Review: Collapse by Vladislav Zubok

This was a disappointing read. The author gives little of the context necessary to understand the economic difficulties and political situation at the start of Gorbachev’s leadership (see, instead, Socialism Betrayed). The narrative centres on the personalities involved in the USSR’s collapse instead: Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and US President Bush Sr (there was a surprising focus on the reactions of the United States — at times we got a near hourly breakdown of White House activity. Countries outside the West were nearly entirely absent from the book, perhaps due to Zubok's choice of sources.).

For all the author’s insistence that Gorbachev was a “neo-leninist” with strong sympathies with the intelligentsia, there was little intellectual curiosity about the philosophical debates and philosophical influences undergirding the USSR’s 1980s reforms (contrast again with Socialism Betrayed). Indeed, the author makes the USSR appear like a one-man show, when CPSU debate and governance was far more distributed.

When the narrative wasn’t honed in on the relative charisma of the key political players or regaling colourful gossip, it detailed nationalist sentiment and account balances. These aspects I found to be informative: separatism ended up being the final mode of collapse — if not the root cause of the collapse — and nationalism continues to drive geopolitics in Eastern Europe. Utopian socialists often insist upon the possibility of non-capitalist reforms, but the hard currency problems Gorbachev had to deal with, particularly in the wake of crashing oil prices, drove decision-making and concessions. While I remain persuaded that the USSR’s collapse was not inevitable (a position Zubok also takes), through Zubok’s book I gained a better appreciation for just how difficult the economy was to keep going (due in no small part to the catastrophic reforms implemented). However, it is also notable what Zubok chooses to exclude: the "second economy" that was so crucial of a factor in the USSR's collapse in Keeran and Kelly's account was nearly absent from Zubok's telling. 

Somewhat by chance, I read this work back-to-back with Isabella Weber’s book on China’s economic reforms, and the comparison between the two approaches is illuminating. The CPSU liberalized the finance industry and media before most of the rest of the economy, and as a result, quickly lost control of both the economy and of political legitimacy. The CPC retained control over media apparatus, banks, and key sectors of the economy, and as a result, was able to steer the economy through their desired reforms without lasting threat to their leadership. This exercise is, however, left to the reader. Zubok is more interested in ensuring that, counter to some Western narratives (including the Nobel Peace Prize committee), the reader understands Gorbachev to be a bumbling idiot.

Zubok's work leaves something to be desired as a reference. He is often too credulous of works that should be suspected of having clear bias, like memoirs by American politicians. Several citations I tried to follow lead to a chain of "as quoted in" references. He is sometimes sloppy when it comes to economics. In one egregious example, he writes that "the tax on alcohol procured one-third of Soviet GDP", which is nearly mathematically impossible.

Zubok tends to lose the forest for the trees. I was hoping for a political and economic analysis, but found myself having to construct this for myself from the very extensive material Zubok relays. Still, his beat-by-beat recounting of the last three or four years of the USSR's existence did give me a better understanding of the overall shape of that era of history.

Review: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

“One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
— Omar El Akkad, October 25th

El Akkad’s tweet, posted in response to a video of the devastation Israel wrought on Palestine, has received over ten million views. It’s a resonant message: we have all been watching a live-streamed genocide unfold, and it is so frustrating to see the major institutions of society refuse to acknowledge this, to sigh and say “oh it’s so complicated,” and receive little real repercussion for it, excepting a few angry protestors at public events, while people who do speak out against it are fired and detained in immigration centers.

The author develops this sentiment further in this expressive collection of ten essays, weaving in his personal experiences. Born in Egypt, he immigrated with his family to Canada when he was just a child. He knows what it’s like to view the West from outside (“In the unfree world, the free world isn’t a place or a policy or a way of living; it’s a negation… For a life stunted by a particular kind of repression, the driving force will never be toward something better but away from something worse.”). He learned about the ideals of the liberal West, and then learned how inconsistently and hypocritically they are applied. The experience of immigration — treated as an outsider, valued very explicitly according to your economic contributions and to your adaptation to the local norms — provided one window into the facade of liberalism; being an Arab who came of age and worked as a journalist during the War on Terror provided another.

El Akkad’s reflections on the journalism and publishing industry were some of the most compelling of the book. His fury at the way liberalism constrains journalistic speech and upholds an unachievable ideal of neutrality in the face of starvation of children radiates through these pages.

There’s always been a contradiction at the heart of this enterprise. In the modern, well-dressed definition, adhered to in one form or another at almost every major newspaper, the journalist cannot be an activist, must remain allegiant to a self-erasing neutrality. Yet journalism at its core is one of the most activist endeavors there is. A reporter is supposed to agitate against power, against privilege. Against the slimy wall of press releases and PR nothingspeak that has come to protect every major business and government boardroom ever since Watergate. A reporter is supposed to agitate against silence. To maintain both these realities at the same time—of the neutral agitator—requires a cognitive dissonance that can be seen in every corner of the industry.

The toll it takes on you to exist in the West and to not speak out against the violence and exploitation it perpetuates around the world is a consistent theme of the book:

Know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sign of dismembered children?

El Akkad takes aim at the “the middle, the liberal, well-meaning, easily upset middle”, who views the “conflict” as “all so very sad, but you know, it’s all so very complicated.” He acknowledges the upfront self-centered hatred of the Republican party, but focuses his criticism on the Democratic party for the corrosive effect of its hypocritical, self-interested ambivalence towards genocide. His writing echoes Martin Luther King Junior’s writing of over sixty years ago:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

That we are still fighting the same battles for liberation against the same foes as we were sixty years ago is infuriating and depressing. Yet, El Akkad’s book is cathartic to read. His writing is vivid, poignant, often poetic. He affirms the contradictory feelings of living in the heart of empire, surrounded by all the privilege it brings while witnessing the devastation it wrecks around the world. But bearing witness and internally grappling with negative feelings isn’t enough. El Akkad acknowledges the need for action too, encouraging the support of boycott movements and using prize acceptance speeches to speak out for the liberation of Palestine:

It is this realization that renders negative resistance most terrifying to political and economic power—the simple fact that, having taken these small steps, a person might decide it was no great sacrifice, and might be willing to sacrifice more, demand more. That having called for justice in one instance, one might do it again and again, might call for a just world.

But for the reader who has already found a non-Israeli vendor for “chocolate flavoured hummus” and coffee and who isn’t winning literary awards, there is little guidance for further negative resistance, and even less for positive resistance, whatever that might be. It is difficult to glean what a positive vision for a more just society might be, since the author dismisses as unfree and imperial the various anti-capitalist states that provide an alternative to Western liberalism.

Will this book change minds? Give people the courage to speak out more strongly? I hope so, and discussion online and reviews I’ve read suggest it might. Certainly, anyone who might once have said "oh, it's so complicated" will feel deeply ashamed to repeat this bromide after having read this work. Still, the book’s argument is just a first step towards changing the ideology that turned a blind eye to this genocide. For a deeper understanding of liberalism and its history, I recommend Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo. El Akkad’s book is a snapshot of our present day anguishes, examining the 2024 US election cycles and Canadian news headlines of the last few years in particular. It is an emotional read, but not one that provides a theoretical explanation of the forces that shape society or proposes a way out. Because of this, I think this book will fade in relevance as the years go on. However, grappling with the psychological demands of our present is also necessary, and this work fulfills that need.

Review: Canada's Long Fight Against Democracy by Yves Engler and Owen Schalk

Washington’s role in destabilizing and otherwise interfering in democratic governments in the imperial periphery has been well-documented (see, for example, Manufacturing Consent, Washington Bullets, or The Jakarta Method). Canada has curated an image as a friendlier, more peaceful version of its southern neighbour, while aiding the US in its regime-change efforts (or sometimes playing a leadership role in such efforts, as in the anti-Venezuelan Lima Group). Canada’s role in geopolitics is under-explored, and Canadians should be more informed of the real foreign policy of their state. Engler and Schalk aim to address this need, but I found the book disappointing.

One of the most important tasks for a work of this sort is to draw out the tactics and repeated themes underlying western interference in global south politics. In Manufacturing Consent, the authors present their propaganda model, then show its application through several examples of American interventions. In Washington Bullets, Prashad presents a manual for regime change, and explores how intervention has shifted from one of “boots on the ground” and assassinations to economic warfare and lawfare, again providing a slew of examples from American interventions. Excepting three paragraphs or so in the brief conclusion to his work, the authors provide no such structural analysis to the events they recount. 

Another angle for a work of this sort is to educate the reader on a small handful of examples with enough context that the reader really understands the conflict. Vincent Bevins takes this approach in The Jakarta Method, using a combination of archival research and witness interviews to show the reader how Washington pushed for regime change in Indonesia in the 1960s, and then applied this same method to later interventions. In contrast, Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy covers 22 conflicts in 210 pages, providing just a cursory summary of each event.

The result is essentially a listicle in book form. The authors seem to hope to convince via a fire-hose of facts rather than providing their readers with the structure and context needed to remember or recognize Canadian regime change operations. And even this approach could serve a useful function in being a repository of resources for deeper research, however the small handful of references I investigated out of curiosity were of low quality. (Clicking through the footnotes did introduce me to Canada in the World by Tyler A. Shipley, which seems to be a more promising read.)

The real prize for a Canadian writer would be to put forward something like the “manual for regime change” or the “propaganda model” but for Canada. Is there a difference at all between Ottawa’s approach and Washington’s approach? How does Canada distribute its aid dollars and diplomatic resources differently? Does its media apparatus — just as concentrated in the hands of billionaires as the US, but also with a prominent public broadcaster — manufacture consent any differently? Canada’s focus appears to be drawn towards the locations of its mining operations, but protecting its corporations alone cannot explain its involvement in countries like Ukraine; is its goal in geopolitics the same as the US’s, or are there slight differences? Canada is far less likely to deploy troops abroad: is military capability and expense the sole explanation or is there more to it? The answers to these questions are not in this book.

Review: Heidegger and the Ideology of War by Domenico Losurdo

When we say we are anti-fascist, it doesn’t mean we are only against the specific forms of fascism that developed in Italy and Germany in the mid-twentieth century, but that we are against all forms of fascism—an ideology of war and violence to benefit the community of the privileged off the subjugation and genocide of the out-groups. Fascism adapts to the specific conditions of a time, and it is happy to put on disguises to best appeal to the needs of a nation. That means we cannot be so reductive as to divide philosophers into camps of “Nazi” or “not Nazi” (or “fascist” or “not fascist”), but must understand and recognize those schools of thought that give birth to fascism, or otherwise nurture it and give it cover. 

To do so, we must correctly understand the political currents of these proto-fascist philosophies at the time they were written. Philosophy fails particularly spectacularly at this task with Heidegger, a philosopher still widely upheld and read today, as Losurdo lays out:

The debate regarding Heidegger and his relationship with Nazism is still unsettled, and it encompasses several unique aspects. Usually, the historian of philosophy tries to single out the interlocutors and the concrete targets of a certain position, and then tries to reconstruct the real historical framework, even for propositions that have the ambition of being valid sub specie acternitatis. He does this not for the sake of historicist reductionism; on the contrary, his starting point is the awareness that even the excess of one theory with respect to its time cannot be grasped and evaluated without a preliminary attempt at historical clarification. In the case of this debate, however, many interpreters of Heidegger seem dominated by the opposite preoccupation: that of relegating all of his texts, even those in which the political dimension is explicit and declared, to a rarefied, politically aseptic sphere. In this way Heidegger, who not only in his letters and occasional speeches, but also in his theoretical writings, tirelessly comments upon the events of his time, is subjected to a purifying process that is supposed to cleanse him of any worldly contamination.

Losurdo places Heidegger in his historical context again, connecting his philosophical work with his political commentary, and comparing him with both his colleagues that clearly denounced the Nazis (Jaspers, Adorno, Horkheimer, Husserl, etc) and those whose philosophy is much more broadly accepted as aligned with Nazi ideology than Heidegger’s (Schmitt, Spengler, Junger). Losurdo traces themes of community and belonging, historicity, epistemology, identity, modernity and war through the philosophical developments between the start of the war in 1914 through the end of the war in 1945.

One of the difficulties with understanding fascism is that within their political movements, at any given time and over the course of time, different strands of philosophies become expressed. For example, the Nazis upheld a bucolic ideal, but then facing the pressures of war, had to elevate mechanization and production, its antithesis. Heidegger’s relationship with fascism is sometimes excused by pointing to these different currents. His denunciation of the Nazis for giving into mechanization and modernity is hardly a damning blow against fascist ideology. It is not particularly exonerating to criticize certain Nazi ideologues for being too liberal: “The works that are being peddled about nowadays as the philosophy of National Socialism but have nothing whatever to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely the encounter between global technology and modern man) — have all been written by men fishing in the troubled waters of ‘values’ and ‘totalities’,” (1935) nor is his rejection of specifically biological racism much consolation given his strong antisemitism. His philosophy elevated the transformational aspects of war and volkische community throughout the war, and he shows little self-criticism for his relationship with the Nazi movement after the war.

Losurdo’s argument here hits similar beats as his masterpiece on Nietzsche, however where that work demolishes Nietzsche as a possible pillar from which to build progressive politics, this blow to Heidegger landed as less fatal. This might be partly due to the length; at only one fifth the page count, Losurdo doesn’t have the space to prevent a full intellectual development of Heidegger. Are there parts of Heidegger that can be salvaged, developed towards some other end? It seems unlikely, but Heideggerians might follow their lodestar in doing a poor job of self-critique.

Review: When China Rules the World by Martin Jacques

The Western punditry can’t make much sense of China. It has elections, but they don’t look anything like the Presidential horse race the US hosts every four years. It has capitalists and markets, but these too don’t look like the western equivalents: there are state owned entities and communist party cells and capital flow restrictions everywhere. It has adopted industrialization, international trade and the internet, but these institutions of modernity did not bring with them the value system that the West recognizes as modernity. What gives? This book is a corrective to the prevailing level of discourse. 

The strengths of Jacques’ book is its recognition that “modernity” (values, and the political structures that reflect them) can take multiple forms, and that a non-Western version of modernity becoming the (economically, demographically) dominant form is not necessarily a travesty. The first few chapters of the book stand out in particular: Jacques examines the history of China and Japan, with the latter providing a comparison point of an industrialized country that has tried to align itself more closely with “Western” conceptions of modernity despite lacking European roots. Jacques emphasizes the influence of Confucianism on popular understandings of the relationship between the State and the governed, and the continuity in philosophy between pre-1949 China through to the present day — another strength of the book. 

However, Jacques ignores the impact of Marxism-Leninism in shaping not just Mao-era China but also present-day China. Marxist figures and quotes are frequent reference points in public speeches. But perhaps more indicative of the influence of Marxism-Leninism is programs like the extreme poverty eradication program, in which communist party members act as guides to local political efforts:

The targeted phase of poverty alleviation required building relationships and trust between the Party and the people in the countryside as well as strengthening Party organisation at the grassroots level. Party secretaries are assigned to oversee the task of poverty alleviation across five levels of government, from the province, city, county, and township, down to the village. Most notably, three million carefully selected cadres were dispatched to poor villages, forming 255,000 teams that reside there. Living in humble conditions for generally one to three years at a time, the teams worked alongside poor peasants, local officials, and volunteers until each household was lifted out of poverty.

This is a method of poverty alleviation alien to neoliberalism, similarly strange to welfare states and not particularly Confucian, and yet remarkably effective: in 2021, China announced it had eliminated extreme poverty. Because Jacques’ picture of the guiding principles of 21st century China is essentially neo-Confucianism, I think his model for China’s growth and future decision-making as world power is incomplete.

In place of really understanding the philosophical traditions guiding the countries—both those of the West and those of China—Jacques turns to psychologizing the countries. Even economic factors, like level of development, fade to the background. The root of trade disagreements is found in hundreds of millions of people acting in unison out of shame or pride based on their sense of national identity. It’s not to say that these factors are not important; China’s resolution to gain independence following its “century of humiliation” and the role the Declaration of Independence plays in the US’s self perception as a fighter for freedom are undoubtedly relevant. But one can’t help but feel there’s several variables missing. 

Finally, while Jacques tactic of using a sort of “neutral, outside observer” lens for understanding China and Japan is instructive, that he does not do the same for the United States limits his analysis. (I’m a scientist, I like controlled experiments.) What, for example, would a “neutral, outside observer” say about racism in 21st century USA?

Overall, although Jacques’ book is a corrective to a far worse sort of analysis, it leaves much to be desired. Written originally in 2009 (it is peppered with references to the ‘08 recession), it reads a bit dated, and China/West relations have changed a lot.