A SHORT HISTORY OF COMMUNISM: The Rise and Fall of World Communism

The idea that communism in its heyday was just like a religion, complete with dogma, sacred texts, rituals and high priests, goes back to the 19th century and Marx's great antagonist, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. Harvey, a British journalist and onetime member of Parliament, milks the idea to the last drop, and the result is a watery drink without substance. There is something, to be sure, in the communism-religion analogy, but so many other factors must be taken into account to explain the ideology and the many movements and states that fall under the rubric of communism. The author fails to locate the intellectual origins of Marx's opus in the Enlightenment and the German philosophical tradition. Numerous errors only enhance the unease: Marx did not advocate "the guiding role of... a party of intellectuals capable of understanding better than the workers themselves where their true interests lay" (that was Lenin's contribution); Rosa Luxemburg was hardly a "true Leninist" and there was no general strike in Germany in 1919. Four pages on Cambodia fail to convey the varied forms of repression and violence the Khmer Rouge exercised. Whatever one's views about communism, a movement that spanned a century and half and the entire globe warrants a far richer and more complex history than Harvey provides. 35 illus. not seen by PW, 2 maps. Agent, Gillon Aitken. (Nov. 17)