

 

A painful moment, realizing that he hated Hatty Morgan for his wealth and privilege, but hated him more for his sexuality - his native, inimitable, desirable attractiveness to women.  'I hate the muthafucka', said Bob, but wasn't sure why. 

In any case, after the almost encounter in front of the Yale Club, Bob renewed his efforts to restore American Communism to its proper place in the political universe.  As always he demurred when asked how could he still be a Communist after the horrendous discoveries about Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, and the rest of the 'socialist' dictators in the world.  

'I am a Marxist', he said, 'not a Communist', but no one had ever read anything by Marx or Engels let alone appreciate the fine points of communist thought, and thought that Bob was simply off his rocker, caught in some kind of a wannabee time warp, still banging on about something no one had cared about for decades. 

It was one thing for a progressive to become conservative.  The old adage, 'Give a liberal enough time, and he will become conservative' has never been more true; but the transformation from Marxist-Leninist Communist to the far side is more unlikely. 

If it hadn't been for Hetherington Morgan and the Yale Club epiphany (when Bob realized that he wanted to be Hatty Morgan and hated him because of it), Bob would have progressed slowly from Communist to Socialist to Progressive to Conservative.  But epiphanies being what they are, a wake-up call out of whatever doldrums you are in, Bob did a volte face, rejected not only Communist doctrine but every last one of the nostrums in the progressive canon, and became his own man, the individualist that he had formerly eschewed, the willful, Nietzschean Superman of his imagination. 

There was still time, Bob reflected, to regain some of the territory lost to fantasy.  While not in his prime, he was no old man either, and pretty heads still turned in his direction; but there was the matter of his wife Corinne, the mortgage, the shabby office on U Street, the cabal of bearded prophets.  He might be done with the past, but the past was not done with him, OK, but what was he going to do about it?

Saying he was no longer a Marxist would be shamefully admitting that he had made nothing but wrong turns.  His life would be seen as one cul-de-sac after another, spinning his wheels, and worst of all a blabbermouth with nothing to say. 

'Fuck it', he said.  'I'm voting for Trump', the one final, absolute, irreversible action that would forever distance himself from communists, socialists, and progressives; and once he did, he felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders.

The last sighting of him was in a Portofino night club by none other than Hetherington Morgan.