Millennial Visions and Selective Vision Part One
By Noam Chomsky
The new year opened with familiar refrains, amplified by the numerology: a
chorus of self-adulation, somber ruminations about the incomprehensible evil
of our enemies, and the usual recourse to selective amnesia to smooth the
way. A few illustrations follow, which may suggest the kind of evaluation
that would have appeared, were different values to prevail in the
intellectual culture.
Let's begin with the familiar litany about the monsters we have confronted
through the century and finally slain, a ritual that at least has the merit
of roots in reality. Their awesome crimes are recorded in the
newly-translated _Black Book of Communism_ by French scholar Stephane
Courtois and others, the subject of shocked reviews at the transition to the
new millennium. The most serious, at least of those I have seen, is by
political philosopher Alan Ryan, a distinguished academic scholar and social
democratic commentator, in the year's first issue of the New York Times Book
Review (Jan 2).
The _Black Book_ at last breaks "the silence over the horrors of Communism,"
Ryan writes, "the silence of people who are simply baffled by the spectacle
of so much absolutely futile, pointless and inexplicable suffering." The
revelations of the book will doubtless come as a surprise to those who have
somehow managed to remain unaware of the stream of bitter denunciations and
detailed revelations of the "horrors of Communism" that I have been reading
since childhood, notably in the literature of the left for the past 80
years, not to speak of the steady flow in media and journals, film,
libraries overflowing with books that range from fiction to
scholarship... -- all unable to lift the veil of silence. But put that
aside.
The _Black Book_, Ryan writes, is in the style of a "recording angel." It is
a relentless "criminal indictment" for the murder of 100 million people,
"the body count of a colossal, wholly failed social, economic, political and
psychological experiment." The total evil, unredeemed by even a hint of
achievement anywhere, makes a mockery of "the observation that you can't
make an omelet without broken eggs."
The vision of our own magnificence alongside the incomprehensible
monstrosity of the enemy -- the "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy" (John
F. Kennedy) dedicated to "total obliteration" of any shred of decency in the
world (Robert McNamara) -- recapitulates in close detail the imagery of the
past half century (actually, well beyond, though friends and enemies rapidly
shift, to the present). Apart from a huge published literature and the
commercial media, it is captured vividly in the internal document NSC 68 of
1950, widely recognized as the founding document of the Cold War but rarely
quoted, perhaps out of embarrassment at the frenzied and hysterical rhetoric
of the respected statesmen Dean Acheson and Paul Nitze; for a sample, see my
_Deterring Democracy_, chap. 1.
The picture has always been an extremely useful one. Renewed once again
today, it allows us to erase completely the entire record of hideous
atrocities compiled by "our side" in past years. After all, they count as
nothing when compared with the ultimate evil of the enemy. However grand the
crime, it was "necessary" to confront the forces of darkness, now finally
recognized for what they were. With only the faintest of regrets, we can
therefore turn to the fulfillment of our noble mission, though as New York
Times correspondent Michael Wines reminded us in the afterglow of the
humanitarian triumph in Kosovo, we must not overlook some "deeply sobering
lessons": "the deep ideological divide between an idealistic New World bent
on ending inhumanity and an Old World equally fatalistic about unending
conflict." The enemy was the incarnation of total evil, but even our friends
have a long way to go before they ascend to our dizzying heights.
Nonetheless, we can march forward, "clean of hands and pure of heart," as
befits a Nation under God. And crucially, we can dismiss with ridicule any
foolish inquiry into the institutional roots of the crimes of the
state-corporate system, mere trivia that in no way tarnish the image of Good
versus Evil, and teach no lessons, "deeply sobering" or not, about what lies
ahead -- a very convenient posture, for reasons to obvious to elaborate.
Like others, Ryan reasonably selects as Exhibit A of the criminal indictment
the Chinese famines of 1958-61, with a death toll of 25-40 million, he
reports, a sizeable chunk of the 100 million corpses the "recording angels"
attribute to "Communism" (whatever that is, but let us use the conventional
term). The terrible atrocity fully merits the harsh condemnation it has
received for many years, renewed here. It is, furthermore, proper to
attribute the famine to Communism. That conclusion was established most
authoritatively in the work of economist Amartya Sen, whose comparison of
the Chinese famine to the record of democratic India received particular
attention when he won the Nobel Prize a few years ago.
Writing in the early 1980s, Sen observed that India had suffered no such
famine. He attributed the India-China difference to India's "political
system of adversarial journalism and opposition," while in contrast, China's
totalitarian regime suffered from "misinformation" that undercut a serious
response, and there was "little political pressure" from opposition groups
and an informed public (Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, _Hunger and Public
Action_, 1989; they estimate deaths at 16.5 to 29.5 million).
The example stands as a dramatic "criminal indictment" of totalitarian
Communism, exactly as Ryan writes. But before closing the book on the
indictment we might want to turn to the other half of Sen's India-China
comparison, which somehow never seems to surface despite the emphasis Sen
placed on it. He observes that India and China had "similarities that were
quite striking" when development planning began 50 years ago, including
death rates. "But there is little doubt that as far as morbidity, mortality
and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India"
(in education and other social indicators as well). He estimates the excess
of mortality in India over China to be close to 4 million a year: "India
seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years
than China put there in its years of shame," 1958-1961 (Dreze and Sen).
In both cases, the outcomes have to do with the "ideological
predispositions" of the political systems: for China, relatively equitable
distribution of medical resources, including rural health services, and
public distribution of food, all lacking in India. This was before 1979,
when "the downward trend in mortality [in China] has been at least halted,
and possibly reversed," thanks to the market reforms instituted that year.
Overcoming amnesia, suppose we now apply the methodology of the _Black Book_
and its reviewers to the full story, not just the doctrinally acceptable
half. We therefore conclude that in India the democratic capitalist
"experiment" since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of
the "colossal, wholly failed...experiment" of Communism everywhere since
1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, tens of millions more since, in India
alone.
The "criminal indictment" of the "democratic capitalist experiment" becomes
harsher still if we turn to its effects after the fall of Communism:
millions of corpses in Russia, to take one case, as Russia followed the
confident prescription of the World Bank that "Countries that liberalize
rapidly and extensively turn around more quickly [than those that do not],"
returning to something like what it had been before World War I, a picture
familiar throughout the "third world." But "you can't make an omelet without
broken eggs," as Stalin would have said. The indictment becomes far harsher
if we consider these vast areas that remained under Western tutelage,
yielding a truly "colossal" record of skeletons and "absolutely futile,
pointless and inexplicable suffering" (Ryan). The indictment takes on
further force when we add to the account the countries devastated by the
direct assaults of Western power, and its clients, during the same years.
The record need not be reviewed here, though it seems to be as unknown to
respectable opinion as were the crimes of Communism before the appearance of
the _Black Book_.
The authors of the _Black Book_, Ryan observes, did not shrink from
confronting the "great question": "the relative immorality of Communism and
Nazism." Although "the body count tips the scales against Communism," Ryan
concludes that Nazism nevertheless sinks to the lower depths of immorality.
Unasked is another "great question" posed by "the body count," when
ideologically serviceable amnesia is overcome.
To make myself clear, I am not expressing my judgments; rather those that
follow from the principles that are employed to establish preferred
truths -- or that would follow, if doctrinal filters could be removed.
On the self-adulation, a virtual tidal wave this year -- perhaps it is
enough to recall Mark Twain's remark about one of the great military heroes
of the mass slaughter campaign in the Philippines that opened the glorious
century behind us: he is "satire incarnated"; no satirical rendition can
"reach perfection" because he "occupies that summit himself." The reference
reminds us of another aspect of our magnificence, apart from efficiency in
massacre and destruction and a capacity for self-glorification that would
drive any satirist to despair: our willingness to face up honestly to our
crimes, a tribute to the flourishing free market of ideas. The bitter
anti-imperialist essays of one of America's leading writers were not
suppressed, as in totalitarian states; they are freely available to the
general public, with a delay of only some 90 years.
(
geocities.com/capitolhill)