
Ideology | Communist daze
I was a communist.
“The communists? They’re as bad as the Nazis.”
My mother was, as is often the case with mothers, right from the start.
That did not deter me from, age fifteen, signing up for a communist youth organisation.
My affiliation to communism lasted four years, and my connection with Marxist politics a further eight.
It was 1999.
I had married a corpse.
Communism was dead.
Writing in 2017 it is hard to recall quite how dead communism, leftism, and Marxism were in the 1990s.
That is not to say that the left today enjoys anything approaching the power and prestige it did between 1945 and 1989 — but the 1990s stand in relation to our own time as the Edwardian era did to the Great Depression.
We live in perpetual recovery from the 2008 economic crash as we explore the deeper variations in budgetary red to pay for our forever wars against Islamism. Liberal democracy, and its attendant multicultural project are challenged by an authoritarian, nationalist right while authoritarian capitalist states, such as China and Singapore, rise to economic preeminence.
Oh, the golden ‘90s.
Western economies grew, and a global liberal democratic capitalist order seemed assured. The Internet was still homespun, but we could already feel our nervous system expand with each new connection. There were bush wars in Iraq, Bosnia, and Serbia — but these were video game engagements without hundreds upon hundreds of limbless veterans to clog our consciences. Multiculturalism worked, with only diehard fascists and high conservatives opposed to our obvious mutual compatibility.
And with the USSR gone, the nuclear death shroud was drawn back to make life a little less anxious.
My childhood, of course — perhaps you think I romanticise? But remember, I was disillusioned enough with that dispensation to kick back, and join an organisation that set out — through revolutionary means if necessary — to overturn that order.
What I am saying is that on rational grounds a young person today has better reason to consider or communism or Marxism to be a viable solution to our current problems than a young person in the late 1990s.
Communism was still a living memory for me. I remembered Gorbachev, the Fall of the Berlin Wall — and I also remembered the dull, oppressive nuclear threat.
A fifteen-year-old today has no sense of two superpowers in nuclear contention, and capitalism has been in a severe, and obvious crisis for sometime.
It is not self-evident, as people felt in the 1990s and early 2000s, that there is no alternative to liberal democratic capitalism.
But what drew me to communism was not the general political situation, though I was very attuned to politics.
One summer, when I was thirteen or so I read Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, which exposed the US role in supporting the mujahideen in Afghanistan.
And, earlier still, when I was perhaps eleven my mother had bought me a book put out by a Trotskyist group to explain why there was a civil war in Yugoslavia. I also read Animal Farm, though it did not inoculate me against communism.
These works were critical of capitalism, and imperialism — a certain groundwork, and disposition was being laid in me.
I was, in short, quite the politics freak before I became a communist.
§
When discussing far-left politics it is important to remember that the movement is like HIV; it evolves and mutates at an extremely fast rate.
Mutations on the far-left occur weekly, with new parties (often with no more than a handful of members) springing up every few years.
By contrast, the right is shark-like — its DNA mutates rarely and slowly. Its killing roots are back in deep history, roots that do not need to change to ensure its survival.
On the left, particularly for people involved in the far-left, these divisions and mutations matter.
A lot.
What turns on the divisions in the far-left is nothing less — in the far-leftist’s mind — than the future security, and happiness of mankind.
Involvement with one far-leftist party is enough to make a person a pariah to another.
I joined a party that had remained loyal to the Soviet Union until the end.
The party’s general line was that ‘mistakes were made’, but that with new computer technology and a greater electorally democratic element socialism — eventually communism — could still be realised.
The party further pointed to communism’s role in ending the West’s imperial domination of the world, communism’s opposition to racism and apartheid, and the USSR’s role in defeating Nazi Germany as evidence that — though flawed — communism had a positive role in human affairs.
What appealed to me about communism was, oddly enough, its elitism.
This is not as strange as it seems.
This party was an orthodox Marxist-Leninist party.
Marxism-Leninism is an elitist political form of political organisation geared towards intellectuals; it is supposedly democratic form of elitism — but elitism none the less.
The idea that I could be part of an elite was deeply appealing, and what was more this elite seemed to be for ideas that were generally considered to be morally good and worthy in mainstream society.
Ideas that I had been brought up to believe were what decent people believed to be good.
Anti-racism is widely promoted as a moral good. And the communists made more of their anti-racism than anyone else. Anti-fascism is widely seen as a moral good. And the communists made more of their anti-fascism than anyone else. Imperialism is widely believed to be shameful and bad. And the communists made more of their anti-imperialism than anyone else.
The list went on. When it came to being against war in the Middle East, for feminism, and for LGBT rights it was the communists who held the most advanced position on these issues.
“How, where and when I became a member of the Soviet intelligence service is a matter for myself and my comrades. I will only say that, when the proposition was made to me, I did not hesitate. One does not look twice at an offer of enrolment in an elite force.” Guy Burgess in John Gray ‘Guy Burgess, the Cambridge spy who bet on a Soviet future’.
As it was with the Cambridge Spies, so it was with me on an altogether more trivial and banal level.
I wanted to be in an elite because I was a long way from success in the mainstream.
I was bullied, dismal in my studies, and socially ostracised at my school.
“You’re from a broken home.”
Sneer of disgust. The school was hardline in its Catholicism with divorce among parents rare, exotic, and disgusting.
To the dislocation of the divorce was added the social distain of my peers.
Communism was enjoyable because it made me feel special when I was failing at everything else.
It gave me a role, a purpose, a home and an accepting social group.
Years later a girlfriend’s grandmother — a woman who had worked in a factory most of her life — told me, “Socialism is the politics of envy.”
At the time I felt superior to her with my university degree, and book learning.
Another case of false consciousness, I thought.
She was right.
I embraced communism out of envy, and spite.
It was very pleasurable to imagine the people who tormented me having their brains smashed out in a proletarian revolution.
Long, lovely daydreams of power: the barbed wire, the gun to the head, the eyes looking for mercy that would not come from me…
What mercy did they show me?
Their parents were richer than mine, and they were more successful in their studies and with girls.
What a relief to find a system that predicted their violent downfall — a downfall that would raise me to a superior position in the new elite.
And, even better, this could all happen in a movement to improve mankind.
I was involved in a movement that was morally blessed, ‘scientifically’ endorsed, flattered my intellect with its jargon and made up for my academic failings.
I could rub my peers in a system that attacked their religion, their wealth, and their values.
Among my fellow students from Spain there was plenty of sympathy for Franco left over.
“You communist? You know Franco? He fucked you communists. He killed you.”
The boy broke into a fascist marching song from the civil war.
Sometimes I didn’t help myself much.
“You fancy him? You want to fuck the man with a beard?”
I had put up a printed out picture of Karl Marx in my study space rather than a girly poster.
And so what was an initial social rejection was turned into a spiral of sneering at everyone else, and being rejected by the mainstream ever more forcefully.
This is how what is known as ‘radicalisation’ becomes self-reinforcing.
Sex also played a role. My interest in communism declined rapidly after I started having sex, and I am rather sure that a male’s preference for violent political action is connected with access to women.
The quickest way to stop a potential jihadi, or far-right militant is probably to get him laid.
One reason I had not had sex, of course, was that I was the type of person who at thirteen was reading in-depth exposes on US foreign policy.
And, worse still, taking it all terribly seriously.
This reached thoroughly misguided heights when I was eighteen, and working my way through The Second Sex and other feminist classics.
I became quite convinced that what women find attractive is a thorough knowledge of feminist philosophy.
My time would have been more profitably spent at the gym.
But reading Simone de Beauvoir is much easier than doing squats.
And, of course, while some women may enjoy a man pretending that he is a feminist few will respect or desire a man who acts as if he actually believes feminism to be true.
§
The factors above would have led me to join a gang if I were not in a middle class environment, and bookish.
Social alienation, low self-worth, and the desire to belong are the troika that makes a person look for meaning and acceptance on the fringes.
And, once excluded, the desire for violent revenge against those who excludes grows apace.
Bookishness, good behaviour, or a middle class environment merely canalises these tendencies into more refined gangs.
This is why young jihadis are often pious, well behaved young men.
It is the fact they do not act up, and are not among the most popular in their peer group that leads them to take their envy, and rationalise it with an interpretation of Islamism that makes their violence revenge a blessing.
As Confucius warns: “The village goody good is a thief [and the ruin] of virtue.”
No doubt, if they lived thirty years ago, they would find their justification in Marxism, and the anti-imperialist struggle rather than Islamism.
§
What decoupled me from the party was a move away from the communist circle in my home town when I started university.
I began to read Orwell, Camus, Kołakowski, and Arendt quite intensely.
These thinkers gently dissolved my belief in Marxist thought, and communist political action as my absence from a communist social circle weakened my commitment to the movement.
My resignation from the party came just after I had been elected as an editor for the organisation’s magazine.
There were those who took this well, and remained my friends — even, very honourably, defended me against criticism from other people in the organisation.
I was dubbed, “That posh ginger twat with the stupid suits.”
And, I must admit, I regularly wore white linen suits that were better fitted to running a plantation in 19th century Borneo than participating in a revolutionary communist organisation in the early 21st century.
This was my own little protest at contemporary consumer capitalism.
We are used to seeing the capitalist still depicted in top hat and monocle.
But this is a visual metonym that has been redundant for over a hundred years.
Capitalists wear t-shirts, and jeans these days just like everyone else.
To wear a suit I reasoned (along with a few others) was to protest contemporary consumer capitalism itself.
We would be formal. The capitalists would be decadent in their t-shirts.
What I looked like — of course — was a posh twat.
Teenage egotism also played a substantial role in my fashion choice, along with being too lazy to choose any new clothes.
But how wonderful to have those two points justified by a struggle against the evils of international capitalism.
§
What I lost after I left the party was a profound sense of meaning in my life.
I cannot really say why I fell into a depression after leaving the party. There are so many factors in life apart from politics, but leaving communist politics played a role.
The party, and communism provided a total life goal, and life meaning.
I can well understand why there were communists who killed themselves after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Communism really is a religion without God. The movement provides a view on politics, art, religion, sport, sexuality — every aspect of human life can be explained with a Marxist analysis.
Further, the cause appears noble, and enlists you in a close-knit, comradely group who are struggling against a secularised ‘evil’ to liberate mankind.
There is communist art, music, and philosophy to guide your life.
And what a dramatic reason to live! To liberate mankind!
This is not a local project — every rise and fall in the fortunes of the communist parties abroad would thrill me.
“We lost this constituency, but we gained China.”
That was the, possibly apocryphal comment, a British communist made when their party lost a seat soon after the communists prevailed in China.
It sums up the world drama of the far-left, a drama that carries on to this day on a smaller scale.
“What’s the latest results for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, comrade?”
Good. We’re winning there, even if we only have fifteen members here.
To lose this sense of purpose and exchange it for a hum-drum life in liberal consumer capitalism is distressing; and, I imagine, one reason why people persist in a communist and Marxist politics for their entire life despite doubts — probably this goes for any political or religious belief.
What is even better about communism is that, unlike the traditional religions, it is somewhat endorsed by mainstream society.
There are very few journalists and academics who are overt communists — though many are sympathetic, and soft-ball communist regimes.
Rather, I mean that Marxism is considered respectable in a way that the traditional religions are not among educated people.
Intelligent, and influential people can be Marxists without ridicule— university professors, for example — but our society does not grant the same for religious people.
This is not to say our society condones communism, or Marxism.
Academics, scientists and artists who express Marxist views are still pilloried as being misguided.
But the Marxist position is respectable in a way religion is not.
Marxism is still important in academic disciplines: sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political theory, and so on.
It is not dismissed as an ignorant superstition; it is, as with the liberalism that dominates Western societies, a child of the Enlightenment.
Marxists, and communists might go ‘a bit far’, but they are fundamentally — in the view of the liberal hegemony — on the the progressive side of history.
This indulgent view towards communism, and Marxism is not matched with an indulgent view to say, Nazism — and those thinkers, such as Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, who endorsed that regime.
These men, and their thoughts are seen, possibly correctly, as extremely suspect — a kind of intellectual ebola.
Marxism, by contrast, is considered quite respectable despite being responsible for as much murder and misery — if not more — than Nazism, and fascism.
As my mother correctly observed, “They are as bad as the Nazis.”
But this is not true in the public sphere.
Figures like Slavoj Žižek are permitted to make cute, semi-ironic jokes about Stalin in a way that would be grounds for instant censure if, say, a conservative philosopher started to joke around about Nazi concentration camps.
Žižek is a trickster.
I was sixteen when I read Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? in an edition features an ironic, cosy picture of Stalin on the cover.
I came away, although appreciating his irony, with a view that perhaps Stalin wasn’t so bad after all.
This is not to say, “Žižek made me a communist.” I have already described how that was much more to do with my psychology at the moment.
What he provided was intellectual respectability when I wanted to ignore the Stalin era, or even actively celebrate it.
After all, Žižek is an internationally acclaimed academic who works with fancy academic publishing houses, makes films and is interviewed by the mainstream news media.
I may have been naïve, or dense, in not appreciating his irony and wordplay —though I am not convinced that anyone knows what he ‘really’ thinks about politics — but even accepting this, his jokey style made me think, well, it seems fine to joke about the gulag.
Could it have been so bad?
§
Churchill said he would make a deal with the Devil to beat Hitler.
And he did just that.
Our societies are soft on Marxism in part because we were in alliance with the Soviet Union during the Second World War. This moral compromise wedded us to communism.
This compromise, along with Marxism’s foundational role in many humanities subjects, and its kinship with the goals of the Enlightenment explains why communism and Marxism continue to be respectable in our societies.
Communism is seen as a noble, misguided project — a failed experiment — rather than a manifestation of palpable evil, as we regard Nazi Germany.
Even now, you will probably not regard me as harshly as if I had announced that I am a former neo-Nazi, or neo-fascist— though some among you will do.
I congratulate you for your moral consistency.
And, in fact, the communist and far-left more generally has served as a training ground for many politicians whose politics moderated when they left university and hunted for a career.
What they learned in far-left politics was not the beliefs — as many on the far-right believe — but the political nous to manipulate committees, and organise politically.
The brutal evolutionary environment on the far-left is a fantastic training for politics proper.
If you can manipulate a resolution for your Troskyist grouplet through a student union you are well on your way to being an effective parliamentarian.
Student politics is often laughable, but so is junior football compared to the professional leagues.
It is in the junior league that the strategy, tactics, and muscles are formed to take a player to the professional leagues.
And so it is with student politics, even if it seems silly and trivial to adults or uninterested students.
We should consider the degree to which our politics has become influenced by communist strategies, and tactics — if not by actual communist beliefs.
This intertwining between Marxism, communism, liberalism and our societies has yet to be really addressed.
We want to review our history with regard to the slave trade, the Empire and so on — but there will be no inquisition into our collaboration with communism.
This is because those who attack national histories over matters such as slavery are, by and large, Marxists or Marxist-inspired.
They have no interest in a full moral accounting because, as Marxists, they have no morals — only political expediency.
We are careful with the intellectuals who fell in love with Hitler.
We need to extend the same scrutiny to the Marxists, and learn to approach their ideas with lead-lined gloves.
This is a commonly made point, which is often mangled on the sensationalist right to present university departments as being infiltrated by seductive Marxist professors.
This is not so in my experience. Indeed, I met more conservative — in the broadest sense — academics in my time at university than Marxists.
Material about ‘mad Marxists’ on a university staff makes for tasty rightist clickbait.
The accounting needed is not quite so literal.
We need a reconsideration the highest level, and not simply — as some imagine — a change of personnel at universities.
§
It took me seven further years to make a final break from Marxism. I still thought that the left represented just, achievable goals — obviously Soviet-style communism wasn’t the answer, though Marxism and eventually communism in some form was, I believed, still possible and desireable.
This really represented intellectual laziness, and cowardice.
My political activity slipped as I divided myself between a relationship, and a career.
I attended a Marxist reading group, worked in its limited political activity and contributed a few articles to the group’s website.
I would have gone on considering myself on the left — a Marxist if not a communist,— for many more years if my relationship had not come to a crisis point that led me to reevaluate my life.
I realised that what remained of my commitment to the left, Marxism, and communism was little more than a reflexive habit, a pose that I did not really believe.
That Marx, and those who followed him had made many true points I could accept. What was missing was a sense that Marx was more right than wrong.
What had also happened was that after completing my degree, working in a career and being in a relationship I no longer needed communism as a mental support for my ego, an outlet for fantasies about having power over people who crossed me, or a conduit for my envy.
When I finally let my remaining commitments to Marxism drop I felt a great relief.
I do not have any politics now, except what I am against. I did not vote in the last general election. I have no answers as to what the just society might be, if a just society is even an attainable or a desirable goal.
What this long period in my life showed me was how easy it is to lie to myself about what I actually thought, and felt.
Dishonesty had become second nature, even though I felt a tension in my mind when I tried to hold a far-left position.
People are surprised that leftist reporters did not ‘see’ the great famine when they visited the Soviet Union.
Those on the right perhaps assume that these reporters knew but chose not to say.
I think this is too simple.
Our mind is a mirror maze. If the mirrors are positioned correctly it is possible to be completely self-deluded while believing oneself to be acting in an unimpeachable manner, and in accord with what one truly believes — or truly believes one should believe.
I suspect that there are people who are better at this deception than others, and that, naturally, it does not apply to politics alone.
We all know — though it is too frightening to admit too often — that this deception applies to our love affairs, friendships, career, business, and life itself.
§
I must add that I do not regard all my political actions while on the far-left to have been a waste, or foolish.
The party kept me occupied in organising opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I leafletted, and helped to organise demonstrations. These activities were worthwhile.
Sweetness may come from selfishness; and private vice — as Mandeville observed — can lead to public virtue.
The wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan were unjust, contribute to our economic woes, and — as critics at the time predicted — built a large, vicious Islamist movement against the West.
The anti-war movement and the later anti-austerity movement were breaking ground for the far-left’s resurgence in British politics.
Without these mass, extra-parliamentary forms of organisation Jeremy Corbyn’s victory in the Labour Party leadership contest would not have been possible.
Jeremy Corbyn now has an advisor who was along-term senior member of the communist organisation I once supported.
My teenage self would be delighted to see Corbyn — a figure so close to our party — breathing down Theresa May’s neck.
I wrote him a fan letter, and published his reply in a small anti-war magazine that I edited when I was nineteen.
I was so infatuated with him that I believed other people would be impressed by his support for our cause.
But back then his name was known to few young people.
This is hipsterist politics. I am claiming, of course, that I liked Corbyn before he was cool.
What a rogue I am.
Back then the possibility that he could become Labour Party leader, or even Prime Minister was as remote to me as the idea that Cuba could invade, and liberate the UK from capitalism.
Vast change is always possible in politics over relatively short periods of time — a good reason why one should never the the political situation as dismal.
My adult self is filled with misgiving about Corbyn.
Corbyn is a principled man in a time when we have been misgoverned by careerists; but I know too much about how his sector of the far-left regards Stalin, and the crimes of communism to be anything other than very concerned that such people could come to power in my country.
§
Now, when I look back, I tend to think that — even though he had considerable insights into human society — it would have been better if Marx had never been born.
He was.
And what followed was what followed.
Due to my experience with communism, I have a sympathetic view on the human level towards people — especially young people — involved in the alt-right, neo-fascism, the Islamic State, Islamism, ant-fa, anarchism, criminal gangs and, of course, communism.
I do not mean that I agree with their political positions, strategies or tactics.
I do not.
But when I read their brief biographies in the media I see lives and experiences similar to those that drew me into communism.
This does not mean I am deluded enough to think people involved with these groups would show me any quarter.
For them I am an infidel, a race traitor, a bourgeois — and God knows what other awful things.
Naughty boy that I am.
I can imagine, if I were born in a Muslim family, joining not the communists but the Islamic State at fifteen.
The difference is that in the current political environment an interest in the Islamic State has the potential to draw a naïve individual into a violent political movement.
Communists in the UK reserve the right to engage revolutionary activity, but in reality communism and Marxism in the UK are settled, peaceful movements.
The people involved have neither the inclination, nor capacity to engage in violent political acts; and their analysis of the current political situation precludes violent action.
Their strategy combines influence in the trade unions, electoral politics, and mass activities organised through front organisations.
Still, the potential remains. The far-left lionises those, such as the Colombian FARC-EP, who take up arms for communism.
The far-left would not be far-left it did not maintain a revolutionary kernel.
I know that, if it had been suggested, I would have relished killing for communism.
This is slightly ludicrous because I am a physical coward, and the few times I was involved in demonstrations and dealing with the police I managed to make a fool of myself.
“Are you Tom Hart?”
“I might be.”
I was hardly at Che Guevara levels of guerrilla sophistication.
Indeed, my contribution to the communist revolution — if any — was probably best manifested in creating precise minutes for each branch meeting I attended.
But my heart contained ample hatred. And the movement’s appeal lay in large part, as I have already noted, in the chance to settle my own scores at the personal level — if only in my head.
No, the Cubans weren’t going to invade and I wasn’t going to put a bullet through the head of the bullies at school.
But that’s what I wanted.
And if there had been a militant — as there are militants in the Islamic State — ready, equipped and able to manipulate my desires into an actual violent act then I was vulnerable to that.
I certainly gained a vicarious pleasure from the increasing US casualty count during the Iraq, and Afghanistan invasions.
These were imperialists being killed by anti-imperialists after all.
How satisfying.
I felt less, only slightly less mind, satisfied at the British casualty rate.
Writing that now seems appalling to me. Those wars were wicked, and unjust — but the soldiers fighting them did not deserve to die any more than the Iraqis did.
Unfortunately, such is the wickedness that lies in my heart — or any human heart.
As I said, I come from an upper middle class family. I never knew any material want, and I was well educated — if a dismal pupil with a modest intelligence.
And yet, despite all this, I could convince myself that communism, and Marxism were the future.
And contemplate violent action to advance the cause.
Man does not live by bread alone
Marginalisation, powerlessness, and a sexless existence combined with a sincere interest in ideas, and a desire to ‘help’ other people can easily provide enough unacknowledged envy, and unfulfilled will to power to push a person towards violent, revolutionary or radical politics.
Money, intellectualisation or moralising cannot solve these problems.
An article announces that a doctor’s son has slit a man’s throat in Syria.
He was quiet, pious, and wanted to help people, say his friends and relatives.
They are surprised. His teachers are surprised. The media are surprised.
I am not surprised.
And if you know about human nature, neither are you.
