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The God That Failed

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The famous collection "The God that Failed" contains reflections by three famous writers/activists who were members of the Communist Party in their nation (Koestler, Silone and Wright), and three who were, at least in the view of some, fellow travellers (Gide, Fischer, Spender). Each of them explains in short anecdotal style, mixed with philosophical and political musings, how they came to be an orthodox Communist, and how they came to leave this position.

All of these contributions make for excellent reading, and together they form an entirely and incontrovertibly damning picture of both the strategies and the mindset of the various Marxist-Leninist Parties and their leading adherents. In that way this book forms an excellent companion to the works of Orwell, Edmund Wilson and similar people who were also sympathetic to socialism of various kinds, but came to see the "official" Marxism of the USSR and its followers as a destructive and evil force. Because that is what goes for all these writers as well as for Orwell - despite the claim of conservatives to books like this, all of the contributors to this collection still supported socialism at the end, only a different kind of socialism, more humane, more sensitive, and for some even more religious. None of them regretted their initial motives in joining the Party, but all of them felt that the Party is rather the kind of thing they wanted to fight against in the first place - the ultimate deception, caused by the political methodology of Marxism-Leninism.

It is well-known by now, but it wasn't so evident then. Marxism-Leninism necessarily rests on two main axiomas: first, that the Party is inherently the most progressive force and representative of the struggle for socialism and the proletariat's role in this; and second, that the ends, as embodied in the Party, always justify the means. Together, these two rules form a deadly recipe for totalitarianism and tyranny over the mind, regardless of how well-intentioned its adherents may or may not have been. One need but look at the many revealing 'incidents' mentioned in this book, or even at Orwell's excellent memoirs of the Spanish Civil War (which Koestler has also written about), to see why this is true.

Conservatives and liberals use this book as ammunition, incorrectly assuming that this is meant for them and to support their views. That is not so. All of the writers in this collection despised professional anti-communism and went on doing so until their death. It is not they who should read this book, but all socialists in this world who should read it, so that we know what happens when we abdicate the search for truth and make it subservient to opportunistic politics, regardless of what goals we have in mind in doing so. People of unfree mind can never build a free world.

For readers interested in the intellectual history of the twentieth century, this book is a fundamental document. "The God that Failed" refers to Communism as it manifested itself in the USSR between 1917 and the time of the book's publication in 1949 (and as it was established in the USSR's satellite states after 1945). In their own phrase, the Russian experience was "real existing socialism", based on so-called Marxist-Leninist principles, whose most adept pupil was Josef Stalin; unfortunately it became the inflexible model for future developments elsewhere. The book is an anthology of six "confessional" essays by three continental writers (Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, and Andre Gide, all novelists and essayists), one English writer (Stephen Spender, poet) and two American writers (Richard Wright, novelist, and Louis Fischer, political journalist). All of them had either joined the Party and worked on its behalf or had been prestigious foreign fellow-travelers of the Russian regime, speaking and writing on its behalf. By 1948 they had all rejected their earlier intellectual and emotional commitments to the Party and to communism (but not to their own ideal versions of socialism - they never became conservatives). The broad appeal of theoretical Marxism and its first "instantiation", Russian Communism, to intellectuals all over the world, regardless of their very different individual life histories - nobody could have experienced his own youth and its surrounding society more differently than Gide and Wright, for instance -- was presumably based on its utopian goals regarding social justice. It aimed to bring about a reformation of man and society by supplying human beings with a political and ideological framework in which economic exploitation would vanish and all men and women would have freedom and equality in a world where the state had "withered away" since it was no longer necessary. This comprises a theology in which private property and the division of labor (hardened into class structure) are original sin and its consequence. The miseries of the Great Depression, a typical phenomenon of the boom and bust cycles in capitalist societies, increased the allure of totally planned societies.

Marxism also had a "scientific" appeal (really, a pseudo-scientific one since it was not open to validation or disproof in the same manner as theories in the physical sciences it wished to ape; special reasons could always be advanced for why the history of economies and political developments did not follow Marx's highly deterministic pathway -- dialectics came in handy here). But most of its intellectual proponents experienced it as a faith more than a set of discursive propositions about man and society which might be contradicted by reality or rational argument. It was a faith that motivated men to particular actions - sometimes heroic, sometimes despicable (always "justifiably so" in the latter case) -- in the struggle to establish an imagined Utopia that awaited at "the end of history" as it had been hitherto experienced. And therein - in the actions themselves, viewed as part of the always bothersome "means versus ends" problem - lay its downfall in the minds of its apostates; and presumably its downfall in fact forty years after this book was published. The arc of an intellectual's life and opinions once he embraced this faith was repeated throughout the satellite states of Eastern and Central Europe - and in China and elsewhere; as different as they were, each of these societies tended to produce the same sort of apostasy based on the same kind of disappointment and disillusionment with "socialism as practiced" in monolithic one-Party states. In the case of the European satellite states the actual structure and practices of Russian communism had been forced upon the various national communist parties, often led by men who had been trained and winnowed in Moscow.

The writers were all aware of inconsistencies between Communism's ideals and its practice when they joined the Party, but they usually assumed these problems were due to minor human imperfections and/or unique historical circumstances, rather than to the political requirements of the ideals themselves or the nature of the Party. The official view from on-high (as exemplified and sanctioned by Stalin, the wily Father of the Peoples) was that all failures within the Communist world were the result of sabotage, treason, and the tenacious resistance of bourgeois capitalists who served allies and masters abroad. At some point in each of the lives of the six apostates who tell their stories here a cumulative threshold (each man's was different) was reached, a point beyond which self-deception about the flaws of Communism, its actual stupidities and inadequacies of practice, and its creation of dystopian rather than utopian conditions where it held sway was no longer possible for anyone with a fairly rigorous standard of truth. Dialectics and special pleading could not cover up the glaring flaws of shabby material conditions and the climate of servility, fear and paranoia created by state security services. The self-serving nature of Party loyalty, resulting in the creation of a "new privileged class" of Party hacks and apparatchiks, was equally demoralizing. The "rot" in these societies actually started at the top and insinuated itself into all corners and crevices of everyday life. The threshold of final disillusionment was brought about both by these pervasive conditions within the Soviet Union and its satellite states, and also by events which were very symptomatic of how the new system worked: treason trials (purges) based on trumped-up and incredible charges, including trials and executions of former powerful agents of the Party itself; chronic economic failures; the actual disenfranchising of working class citizens in whose name the Party ruled; the war against the peasantry required by the ideal of collective farming; the battle against all other political forces on the left in the various European nations, especially against Social Democratic parties and against all other parties in the Republican coalition during the Spanish Civil War; and, a last straw, the cynical Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, an agreement between two traditional Great Powers to slice up a neighboring small state and expand their zones of influence.

Richard Crossman, eventually a Labour Minister and an old-fashioned democratic socialist of the British Labour Party, supplies an excellent concise introduction to the book. As Koestler points out, during the post-World War II era, ex-Communists were afflicted with many of the same psychological conflicts that afflict ex-Roman Catholics, who often experience a sort of life-long hangover from the intensity of their former faith. This frequently requires them to veer 180 degrees in their political opinions; they also have to endure the public scorn of their former comrades and allies, a painfully depressing experience. In spite of the temptations of being embraced within a new and similarly cultic comradeship, Koestler believes it dangerous for a former Party member to become merely a "professional ex-Communist" often allied to a society's most conservative forces, to the exclusion of actual rational examination of civilization's problems and how they may be addressed in a democratic and humane fashion. In terms of the personal motives for joining the Party the most revealing stories are those of Wright and Silone, each of whom was reacting to local conditions of life (including local rationalizations of extreme brutality towards one's fellow man) which made the Party the most attractive force for change.

The themes of this book have been given excellent and vivid renderings in the fiction of dissent that emerged in Russia and its satellite states (especially Czechoslovakia, perhaps the most doctrinaire of these states) during the 1960s. The qualitative differences between the accounts in Crossman's book and those of the later literature of dissent in Communist societies stem from the fact that the writers of the anthology lived beyond the pale of the post-war Iron Curtain, allowing them the luxury of public dissent and departure from the Party. This may have been a personally wrenching decision but it was one which would have had much more serious - often lethal - consequences farther east; the "inescapable" nature of the system into which whole generations were born (rather than freely chose, as the six writers did) adds an intense and pervasive melancholy to the literature of dissent that could not be duplicated elsewhere. In France or Italy a dissenting ex-Communist might be snubbed or vilified in the left-wing press. In the Communist societies a well-known dissenting intellectual could wind up in the Gulag, the mines, or, at times of stress, on the gallows; after 1960 or thereabouts he or she would become a non-person, deprived of work and decent housing. The phrase encapsulated in the book's title will continue to be an appropriate one whenever a dominant ideology crumbles due to its own inconsistencies or glaring discrepancies between its ideals and its practice. The psychological attractions of all-embracing creeds and movements are undermined by the unattainability of their goals - the further the goal recedes, the more ludicrous become the fictions used to prop up sagging faith in it; apostasy is inevitable and constitutes a restoration of sanity and self-dignity.

Anyone who is a fan of George Orwell or P.J. O'Rourke should enjoy this collection of essays from intellectuals who made the journey to communism and back. Arthur Koestler's (sp?) essay captures perfectly the confusion of Weimar Germany before the rise of Hitler, and shows that the communists actually helped the Nazis to power. You will come away from the book wondering how some intelligent people believed - and still believe - that communism was the way of the future. If there is a book that will turn a diehard leftist into a subscriber to the "National Review", TGTF is that book.

This is one of the great political books of all time.

The authors of THE GOD THAT FAILED consist of three former Communist Party members, and three "fellow travellers." All were attracted to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and '30s. All eventually realized it was a horror, and left it. In this book, they try to explain how they were able to love a dictatorship, what they had to do, mentally, to preserve their vision of a shining future, and how, in the end, they couldn't avoid facing a dismal reality.

These are moving and human stories that illustrate the decency and meanness that exist side by side in the human soul. Read and learn.

The book is must for a history as well as philosophy students. In this book you will find how at one time Author is facinated by communism turned against it after finding it very oppressive.

Length:: 7:34 Mins

Study the past, especially today because they're trying to tell us that socialism is good. This is a remarkable book and I'm sorry that it took me so long to get around to reading it.

This collection of six essays reveals why so many people not only feared communism, but were right to do so. From a variety of nations and perspectives, the authors recount the events that led to their involvement with, and eventual break from, "The Party." At times chilling, always fascinating, this short series of works is an important philosophical milestone in the (ongoing) fight against communism.

This is really a great find to have. It shows you how that anything that represents a community can and will be corrupted. The book is mainly directed toward Communism, but when you go to compare it to religion, it's pretty much the same deal. Like in one paragraph it said the following; "...Once the renunciation has been made, the mind, instead of operating freely, becomes a servant of a higher and unquestioned purpose. To deny the truth is an act of service. This of course is why it is useless to discuss any aspect of politics with a Communist. Any intellectual contact you have with him is a challenge to his fundamental faith." Notice the resemblance between Communism and Religion have? Things like this you'll find throughout this book. This book is a compact version of six great authors about Communism, two of them, Louis Fischer and Richard Wright are my favorites. As I said in the title of this review Christopher Hitchens speaks highly of this book and you can see why. I think you'll find this book quite informing and it'll give you a piece of mind before you become a member of something.

These autobiographical notes give an in depth insight into the personal motives, the inner Party workings and the ultimate overall assessments of the CPs and the USSR in the first half of the 29th century.

Motives
Except for S. Spender (an intellectual engagement) and A. Gide (a journey in the USSR), the main motives to enter the CP were emotional and moral: `the similarity of the experiences of the disinherited' (R. Wright), `spontaneous intolerance of injustice' (I. Silone) or `repulsion by the social environment' (A. Koestler).

Faith
Becoming a Party member was like `a conversion. Life, death, love, good, evil, truth, all changed their meaning or lost it.' (I. Silone) Communist faith was `purist, radical, uncompromising. One lived in a mental world of a drug addict.' (A. Koestler).

Inside the CPs
I. Silone was amazed that the Russian communists (Lenin, Trotzky) were utterly incapable `to be fair in discussing opinions that conflicted with their own.' At the basis (cell work) criticism of Party decisions were not allowed (A. Koestler). Others were accused of `seraphim tendencies (considering oneself as infallible) (R. Wright).

Kronstadts
After his Kronstadt (a rude awakening), A. Koestler decided to stay, because `the Party could only be changed from inside', while I. Silone left (`an extremely painful decision').
For L. Fischer, the first flaw in his convictions came with the collectivization (`a form of wholesale serfdom'); a further blow was the Spanish War (Soviet fighters who returned home, were summarily shot) and a complete watershed was the Soviet-Nazi Pact of 1939.
For S. Spender, the Spanish War with its internecine fighting on the left opened his eyes (the ends justified all the means).

Overall evaluation (CP, USSR)
For I. Silone, the defects of official Communism were `fanaticism, abstraction and centralization'.
For S. Spender, in the CP `too much power is concentrated in the hands of too few people.' The latter are protected from their `worst human qualities: savagery, vindictiveness, envy, greed and lust for power.'
Concerning the Soviet State, for L. Fischer it was `a mammoth political-economic monopoly', full of `ubiquitous fear, terror, cynical safety-first, dead conformity and bureaucratic formalism'.
For S. Spender, there was a complete lack of freedom, also in art: `art teaches us that man is not entirely imprisoned within his society. To destroy freedom of art is really a kind of madness.'
For A. Gide, the USSR was `a tragic failure, a country of moral cynicism.' There was no freedom (speech, news gathering, art). Workers could not elect their own representatives in order to defend their interests. They were bound, like serfs, to their territory and exploited by the Party (a new aristocracy of right-thinkers and conformists) working for starvation wages.

This bitter verdict, of which some aspects all still highly relevant today, is a must read for all true democrats.

"The God that Failed" is a compilation organised by Richard Crossman, British Parliament Member, of testimonials by 3 ex-members of the Communist Party and also of 3 "fellow travelers", all of them writers and hournalistas: Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Richard Wright -- the "initiates" -- and then André Gide, Louis Fischer and Stephen Spender. All of them narrate their first contact with the Communist movement, the impression it made on their worldview, several episodes of the convivency with fellow comrades and, above all, they offer an analysis of how, little by little, their utopic idealism and the emotional bonds with their colleagues grew more and more strained when they discovered "the other side" of Communism; for one, it was the disturbing facts of the Moscow Trails; for other, it was the realization that the Party was using him for spionage and therefore treason; for a third, it was the shock of visiting the Soviet Union in the 1930s and finding there a reality different of the Egalitarian and Just Socialist Paradise he dreamed of.

For me, the best parts of the book are the ones where values were discussed. Communism, at least for these authors, was not only a political option -- it was a way of thinking, of viewing themselves and the world, a moral guide and, most of all, a sense of being one of the "chosen" for changing the world and making "history" become a concrete reality. It's very similar, at times, to the literature on religious cults and fanaticism -- each author descbribe with high ability and even literary flair his subjective reactions and the difficulties in renouncing the dream. At the same time, we are presented to the turbulent politics of the 1930's, when Fascism was a concrete menace and the Popular Front (led by the C.P.) reunited some of the best minds and hearts of the time. Then came the (still more) explicit betrayal by Stalin of all this, in the form of the non-aggression pact with Hitler -- for some, the last straw in a already started process of questioning their own choices.

This book should be obligatory reading for everyone who tries to understand the political atmosphere of the period between the World Wars and the first years post-1945. Its autobiographical prose is very easy to read, an at the same time very informative. That's enough to make "The God that Failed" a classic for those interested in the political thought of the 20th century.