From his very interesting Reith Lecture on the BBC, 20 December 1953
It is a cruel and humourless sort of pun that so powerful a present form of modern tyranny should call itself by the very name of a belief in community, by a word 'communism' which in other times evoked memories of villages and village inns and of artisans concerting their skills, and of men of learning content with anonymity. But perhaps only a malignant end can follow the systematic belief that all communities are one community; that all truth is one truth; that all experience is compatible with all other; that total knowledge is possible; that all that is potential can exist as actual. This is not man's fate; this is not his path.
...or maybe the problem was that the revolution faced so many problems and such stiff resistance (both domestic and foreign) that the original ideals had to be horrendously compromised; the thinkers had to be replaced with thugs; and a war against the world had to be waged which exchanged men for monsters, principles for propaganda, and dreams for dogma.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the single greatest tragedy of the 20th century - after World War I - is the success of the Bolsheviks over the Mensheviks. My mind reels to imagine how different the world would be if Lenin and his ilk had been kept out of power, and a moderate form of Socialism had won out.