Customer Reviews

How Democracies Perish

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found that this book contained a number important points that we may be forgetting now that the Cold War is fading into history. In particular, Revel focuses on how the totalitarian Soviet government had a great number of advantages over the western democracies, and how these advantages were used time and time again to ensure small but inevitable victories over the west. Most important were the Soviet's abilities to avoid media coverage of, and internal and external criticism for, its acts; its ability to embark on courses of actions which are not politically expedient, but will bear fruit decades hence; and its ability to be the aggressor.

Such advantages lead the Soviets to a number of small victories over the fifty-year war. Revel correctly pointed out that the west really had few victories over the Soviets before the communist economy finally crumbled a decade ago. For example, the Cuban missile crisis and the Korean war were merely draws for the west, precisely because everything returned to how it was before. Yet Vietnam and Poland were clear victories for the Soviets.

This is a solid work that accurately points out some of the weaknesses of democracies when fighting against totalitarians, and just how close we came to losing the struggle against communism.

I read this book when it first came out and am now re-reading it after all these years. Not only is it wonderfully written with biting satire and clever analogies and turns of phrases, it is just as relevant today as then. If you are not old enough to remember the middle 70's through the early 80's then this book will shock you with its exposition of the craven cowardice and stupidity of the Europeans and their governments in the face of Soviet expansionism. America comes in for its share of stupidity but it's Europe ( remember this book was written by a Frenchman) that is deservedly held up to scathing review. The fact that the Soviet Union collapsed was by no means because of European help. This book will make that bluntly obvious. On the contrary, they fought tooth and nail against every American effort and iniative to rescue them from the closing jaws of the Kremlin. This makes Reagan's triumph even more incredible. Rare in history has a civilization struggled so mightily against its rescuer in the face of clear and present danger. This history will amaze and sicken you.
That there were European writers then who saw so clearly the dangers and who managed to ward off the disease of surrender, puts them in a unique light. THAT is why this book and Revell's others must be read.

This book was excellant. I enjoyed the contrary veiws. Having a contrary thought every now and then is very refreshing. Like his other book, Totalitarian Temptation, this one gives a lot of thought on the problems that liberty, freedom and equality bring. I recommend it for debate, high school and college, and suggest it to anyone who feels that no government is perfect. It tends to be wordy, but that almost makes it better, or at least, gives many different ways to interpet his ideas. His arguements at first appear opposite of American beleifs, but if you really concentrate and want to read it, it will give you an excellant understanding of goverment.

Dr Revel has written several books about the slide of socialism to despotism. His work is particularly interesting because he is a committed member of the political left. Dr Revel explores the history of socialist parties, socialist activists and the outcome of their efforts as well as their unwillingness to condemn even the obvious evils of any system which describes itself as socialist. He argues that the left must figure out how to sustain the productivity of capitalism while ensuring and developing social programs. His books are compelling.

Written towards the end of the Cold War, Revels book was a wake up call that the U.S. (unlike his French compatriots, the U.S. was a country Revel admired) was following closely in the footsteps of the totalitarian regime, the Soviet Union, and would soon end in the same self-destructive way as that empire. Having survived Nazi Germany, Revel maintained a healthy disrespect for totalitarian governments. Yet, rather paradoxically, he advocated mimicking their totalitarian methods (such as more control over the press, etc.) in competing with them?

His prediction that the U.S. demise would occur because it would allow the Soviets to bully it turned out to be wrong: The Soviet Empire fell due to its own overreach and due to internal contradictions, two symptoms that would also cause the U.S. demise. In short, the cause of the U.S. demise would not be due to lack of U.S. resolve in competing with the Soviet system but precisely for the same reasons that brought Russia down: International overreach and internal contradictions.

Revel's plan: to counter and even dominate the Communist world and impose democracy on it, as well as on the rest of the world may have seemed reasonable in the mid-80s but lost its appeal after the Reagan and Bush II debacles in Iran and Iraq, respectively. Revel's view was undergirded by the "framing thought" that one system or the other would dominate the world and that being a "passive democracy" was a sure route to ideological defeat and eventually to ruin. He cited the many ways that the Communists had "outflanked" us during the 50-year Cold War.

While this may have been a leading edge argument in defense of an "activist democracy" in the 1980s, and went on to serve to frame both the Reagan and GW Bush's foreign policies, the only aspect that seems to have survived his prediction is that the U.S. would quickly follow the Soviet demise? The reason however, would have little to do with the failure to seize the reigns of international power in the name of democracy but due to the same mindless imperial and cultural expansionist tendencies that had been the primary impetus and that had bedeviled Russian. In an exactly carbon copy fashion, the U.S. did this while at the same time neglecting institutions and infrastructures at home.

Had the Soviet Empire survived, there is an even chance that Revel's predictions may have retained some face validity. However, it seems that he missed the most important aspect about the survival and demise of democracies: Like totalitarian systems, they too are susceptible to internal corruption and come about in ways that are peculiar to the political circumstances that give rise to them. The best example is the spontaneous outbreak of democracy in the Middle East today.

Just as there appear to be no "one size fits all" democracies, there also are none resistant to the temptations of grabbing at international power vacuums, or succumbing to internal corruption. They perish in the same unique ways that they come into being. Three Stars