There are, in our political and ethical traditions, two apparently
contradictory principles:
-
--the primacy of community: "No man is an island
entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of
the main. . . ." (John Donne)
-
--the sanctity and autonomy of
the individual - that each individual is "endowed ...
with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness." In the words of John Rawls, that "each person
possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the
welfare of society as a whole cannot override."
The contradiction is only apparent.
In fact, no society can be both viable and just if it completely
commits itself to one principle to the exclusion of the other. Recent
Russian history so testifies.
The First
Lesson
For seventy years, the Soviet economy
proceeded under the assumption that individual enterprise and
initiative would necessarily work to the detriment of the social
order "The free market" - the summation of individual preferences
manifested in economic transactions - was not to be trusted. Instead,
the economy should be managed "from the top down."
The results are well known. Vast
stores of food rotted in the fields and warehouses, because the
managers failed to coordinate production with transportation and
distribution. With raw materials, machine tools, skilled workers, and
end users scattered from Omsk to Tomsk to Pinsk to Minsk, productive
collaboration was more an exception than the rule. With quotas passed
down from Moscow, the priority concern of local managers was quantity and less so
quality and innovation,
and least of all the safety and welfare of the workers.
Harebrained theories and schemes by politically correct but
scientifically uninformed charlatans like Trofim Lysenko were
mandated for the entire economy, with disastrous results. Finally,
the natural environment was trashed, due in large part to the
pervasive attitude, "that which belongs to everyone [i.e., the
state] is the responsibility of no one."
In Soviet society, citizens were
expected to invest their primary loyalties to the state and the
Party. "Civil society," the spontaneous and voluntary association of
citizens, was discouraged at best, and suppressed at worst. Instead,
citizen groups, such as they were, were organized, sanctioned and
supervised by the Party.
And, of course, this political order
eventually failed. It proved too much to ask of intelligent human
beings that they surrender all of their initiative, autonomy, and
dignity, in short the governance of their lives, to remote, anonymous
and unresponsive bureaucracies. And so when, in the 1980s, the virus
of liberty once again broke out in Germany, Poland and
Czechoslovakia, it spread to the east, infected the Russians, and
overthrew the Soviet order.
Thus the first lesson from Russia:
Pure collectivism will not work. If a modern economy is to
succeed, individual preferences must be reflected in prices, and
individual initiative and productivity must be
rewarded.
The Second
Lesson
By all appearances, "the new Russia"
should be a libertarian paradise. Single party rule has been
abolished, and the once all-powerful central government has been
reduced to impotence. ("Government," writes the libertarian
philosopher John Hospers, "is the most dangerous institution known to
man."). Taxes, regarded as "theft" by libertarians, are universally
evaded. Of necessity, Russians are ever-more adopting Ayn Rand's
maxim: "selfishness is the primary virtue." The Russian economy is
now dominated, in fact virtually owned, by a small group of
hyper-capitalists, not unlike Ayn Rand's "John Galt," who have seized
for their private selves much of what was previously the property of
the Soviet state. (In a frenzy of ideological conversions rivaling
that of Saul of Tarsus, former communist aparatchiki have
become thriving capitalists - now the owners of firms that they
formerly managed for the state).
The results have been dramatic, and
yet should have been predictable. With tax revenues cut to a
pittance, the public sector is in ruins. Russian science, once the
glory of this old and splendid culture, is in desperate straits, as
scholars and scientists either emigrate to Western universities or
desert their professions for the only available alternative
livelihood - "the private sector." The education system, the seed-bed
of cultural continuity, is being devoured by private avarice. For a while in
1998 the postal service in Russia ground to a halt, thus
strangling the lifelines of commerce. Thus the neglected public
sector retaliates upon the culprits -- private enterprises that
regard government as "the enemy." Finally, the middle class,
universally recognized as the foundation of a flourishing civilized
economy, is disappearing in Russia, as it moves toward the Central
American model: a vast sea of poverty, surrounding a few small
islands of obscene opulence.
Thus it should surprise no informed
observer, that the economy of "the new Russia" has collapsed. The new
oligarchs are learning, perhaps too late, what Henry Ford astutely
observed: that if the few appropriate all the wealth, then there will
be no customers to purchase their goods and services. One can only
hope that the Russians will have another chance to do it right.
However, the prospects are not encouraging.
It should not go unnoticed that the
conditions that have brought down the post-Soviet economy are not
unlike those that are celebrated by our home-grown so-called
"conservative" politicians, and by our conservative media (a.k.a.
"That liberal press"): abolish government and taxation, and "let the
market decide."
The second lesson from Russia:
no
society can endure if its citizens are consumed by unconstrained self
interest, untempered by compassion, civic loyalty, and personal
investment in social justice. And no successful civilized society
exists without the rule of law, effectively enforced by a
government answerable to the public will.
The aforementioned two principles of
community and autonomy are not contradictory, they
are complementary. As Immanuel Kant so carefully argued, the ideal community
consists of autonomous individuals who have freely consented to
obedience to just laws ("the kingdom of ends"), and who have freely
assumed self-transcending loyalties and concern for persons,
institutions, principles and generations beyond themselves.
Communists and libertarians similarly err as they embrace one
principle to the total exclusion of the other - respectively, the
principles of community (by the communists) or of autonomy (by the
libertarians). (Cf.
"Why
Care About the Future,"
The Online Gadfly).
What is to be
Done?
The question prompts an immediate and
obvious retort: "Why do anything at all? After all, these
communists gave us no end of grief for over thirty years. Besides, we
have troubles of our own."
To which we reply: If you want to
find an anti-communist, look first to Russia. The Russian people were
not, by and large, enthusiastic supporters of Soviet communism, they
were its victims. Moreover:
There are altruistic reasons
for assisting the Russian people in their struggle to maintain and
expand the civil liberties so dearly won. These are human beings with
careers and families, and with aspirations for both. Their suffering
is both unjust and unnecessary. Simple compassion calls on us to come
to their aid.
For those unmoved by pleas to moral
conscience, there are selfish reasons for helping the
Russians, sufficiently compelling to make the moral pleadings almost
superfluous. First of all, there are those thousands of nuclear
warheads, formerly pointed at our 100% American heads. At what point
of starvation may we expect some desperate Russians to hand over
those nukes to the highest bidder? Second, without industrial reform
and renovation, and without the enforcement of a revived
Goscompriroda (the Russian counterpart of the EPA), the
Russian economy will continue to pour noxious nasties into the common
atmosphere and oceans. Finally, the moribund Russian economy
presides, paradoxically, over a society that is wealthy in human and
natural resources. If Russia can get its economic act in order, there
are benefits to be enjoyed, not only by the Russians, but by all
mankind.
But make no mistake, Russia, and by
extension the entire world community, is at a crossroads, and the
outcome is both momentous and uncertain. As an old and honored
friend, Oleg Kalugin(1),
observed to Salon Magazine interviewer, Jeff
Stein:
the United States
[is] a great country which was admired by many Russians
for many decades... [Now] the Russians feel disappointed,
they feel betrayed. This is bad. Anti-Americanism is on the rise.
I feel sorry that some people who used to be my friends
[now] speak of Americans in a most negative way.
We are reminded of a remark by the
American/Russian journalist, Vladimir Pozner: "Americans have
accomplished in less than a decade what Soviet Communism failed to
achieve in seventy years: they have provoked Russians to hate
Americans."
Stein then closed his interview with
the question, "Where did we go wrong?" Kalugin replied:
When the West won the Cold
War and defeated the former Soviet Union, it was not the end, it
was the beginning. But I think the White House, and the West
generally, thought, well, the war is over, let's enjoy ourselves.
But that was the beginning of another war - the war against the
totalitarian mentality in Russia. That requires years of
persistence and hard work. It's still up for grabs, but it's hard
not to say now that that war may be lost.
And so we ask, once again, if that
"war" against the totalitarian mentality is not to be lost, what
must be done?
The wrong approach became painfully
apparent to us several years ago on a flight back from Moscow. We
happened then to sit next to an officer of a libertarian think-tank
(whom and which we will mercifully decline to identify). During those
hours over the Atlantic, he told us at length what he had "taught"
the Russians, though we do not recall that he had a word to say about
what he had learned from the Russians. He went to Moscow with his
pre-packaged free-market libertarian dogmas, apparently uninformed
and uninterested in the historical and cultural context into which he
was eager to bestow his ideological gift. He was, we suspect, typical
of a small army of "helpful" western advisors that descended upon
Russia following the fall of the "iron curtain."
In contradistinction to that sort of
"help," we suggest the following:
1. The very question, "what can
we do for the Russians?," is mischievous. It suggests an
arrogant "mission to the infidels" attitude that the Russians will
quite properly resent and reject. Borrowing from President Clinton's
remark during his recent African trip, we should ask instead, "what
can we do with the Russians." If an acceptable solution to
these difficulties is to be found, it must be a Russian
solution which, at best, we might facilitate.
2. Any attempts to assist the
Russians during these difficult times should adopt the "prime
directive" of medicine: "first do no harm." Before we go running
off to Russia with our mouths open and our ears shut, we should
acquaint ourselves with their customs, and prepare to listen to their
concerns, their aspirations, and their assessments. Better still, we
should include in our entourage someone who can listen in their
language - and best of all, we might even learn to do so
ourselves.
3. We should approach the
Russians as humble, appreciative and compassionate friends, and
as friends we must genuinely care for their well-being. We should
appreciate that we are, in many ways, in their debt. For
every American casualty in World War II, there were more than eighty
Russians. Moreover, while half of European Russia was overrun and
devastated by the Nazis, mainland America was essentially untouched
by war. But for the sacrifice of the Russians, we might today be
speaking German and saluting the swastika. Furthermore, it was
Gorbachev and the Soviet government that ended the Cold War, and not
because they had to. When the East Germans, the Poles, the Czechs and
the Lithuanians once again resisted Soviet hegemony, this time the
Red Army tanks remained silent. It could well have been
otherwise.
In addition, we have as much to learn
from the Russians as they have to learn from us. The contribution of
the Russians to world literature and music is unparalleled, and their
record of achievement in theoretical science is the equal of any
world power. And yet all this was accomplished under conditions of
extraordinary privation and repression. How was this possible? Sadly,
few of our compatriots understand or even care. Our knowledge and
appreciation of Russian culture is abysmal, while myths and
misconceptions abound. There are more teachers of English in Russia
than there are speakers of Russian in the United States. More than
half of the working population in Russia has studied English.
(Though, as we found out to our frustration, none of them appear to
drive taxicabs in Irkutsk). They have much to tell us, if only we
have the good sense to listen.
4. We must encourage and support
the development of civil society in Russia. Herein is another
paradox: the Russians, with little experience with "civil society" -
private, voluntary, independent, citizen-based organizations ("from
the grass roots") - are acutely aware of its importance as they
strive, against formidable odds, to establish civil society. In
contrast, American civil society, which so caught the attention and
admiration of Alexis de Tocqueville and other foreign observers, is
languishing from neglect and is in apparent decline. Perhaps not
coincidentally, in the United States a new dominant political
ideology proclaims that society is to be treated as a market place,
and the citizen as a private "satisfaction maximizer." It is
remarkable indeed that the so-called "conservatives" who so deplore
communism, have adopted a political ideology that rivals, in its
emphasis upon economic concepts and theory, the thought of the
despised Karl Marx. (See
"With
Liberty for Some," and
"The New Alchemy,"
this site).
With Gorbachev's proclamation of
glasnost and perestroika in the mid- and late
eighties, the door was opened to the development of civil society in
Russia. Environmentalists were among the very first to pass through
that door. A network of citizen-based environmental organizations
emerged throughout the Soviet Union, significantly enhanced by
donations of computer equipment and the subsequent development of
communications networks such as glasnet. Unfortunately,
subsequent economic privations have sharply curtailed such
activities. Still, the viability of civil society remains the
keystone to both environmental renewal and political reform in the
former Soviet Union. As Oleg Yanitsky, a sociologist and chronicler
of Russian environmentalism, observed in his book, Russian
Environmentalism, with the the advent of perestroika and the
rise of the environmental movement,
Ordinary citizens were no
longer willing to display enthusiasm for building an illusory
"shining future," but began, independently and very actively, to
fix up the present. Moreover, they did this in such a way as to
ensure that they themselves could enjoy the fruits of the efforts
they had invested. The participants in the "grass-roots" movements
thus rejected yet another dogma -- about the priority of public
(read: state and [bureaucratic]) values over personal ones). Instead, they affirmed that a society develops only when
those who build it develop themselves and achieve satisfaction. It
seems to me that this represents a complete revolution in our
consciousness and in society as a whole, a revolution which so far
we have sense only dimly. (Russian Environmentalism,
35-6. See also
The
Gadfly's interview with Dr. Yanitsky
at
this website)
Among the prominent supporters of
Russian civil society are the philanthropist George Soros, who, along
with other philanthropic organizations, stipulates that financial aid
be given directly to individuals and private organizations, and not
through government agencies or businesses. Also noteworthy are ISAR: Initiative for Social Action and Renewal in Eurasia, a
Washington-based organization devoted to the promotion of civil
society in the former Soviet Union (www.isar.org),
and The Sacred Earth Network (www.igc.org/sen).
which gives primary attention to environmental NGOs in the former
Soviet Union.
Last month we were reminded of the
urgency of developing and sustaining civil society, in an e-mail
exchange with a friend in St. Petersburg. We wrote:
I am heartsick over the news
from Russia - of the hardships being endured by yourself, your
family, and your compatriots. And I deeply regret the
opportunities lost this past decade. After the end of the Soviet
Union, the Russians saw the worst face of Americans - with our
mouths open and our eyes and ears shut. We offered too much
uninformed and unsolicited advice, and too little understanding of
the Russian history and Culture. Worst of all, we simply withdrew
unto ourselves and forgot about the rest of the world. And now,
your politics has become a Greek tragedy while ours has
deteriorated into comic opera. Not a very happy situation.
He replied with a reassurance that
was both admirably stoical and touching: "take it easy," he reassured
us, "that is the way we usually live." He continued:
At the same time I feel that
there is a great need to mobilize all the links that were
developed during the "lost decade" as you call it. No more aid
should come through government and monopolies. Instead, small
contributions from citizens and charities should be used to
support the seedlings of civil society which are in grave danger
now. Donors should ensure the quality and sustainability of the
aid. In short, we need links and projects.
Upon reading this, we were reminded
of Churchill's plea to Roosevelt: "Give us the tools, and we will
finish the job!" Admirable!
As we have noted elsewhere (in
"A Funny
Thing Happened..." this
website), the very notion that the West "won" and the Soviets "lost"
the Cold War is profoundly misconceived. The Cold War was no zero-sum
game. While it took place, both sides lost, and when it ended that
very closure was a "win" for both sides. And now, both sides are on
the brink of "losing" the liberation that followed the ending of the
Cold War.
Though not optimistic, Oleg Kalugin
still believes that the outcome is "up for grabs." We agree. While it
is, we and our Russian partners must not allow what may be freedom's
last chance to slip through our fingers.
1. The Gadfly met Oleg Kalugin over thirty
years ago, when we were both students at Columbia University. He
later rose through the ranks of the KGB to become a Major General and
the Chief of Counterintelligence. With the advent of glasnost and perestroika, Kalugin became a
steadfast supporter of Gorbachev and a critic of his former
associates in the KGB, a public position which cost him his rank and
pension, and which put his life in great jeopardy. It is a great
privilege to be personally acquainted with an authentic hero, and we
hope to have much more to say about this remarkable man in the near
future. (For more about the career of Oleg Kalugin, read his book, The First Directorate, St. Martins, 1994.
See also at this site, "What About the
Russians: Personal Reflections).
Copyright 1998 by Ernest
Partridge
