Socialist Action /October 2002
BOOK REVIEW: Martin
Amis Rewrites the Russian Revolution
By JOE AUCIELLO
British writer Martin Amis, best known as a novelist, has just published
a short, nonfiction book about communism, the Russian Revolution, Stalin,
and the blindness of British intellectuals (especially his father) to the
Gulag. The book is titled "Koba the Dread," and it is absolutely
dreadful.
We'll get soon enough to the whys and wherefores, but let's assert from
the first that this book is shallow, stupefying, and just plain bad. It
is an intellectually useless work whose ideas are little more than recycled
dreck. The book did not deserve publication but presumably found its way
into print because its author is a successful novelist promoting a reactionary
agenda so dear to the ruling elites.
Let's also say that my opinion hardly represents a consensus among commentators.
The New York Times Book Review, last July 28, featured "Koba
the Dread" on its cover and ran a critical but friendly review by ex-leftist
Paul Berman. The September 2002 issue of The Atlantic Monthly includes
a meandering review of some 10 pages, also critical but friendly, by former
socialist Christopher Hitchens. These articles, especially the latter, are
part of the story, too, as we shall see later.
But first the book itself. Amis recently read "several yards of
books about the Soviet experiment" and came to the conclusion that
communism was a disaster because Stalin murdered millions of people and
that Stalin himself was only the logical consequence of Bolshevik doctrine
in general and the policies of Lenin and Trotsky in particular.
In other words, Amis has discovered the central idea of the West regarding
Marxism and the Soviet Union, the dominant theory of Cold War ideology that
lasted from the end of the Second World War to the end of the Soviet bloc.
Given Amis's choice of a reading list-all the familiar names of the academic
right-wing: Richard Pipes, Robert Conquest, and, on the Russian side, Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn and Dmitri Volkogonov -the conclusion was only all too obvious.
Let's look more closely at "Koba the Dread," at Amis's language
and argument. He tends to write in this way: "Trotsky was a murdering
bastard and a fucking liar. And he did it with gusto. He was a nun-killer-they
all were" (p. 252).
A section of Amis's book attempts to analyze Stalin's rise to power following
Lenin's incapacitation due to a set of strokes. His death in 1924 gave Stalin
much greater opportunity to maneuver to his maximum advantage.
Here is how Amis addresses the issue: "No one can reckon on dying
at the age of fifty-three; but the matter of the succession was one of the
great integral carelessnesses of Leninism. The chain of command, according
to 'State and Revolution' (written in haste between the two revolutions
of 1917), depended on 'unquestioning obedience' to the will of a single
person, the Soviet leader. And when that Soviet leader died-then what?"
(pp. 113-114).
Other than Lenin's age and the date of the writing of "State and
Revolution," everything else here is wrong and is typical of the quality
of Amis's arguments.
First, let's look to the language. "Succession" is a word suitable
for monarchs or dictators-Lenin was neither. Nor was he careless about the
fate of the Soviet Union following his death; he sent letters to the party
leadership on several topics and expressly called for Stalin's removal as
general secretary. Stalin could not be removed at Lenin's command.
More important is the ostensible quote from "State and Revolution."
The words "according to" suggest that the quote about the "unquestioning
obedience to the will of the Soviet leader" is drawn from Lenin's pamphlet.
But it is not so. For one thing, when "State and Revolution" was
written the Bolsheviks had not yet won a majority in the Soviets. Lenin
would hardly have demanded "unquestioning obedience" to a party
or person he politically opposed.
But a larger objection must be made about this quote. Neither those words
nor that idea can be found in "State and Revolution" or in Lenin's
subsequent writings. Here is an example of what Lenin actually did say:
"We set ourselves the ultimate aim of actually abolishing the state,
i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against
people in general ... the need for violence against people in general, for
the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population
to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to
observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and
without subordination."
If Amis is quoting from a work of Lenin, he ought first to have read
it. If, instead, the quote is someone else's commentary on Lenin, it ought
to be presented that way, and the source should be cited. To do less is
to deceive the reader.
A war against human nature?
Amis is not an accurate guide to the history of the Bolshevik revolution
and its aftermath. Amis writes about the Civil War as if only the Bolsheviks
took up arms. The Red Terror seems to spring from nowhere. Violence erupts
simply because Lenin and Trotsky were violent and the Revolution requires
blood.
"...[T]he Bolsheviks were conducting a war against human nature,"
Amis claims. He omits any mention of counter-revolutionary violence; he
omits the White armies, the White Terror, imperialist intervention, and
the hostile capitalist encirclement of the fledgling Soviet republic. In
Amis's retelling of history, history disappears.
The Bolsheviks did not at first seek repression and violence, despite
what Amis claims ("Lenin wanted executions; he had his heart set on
executions"). Instead, the Bolsheviks accepted terror as the price
of the people's revolution, a price they did not set but were willing to
pay. To do otherwise would be to abandon the struggle for socialism and
the hopes for freedom because its enemies threatened bloodshed.
In 1918 Trotsky described how the Bolsheviks put down counter-revolutionary
raids in Petrograd. The Red Guards, he said, "undoubtedly committed
cruelties on individual cadets. The bourgeois press afterwards accused the
sailors and the Soviet government of inhumanity and savagery. But it was
silent on one point: that the Revolution of November 7th-8th had been accomplished
without a single shot and without a single victim, and that it was only
the counter-revolutionary plot which had been organized by the bourgeoisie
and which threw its young men into the cauldron of a civil war against the
workers, soldiers, and sailors that led to inevitable atrocities and victims"
("The History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk," in
"The Essential Trotsky," Barnes & Noble/Unwin Books, 1963,
p. 79).
In 1935 Trotsky wrote an introduction to the second English edition of
his 1920 work, "Terrorism and Communism." There he says, "The
present work, therefore, is far away from any thought of defending terrorism
in general. It champions the historical justification of the proletarian
revolution. The root idea of the book is this: that history down to now
has not thought out any other way of carrying mankind forward than that
of setting up always the revolutionary violence of the progressive class
against the conservative violence of the outworn classes" (p. xxxix).
A rejection of revolutionary violence means an acceptance of the everyday
violence of capitalist oppression. "The jury of moralists who condemn
'terrorism' of whatever kind have their gaze fixed really on the revolutionary
deeds of the persecuted who are seeking to set themselves free" (p.
xxxviii).
Unfortunately, Amis is so horrified by the murderous policies of Stalin,
so repulsed at the thought of the millions of Soviet dead, that he will
accept nothing of what Trotsky says.
To cite only one instance from "Koba the Dread": "Trotsky's
'History' ['of the Russian Revolution'] is a valuable historical document,
but it is worthless as history, as historiography, as 'writing' ... After
a while the reader is physically oppressed by the dishonesty of his prose"
(p.35). Frankly, those words are more applicable to Amis himself.
How is it that such an amateurish and shoddy book has been so well received?
Is it the radical youth of today, anti-corporate protesters, who need to
be inoculated against the virus of Marxism and revolution? In The New
York Times Book Review (July 28, 2002), ex-socialist Paul Berman happily
notes that "Koba the Dread" makes the essential anti-socialist
argument.
"[Amis] explains, patiently and correctly," writes Berman,
"that Lenin and Trotsky founded the Communist police state, and Stalin
merely perfected it. Lenin and Trotsky, not Stalin, created the Soviet contempt
for human life and the principles of truth."
So, take that, you anti-globalization activists. Protest all you want
against capitalism and the market, but just remember not to go too far.
Look where revolution against class oppression will lead you: "contempt
for human life and the principles of truth."
Why, if capitalism is overthrown you'll end up living on Animal Farm,
where everyone is equal but some are more equal than others. (Wait-isn't
that exactly what life is like under capitalism?)
A pompous response from Hitchens
One section of "Koba the Dread" is written as an open letter
to Amis's friend, Christopher Hitchens, former columnist for The Nation
as well as Vanity Fair. Amis wonders why Hitchens looks so favorably upon
the Marxist heritage, Lenin and Trotsky, in particular.
Amis's timing here is embarrassingly off. Hitchens these days is hardly
an exemplar of socialism-quite the contrary. It's the heritage he has renounced.
In "Letters to a Young Contrarian" (Basic Books, 2001), Hitchens
comments of socialism, "I've been compelled to recognize that its day
is quite possibly done" (p. 97). In the closing letter of the book
he notes apologetically, "If you define me as an authority on the radical
you may be under an illusion...." (p. 139). Fair warning.
Hitchens's "contrarian" outlook is largely an ungrounded abstraction,
more of an attitude than a well-reasoned philosophy. Shouting a defiant
"no!" brings the echo of a conformist "yes."
Hitchens believes he has battled the prevailing orthodoxy after Sept.
11, 2001, by courageously opposing the left. It leads him, willy-nilly,
to support the right: "We should be building such internationalism
[ousting the Taliban] whether it serves the short-term needs of the current
Administration or not." (His articles for The Nation are included in
the recently published collection, "A Just Response," edited by
Katrina vanden Heuvel.)
Writing in The Atlantic Monthly (September 2002), Hitchens has
some rather flattering and not so surprising things to say about Amis's
book, commending the author for his literary style and careful attention
to the nuance of language: "Amis understands that cliché and
banality constitute a menace to even the most apparently self-evident truths"
(a remarkable statement about a writer who serves up little else than cliché
and banality).
Hitchens continues, "Thus Amis's achievement in these pages is to
make us wince again at things we already 'knew' while barely wasting a word
or missing the implications of a phrase."
"Koba the Dread" is actually a shoddy book, but given his current
stance, Hitchens is unable to refute it effectively, nor is he really inclined
to, despite some harrumphing about the legacy of socialist heretics.
Hitchens's review is a windy, flaccid, and pompous response that is largely
concerned to criticize the parts of "Koba the Dread" that criticize
Hitchens himself.
Even then, Hitchens concedes most of the major points and dithers about
the rest: "At several points [Amis] states with near perfect simplicity
that ideology is hostile to human nature, and implies that teleological
socialism was uniquely or particularly so. I would no longer disagree with
him about this. Corruptio optimi pessima: no greater cruelty will be devised
than by those who are sure, or are assured, that they are doing good."
And, for good measure, Hitchens later adds, "I now agree with him
that perfectionism and messianism are the chief and most lethal of our foes."
Is that what Stalinism was-a misguided effort to do good and achieve the
impossible, human perfectibility?
And does Hitchens now believe that Stalinism is what revolutionary socialism
must inevitably become? If so, if the overthrow of capitalism means the
gulag, then no wonder Hitchens speaks approvingly of dalliances with the
Bush administration and shouts encouragement for "our" war against
the Taliban.
Hitchens concurs with Amis's hostility to socialism, but habit or instinct
or vestigial integrity compels him to raise the opposing argument ("Does
anybody believe that had the 1905 Russian Revolution succeeded, it would
have led straight to the gulag, and to forced collectivization? Obviously
not. ... Yet that revolution's moving spirits were Lenin and Trotsky...."),
an argument which, finally, he no longer supports.
In responding to Amis, Hitchens is, at best, contradictory because his
ideas are in flux between opposing viewpoints. As he wrote last year in
"Letters to a Young Contrarian," "But many is the honorable
radical and revolutionary who may be found in the camp of the apparent counterrevolution.
And the radical conservative is not a contradiction in terms" (p. 100).
This is the rationalization of a believer losing his belief.
Hitchens faults Amis for a lack of irony and as an antidote summons the
spirit of Arthur Koestler and his novel of the Moscow Trials, "Darkness
at Noon." But for instruction in irony Amis would have done better
to recall another writer, the 18th century satirist, Alexander Pope, who,
in "An Essay on Criticism," cautioned the "half-learn'd witlings"
of his day: "Be sure yourself and your own reach to know/ How far your
genius, taste, and learning go/ Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet/
And mark that point where sense and dullness meet."
"Koba the Dread" shows little regard for discretion or good
sense, is too dull to discern dullness, and thereby justifies again the
best known lines from Pope's poem: "A little learning is a dangerous
thing/ Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."
Alexander Pope, if he were living at this hour, might well have enjoyed
ridiculing the half-baked pretensions of a scribbler that Pope would surely
have dubbed "Martinus Ignoramis."
Socialist Action /October 2002 |