The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries, and Political Morality in the Twentieth Century

by Paul Hollander

The seduction of some of the twentieth century's great thinkers by Communist ideology and ideals is one of the most intriguing stories in the history of that ill-fated century. How was it that these distinguished intellectuals, public figures, and revolutionaries could enlist in the service of ideas which, when put in practice, proved repressive? Much has been written about the durable attraction of communism; we know far less about the disillusionment it spawned. In The End of Commitment , the distinguished sociologist Paul Hollander investigates how and why those individuals who were attracted to communism finally abandoned the cause that moved them. His is the first book to take a comprehensive, historically comparative view of disillusionment with Communist ideologies and systems, both in the countries where they were introduced and in the West. Relying chiefly on the autobiographies and memoirs of defectors, exiles, and dissidents from Communist states (the Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe, and in the Third World) as well as similar writings of major Western figures, Mr. Hollander examines and compares the sources and expressions of this political disenchantment. Concentrating on the moral conflicts created by the clash of unrealized ideals and actual practice, The End of Commitment sheds new light on the failings and malfunctions of these systems that were fully grasped only by those who lived under them. In a final, provocative section, Mr. Hollander explores the attitudes of some distinguished Western intellectuals who resisted disillusionment and clung to their commitment in the face of a welter of discrediting information. In all, his book offers a new insight into the patterns and processes of political attitude formation, persistence, and change in different social and historical settings.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction

416 pages, Hardcover

First published July 25, 2006

About the author

American political sociologist, communist-studies scholar, and non-fiction author. He is known for his criticisms of communism and left-wing politics in general. Born in 1932 in Hungary, he fled to the West after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was bloodily put down by Soviet forces.
Hollander earned a Ph.D in Sociology from Princeton University, 1963 and a B.A. from the London School of Economics, 1959. He was Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Center Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He was a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Reviews

[Howard Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hollander is a sociologist whose life's work has been the study of The Left, specifically the idealistic, collectivist Left of the 20th century. This book examines the process by which some leftists came to lose their ideals and turn back towards capitalism and liberal democracy. This turning away meant more than just a change in political identity; it usually meant the loss of friends and community. For persons behind the Iron Curtain, dissent quickly led to imprisonment, exile, and death. The case studies are the heart of the book and are often heart-rending. The book is inspiring in that the univerality of the yearning for freedom will lead people to make sacrifices that those of us who live in freesom can only imagine.

[David Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The emigres from Communist countries we didn't listen to, who found it easier to get published in Reader's Digest than in The Nation, or the New Statesman, were telling the truth… Why didn't we hear them before, when they were telling us exactly what they tell us now? … We didn't love the truth enough… We tried to distinguish among Communisms - for example treating Stalinism, which we disavowed, as if it were an aberration and praising other regimes outside Europe, which had and have essentially the same character."

-Susan Sontag, quoted on page 32


In chapter 2, Hollander notes political defectors from Communist countries by and large were ignored as a source of information about these political systems and about political attitude formation and change. Sometimes their message was even trivialized and caricatured with scorn. The same kind of dynamic is observed in The Demon in Democracy.

How do you prevent the mass generation of ideological shock troopers capable of committing heinous acts and living atrociously day after day while convinced sanctimoniously of their purity? Once permission-giving beliefs are lodged in the minds, mere information may take years to filter through, or may never truly register. I am reminded as I read about Communist defectors and how they often explained away mendacious politics by an end justifies the means rationale when I see the reactions to the Mueller report in the liberal media.

"Once more it was neither the lack of information nor his acceptance of official versions of these events [coercion of peasants to join collective farms; mass starvation; the purges and show trials] that was decisive in allowing him to retain his faith but the ability to neutralize these outrages with other considerations. By persuading himself that the ends justified the means, he found ways to reduce the moral significance of unappealing means used in the accomplishment of long-range goals…'I never believed that Bukharin and Trotsky were Gestapo agents or that they wanted to kill Lenin…But I regarded the purge trials…as the expression of some farsighted policy; I believed that, on balance, Stalin was right in deciding on those terrible measures in order to discredit all forms of political opposition, once and for all. We were a besieged fortress. We had to be united… the opposition leaders had to be depicted as deviationists and villains, so that the people would come to hate them."

-The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries, and Political Morality by Paul Hollander, Pg. 42

“With time. a segment of the population... deteriorated into a set type, with a smirk on their faces, rote words on their lips, a noncommittal stance on issues for which they have responsibility. They simply carried out their work according to routine, choosing their words carefully... and taking every precaution to ensure their own safety.’
Such behavioral changes were characteristic of all Communist systems where people learned to carefully separate public expressions of their beliefs or sentiments from their private thoughts in all matters that had the slightest political relevance. In the Soviet Union this behavior used to be called ‘wearing the Party mask.’”
-Paul Hollander quoting Liu Binyan in The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries, and Political Morality, pg. 115

The Communist dictator Mengitsu in Ethiopia dismissing reporting on the severity of the famine, urged Davit Wolde Giorgis, "Don't let these petty human problems that always exist in transition periods consume you." (pg. 166). In built in so much of Communism and socialism has been a permission giving belief for hardness of heart. It seems counterintuitive, but much of it was built on a closing of the ears against the cry of the poor. Permission for sin and transgression against the neighbor, for theft, betrayal and murder, was given in the name of Progress. Perhaps the most famous example is when Stalin told his forces entering Germany "All is forgiven" in advance, meaning no atrocities would be impugned or held to account.

"It was widely known that security people watched those who were not cheering loudly enough. Mengitsu even had to win the tennis games he played with members of his government who let him win; he expected and received 'rounds of applause' from the officials who gathered to watch these games." pg. 166
Such historical anecdotes are often dismissed without dwelling on their deeper significance. This wasn't an idiosyncratic dictatorship, an anomaly within Communism. Somehow such awfulness, cloaked in public mendacity, rose over and over again in Communist countries. Why? What about Socialism generates this mendacity? Probably we are closer to the mark when we note the falsehood of its anthropology. "Marxism will overcome nature."

Giorgis recalled that "none of us felt we were able to tell him the truth. It is a guilt that I and other public officials must live with." Solzhenitsyn recognized the "evil empire" was built on the little day to day concession to lies and urged a personal commitment never to lie. "The lazy man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion."

"A primitive belief in Marxism encouraged such attitudes as Mengitsu observed that 'the tide will turn… Marxism will overcome nature." pg. 167

“If radicalism was a displacement of personal grievance, it was not surprising that radicals could not confront their interior lives. New Left radicals favored the slogan ‘the personal is the political,’ but the intention behind it was not introspective. The phrase expressed, rather, their totalitarian agenda to CONTROL the personal in order to make utopian politics work.”

-David Horowitz

“If the Left was primarily motivated by the desire to ‘make the world better,’ why was it so indifferent to the consequences of its efforts? What else could explain its lack of concern about the deeds of its liberators in Indochina, or its Panther vanguard at home? It’s disinterest in whether socialism WORKED or not? The more I thought about the moral posturing of the Left, the more I saw that its genius lay not in reforms but in framing indictments. Resentment and retribution were the radical passions.”

-David Horowitz

“Marx was a man of strong hatreds and loves -mostly hatreds- which deeply conditioned his thought.”

-Eugene Genovese

(His love for one of his maids ended in his refusing to acknowledge his offspring with her).

“The horrors did not arise from perversions of radical ideology but from the ideology itself. We were led into complicity with mass murder and the desecration of our professed ideals....by a deep flaw in our understanding of human nature- its frailties and possibilities- and by our inability to replace the moral and ethical baseline long provided by the religion we have dismissed with indifference, not to say, contempt...Our whole project of ‘human liberation’ has rested on a series of gigantic illusions. The catastrophic consequences of our failure... cannot be dismissed as aberrations....They have followed in the wake of victories by radical egalitarian movements throughout history, from ancient times to the peasant wars of the Sixteenth century to the Reign of Terror and beyond, social movements that have espoused radical egalitarianism and participatory democracy have begun with mass murder and ended in despotism...The allegedly high ideals we placed at the center of our ideology and politics are precisely what need to be re-examined.”

-Eugene Genovese, qtd. in The End of Commitment, pg. 193

“There are certain kinds of people who are political out of a kind of religious reason...It is fairly common among socialists: They are... God-seekers, looking for the kingdom of God on earth...trying to abolish the present in favor of some better future- always taking it for granted there is a better future. If you don’t believe in heaven, the you believe in socialism.”

-Doris Lessing

The problem is not with religious acknowledgement of the transcendent but with the misplace meant of that into idols, what Rene Girard would call a subterranean metaphysics with an infernal mechanism leading to what Eugene Genovese noted: “That no socialist regime- no regime of the radical Left at any time in history- has ever avoided political tyranny and mass murder goes unremarked.”

“...in the motherland of socialism (the Soviet Union), socialism did not work.”

-Maurice Halperin

[João Cerqueira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why have some supporters of communist regimes stopped believing in their own country’s system? Why have intellectuals and others living in democratic societies supported communist dictatorships in the name of freedom and progress? And why have some of these supporters abandoned their beliefs, while others have resisted all evidence of the failure of communism? These are same of the questions that Paul Hollander addresses in this book.

If it’s not difficult to understand that those who lived in communist regimes often fled (when they had an opportunity) confirming the failure of those systems or because they felt threatened. It is more difficult to understand why some people who lived in a democracy denied the accomplishments of their country and, in a few cases exchanged freedom for dictatorship by emigrating to a communist country.

One such example was Sidney Rittenberg. Born into a wealthy family, he was convinced that the social injustices of the United States could only be remedied by communism. After belonging for some time to the American communist party and doing military service in China, he came to believe that he has found the ideal society in communist China. He continued to live in that country for thirty-five years, seventeen of them in prison. Even though he loyally served the Mao regime, he was imprisoned as a spy. Despite this experience he continued to believe in the regime, convincing himself that his arrest was a mistake. His faith in communism was such that he preferred being an innocent victim to renouncing his beliefs. Rittenberg was victim of the very system that he defended and instead of rejecting it, he served it with even greater devotion. It was only when, years later, his family was also arrested, that Rittenberg finally renounced his beliefs.

The book also addresses cases of people, such as Eric H. Hobsbwam, the famous historian who, even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was unable to face reality. Such individuals remained convinced that capitalism had to be replaced by communism. Hobsbwam was forced to admit that the USSR failed, but he still believed in Marxism and it superiority over Capitalism - the source of all evil. By replacing facts with belief, Hobsbwam seems more like a clairvoyant, or true believer, than a historian, refusing to confront what was right before his eyes.

For these true believers, the means justified the ends – a better world – or they argued that the construction of this superior system was a long process and only in the long run would the ideals be realized. These mental gymnastics bring to mind the attempts of medieval theologians to tried justify the existence of evil in a world created by God – without, however, reaching the intellectual sophistication of Saint Augustine.

Paul Hollander shows that belief in communism is a form of fanaticism immune to reality and logic that is more prevalent among those who live in free countries, and especially among idealistic intellectuals ignorant of realities of these systems. They convinced themselves that the social problems of their country would not exist in a communist regime, embracing Marxism and political systems which were opposed to the West. They nurtured these beliefs while living in the bourgeois comfort of capitalism enjoying free expression. A good example is the Portuguese Communist Party that continues to support the exceptionally repressive regime in North Korea.

The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries, and Political Morality is not only a great history book, but also an important contribution to the appreciation of democracy.

I highly recommend it.

[Michael Connolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a study of people who at one time believed in Communism, but who later changed their minds.
It includes both defectors from Communist countries and Western intellectuals. Some of the people discussed include:
* Alexander Orlov of the NKVD who secretly transporting the entire gold reserve of Spanish Republic to the USSR
* Lev Kopelev, who criticized the treatment of German civilians in the wake of the Russian victory in World War II
* Victor Kravchenko, who defected from the Soviet Union in 1944 and in 1946 published I Chose Freedom
* Arkady Shevchenko, the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect to the West
* Andras Hegedus, former prime minister of Hungary, who summoned the Soviet tanks to crush the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
* Bui Tin, a North Vietnamese Communist soldier and newspaper editor who defected to France in 1990
* Truong Nhu Tang, one of the founders of the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam, who defected to France in 1978
* Liu Binyan, who wrote the book People or Monsters, an expose of Communist Party corruption
* Fang Lizhi, a Chinese astrophysicist who helped inspire the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
* Wei Jingsheng, who advocated "The Fifth Modernization: Democracy", and who wrote famous letters from prison
* Sidney Rittenberg, the first American citizen to join the Chinese Communist Party
* Heberto Padilla, a Cuban poet and early supporter of Fidel Castro, who later turned against him
* Rafael Del Pino, a Cuban Air Force General who fought in Angola and later defected to the U.S. in 1987
* David Horowitz, who needs no introduction
* Ronald Radosh, who became disillusioned by visits to Nicaragua and Cuba and his research into the Rosenberg affair
* Eugene Genovese, an ex-Marxist American historian who founded the Historical Society of Boston University
* Christopher Hitchens, who criticized the Left's failure to recognize the threat of political Islam
The main reasons for their becoming disillusioned were:
(1) the hypocrisy of the leaders, who cared only about their own privileges, and not at all about the welfare of the poor,
(2) the inequality between the lifestyle of the leaders and the masses,
(3) the corruption,
(4) the failure of socialism to provide material plenty for the masses,
(5) the lack of political freedom,
(6) the feeling of having been deceived by the Communist Party leadership

Most of those disillusioned with Communism in practice continued to believe that socialism has never really been tried. Most believed that power-mad leaders had corrupted socialism, some came to believe that the ideal of socialism was incompatible with human nature, or that it was not practical. Few ever understood that radical egalitarian vision was evil in and of itself.
Ayn Rand has argued that the main cause of totalitarian socialism was German philosophical idealism. Rand asserted that Kant, Hegel and Marx helped both (a) to create this utopian vision, and (2) to destroy the Aristotelian philosophical tradition, which was the only force powerful enough to combat German philosophical idealism. Rand's great philosophical insight, however, is perhaps not the whole story, because we still do not fully understand the psychology of the appeal of religious and socialist utopian visions. There is more to their appeal than whim worship, envy and self-congratulation. Something to do with the fear that there is no magic in the world and the fear that life is pointless, given that we all die.

[T Fool · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of three or four books recommended to sober readers about Communism. It does that, in spades. The assemblage of profiles is impressive, covering the globe. To get first-hand witness of living in very constrained societies would cause a reader in the West to revalue local complaints, however drastic they are.

Better is the quality of witness. Most of these people were high-up, enthusiastic members, people with positions of power. Some became disillusioned because practice didn't come close to theory. Some saw the distance between human response as predicted it would unfold and human response as it was neglected 'on the ground'.

Hollander presents this as a sociological look, and draws conclusions about the nature of political 'true belief', relying in part on Eric Hoffer, and in part on cognitive dissonance: the psychological discomfiture at situations that run counter to firm expectation. The personal figures living in Western countries often, he documents, try mightily to excuse what their eyes and ears get shown.

It's worthy to see an examination of what historically fails and to get a taste of why.

If Communism was indeed a kind of secular religion, a substitute for it, where else might this human behavior take hold?

Any system that explains all, that claims to answer all human questions, solve all problems (if only sometime later), rarely recognizes itself as an ideology. To it, any other explanation is, but not it itself.

Marxism early on analyzed industry, economic relationships as a whole, not just historically, but as an unfolding expression of an ontological newness. Freedom was to ripen categorically. Whatever its merits, it discounted far too much human characteristics of fear and stodginess, tribalism and xenophobia, arrogance and possessiveness.

Not that people can't be good, too! But cautious institutions have to be in place to allow 'our better angels' to manifest. Freedom is heady. Liberalization is delicate. Each person requires respect, and a free society must value that.

So, if Hollander is right about applying 'true belief' to politics -- and he is -- are his conclusions not valid for any politics if taken to ideological extremes? In an effort to counter the falsehoods various communist societies have put forward, the much more effective capitalist societies may also have oversold themselves.

Communism has been a failure. But it's possible that any explanation of humanity that reduces things to an economic nutshell is also rendering an ideological disservice.

Maybe we humans just can't adequately be explained. Irreducible. And in that uncomfortable mystery, therein our humanity lies. Any system that wants to provide us stability needs to make ample room for that.