Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1940), and George Orwell’s 1984 gave the world a glimpse of the dystopian transformation that Soviet-style communism was bringing about in the name of communism. These were among the first works of art to depict the reality of a state-controlled existence where “Big Brother is Watching” would be a matter of fact and not a disquieting aberration.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Will the pendulum swing left?
My 500-word rant on the referendum in Greece
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1940), and George Orwell’s 1984 gave the world a glimpse of the dystopian transformation that Soviet-style communism was bringing about in the name of communism. These were among the first works of art to depict the reality of a state-controlled existence where “Big Brother is Watching” would be a matter of fact and not a disquieting aberration.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1940), and George Orwell’s 1984 gave the world a glimpse of the dystopian transformation that Soviet-style communism was bringing about in the name of communism. These were among the first works of art to depict the reality of a state-controlled existence where “Big Brother is Watching” would be a matter of fact and not a disquieting aberration.
The Soviet Union, by then under the control of Stalinist
ruthlessness, of course, dismissed them as propaganda. It was much later – in the
1970s, during the Brezhnev era – that Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago was published. It destroyed
the last vestiges of Soviet Union’s claim that the Soviet interpretation of
communism was a better and just system.
Describing the life in a Soviet labour camp between 1958 and
1968, Solzhenitsyn's book depicts the grim reality of life in Soviet Union – a life
without freedom, a life of perennial scarcity and a life where equality was a
mere notion. Within two decades of the publication of the book, the Soviet
Union was consigned to the trash bin of history, and it wasn’t a day sooner.
The pauperization of Soviet ideology and the rise of Reagan
were concomitant, and in the rapid collapse of the former lay the genesis of
the rapid rise of the latter. The relentless propaganda war that the
Reagan-Thatcher duo unleashed in the 1980s (Evil Empire, etc.) helped in
shifting the paradigm, and the pendulum swung to the right.
Globally, fiscal conservatism became the new normal; public spending
on essential services was no longer considered necessary, and was interpreted
as wasteful. Surprisingly, more than
Reagan and Thatcher, it was Bill Clinton and Tony Blair who abetted this
transformation.
By the mid-1990s, ideological left in the West (which was
radically different from Soviet interpretation of leftism) was confined only to
a few institutions and individuals. Insofar as the government policies were
concerned, the left was finished. Its total obliteration also led to the rise and
acceptance of globalization, the rise of China, and the Walmartization of the
world economy.
Twenty years later the world is beginning to come to grips
with the fallout of this process – the disparity between the haves and the
have-nots has pierced the stratosphere; unsurprisingly, statistics don’t capture
either the absurdity or the tragedy of this inequality. And that is only the
economic manifestation of the phenomenon.
The rise of religious fundamentalism, institutionalization
of racial discrimination, the utter disregard for the depletion of natural
resources, the devastation of the fragile ecosystems to make the rich richer are
among the political and sociocultural manifestations of the Rise of the Right.
These developments have had deeply disturbing ramifications, and have left a permanent
scar on people and societies.
Greece’s referendum last week, therefore, gave rise to hope to
many across the world that finally the leaders of Western Europe would
comprehend that the pendulum had begun to swing back, and that it was now time
to understand the human cost of the myopic policies that have been followed.
Will anything concrete emerge from it? The answer is an
unequivocal and emphatic no.
Labels:
#Greecereferendum
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