Why is it that liberal, socialist utopias end up producing the opposite of their stated goals?
Malcolm Muggeridge pondered this question most of his life. His father, H.T. was a prominent Labor party minister of parliament, and Malcolm grew up fascinated by the socialist dreams of a better world. He was attracted by Communism, and after graduating from Cambridge, he and his wife travelled to Moscow in 1932, where he was a correspondent for the liberal, Manchester Guardian. He, along with the rest of the Western liberal press, was giddy about finding out about Stalin’s New Soviet Man, thinking it was the answer to the world’s problems. But he found out things were not as they seemed.
While proclaiming the success of state-controlled communism, Stalin was starving six million Ukrainians to death. Malcolm was horrified and reported the holocaust, but was censored, silenced and eventually resigned. Other Western reporters like William Duranty of the New York Times continued to praise the Soviet system and even received a Pulitzer Prize (1932) for his reporting. It is a mystery to many why the Western liberal press continued to promote such an evil dictator long after he was exposed. I, too, am deeply puzzled and disturbed why evil is excused and good is condemned in our post-modern culture.
Malcolm was devastated at the deception and could only conclude it was fueled by a thirst to be close to raw power. He writes about his time in Russia, “The depression was on at that time (1932-33) It was on in Lancashire, and it seemed as though our whole way of life was cracking up, and of course, I looked across at the USSR with a sort of longing, thinking that there was an alternative, some other way in which people could live, and I managed to maneuver matters so that I was sent to Moscow as the Guardian correspondent, arriving there fully prepared to see in the Soviet regime as the answer to all our troubles, only to discover in a very short time that it was an unattractive answer. It is difficult to convey to you what a shock this was, realizing what I had supposed to be the new brotherly way of life my father and his cronies had imagined long before, was simply on examination appalling tyranny, in which the only thing that mattered was raw power.”
Meanwhile Malcolm pondered why the socialist system produced the opposite of its promises.
The more it spend on education, the more illiteracy increased.
The more it regulated health care for all, the more it became available to less. (As we are discovering in our own time with the “Affordable” Health Care.)
The more it distributed wealth, the more the poverty.
The more it tried to make everyone equal, the more classes were divided.
The more guns and weapons were banned, the greater the crime.
The more it promoted freedom, the more it used slave labor to build the country.
Malcolm called it “the great liberal death wish.”
Why is this?
Malcolm concluded that in the absence of a “higher power” man becomes his own god. He ends up in megalomania (delusions of fantasies of greatness, power, omniscience, wealth, and intelligence) or egomania (pursuing happiness and ending up in the carnality of animal instincts). Megalomania produces narcissistic mad men like Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin Dada, and Kim Jong Ill. Egomania produces the chaos of debauchery, and in seeking happiness man never finds it.
“What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’ – could set themselves up on their own as if they had created themselves – be their own masters – invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside of God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery, – the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” (C.S. Lewis)
Malcomb’s diagnosis got me thinking further:
In the absence of the Anointed One, elites anoint themselves as those with the answers to the problems of the world. This arrogance has brought the Western world to the brink of destruction.
It is interesting that Dostoevsky starts his political novel, “The Devils.” with the story of Jesus casting demons into swine who follow each other over the cliff. It is the picture of socialism’s death march. Self-anointed elites are leading their herd of swine (their view of people) over the cliff of socialism. What they don’t realize is they are committing suicide with their herd. On the other hand, the man who remained with Jesus on shore was “in his right mind” while the insane herd plunged over the cliff. This is a poignant description of the death walk of collectivism in the 20th century.
In a lighter vein, comedian, Groucho Marx said, “Politics is the art of seeking trouble and finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies”
In the absence of the Kingdom of God man has to create his own utopia. (“No-where”) Thus he creates systems with the need to control and regulate. People are herded into collectives and dehumanized. (Dostoevsky’s, “The Devils, Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” Orwell’s “1984”.) Human utopias are cries from man’s heart for the Kingdom of God, who is the only one who can unite humanity in love and cooperation.
In the absence of true worship, man will create and worship a man-made god he can control, because he has to worship something. “The one essential condition of human existence is that men should always be able to bow down before something infinitely great. If men are deprived of the infinitely great, they will not go on living and will die in despair. The infinite and eternal are as essential for man as the little planet on which he dwells.” (Dostoevsky, “The Possessed”)
In our day, in the absence of worship of the creator, we begin the insanity of worshiping creation. So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them — the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes! “ (Rom 1:24-25 Msg.)
In the absence of the significance of God’s purpose, man seeks significance in attaching himself to important people. But this is not God’s way.
“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”?” (1 Cor 1:26-28 Msg.)
In the absence of God’s power, man seeks to be close to human power. As Muggeridge walked the street of Moscow, he looked up looked up at the flag. “The Red Flag flying above the Kremlin was illuminated at night, a little pool of blood suspended in the darkness. This was the true image of the revolution; the mysticism of power…” Being close to power is very addictive and motivated many Western elites and journalists.
In the absence of God’s plan, man creates his own plan that delivers the opposite of what is intended. This is the record of the history of Marxism, socialism, and the progressive movement. Muggeridge writes, “I came to realize that in the name of progress and compassion, the most terrible things were going to be done, preparing the way for the great “humane holocaust” (the killing of over 50 million babies). There was, it seemed to me, a built in propensity in this liberal world-view whereby the opposite of what was intended came to pass. Take the case of education and the assumption that being educated would make people better and better… but the more money that is spent on education the more illiteracy is increasing. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the whole revenue of the western countries would be spent on education causing total illiteracy.”
In the absence of God’s security and protection, man has to eliminate his own enemies. Thus there is much blood spilled in the name of protecting ourselves. As Dostoevsky has his revolutionary leader say, “What we need are a few generations of debauchery at its most vicious and most horrible – followed by a little sweet bloodletting, and then the turmoil will begin.” This is the sort of thing that is happening in Western culture at this moment in history. The debauchery is well underway and the chaos and bloodletting are soon to follow.
In the absence of the true Scapegoat, man casts blame on whole races and nationalities resulting in the genocides of millions.
In the absence of God’s love, man has to lift himself in prideful arrogance above others. Survival of the fittest has become the doctrine of success. The “politics of personal destruction” gets votes, because people drift to negative gossip like flies to honey. This is upside down to God’s ways. “You’ve observed how godless rulers throw their weight around, how quickly a little power goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not be served — and then to give away his life in exchange for the many who are held hostage.” (Matt 20:25-28 Msg.)
In the absence of God’s provision, man redistributes the wealth starving many to feed the chosen.
In the absence of God’s place for us, man has to build his own mansion trading castles for shacks. “If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” [C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”]
In the absence of God’ special place for us, man has to bribe or bully others to push his way to the front of the line. “Don’t try to be like those who shoulder their way through life. Why be a bully? “Why not?” you say. Because God can’t stand twisted souls. It’s the straightforward who get his respect.” (Prov. 3:31-32 Msg.)
In the absence of forgiveness, man has to eliminate guilt by calling bad good and good bad. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isa 5:20)
“Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent — are equally abhorrent to God.” (Prov 17:15) Prov. 17:15
In the absence of grace, man adopts repressive, selective morality crushing those who disagree. So now we have the insanity of sending a child home from school for making an innocent jester of a gun with his hand while releasing vicious child molesters on the streets. Everything is upside down.
The younger generation will probably witness the collapse of Western civilization, but true spirituality will rise from the slave camps as it has in the past. This was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s great discovery in prison. “It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, the essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of my youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it is only when, in the Gulag Archipelago, on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes, not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart and through all human hearts…And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: Bless you prison!” [“Gulag Archipelago”]