The Other Side of Communism

On Saturday 16 February 2019, it was discovered that Karl Marx’s memorial in Highgate cemetery had been defaced for the second time in a month. The first attack had hammered at the tomb’s marble plaque. The second was more empathic: ‘doctrine of hate’, ‘architect of genocide, terror, oppression and mass murder’ were splashed in red paint on the side and back of the memorial. This was an extreme expression of a commonly held view. Communism, the political ideology inspired by Marx’s writings, is often equated with authoritarianism and state terror. The example of Stalin’s dictatorship over the Soviet Union is the one most commonly advanced to support this thesis. The fact that Stalin purged and imprisoned over a million Soviet citizens over the course of his rule (1929-1953) offers powerful evidence that Communism is a highly oppressive form of government.

In light of such evidence, it is hard to understand why Marxist Communism had so many adherents in the twentieth century. One explanation is that those drawn to Communism were particularly ruthless individuals who were willing to use murderous force to achieve their ends. This view has some merit and may explain why Marxists like Stalin were able to exercise power in such an unsparing manner. It does not explain, however, the appeal of Communism for individuals with no obvious violent or authoritarian tendencies, such as the American actor and singer Paul Robeson or the British historian E.P. Thompson.

In my view, much of Communism’s allure in the twentieth century can be explained by its staunch opposition to racism and imperialism. Even if Communist regimes did not, in practice, live up to their pledge to observe full equality between nations and races, they nonetheless provided powerful rhetorical support for this position. This is one reason why ethnic minorities were among the most vocal supporters of Communism. Jews such as Leon Trotsky and Karl Radek were prominent in the leadership of the Russian Bolshevik party. In 1917 the Bolsheviks abolished the legal restrictions that had curtailed the liberties of Jews in the Russian Empire for centuries. It also helps explain Communism’s powerful attraction for anti-colonial activists. From Ho Chi Minh to Che Guevara, Communism was closely connected with the violent resistance of imperial domination.

Today, anti-racism and anti-imperialism have become mainstream progressive positions and are entirely separated from Communism, which is taken to be a deeply unprogressive ideology of absolute state power. This negative view of Communism reprises the stance taken by some in the twentieth century, such as George Orwell and the Philippine diplomat Carlos P. Romulo, who were opposed to both European colonialism and Communist authoritarianism. Yet for many on the left in the twentieth century, opposition to imperialism and racism went hand in hand with a commitment to abolishing the economic exploitation that they associated with capitalism. Detaching anti-capitalism from anti-imperialism was simply unthinkable, since capitalism and colonialism were taken to be synonymous. It was in this vein that the Indonesian Marxist Tan Malaka argued in 1948 that the anti-colonial revolution against the Dutch was inseparable from the social revolution against capitalism. Few would voice such opinions now, but in order to understand the appeal of Communism in the twentieth century we must be aware that Marxist political thought had anti-imperialist and anti-racist elements which are uncontroversial now only because they have become so widely accepted.  

John LeCarré and the Disappearance of the English Elite

One of my favourite films is Tomas Alfredson’s 2011 adaptation of the John LeCarré novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974). The most compelling aspect of the film is its beautifully atmospheric depiction of London in the 1970s, a city of browns and greys, stained by pollution and cigarette smoke. LeCarré himself dwells on the shabby, run-down look of post-war Britain in the novel, with its peeling paint and ‘vile’ concrete staircases.

When it comes to the social world of the 1970s, however, the film is entirely unfaithful to its source material. What most struck me when watching the film is how it misrepresents the social milieu of its cast, the spies and bureaucrats of British intelligence agencies. In LeCarré’s story, these figures are the remnants of the English upper class, educated at public schools and Oxbridge colleges, whose pastimes included playing bridge, watching cricket, spending weekends in country houses and evenings in London clubs. The main characters of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy are children of the 1920s, who came of age in a time when the British class system, like the British Empire, still seemed secure. In those days, adopting the mores of an English gentleman was considered essential for professional success.

By the 1970s, this class class had come to seem something of an anachronism. In an increasingly egalitarian society, with nationalised industries and a welfare state, their posh accents and old-fashioned clothes appeared to be signs of eccentricity rather than social distinction. Perhaps the last place they remained truly at home was within the unelected institutions of the British state, the armed forces and the civil service. These institutions had been crafted in the image of the English upper class: they prized self-confidence and sporting achievement among their upper ranks; they were marked by a respect for hierarchy and a certain cultural elitism. Deference and snobbery survived in Sandhurst and Whitehall long after they ceased to predominate in mainstream British society. The British secret service, operating entirely behind doors, was the organisation least exposed to ‘vulgar’ popular culture and so functioned as one of the final redoubts of the English upper class.

The central characters of LeCarré’s novel bear all the hallmarks of the English elite. George Smiley, the protagonist, has a club in central London and wears expensive if ill-fitting suits. His former colleague Jim Prideaux uses ‘old boy’ as a term of affection and plays golf in his spare time. Oliver Lacon, a civil servant, lives in a large country house, sends his daughters to Rodean and keeps a stable of horses. Bill Haydon, Smiley’s rival, comes from an old aristocratic family. The head of British intelligence – known only as Control – expresses his disdain for ‘everywhere except Surrey, the Circus [LeCarré’s code for British intelligence], and Lord’s Cricket Ground.’ Needless to say, all are graduates of Oxford and Cambridge.

In the 2011 film, these class signifiers disappear. Smiley dresses plainly and spends his time in dingy rooms rather than grand clubs. Jim Prideaux  wears slightly flared trousers and does not speak with a noticeably posh accent. Lacon lives in a concrete modernist house rather than a country pile. Haydon’s blue blood goes unmentioned. Control, shown living in a shabby London flat, states no strong preference for Surrey or cricket.

This shift reveals something, I think, about what our remembrance of the 1970s has obscured. The decade has now been reduced to a set of symbols: long hair, flares, rock and roll, protesters, punks and strikes. It seems pervaded by an air of decline, dilapidation and neglect. The film of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy captures this in beautiful, poetic style. Yet the social world of the 1970s, as depicted in LeCarré’s novel, that is the residual world of the English upper class, is not accommodated within our picture of the decade. According to popular understanding, the English upper class perished at the close of the 1950s, swept away by pop music and the sexual liberation of the sixties. English gentlemen seem to have no place in the grim, industrial 1970s of David Bowie and the Sex Pistols.

This points to one problem with seeing the past as a sequence of decades: social change does not happen at neat, decade-long intervals. Eras blend into one another. When we look more closely at sources from any decade, we find considerable overlap with other decades, to the point where it becomes difficult to identify something as truly belonging to any particular decade. Suits and bowler hats persisted after the end of the ‘conformist’ 1950s. Mullets did not cease to exist in 1990. What the novel of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy reminds us that the 1970s was not only the decade of leather jackets. For some it remained a time of tweed suits.