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itarianism, if only because they are not based on either total
mobilization or total control.
Such comments naturally raise the question of how Gorbachev's
reforms fit into this picture . The answer is difficult because we are
looking at a process, the outcome of which we do not know. All
reports from the Soviet Union seem to indicate that
glasnost,
the
opening up of public discourse and debate, has been a spectacular
success, if with partly unexpected and undesired consequences,
whereas
perestroika ,
the restructuring of economic and social condi–
tions, has so far been an equally spectacular failure. The relation
between the two raises difficult questions. Is civil society a prere–
quisite of economic growth, or is the coincidence of the two in Bri–
tain and the United States an accident of history? How can a civil
society be created in a country without a tradition of autonomous in–
stitutions or the rule of law? I confess to belonging to those who
believe that the Gorbachev experiment has too flimsy an intellectual
and political base to succeed . Clearly, the General Secretary does
not have the power or the courage of his apparent convictions, which
would be needed to let real prices determine economic activity. He is
still much closer to Karl Marx than to Adam Smith. But even if he
fails, the Soviet Union will not become totalitarian again. It is more
likely to turn into a technocratic version of bureaucracy than into a
personalized regime of terror.
I said that the question of whether totalitarianism can happen
again is two questions . The other one is whether we are likely to see
more examples of that evil and destructive perversion of govern–
ment. Here, the answer unfortunately must be, yes. Again, if my
analysis is correct, which it may not be, countries in which old struc–
tures of hierarchy and dependence are uneasily allied with the
strains of modernization are the main candidates . If in addition
there is a smell of war in the air, or even the real smell of guns and
bombs, the risk is even greater. I have no expertise whatsoever con–
cerning the Middle East. But from the vantage point of a passionate
observer, a number of countries in this explosive corner of the globe
are characterized by precisely that unhappy mixture of traditional
structures and strains of modernity that provide the conditions
under which tyrants, as Manes Sperber described them, can rise to
power. An inveterate eighteenth-century liberal like myself is there–
fore tempted to recommend,the remedy of civil society in these parts
as elsewhere .
So what is to be done? Step by step , I seem to have slipped
