The Black Swan of the Russian Revolution

go to Independent Review (note: behind a firewall)

Like the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Revolution caught almost everyone off guard. Contrary to Marxist-Leninist dogma, the Bolsheviks’ victory resulted not from communism’s alleged inevitability but rather from a series of coincidences and accidents that could have been otherwise.

Speaking Bolshevik and Speaking PC

The true purpose of PC speak is not to spare the feelings of sensitive people, as the left claims, but to block alternate views. PC speakers do not want the masses to hear all sides of an issue because they fear that those ordinary individuals will come to their own conclusions.  Ironically, the fear of public debate places the left on the same side as the fascists they supposedly abhor. 

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Egypt's Rocky Road Into The Unknown

The Egyptian military’s ouster of President Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood is, to play with Lenin’s famous expression, one step back (away from democracy) in order later to take two steps forward (for democracy).

The Muslim Brotherhood electoral victories that brought Morsi to power with a parliamentary majority show ability of a disciplined minority to gain power over an undisciplined majority. The Bolsheviks gained power in October of 1917 through their greater discipline (and their willingness to use force) despite garnering only a quarter of the votes for the constituent assembly at the peak of their power and popularity. It is noteworthy that Morsi ran on an electoral platform that promised a secular Egyptian state. It was this electoral promise that he was backing off when he was ousted.

go to forbes.com

If State Capitalism Is So Good, Why Are Russian And Chinese Entrepreneurs Fleeing?

State capitalism was touted by Lenin as a positive step on the road to socialism. By state capitalism, Lenin meant a “commanding heights” of large businesses and trusts controlled by a state that served the interests of the working class.

Lenin’s transitory state capitalism of the 1920s was replaced by Stalin’s command economy. Postwar France’s dirigisme and Japan’s industrial policy were both failed experiments with state capitalism, but it is alive and, some think, well in China, Russia, Brazil, and many other countries.

I spent four days in Moscow last week, attending a conference on the Gulag system and renewing old acquaintances. On my last visit three years ago, I encountered mixed opinions on Vladimir Putin. He had some strong defenders and few vehement opponents.  This time, the common response to Putin’s return to the Presidency was: “Why do we need that guy back?”

go the Forbes.com

Let’s Face It. Gaddafi Has Won

As the Western powers dither and deliberate, Gaddafi has won. He will stay in power even if we establish no-fly zones or impose sanctions with sharp teeth. Short of actual invasion, Gaddafi will stay in power and will likely pass his power on to his sons when he dies. The Western press will continue to hope as a civil war continues, but its outcome is preordained.

There is a prominent historical pattern which explains why Gaddafi has won. There are virtually no cases of unconstrained dictators being overthrown. An unconstrained dictator is a Stalin, a Kim Il Sung, a Saddam, and a Gaddafi who is willing to take any measure, no matter how brutal or repulsive, to stay in power.

The state security organizations of unconstrained dictators reach even down into neighborhoods and report directly to them; prison or worse is the price even modest dissidents pay; they shoot first, not particularly worrying whether their victim is a threat or not. They make the price of resistance of any kind so high that only a brave few are willing to take the risk. Any potential rival is a dead man.

These brutal measures have served unconstrained dictators well. Stalin in his three decades of rule faced not a single assassination attempt. (There were two attempts on Lenin’s life in the early days of Bolshevik power. He had not yet had time to build his state security network). Father and son, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, ruled North Korea for a half century despite incredible economic failure and deprivation of their people too downtrodden to resist.

The recent events in the Middle East have taught us a new and bitter lesson: Even mass popular uprisings are not enough to topple an unconstrained dictator. We had hoped that popular uprisings would eventually topple the Iranian mullahs, Syria’s Assad, and Kim Il Sung. The Libyan experience proves that they can survive almost an entire nation rising up against them. They do so by killing as many people as necessary and by placing a high price on any form of resistance.

Popular uprisings are, however, sufficient to topple constrained dictators, as Mubarak’s experience in Egypt shows. Earlier the constrained Shah fell to a popular uprising and even the East German dictatorship was unwilling to use force against demonstrators in Leipzig.

The few cases of overthrow of unconstrained dictator take the form of internal coups and invasions. The Romanian dictator Ceausescu was shot dead by his inner circle after being booed by a crowd. Beria, Stalin’s head of state security, was executed by his Kremlin colleagues, when he tried to succeed the deceased Stalin. Hitler committed suicide before Soviet troops reached his bunker.

What signal does past and current history send to constrained dictators? What message does it send to Chavez in Venezuela, Ortega in Nicaragua, Hamas in Lebanon, or Assad in Syria? The message is that only the most vicious and brutal dictators survive. There is no payoff from restraint. “Reforms” will do them no good and are to the contrary quite dangerous. They will heed Machiavelli’s advice that the “prince must learn to be less good..

A Libyan civil war will likely follow the pattern of the Russian civil war. In this civil war, there were almost a half million executions, as the Red Army and the Cheka carried out Lenin’s Red Terror. The White forces were divided and more timid (except the Cossacks, who matched the Reds in brutality). The interventionist forces used only half measures and pulled out with their tales between their legs. Tribal enmity will likely keep a Libyan war going for a while but the outcome is not in question.

If history shows that palace coups are the most likely way to topple an unconstrained dictator, should US policy aim at promoting an insider conspiracy among Gaddafi's lieutenants? I am sure that Gaddafi has organized his state security to prevent just that. The odds of an outsider successfully organizing a palace coup are about zero. Even if a palace coup worked, the result would likely be a new leader slightly less bad than Gaddafi.

An Egyptian Power Struggle: Why the Worst Will Win (Lesson’s from Lenin’s Playbook)

The media has again begun its celebration. Another repressive dictator has been overthrown (or is about to be). The people are massed in the streets demanding freedom. Talk turns to a successor who will restore order and create a new and better order. We hear these familiar words as the thirty-year-old Mubarak regime totters on the brink.

The hard reality is that this optimistic scenario rarely works out. A worse (or equally bad) dictator rises to the top, not a democracy or even a more benevolent dictator. Throughout history, it is the Lenins, Stalins, Ayatolla Khomeneis, Saddams, and Aristides who replace the Czars, the Shahs, the al-Bakrs, and the Papa Docs. Successful transitions from dictatorship to democracy of the Philippines and South Korea are the exception and require special circumstances.

Machiavelli advised that “a man, who wishes to profess goodness at all times, must fall to ruin among so many who are not good.” Even a well-intentioned “Prince” must learn “how not to be good.” F. A. Hayek expressed the same sentiment when he explained why “the worst will rise to the top” in a power struggle played without rules. In Russia, the “good” Kerensky fell to Lenin. In Iran, the good “Bakhtiar” could not contend against Khomenei. In Egypt a “good” El Baradei will fall to a yet unidentified leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Lenin-Stalin-Khomenei-Saddam has substantial advantages in a power struggle, and there is little the outside world can do. He is unconstrained by a moral compass; he is willing to do whatever is necessary to gain power. These advantages are multiplied when the dictator-to-be does abhorrent things in the name of a powerful ideology. Lenin and Stalin had socialism and its intellectual admirers in the West. Saddam had Arab nationalism, and Khomenei had his vision of a fundamental Islamic revival.

Dictators are loathe to designate a successor (unless it is their son or daughter, but even then they hesitate). Hence, the power struggle will take place in a vacuum without established rules. In such a free-for-all, the most brutal contender is advantaged, particularly if he has organizational skills. Nor does it particularly matter what the people want. In the absence of established democratic institutions, their voices can be scarcely heard.

Lenin’s playbook of 1917 is still the classic. His Bolshevik party was organized as a tiny party of professional revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks were part of the February-revolution coalition that dispensed with the Czar. The victors agreed to elect a constituent assembly to create a new multi-party parliament. Lenin had carefully wooed supporters within army and navy units, and he had enough of them to drive Kerensky’s timid provisional government from the Winter Palace in November 1917 without a shot.

After the Bolsheviks received only twenty percent of the popular vote for the constituent assembly, Lenin sent in armed sailors to its first meeting and bolted the doors forever. Lenin then ordered his bloody Red Terror against rival parties and independent thinkers. Notably, he suppressed those parties most brutally that were the closest to the Bolsheviks in ideology. He could not afford to have any rival in the wings. The Czar and his young son and teen age daughters were slaughtered in Siberia.

It was left to Lenin’s successor, Stalin, to move against his own party. By 1938, he had executed any and all party leaders, whom he regarded as a threat.

Lenin’s formula for power fits the Egyptian situation to a T: A popular revolution overthrows a despised dictator. There is no planned succession. Any figure associated with the old regime is tainted. There will be some popular figures among the “revolutionaries,” but they are disorganized and have no ideology to sell. The dictator-to-be’s party may be small, and it may not be particularly popular, but it is well organized and can bring force to bear when necessary. It employs its organizational superiority, brutality, and raw power to outmaneuver or liquidate rivals. Once the dictator-to-be’s party is in power, he can turn his attention within to eliminate his rivals.

The Egyptian army is the one wild card, just as the Czarist army was Lenin’s wild card. Indeed, remnants of the white army fought Trotsky’s Red Army to a standstill, until they were split apart by internal disputes. The advantage to Lenin and the next Egyptian dictator is that both armies were conscripted rather than professional. Conscripted armies are less likely to fill a power vacuum than professional armies.