In praise of collectivism

By Klaus Rohrich —— Bio and Archives August 19, 2008

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If anyone’s interested in what the New York Times considers a “conservative” columnist, reading the latest column by David Brooks will convey a fairly good overview. In his August 11 Times column, Brooks wrote gushingly about how China as a collectivist culture could teach the west, with its rugged individualism, a thing or two about making society work harmoniously.

Gushing about the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, Brooks rhapsodized about how striking it was to see “the images of thousands of Chinese moving as one—drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without ever stumbling or colliding”. He then went on to write about China’s “miraculous growth” coming about as a result of “collectivism of the present”, a “high tech version of the harmonious society”. Brooks was able to gather all that just from watching four hours of pageantry for which the Chinese have been practicing for the past four years. What was patently absent from Brooks’ ode to collectivism was any mention of Tiananmen Square, Falun Gong, Lao-gai (labor camps), organ harvesting from executed prisoners and the plethora of other human rights abuses for which China has become famous. Brooks’ article reads as if none of these things had ever happened or were not in fact ongoing. Reading Brooks’ column about China’s wonderful society was reminiscent of another New York Times columnist, Walter Duranty, who is known as Joseph Stalin’s apologist. Duranty filed stories from Russia in the 1930s that made no mention of the human rights abuses and misery to which the average soviet citizen was subjected. Like Brooks, Duranty wrote in glowing terms about the “workers’ paradise” being created under the guidance of Uncle Joe’s capable hands. Of course history has a habit of putting things into perspective, regardless of the lies told by contemporary journalists like Brooks. Witness Walter Duranty’s fall from grace as the truth about Stalin’s atrocities finally emerged. Duranty, Like Brooks, rhapsodized about the Soviet Union’s collectivism and the wonderful society it created. Subsequent historians made the true story of Stalin’s collectivism and the 14.5 million deaths it caused known to the world just as the story of China’s collectivism will prove to be one massive human rights nightmare, David Brooks notwithstanding. The saying that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” comes to mind when reading columns like Brooks’. It’s particularly ironic that a New York Times writer, given that paper’s history of breathless adulation of collectivist human rights abusers, would file this column. Is David Brooks hoping to win the Pulitzer Prize for his commentary of the Beijing Olympics? If he did it would be the irony of all ironies and 70 years from now, the Pulitzer Prize Committee would have to examine the pros and cons of allowing Brooks to keep the Prize, much as they recently agonized over allowing Duranty’s Prize to stand. Brooks’ assertion that “the ideal of a harmonious collective [like China] may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream” is indicative of either a boundless sophomoric gullibility or a cynicism not seen since the days of Walter Duranty.