Collectivism, Warmed Over – The Dispatch

To paraphrase Theodore White’s quip about Barry Goldwater, it was a real “My God, he’s going to govern as Zohran Mamdani!” moment.

For young people who barely know who Goldwater (never mind Theodore White) was, the reference is probably lost. The same historical ignorance probably explains why some were surprised by all the fuss over the word “collectivism.”

“Collectivism” and its sibling, “collectivization,” are trigger words for, well, people like me. In the academic and philosophical literature, “collectivism” is the blanket analytical term for certainly most and arguably all forms of totalitarian ideology. 

The term came into the English language in the 1850s—probably borrowed from the French collectivisme—where it battled with competing terms for basically the same thing: communism, socialism, cooperation, corporatism, solidarity, etc.   

But it wasn’t until the 1930s that it got separated from the solidaristic adjectival herd. American journalist William Henry Chamberlin, a communist sympathizer until he lived under actual communism in the Soviet Union, wrote Collectivism: A False Utopia in 1937, which solidified its negative connotations. On the first page, Chamberlin writes, 

“Collectivism, both in its communist and fascist forms” falls on the wrong side of that question, according to Chamberlin.

After Chamberlin, Karl Popper, Friedrich Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter, and countless other heavy hitters established “collectivism” as the acceptable term for a political orientation that stands in opposition to the individual and individual rights. 

Colloquially, the reason collectivism acquired a bad odor that sometimes even communism did not emit was because of collectivization. At least when one denounces communism, communists spout the usual “but true communism was never really tried!” Precisely because of its bloodless academic nature, the word “collectivism” evades such defenses. No serious person can claim that “true collectivism was never really tried,” in part because, again colloquially, collectivization is the fully realized act of putting collectivism into practice. 

The Soviets used collectivization to describe their effort to transform agriculture, and they killed millions in the process. In Ukraine in the early 1930s, collectivization led to such mass man-made starvation and cannibalism that Soviet authorities had to distribute posters that read, “To eat your own children is a barbarian act.” 

When I first heard Mamdani refer to the “warmth of collectivism,” I immediately thought of Anne Applebaum’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag: A History. In one scene, she describes how a slave-laborer fell in the snow from exhaustion. The other slaves—and they were slaves, owned by the state, as Chamberlin would put it—rushed to strip the fallen man’s clothes and belongings. The dying man’s last words were, “It’s so cold.”

Collectivization under Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” led to millions more Chinese famine deaths from 1959 to 1961—from a lowball estimate of 20 million to a high of 45 million.

Now, I don’t for a moment think Mamdani has anything like that in mind. Moreover, even if he did, nothing like that can be orchestrated from New York’s City Hall. 

But here is what I do think is interesting and worrisome about his use of the term “collectivism.” I can only think of three possibilities for it: 1) Mamdani is ignorant of the term’s historically grounded connotation, 2) he knows it and doesn’t care, or 3) he knows it and does care. 

Under the second and third options, he could be trying to reclaim the positive connotation of collectivism—a connotation it has not had for at least a century. Or he could be trying to troll people—like me—into attacking him and overreacting to a word his fans have no problem with.

I suppose there’s a fourth possibility. He has a bad speechwriter—or is one—and just made a stupid, lazy mistake. After all, he could have used “community,” “communal,” “solidarity,” “cooperation,” “shared sacrifice,” or some such treacle. 

But this mistake is essentially no different than ignorance. That it didn’t stand out to him is a form of ignorance. After all, if the draft referred to the warmth of “Stalinism” or “National Socialism,” Mamdani would certainly have said, “Whoa, we can’t say that. Let’s talk about the ‘warmth of community’ instead.”

Part of me just wants to beebop and scat all over commies. It’s my intellectual safe space. Doing so makes me nostalgic for the days when I was in better odor on the right. It literally makes me feel closer to my father, who was a passionate anti-communist and who could talk for hours in granular detail about “the God that failed.” Indulge me as I briefly scratch that itch. 

The inability of many people on the American left to understand why millions of decent, rational, even quite progressive, people are turned off by radical communist—or communist cosplay—rhetoric is one of my great obsessive fascinations. I have no problem with people who think Hitlerism was worse than Stalinism or Maoism—there are good and persuasive arguments on that score. What I cannot fathom, or credit, are people who can’t understand or acknowledge why it’s a fairly debatable question, a legitimately close call. 

Let’s put it this way: John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer. So was Ted Bundy. I’m fine with people saying that Gacy was “worse” than Bundy—or vice versa. What I cannot comprehend is why someone would say that because one is really bad, the other isn’t really all that bad. 

Go ahead and argue that Hitlerism was worse than Stalinism. I think that’s correct. But Stalinism was close. And yet, communist kitsch—hammer and sickle T-shirts, Maoist caps—are transgressive fashion statements (in a boringly conformist sort of way), but the swastika is taboo (or was). I’m all for the swastika being taboo, I’m just at a loss why communist swag shouldn’t be too. 

Moreover—and I don’t say this in a trollish way—at least Nazi economics had more tangible deliverables than Maoism and, with some caveats, Stalinism. (We can argue about that another time. Suffice it to say, I think all three economic systems were evil and empirically inferior to our own). 

But let me forgo the comfort of further venting and make a different point. I think our politics, on the left and right, are shot through with a kind cultivated ignorance about the past. 

Let me say something in defense of Karl Marx and his socialist and nationalist contemporaries: They were starting relatively fresh. The Industrial Revolution was a legitimately new thing. The wealth it created was new. The kind of poverty it created was new, too. Poverty itself was hardly new, but prior to the Industrial Revolution, poverty was normal and ubiquitous. What was unusual and rare was wealth. The Industrial Revolution, and the urbanization that came with it, made “pauperism,” a new term in the 19^th century, visible in ways it had never been. 

Speaking of new terms, it’s difficult to get your head around how new and unsettled the world seemed in the 19^th century, when societies were undergoing massive change. Consider that  all of these words were either invented or took on their modern meaning in the 19^th century: social science, society, socialism, sociology, capitalism, Marxism, nationalism, feminism, ecology, ideology, conservative, liberal, realpolitik, bureaucracy, scientist, automobile, telephone, typewriter, homosexual, heterosexual, freelance, even boredom (coined by Charles Dickens) and—arguably—the term Western Civilization. Empathy wasn’t a word in English until the early 20^th century. 

So you can have some sympathy and empathy for people being wrong at a time when it was unclear what was right and so many new ideas were swirling around. Why not collectivize? Or why not hold onto a king during these turbulent times? What’s so wrong with following new-fangled “nationalism” or “socialism” to their logical conclusions? Why accept that capitalism is good when it’s made poverty so much more visible? The experiments hadn’t been run yet. 

British historian Eric Hobsbawm coined the term “the long 19^th century” to describe the era from the French Revolution to the outbreak of World War I. I think you can extend that a little further to the outbreak of World War II, because the spirit of the French Revolution lived on in the Soviet Union and in the hearts of utopians in the West. During the long, or super-long 19^th century, the verdict was still out on how to organize society—collectivism or individualism and all that. That’s what the debate over the “social question” was all about. From the end of World War II until fairly recently, the answer to the social question was largely settled. 

Maybe Francis Fukuyama jinxed it by noticing that settlement, but the social question is suddenly a live question on the left and right. 

And you know what? That’s fine. I’m open to another way of doing things—if it works. If there’s something better than liberal democratic capitalism at doing the things socialists or nationalists want done, I’m willing to hear the case. But here’s the thing: The burden of proof is on you, the radicals of all parties. 

But what bothers me about the Mamdani and new right crowds alike is the degree to which they all want to revisit the social question without reference to the historical record. 

Bernie Sanders, who—of course—swore Mamdani in, gave a speech at the ceremony in which he simply asserted that government-run (“city-sponsored”) grocery stores save money because access to good and healthy food is good for public health. What evidence is he basing that on? 

It’s a small example, but in an age in which ideologues of the left and right want to revisit the social question, so much of their respective arguments depend on question-begging. Sanders assumes government-run grocery stores work, and therefore we should have them. The practical question of “Do they work?” is just skipped over. They should work and that’s why we should have them.  

America, various new rightists claim, should have an integralist, or postliberal, or monarchist, or corporatist system because these things will do X or Y. The evidence comes in second, if at all. We live in a time where arguments are about how things work in theory, with little heed to actual practice. It’s like everyone is an apocryphal French intellectual or some other egghead now.

Indeed, as my friend Dan Rothschild writes, “Most of the bad ideas in circulation today are old bad ideas, not new bad ideas.” He sees this as a cause for optimism, because the defenders of liberal democratic capitalism have evidence and data on their side in a way they didn’t in the early 20^th (or 19^th) centuries. Intellectually I’m with Dan. And emotionally I often am. 

But there’s something dispiriting about the refusal of people to accept that their conception of the ought has been rebutted by the is—or what was. 

“We will govern without shame and insecurity, making no apology for what we believe,” Mamdani said in his inaugural address. “I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist. I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical.”

Put aside that there’s a tension between “collectivism” and at least the “democratic” in democratic socialist (though that tension is muted somewhat by the actual beliefs of the Democratic Socialists of America party). The DSA believes in abolishing the police, nationalizing the fossil fuel industry to hasten phasing it out, and trying its CEOs for “crimes against humanity,” withdrawing America from NATO, and, in some quarters, abolishing capitalism.

I hope it’s obvious that I think these ideas are objectively stupid and contradicted by the verdict of history.  

I don’t say this just because I think Mamdani and the DSA are objectively wrong about so many things, but because I honestly think the leaders of a party advancing so many failed and radical ideas should have some shame and insecurity about what they believe. That might be asking too much, so how about some humility? Or heck, maybe just some empathy for the people who are scared or offended by such willful or accidental ignorance.

So it’s been a rough week for the canines. Pippa got her long-delayed bath. I wish I could have gotten video of me trying to get her into the tub. She ran, hid, and dodged like we were taking her to the chair. At one point she extended all four legs like arms, clutching onto the door frame. Once in the tub she took it with admirable stoicism (and, no, that is not windshield wiper fluid). Her stoicism extended to the post-bath period, where she stared out the window like Joe Biden peering out on the Rose Garden. But she eventually reconciled with us and is now in good spirits. She’s even taken to her winter gear well. Meanwhile, in more serious news, TFJ took Zoë to a veterinarian surgeon for yet another opinion on removing her lump. It’s not getting smaller, and we think it’s starting to affect her health and mobility. So it looks like we’re going to have it removed, which is a bummer, not least because of the expense. But also because at her age there are real risks and recovery might be an ordeal. Gracie remains as demanding for love as ever. Appeasementcontinues, despite the lessons of history referred to above.

Member Name: Andrew Bledsoe

Why I’m a Dispatch Member: Thoughtful, long-form journalism with a refreshingly normal perspective. And Jonah’s bon mots.

Personal Details: I’m a history professor at a small Southern college.

Pet’s Breed: Domestic short-hair tabby.

Gotcha Story: Mosby was one in a litter of strays who got snatched up by my future wife (who can’t resist stray kitties). He lived with her dad until he passed, then joined us and has been a central part of our lives ever since.

Pet’s Likes: Sitting on books, begging for people food (especially Chick-fil-A), sleeping in the sunshine, belly rubs.

Pet’s Dislikes: Company. He’s a true introvert.

Pet’s Proudest Moment: Probably when he figured out how easy it is to manipulate his people into feeding him extra dinner.

A Moment Someone (Wrongly) Accused Pet of Being Bad: Impossible, he’s the perfect cat.

Do you have a quadruped you’d like to nominate for Dispawtcher of the Week and catapult to stardom? Let us know about your pet by clicking here. Reminder: You must be a Dispatch member to participate.

Note: ICYMI and the Weird Links will be back next week.