New York Times “Celebrates” the Fall of the Berlin Wall
by Marian L. Tupy2 people liked this
In a way, I always knew it would happen. I knew that, come November 9, the left-leaning NYT would publish an article focusing on the supposed crisis of capitalism rather than the end of communist dictatorship. Still, I was not prepared for Slavoj Zizek’s op-ed en led “20 Years of Collapse.”
First, a few words about the author — a Marxist philosopher from Slovenia. Generally ignored or ridiculed in Slovenia, Zizek is considered (by some) to be the new messiah of leftist thought in the West. Why did the NYTchose to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the collapse of communism with Zizek’s call for “socialism with a human face,” rather than an op-ed by someone like Vladimir Bukovsky, a former Soviet political prisoner tormented for years by the communists, is anyone’s guess.
But, it is the substance of Zizek’s article that is so misleading. The article makes absolutely no mention of theeconomic progress made in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, as the World Bank and even the United Nations tell us, incomes in the region have substantially increased and so has school enrollment. People live longer and healthier lives; environmental quality has much improved.
Zizek mentions communist oppression, but nowhere does he mention that 100 million people have died in the pursuit of communist utopia. Contemporary Marxists either ignore the astonishingly high number of victims of communism or try to minimize it. That is understandable. No matter what the (real or imagined) problems with capitalism are today, no sane person would be willing to embrace an alternative to capitalism that has a habit of resulting in a mountain of corpses.
The second — and equally risible tactic of contemporary communists (as Paul Hollander mentions in his just released Cato study) — is to try to draw a moral equivalence between socialism and market democracy. Zizek attempts to do exactly that by telling a story of a Soviet defector who became an outspoken critic of McCarthyism in the United States. The idea that there is any but the most superficial similarity between Soviet totalitarianism and the United States in the 1950s is preposterous — unless, of course, you are a modern-day leftist trying to salvage whatever remains of your philosophy from the dustbin of history.
Zizek is right to point out that there is growing disenchantment with capitalism and democracy. But, the recently released Pew and BBC polls have surely been influenced by the current (and likely temporary) economic environment, which, we are told, is the worst since the Great Depression. There are other psychological factors at work. Current problems feature more prominently in the minds of today’s Central and Eastern Europeans than shortages of 20 years ago and the old tend to remember their youth fondly — no matter what the actual political and economic cir stances.
Last, but not least, young people in the region know very little about communism. Learning about communism is by-and-large superficial, because the level of collaboration with communist regimes was very high among the general public. A thorough investigation of communist crimes would open too many wounds, it is claimed. Unfortunately, this collective amnesia means that instead of appreciating the great advances that their societies have made over the past 20 years, young people focus on their societies’ shortcomings vis-ŕ-vis the contemporary West.
I have lived under communism. Although I have never personally experienced its true horrors, I had family members who did. The NYT’s choice of a lead op-ed on the day of an almost miraculous deliverance of hundreds of millions of people from communist slavery is shameful and sickening.
Or an old-fashioned anti-New Deal liberal like Mencken, John Flynn or Al Smith; or an America Firster like Lindburgh or Pat Robertson; or the Taft Republicans, pre-war; or my ancestor WFB Sr.The idea that there is any but the most superficial similarity between Soviet totalitarianism and the United States in the 1950s is preposterous — unless, of course, you are a modern-day leftist trying to salvage whatever remains of your philosophy from the dustbin of history.
Last edited by Winehole23; 11-10-2009 at 02:03 AM.
Social democracy and the bureaucratic management of everyday life are over 70 years old in the USA -- why is the equivalence risible?The second — and equally risible tactic of contemporary communists (as Paul Hollander mentions in his just released Cato study) — is to try to draw a moral equivalence between socialism and market democracy.
Last edited by Winehole23; 11-10-2009 at 01:58 AM.
The New Deal, not Obama, signified our turn to socialism.
You guys believe too much of that good government bull .
And we haven't had free enterprise in this country since before TR.
and hated
Thank God we have the NYT, although with it's sales in the toliet who knows for how long(....I wonder why.).I'ts so refreshing to have a legitamate news source, and not some hacks like at FOX.I's were all the real intellectuals go for information.New York Times “Celebrates” the Fall of the Berlin Wall
by Marian L. Tupy2 people liked this
First, a few words about the author — a Marxist philosopher from Slovenia. Generally ignored or ridiculed in Slovenia, Zizek is considered (by some) to be the new messiah of leftist thought in the West. Why did the NYTchose to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the collapse of communism with Zizek’s call for “socialism with a human face,” rather than an op-ed by someone like Vladimir Bukovsky, a former Soviet political prisoner tormented for years by the communists, is anyone’s guess.
But, it is the substance of Zizek’s article that is so misleading. The article makes absolutely no mention of theeconomic progress made in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, as the World Bank and even the United Nations tell us, incomes in the region have substantially increased and so has school enrollment. People live longer and healthier lives; environmental quality has much improved.
Zizek mentions communist oppression, but nowhere does he mention that 100 million people have died in the pursuit of communist utopia. Contemporary Marxists either ignore the astonishingly high number of victims of communism or try to minimize it. That is understandable. No matter what the (real or imagined) problems with capitalism are today, no sane person would be willing to embrace an alternative to capitalism that has a habit of resulting in a mountain of corpses.
The second — and equally risible tactic of contemporary communists (as Paul Hollander mentions in his just released Cato study) — is to try to draw a moral equivalence between socialism and market democracy. Zizek attempts to do exactly that by telling a story of a Soviet defector who became an outspoken critic of McCarthyism in the United States. The idea that there is any but the most superficial similarity between Soviet totalitarianism and the United States in the 1950s is preposterous — unless, of course, you are a modern-day leftist trying to salvage whatever remains of your philosophy from the dustbin of history.
Zizek is right to point out that there is growing disenchantment with capitalism and democracy. But, the recently released Pew and BBC polls have surely been influenced by the current (and likely temporary) economic environment, which, we are told, is the worst since the Great Depression. There are other psychological factors at work. Current problems feature more prominently in the minds of today’s Central and Eastern Europeans than shortages of 20 years ago and the old tend to remember their youth fondly — no matter what the actual political and economic cir stances.
Last, but not least, young people in the region know very little about communism. Learning about communism is by-and-large superficial, because the level of collaboration with communist regimes was very high among the general public. A thorough investigation of communist crimes would open too many wounds, it is claimed. Unfortunately, this collective amnesia means that instead of appreciating the great advances that their societies have made over the past 20 years, young people focus on their societies’ shortcomings vis-ŕ-vis the contemporary West.
I have lived under communism. Although I have never personally experienced its true horrors, I had family members who did. The NYT’s choice of a lead op-ed on the day of an almost miraculous deliverance of hundreds of millions of people from communist slavery is shameful and sickening.
By some, sure. My point was, this country didn't turn socialist just last November. The turning point was over two generations ago.
I actually touched a piece of Berlin Wall
That's really cool, lefty.
It is kinda cool, and leaves an unexplainable sensation.
When I was stationed out of Patch Barracks in Germany, they brought in and memorialized complete sections of the wall.
Last edited by Wild Cobra; 11-10-2009 at 05:01 PM.
there's a section out here at the republican mecca.
you've just illustrated my main beef with modern conservatives: they view an editorial as a "legitamate [sic] news source" if it validates their own opinion.
Yeah
But I was so disappointed,because I didn't feel anything
By the way, the piece I touched is permanently exposed in an empty place in Montreal.
It was a gift from the city of Berlin.
It's not oo far from where I live, so I can touch it everyday if I want to
HEck, I could pee on it, they wouldn't notice
The rise of alternative news sources is because of like this piece. What thinking people are just supposed to sit on thier hands and nod and accept this.It's not just radio, it's news sources all over the internet. people are becoming more well informed, and you wanna call it a problem.
you find right wing hack editorials and claim they are facts.. own up to it.
What part of op-ed do you not understand, micca?
not only that, he seems to be confused about the source of the article (The Cato Ins ute) and that it criticizes the NYT for being too liberal. He probably meant to praise the New York Post.
Why do you not understand that for the anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall, this op-ed was completely inappropriate.
Why? Because you think it's better to pretend that all the problems of former communist countries ended with the fall of the wall?
So smart people read the NY Times and stupid people watch FOX News? What are you if you watch MSNBC or CNN?
I'm sure you could find some demographics if that was a serious question, but I'm sure it wasn't.
It's no secret that since the fall of communism, especially in Russia, there has been a very slow emergence of the middle class. Many of the workers got left behind when the Wall fell and the cronies were the ones who made the most out of the free market influx that followed.
To say that Eastern Europe is not lagging behind from the rest of the Western world is a gross understatement and to pretend that bringing democracy and capitalism has solved the problems of Eastern Europe would be foolish.
Why not? Are they doing better than they were behind the iron curtain? What is the alternative?
Along The Route From Communism
Oleh Havrylyshyn 11.14.07, 6:00 AM ETThe fall of the Berlin Wall 18 years ago symbolized the beginning of a transition from communist central planning to market democracy in some 25 countries--many of them new states. Repeated debates took place concerning the speed, scope and sequencing of reforms. But today it is clear that countries that undertook deeper and faster reforms achieved better results than countries that adopted more gradual and less extensive reforms.
As early as the mid-1990s, two schools of thought clashed over the effects of reforms on gross domestic product growth, unemployment and poverty rates, and income distribution in ex-communist countries.
The promoters of the "big-bang" approach claimed that it was better to start early and move rapidly on market liberalization and privatization. The defenders of the gradualist approach urged formerly communist countries to move more slowly in order to ease the social pain brought about by closing inefficient firms while also allowing time for ins utional development.
The early analyses of transition were quite negative. In 1995, for example, the United Nations Development Programme saw "the most acute poverty and welfare reversals in the world" in formerly communist countries.
By 2005, however, the World Bank painted a different picture. The Bank noted that in almost all formerly communist countries, poverty rates peaked between 1995 and 1998 and then fell. In many cases, they fell to their original levels.
Similarly, following the start of the reforms, many such nations experienced severe economic contractions. By 2000, however, ALL enjoyed high annual growth rates ranging from 4% to 10%.
Doubters note that official statistics show that only Central Europe and the Baltic states surpassed the output levels of the communist period. But official statistics suffer from two problems. Communist output methods overestimated real values of goods and services produced in the Soviet bloc. Moreover, statistics don't account for "underground" economic activity or the "gray economy" during the transition.
In the 1990s, some political scientists feared that economic reforms would undermine rather than help democratic development. They argued that rapid reforms would cause great social pain and democratic elections would overturn reformist governments. In fact, there is a high correlation between the Freedom House Index and the Transition Index of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In other words, ex-communist countries with more liberalized economies are more politically free today than ex-communist countries with less liberalized economies.
Moreover, it's not true that rapid reforms caused more social pain than gradual reforms. The UNDP's Human Development Index clearly shows that deterioration in human well-being was far greater in countries that progressed least toward the market than in countries that embraced economic reforms. Most of Central Europe, for example, experienced no deterioration between 1990 and 1995, while the Baltics did suffer some deterioration but recovered very quickly. The worst deterioration took place in the CIS countries, which saw a very slow progress toward a market economy.
Finally, the entrenchment of an oligarchy, which, like all vested interests in history, blocks full development of a compe ive market economy, has been most severe in the countries that opted for gradual reforms.
Many analysts, including Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, blame entrenchment of the oligarchies on rapid privatization and point to Russia as the prime example. Stiglitz is right to point out that the push for quick privatization permitted a formation of the oligarchs in Russia. What he also needs to explain, however, is why equally rapid privatization early on failed to create oligarchs in Estonia, Hungary and elsewhere and why delayed privatization, which he favored, resulted in the creation of an oligarchy in Ukraine.
The real reason behind the emergence of the oligarchs was not too much liberalization but too little. It was not the rapidity of privatization that caused the problem, but its incompleteness in Russia and Ukraine.
With all the bumps in the road and the still incomplete process of transition in some ex-communist countries, it is clear that the lives of more than 300 million people of the former Soviet empire are better today than they were under communism. Today, more than half of the ex-communist countries are democracies. Others, like Belarus, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan will, hopefully, soon follow. Broadly speaking, those who moved earliest and most resolutely on economic liberalization experienced greatest successes in democratization, economic prosperity and social well-being.
Oleh Havrylyshyn is the former deputy finance minister of Ukraine and the author of the new Cato Ins ute study "Fifteen Years of Transformation in the Post-Communist World: Rapid Reformers Outperformed Gradualists." He is a research scholar at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies.
http://www.forbes.com/2007/11/13/pos...mie_print.html
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