Communist Symptoms in America
John FarnumVáclav Havel was an essayist and playwright in communist Czechoslovakia. He was an outspoken dissident to the communist regime and in 1975 he wrote an open letter to the president (or “general secretary”). In it, he critically analyzed the detrimental effects that the communist political system had on the Czech society and outlined his perceived causes of those symptoms. Many of the symptoms describe a significant portion of American culture; however, the causes of those symptoms, namely, facets of a communist government, do not exist in the United States. Perhaps Havel’s insights can help illuminate the causes of some of the similarly degenerate symptoms in our society.
Havel describes the communist revolution and the subsequent state of affairs in his country as follows:
It is as if the shocks of recent history, and the kind of system subsequently established in this country, had led people to lose any faith in the future, in the possibility of setting public affairs right, in the sense of any struggle for truth and justice. They shrug off anything that goes beyond their everyday routine concern for their own livelihood; they seek all manner of escape routes; they succumb to apathy, indifference toward impersonal values and their fellow men, to spiritual passivity and depression.
And later he says,
The more completely men abandon any hope of general reform, any interest in impersonal goals and values or any chance of exercising influence in an ‘outward’ direction, the more their energy is diverted in the direction of least resistance, i.e. ‘inwards’.
He goes on to say that this ‘inwards’ direction of energy manifests itself in the form of materialism and intensely private lives. It is my experience and observation that many Americans exhibit these symptoms. We are materialistic. We do not know our neighbors and focus a great portion of our energy on our private lives. There is a lot of political apathy, and people generally operate in a mode that is unconcerned for anything beyond their concern for their own livelihood. Granted the problem is probably much less drastic than it was in Havel’s time and place due to the flexibility and resiliency of a democracy, but it is interesting to see the same set of symptoms, to an extent, occurring in a society that exists within a very different political framework.
The number one cause that Havel identifies as the manufacturer of these symptoms is the state police and their enforcement of extreme restrictions which the political leaders deem necessary to keep the population in order and to maintain control. Though I am sure it is highly debatable, I will say that this is not the state of affairs in the United States of America. Things like the Patriot Act might smack of the communist state police, we do not have officers coming to our doors to confiscate plays or newspapers which might prove detrimental to the government. The cause of the degeneration of society must come from another source.
So far, I have not been able to hypothesize what the roots of these symptoms are in American society. The people in Czechoslovakia kept silent and stayed in line because they were punished for stepping out of line. The energy focused inward because the government needed to keep its people pliable and under control. People lost interest in social interaction because the government was determined to tell them what to believe rather than be directed by the input of its citizens. I can see that the US government might be interested in keeping its population docile and under control, but I do not see the mechanism by which it could be effecting this state except through very indirect an inefficient means.
I can hypothesize that many Americans are cynical toward their government because of continued dishonesty and stagnancy and that this might cause many of the symptoms concomitant with oppressive communist regime. I can hypothesize that increasing apathy toward spiritual truth is causing increased apathy toward morals and values and that the society defaults on a materialistic philosophy that resembles the effects of an oppressive communist regime. But all I can say for certain is that the similarities are striking between how Havel describes his oppressed country and how I perceive many Americans to be living.
Note: The quotes came from Václav Havel’s “Living in Truth”, edited by Jan Vladislav, Faber and Faber, London, 1989. It was one of the texts from a political science course at Wheaton College.
January 16th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Given your hypotheses, John, it seems that a better title for your essay should be “Materialist Symptoms in America”.
Communism is the most overtly materialistic socio-political system, but it is far from the only one. It’s common in economics to hear the phrase, “We’re all Marxists now,” because of the radical effect that Karl Marx had the definitions of wealth, capital, labor, and classes in contemporary economics. We could also say that we’re all Marxists now socially and politically too. Modern liberalism flows out of an earlier New Deal liberalism that was profoundly affected by Marxism. The beliefs that death is the worst thing possible and that material wealth is the sole measure of human happiness now characterize our society. You can see this, for instance, in the way that people view Mother Teresa increasingly with a jaundiced eye for her refusal to unnaturally extend her patients’ lives, or in the way that we consider the GDP and the stock market to be the most meaningful barometers of the health of the country.
These are the results of a materialistic ideology, however, not a Communist one. There are, I feel, examples in American society that seem to indicate that America is moving ever closer to the fascist state that Fredrich Hayek called “Serfdom”, but I don’t think we’re moving towards Communism per se.
January 16th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Every economics course I ever took began with the obligatory review of previously learned definitions, of which of course GDP was one. “We all know that GDP isn’t perfect,” (since it doesn’t measure diversity of economic scope nor income equality), “but we’ll be continuing the class under the assumption that GDP tells 100% of the story.” ARGH!
January 16th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Maybe that’s the link, Paul. I did not mean to imply that I am afraid that the US is leaning toward communism. Clearly, we’re not one, but the same symptoms exist as Havel was describing in communist Czechoslovakia. Perhaps the link is materialist philosophy. But Havel seemed to say that materialism was the result of oppression. He said that the people lost hope in social and political life and resorted to materialism and the private life as the last place of creativity and uniqueness open to them. You and Tom seem to be saying that materialism is causing apathy and indifference toward morals and values. I don’t know which comes first or if it’s a self-sustaining cycle. But I am curious as to whether or not there are forces at work causing apathy and loss of hope the same way the oppression of communism did.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
The 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto:
1.) Abolition of private property. (The Kelo decision)
2.) A heavy progressive income tax.
3.) Abolition of inheritance rights.
4.) Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5.) Centralization of credit in the hands of the state.
6.) Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state.
7.) Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state.
8.) Equal liability of all to labor.
9.) Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country.
10.) Free education for all children in public schools.
Defined by Marx and Engles, exactly where does the US differ from communism again?
January 17th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
the regime of which you speak does certainly exist in American society, but not necessarily exclusively in the government. It has a nebulous existence in the education system, the media, and in the legal and medical arenas.
not only the new communism, but the new mccarthyism also, is the fear of overpopulation and global warming. and the sort of generalized utilitarianism which infects the public mind, and which infects academia. i think it is this sort of oppression causes loss of transcendent hope which drives the sort of spiritual goal-seeking and ‘outward’ focus which Havel describes.
January 18th, 2008 at 11:17 am
I’d say that materialist philosophy is the chicken to the egg of social apathy and the broken spirit of the populace. So long as people believe in a genuinely transcendent reality, as long as there is something they can hang their hat on beyond the four corners of the Earth and the world presented to our five senses, it’s impossible to truly break their spirits. Once people become convinced that this is all there is, it becomes fruitless for them to resist when all there is is being taken from them or is controlled by an apparently omnipotent state.
I hadn’t looked over Marx and Engel’s little booklet in a long time, Tom. I’d forgotten their ten-step plan for world domination. It’s frightening to see just how far along America, a nation that never could become truly Communist, nevertheless is along the road to Communism. America’s demographics, history, and traditions strongly mitigate against it ever becoming properly Communist. Then again, given how determined many cultural elites are to destroy or transform America’s culture, traditions, and history, that situation could change much faster than anyone thought possible.
As an aside, it’s striking that the most important part of Marx and Engel’s platform in hindsight was universal public education, which wins the “Ryan Grant Throw-In Award” for most crucially important afterthought. To Marx and (to a lesser extent) Engels, the tenth point was the least important part of the list, and the most inevitable: when all the other ducks in the agenda had gotten into a row, free public education for all would be the natural next development that would finally cement The Revolution. But it turned out that Communism wasn’t so inevitable (although inevitability is another Marxist doctrine that’s infected modern society to an amazing degree), and free public education was one of the first planks of the Communist agenda put in place throughout the West. And, because of the oft-underrated influence which teachers have over their students, Marxist disciples were able to spread their ideology further and wider than they ever would have if Communists had stuck to the original 10-step plan. Funny how history turns out sometimes.
January 19th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Taking Paul’s point one step further, the abolition of private property rights was only recently legally removed in Kelo. America took the ten steps, and maybe followed them 10-1.