I just finished Katja Hoyer’s book “Beyond the Wall” recently. The book attracted an insane amount of criticism for telling the 40 year history of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) in a remarkably unbiased and even handed way. Neither laudatory nor condemning, the book gave a history that understood the context of both why the little state had so many defectors it had to build a wall to keep people in, as well as why there were many people who were intensely loyal to it and still have fond memories of it to this day. This, apparently, was controversial. Because nuance is the enemy of the contemporary commentariat, be they right, center, or left.

I personally have often been historically attracted to the DDR because of its awful reputation in the west and its very real (though heavily frontloaded) achievements. It was a state that was outnumbered and outsized by its West German rival, had to pay enormous reparations to the Soviet Union, including in the form of its own surviving postwar industry, and occupied the most resource-poor sections of the former singular Germany. Stalin didn’t even want it, preferring to see a unified and neutral buffer state between the victors of World War II. Even its geography on the North European Plain was the opposite of defensible. Then there was American-aligned West Berlin right in the middle of it. By all rights the state should have failed immediately. And yet despite everything and the inevitable garrison paranoia that took over its political culture, it still managed to deliver massive achievements in land redistribution, women’s rights, education, technical training, and mass producing the coolest modern helmet. Filled with community events and impressively low crime rates, one can see the appeal just as one can see the massive downsides of its closed off mass surveillance state. A state where you give up freedom for a kind of egalitarian stability is a good deal to many. The kind of bargain many might settle for if given the option in today’s world of perpetual capitalistic instability.

Having read previous works on other Eastern Bloc Soviet states, one thought that I always return to is how much these societies end up resembling not so much the initial Marxist dream of proletarian triumph, but rather a different version of the paleoconservative vision of society. While paleoconservatives (pre-neoconservative and restraint oriented right wingers) claim to want a small state, most of their goals under contemporary conditions would require a strong state. Their view of a pro-family, pro-community, and low crime society is simply a church goer’s version of something many communist states actually achieved, at least compared to their capitalist rivals. The foreigners are kept out or to a minimum with strong border security, the avant-garde bourgeoisie are viewed with a deep suspicion, the for-profit motivation is castigated as being an attack on civil society, and the common working person is held up as an ideal. The communist experience may have been a long term failure in most countries that tried it, but it delivered this combination longer than postwar America arguably did, if at a more modest level. Probably because housing costs were, per Hoyer, 4.4 percent of the average family’s income. Compared to over 20% in the west (and think about what this would be now). No wonder some in the east want to turn back time.

Paleoconservatives, of whom I am very aligned on certain issues, especially foreign policy, miss the social forest  for the trees. They often think if only people went back to church they would find some magical answer to the problems of an out of control neoliberal modernity. But church now, as it did then, can only offer moralistic platitudes to those who do not take it seriously on its open terms. It has little to say about how power is used to deliver real material results in the actual physical world. Its use as a social connection, while very real, can be easily replaced by other institutions, as the communist experiment often proved with its pioneers, associations, and streets mostly free of crime.

You could say that the traditional (pre-neocon) conservative objectives of a particularist, anti-globalization, safe, family friendly society has come the closest to being in the last half century through communism.

I want to state for context; if this was the 1920s, I would have been the biggest anti-communist ever. Sure, I would have had problems with capitalism and liberalism, especially coming off of the horror show of Woodrow Wilson, but something with messianic claims about some mythic teleology of the human race centered around a project of building a ‘better man’ is basically custom tailored to trigger every warning bell that could possibly exist in the brain of any alternate history version of myself. The real world, regardless of what anyone thinks of it, is cyclic, amoral, unconcerned with human rights, and philosophically pagan. (I probably would have been a reluctant left-Brooks Adamsite with a mixed yet fascinated relationship with Spengler in this time). So long as Trotsky was part of the communist equation there would have been that whole fighting for the world revolution aspect to it as well. I would have been disgusted by this. It sounds like secularized slave morality.

The nice thing about history, however, is that we can look back on things with hindsight, and in so doing challenge how we think about the present. Knowing how the Euro-communist experiment turns out enables us to see it as it really was, rather than what it claimed to be. And it was ultimately not the missionary quest of world transformation that it claimed to be, but rather a rebellion against capitalist hegemony. An alternative that in the end would challenge the capitalist powers to increase their social safety nets lest they face revolt and efection. A faulty experiment in many ways, sure, but one based on the correct desire to resist global homogenization pushed both by business and ideologies. An alternative way of being. A new version of the paleoconservative dream.

Attacked relentlessly both directly and indirectly by British and American intelligence and military proxies, this way of being rapidly adjusted to competition with, rather than conversion of, the capitalists. In so doing it lasted longer than it would have under conditions of perpetual open war. It turned war-shattered and post colonial societies into divergent, rather than convergent, models of differentiated modernity (a concept with which I am fascinated in any context), and provided the space for a social solidarity that looks almost impossible under today’s unchallenged reign of neoliberal terror. 

And if this seems quixotic I would challenge you to look outside of Europe. Asia was where it really seemed to work. Uninterested in subsuming everything into some kind of nonsense ‘Hegelian Dialectic’ many Asian states easily adopted Marxism to preexisting cultural forms with no contradiction. Ancient traditions met modernization and created interesting and still successful hybrid regimes such as China and Vietnam. From at least Deng Xiaopeng onwards China disavowed the typical leftist war with the historical past for a merger of the past with the present and future. Or, as Lao Tzu might have put it, going with the flow. The Platonic and Christian societies of Europe struggled to pull this off, seeing the world as one of simple moral binaries. But outside of the Occident, people knew better. They could selectively harvest the successes and failures of the Soviet and allied experiments with a pragmatism worthy of the august term realist. Whatever alternative to global capitalism that now arises, it will not look like the experiments of the past…but it will have learned from them. 

And these new societies, like the earlier more questionable communist experiments before them, focus on different things than the clearly unstable capitalist order wants. Social mobility, clean streets, a public culture held above and beyond both the individual and the profit motive. All without insisting other countries adopt their model nor prioritizing its diplomacy around anything but national interest. I have no idea if it will succeed, and am sure that like all things success would be temporary, but right now it exists, and in doing so shows that humanity desires an alternative to neofeudal atomization.

And if this new experiment perturbs paleoconservatives, I will simply ask them this…If you think you can do better, this is your challenge. Break with the priorities of the old economic order and come up with something new and appealing. Rebuild the communities you claim to love so much by rejecting the financial globalism you claim to decry. If the communists, despite their original intentions, could do it, why can’t you. The future should learn from the past but it will not be found in simply retvrning to it. Divergence from a powerful status quo requires a future oriented effort. Once upon a time, the communists had this. They clearly do not anymore. But someone has to do it.

And communists, you failed to become the globalizers in chief. It is for the best. Nothing lies down that path but ruin, hubris, and shattered dreams. Learn from the paleoconservatives. find  your regional distinction. It was, in the end, what you ended up being good at after all. Imagine how much better the whole experiment would have been had it given up dreams of world revolution and stuck consistently to national liberation with unique and historically rooted basis, be it from the empires, the international finance, or the perpetually fruitless quest to shape the world around a singular vision. 

I often think about the late 90s anti-globalization protestors, now so often forgotten. When Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader supported roughly the same side, and the bipartisan elite opposed them. It was a promising moment buried by the shock of the War on Terror and the congruent evangelical-vs-woke cultural battles that ensued after. It makes me wonder what opportunities could be open to the unorthodox of all types going forward. Those who, above all, are willing to seek a modus vivendi at home and abroad. 

Besides, anyone that knows liberals knows that it drives them even more nuts to own them from the left than the right.

So ist das leben.