Pun Salad

This book won the "Hayek Prize" from the Manhattan institute earlier this year. That's a reliable signal that it's worthwhile reading in my ideological comfort zone. The author, Sean McMeekin, is a history professor at Bard College; judging from the titles of his other books, he specializes in all things Commie.

His book was unavailable at Portsmouth Public Library, but the good Interlibrary Loan folks at the University Near Here were happy to fetch a copy from the Boston Public Library. (Thanks as always, Jean!)

As you might guess from the subtitle, it's a global history of Communism, starting off from musings of Plato, but only getting its modern form in the woolly-headed thoughts of Thomas More, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, and others. And finally maturing in the works and activism of Karl Marx. Who combined bad economics, dubious historicism, a contempt for liberalism, and flaming rhetoric into an ideology that predicted … well. nothing that resembled what actually happened. Which, over decades, and over many countries was (variously): ruthless terror, pestilence, hunger, repression, and poverty. Examples abound, and McMeekin describes even the most stomach-turning ones dispassionately.

Appropriately enough for a Hayek Prize-winner, the book provides plenty of examples illustrating Chapter 10 of The Road to Serfdom: "Why the Worst Get on Top". Whatever charisma the Communist leaders exhibited was invariably backed up by an iron fist. (Before reading, I was under the impression that Trotsky was a kindler, gentler version of Stalin. Nope, sorry: that Mexican ice axe was too good for him.)

A recurring sub-theme in the book: the occasional lifelines and bailouts the non-Communist West offered struggling Communist regimes, for example: 1921's Russian Famine Relief Act; (somewhat more understandable) the Lend-Lease program during WWII; extending most-favored-nation status to China; and more.

And another take-home point: when Communists take their boots off the necks of their subjects even slightly, it can result in chains being thrown off. Sometimes it works (Eastern Europe); sometimes it doesn't (Tiananmen Square).