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the political systems now utterly discredited and collapsing in Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union have not been greatly admired by the crit–
ics of Western societies since the death of Stalin, they were not subjected
to the type of searching and merciless criticism these critics so eagerly
aimed at their own social systems. After all , these systems expunged
capitalism.
The American (and Western) critics of capitalism could not quite
believe that Soviet-type systems were totally lacking in legitimacy among
their own people; they subscribed to the belief that while they did not
excel in the provision of political liberties, they did provide their people
with material security and a commendably egalitarian income distribu–
tion. The critics of the West did not know or found it difficult to be–
lieve that these socialist countries developed new forms of inequality
which became deeply entrenched and that they were also riddled with
social problems identical or very similar to those found in the decadent
West. As far as the Soviet Union was concerned, its deficiencies were of–
ten ascribed to and excused by American intrigues, the arms race, a
troubled history, and so on.
Thus certain illusions about these systems persisted even after they
were no longer revered; the Western (and especially the more radical) left
never really took their full measure because it was never much interested
in them and their defects. Social democrats were the major exception;
they remained unrepentant critics of communist systems at a time
(between the late 1960s and throughout the 1980s) when anti-anticom–
munism was the proper attitude among people who thought of them–
selves as enlightened liberals.
It
should be emphasized that those of left and left-liberal persuasion
had ample opportunities to rethink their beliefs regarding "existing so–
cialist systems" well before their recent collapse - but they were not ter–
ribly interested in those in Eastern Europe. They preferred the newer so–
cialist states in the third world which more readily gratified their long–
ings for some uncorrupted, harmonious, preindustrial realm, populated by
poor but pure, happy and unpossessive peasants thriving on authentic
communal bonds. But then the supply of such countries began to run
out as their images became tarnished: Cuba persecuted homosexuals,
China was receptive to capitalism (and massacred students on television),
Vietnam presided over the flight of the boatpeople. Nicaragua through
the 1980s inspired great hopes but that too came to an end when in
1990 its benighted masses "voted with their bellies and not with their
hearts" (in the words of William Sloan Coffin) - as the event came to be
described among erstwhile supporters . At last came the spectacular col–
lapse of the East European communist states and the accelarating change
