Taxpayers Subsidize Our Healthcare

I recently finished filing my taxes for 2018. Unlike most Americans, who seem to think of taxes in terms of “what did I get for a refund this year,” and don’t really think through how all the complex laws fit together, I am acutely aware of how the rules affect me. Part of this comes from the fact that I do my own tax preparation. But more of it comes because I am a self employed attorney, and thus write checks to the IRS and the State of California every three months. 

One of the problems I have seen with our current political climate is that, while most people are aware of welfare programs (usually mis-described as “socialism”) that benefit the working poor, very few notice the even more generous subsidies that benefit middle to upper class people. So here is a subsidy which benefits me and my family:

Taxpayers paid for $12,236.51 of my family’s health insurance last year.

It’s worse than that, though. For higher income families, that subsidy would be $14,696.11, while for lower income families, it might be as low as $4,57.71.

That’s right, the more you earn, the more taxpayers subsidize your health insurance.

The reason people don’t pick up on this is that the subsidy is cleverly hidden in the tax code as a “tax exemption,” rather than done as a direct benefit, as subsidies for lower income people are.

Tax exemptions basically work like this: money you or your employer pay for certain things is exempted from your taxable income. (It doesn’t matter who “pays” for it on paper - it is still income to you in the sense that you get it in return for your work.) In the case of health insurance, it is “above the line,” meaning it is subtracted even before Social Security and Medicare payments are calculated.

There are plenty of other exemptions that benefit you more as you become richer. For example, the cost of paying for one’s house. This year, taxpayers don’t subsidize my house, because my interest payments are too small to allow me to itemize. (We have lived there for 14 years and have paid down a lot of the loan.) But, for someone with a million dollar loan, taxpayers are probably paying for 32% of the interest on that loan. And, the bigger the loan, the higher the subsidy.

These are just the two biggest taxpayer subsidies (can we call it socialism?) that work to benefit richer people more than poorer.

The point here is this: the Right Wing here in the United States came within a couple votes of eliminating most of Medicaid, the program which pays for the heath care of virtually all of the disabled, people in nursing homes, and fully half of the children in our nation.

And called the parents of those children “lazy” for not paying for their own insurance.

I would strongly doubt that fully half of the parents in this country are lazy and refuse to work. Rather, there is strong evidence that the overwhelming majority of them ARE working. They just don’t have employer-sponsored health insurance. And they don’t have access to those generous subsidies which people like me have.

I am sure most people relying on Medicaid would love to have an extra ~$30,000 in tax-free income (the total cost of our insurance, between what “we” pay and what my wife’s employer pays - all of which is above-the-line deductible). But since they don’t - their employers choose not to pay the full cost for their employees, assuming that taxpayers will make up the difference - they have to rely on public benefits. And the contempt that more fortunate people heap on them for having jobs that don’t come with benefits.

This is where we need to change the conversation itself. Right now, thanks to decades of idolatry of the market, we instinctively value people and the work they do by what “the market” pays as reward. And then, when the market fails to provide workers with basic necessities like healthcare, we assume that the person is defective - “lazy” - rather than realizing that the market is failing to pay people what they are worth.

In the wealthiest nation in human history, there is no excuse for letting people go without necessities like healthcare. Or for subsidizing the wealthy more while blaming the less wealthy for the subsidies they get.

***

Actually, here in the United States, it isn’t any mystery why our discussion of social programs is so screwed up. I wrote about it a while back.

Also, Chris Ladd wrote the best summary I have read – he explains that white Americans LOVE socialism for white people. Just not socialism for anyone else.

Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg

Source of book: I own this.

I figure anyone who has been through any kind of American schooling has had to read two Carl Sandburg poems: “Fog” and “Chicago.” Everyone knows them a little, even if few could quote them on demand. However, the acquaintance usually stops there, in my experience. I decided to read the complete Chicago Poems to fill this gap in my knowledge. It also seemed fitting since it was published exactly 100 years ago this year.

Chicago Poems contains the title poem, of course, the listing of the ways the poet views the city as he experienced it in the second decade of the Twentieth Century.

My particular collection of Sandburg has almost all of Chicago Poems. Two are missing. A quick search of the internet revealed why. One is called “Nigger,” and contains some unfortunate stereotypes. The other is “The Has-Been,” which contains the slang “niggerhead” for a mudball. So basically, these were deemed offensive, and left out without explanation. Whatever. I read them online, and didn’t find them essential or the best of the bunch.

Here are some of the poems that caught my attention as particularly good.

“Halsted Street Car”

COME you, cartoonists,       

Hang on a strap with me here       

At seven o’clock in the morning       

On a Halsted street car.               

Take your pencils        

And draw these faces.  

Try with your pencils for these crooked faces,

That pig-sticker in one corner—his mouth—

That overall factory girl—her loose cheeks.  

            

Find for your pencils        

A way to mark your memory             

Of tired empty faces.               

After their night’s sleep,             

In the moist dawn             

And cool daybreak,   

Faces             

Tired of wishes,      

Empty of dreams.

A theme that runs through the book is that of the workers, exhausted by long hours, hungry from low wages that don’t cover rent and enough food for the family, and unable to rise beyond the need for survival. And yet, they are not just types, but actual people.

“Passers-by”

PASSERS-BY,

Out of your many faces

Flash memories to me

Now at the day end

Away from the sidewalks

Where your shoe soles traveled

And your voices rose and blent

To form the city’s afternoon roar

Hindering an old silence.   

Passers-by,     

I remember lean ones among you,

Throats in the clutch of a hope,

Lips written over with strivings,

Mouths that kiss only for love.

Records of great wishes slept with,       

Held long And prayed and toiled for..       

Yes,

Written on

Your mouths

And your throats

I read them

When you passed by.

Some of Sandburg’s observations made me smile. Like this one.

“Happiness”

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.

And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.

They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them

And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river

And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Perhaps a bit of a kindred spirit with Tchaikovsky who prefaced the final movement of his 4th Symphony (based on  Russian folk song) with “If you cannot find reasons for happiness in yourself, look at others. Get out among the people.…Oh, how gay they are!…Life is bearable after all.”

And yet, it is these “commoners” that the wealthy then - and now - are most eager to escape.

“A Fence”

NOW the stone house on the lake front is finished and the workmen are beginning the fence. The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.

As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering children looking for a place to play.

Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow.

The neighborhood I grew up in - and the one I live in now - are kind of “old school” now. The kind where anyone can drive in. Now, it seems, so many are “gated communities.” Have a pass code, or stay out. And their own little private parks where their children can play without fear of poor kids rocking their world. Sorry. Pet peeve. Kind of up there with the tendency so many have to fight low income housing (or even apartments) in their neighborhood. Best to shut off all the rabble. Love this poem.

This one is a favorite as well:

“Style”

STYLE—go ahead talking about style.

You can tell where a man gets his style just as you can tell where Pavlowa got her legs or Ty Cobb his batting eye.       

Go on talking.

Only don’t take my style away.       

It’s my face.       

Maybe no good           

but anyway,

my face.

I talk with it, I sing with it, I see, taste and feel with it, I know why I want to keep it.   

Kill my style             

and you break Pavlowa’s legs,        

and you blind Ty Cobb’s batting eye.

It’s almost as if Sandburg could have anticipated the arguments about style in professional sports, which have a strong element of race and class in them. (Looking at you, Cam Newton…)

Another one which struck me as interesting was this one, which is essentially one big line. The form is interesting, but also the sentiment. Sandburg, like me, believed the arts elevate, and make one more human.

“Bath”

A MAN saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones. The rose flesh of life shriveled from all faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a useless silence. So he saw it all. Then he went to a Mischa Elman concert. Two hours waves of sound beat on his eardrums. Music washed something or other inside him. Music broke down and rebuilt something or other in his head and heart. He joined in five encores for the young Russian Jew with the fiddle. When he got outside his heels hit the sidewalk a new way. He was the same man in the same world as before. Only there was a singing fire and a climb of roses everlastingly over the world he looked on.

The final one that I include here is this one.

“To A Contemporary Bunkshooter”

YOU come along … tearing your shirt … yelling about Jesus.     

Where do you get that stuff?     

What do you know about Jesus?

Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem everybody liked to have this Jesus around because he never made any fake passes and everything he said went and he helped the sick and gave the people hope.   

You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist and calling us all dam fools so fierce the froth slobbers over your lips… always blabbing we’re all going to hell straight off and you know all about it.  

I’ve read Jesus’ words. I know what he said. You don’t throw any scare into me. I’ve got your number. I know how much you know about Jesus.

He never came near clean people or dirty people but they felt cleaner because he came along. It was your crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out of the running.   

I say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth. He had lined up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men now lined up with you paying your way.   

This Jesus was good to look at, smelled good, listened good. He threw out something fresh and beautiful from the skin of his body and the touch of his hands wherever he passed along.

You slimy bunkshooter, you put a smut on every human blossom in reach of your rotten breath belching about hell-fire and hiccupping about this Man who lived a clean life in Galilee.  

When are you going to quit making the carpenters build emergency hospitals for women and girls driven crazy with wrecked nerves from your gibberish about Jesus—I put it to you again: Where do you get that stuff; what do you know about Jesus?   

Go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to. Smash a whole wagon load of furniture at every performance. Turn sixty somersaults and stand on your nutty head. If it wasn’t for the way you scare the women and kids I’d feel sorry for you and pass the hat.

I like to watch a good four-flusher work, but not when he starts people puking and calling for the doctors.

I like a man that’s got nerve and can pull off a great original performance, but you—you’re only a bug-house peddler of second-hand gospel—you’re only shoving out a phoney imitation of the goods this Jesus wanted free as air and sunlight.   

You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it up all right with them by giving them mansions in the skies after they’re dead and the worms have eaten ’em.  

You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need is Jesus; you take a steel trust wop, dead without having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross and he’ll be all right.

You tell poor people they don’t need any more money on pay day and even if it’s fierce to be out of a job, Jesus’ll fix that up all right, all right—all they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say.

I’m telling you Jesus wouldn’t stand for the stuff you’re handing out. Jesus played it different. The bankers and lawyers of Jerusalem got their sluggers and murderers to go after Jesus just because Jesus wouldn’t play their game. He didn’t sit in with the big thieves.   

I don’t want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.

I won’t take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar.

I ask you to come through and show me where you’re pouring out the blood of your life.   

I’ve been to this suburb of Jerusalem they call Golgotha, where they nailed Him, and I know if the story is straight it was real blood ran from His hands and the nail-holes, and it was real blood spurted in red drops where the spear of the Roman soldier rammed in between the ribs of this Jesus of Nazareth.

This one affected me strongly. It contains some things I have wanted to say so many times, but never more than during the Ferguson protests. A bunch of well-meaning Christian friends spouted off with this whole “they all just need Jesus” bullcrap.

I can guarantee you that they weren’t meaning it in the sense of “Jesus needs to make the wealthy and middle class people who have used the justice system to loot and harass the poor realize that they have done evil, so they will stop looting and harassing and give back their ill-gotten gains.”

Chances are, the meaning was more “If those damn black people would just get saved, they would stop whining and protesting.”

Because, think about it, the oppression and looting and harassment and police brutality existed before, and continues to exist around our nation after the protests. But nobody bothered about it until there was social unrest, and suddenly “they need Jesus.” Hmm.

I wrote a bit more on Ferguson here, and included a link to the original Justice Department report, which should be required reading.

Sandburg’s point, though, is well taken. When you are preaching a “Jesus” that turns a blind eye to oppression, and supports the wealthy and self-righteous, you aren’t preaching the real Jesus, who sent John the Baptist’s followers back with this report: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” And the one who said “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” And the one who said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

The “gospel” isn’t a bludgeon to get the oppressed to shut up, but a ringing challenge to love your neighbor as yourself.

It is hard to read these poems without noticing that they caught a spirit - and a time - that resembles our own. Sandburg was a socialist, at a time when it legitimately seemed as if the United States might in fact turn socialist - or even communist. (As a matter of fact, the Bolsheviks at one time believed it was only a matter of time until the United States joined them. The reasons why this was, and why the revolution did not come to pass are fascinating.

In the second half of the Nineteenth Century, a number of notable events and changes took place. With the end of slavery and the industrial revolution, a shift in employment began away from agriculture (which now required fewer workers) and toward urban employment. This change continues today, around the world. More unique to the United States was the era of the Robber Barons. If you want to read a tale of corruption even more sordid than modern corporate-influenced politics, I recommend Railroaded, by Richard White. As that book noted, if you put together all the free land the Federal Government gave the railroads, it would make a state larger than either Texas or California, smaller only than Alaska. This in addition to the interest-free loans, many of which were not repaid. And then the big wheels looted the railroad corporations, enriching themselves at the expense of the smaller investors and creditors. (Just one of many reasons I laugh when anyone claims the world is more evil now than in the Victorian Era. I am calling serious bullcrap on that.) This led, naturally, to great inequality - and a lot of hardship for the ordinary workers who were then exploited by the giant corporations.

Just for perspective, when you adjust for inflation, of the 30 most wealthy Americans in history, 22 of them made their fortunes during the Gilded Age. And these men (yes, they were all men, of course) used their money to buy off elected officials in ways that would be shocking to us now in their refusal to even pretend they weren’t buying votes.

In the aftermath of this inequality, corruption, and exploitation, there were many calls for a fundamental change to the economic and political systems of the nation. A call for socialism was one of the ways this manifested itself.

So what headed off the revolution? While there were undoubtedly too many reasons to point to a single one as “the” cause, it is generally agreed that the United States - and most of the Western world - did in fact make fundamental changes to the system. It was these changes which removed the chief cause that there was a call for revolution in the first place. The changes were not immediate, and they were affected by two world wars, but they eventually came.

These changes included the rise of labor unions, which provided a counterbalance to the power of the rich and powerful employers. And also wage and hour laws, the abolition of child labor, and workplace safety laws, which help re-balance the lopsided employer-employee relationship. The New Deal put a safety net in place to help make a job loss less catastrophic, enabling more employees to speak up without fear of starvation.

It wasn’t just the government and unions, though. Individuals also took initiative. Whether from altruism or from a realization that momentum was building toward a revolution which would not be kind to them, some of the Robber Barons - or their descendants in some cases - decided to use a significant portion of their wealth for the public good. Leland Stanford founded a university, others sponsored libraries and the arts. Others founded charities of various sorts. It became popular - and expected - that the top 1% owed something to everyone else. Still others, like Henry Ford, changed the nature of employment, by choosing to pay his employees enough so they could buy his cars.

In essence, the social contract was changed. And, by the 1950s post-war boom, living standards for working class people had risen substantially.

This relieved the pressure that led to the call for revolution. After all, if one could get a better deal without it, it wasn’t necessary.

Now admittedly, things didn’t get better for everyone. As I noted in this post, it would still take a few decades until Jim Crow was ended. But for enough people, things did indeed improve. The United States has never returned to the days of workers being treated as expendable lives like they were in the Gilded Age.

However, some of the same pressures are building again now, and you can see it in the way that Millennials are leaning socialist. That is the topic for another post, but you can at least see increasing inequality (with a stratification by age in the mix as well), decreasing real wages, soaring costs for education and health care (and that’s before you get to the cost of housing), corporate control of elections, the decline of private-sector unions, and so on. It is only natural - and I would add just - that there is again a call to renegotiate the social contract.

I blogged about the way that “Communism” and “Atheism” have been conflated. Another unfortunate conflation is “Socialism” and the redistribution of wealth. It is the sort of thing that mistakes, say, France with North Korea. Everyone knows that subsidized post-secondary education is just one step away from the Gulags. Or something like that.

Again, a bit beyond the scope of this post, which has already gone a bit afield.

But the point is that, instead of just saying “young people are more evil because they support socialism,” perhaps a better plan would be to look at the underlying realities that create the pressure for revolution. Communism didn’t happen because people were atheists or evil. It happened as a response to genuine problems and injustices. Whether it the cure was worse than the disease is another matter. It doesn’t change the fact that if the underlying problems are not corrected, drastic treatment will often be attempted.

So just a word to conservative Boomers: Maybe instead of complaining about how bad Millennials are, or blaming it all on the brown skinned people, perhaps you might figure out how to renegotiate the social contract - like our ancestors did 100 years ago - in a way that reduces the inequality in wealth and power. It’s a thought.

One of the reasons I love reading works from the past is that it gives perspective. Very few things are new under the sun. From the days of the prophet Isaiah (and before, I am sure), there has been the call for justice. For a social contract which protects the vulnerable, and not the wealthy and powerful.

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-- when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Sandburg captures the past, but also a universal truth. The value of our religion or philosophy or ethical framework isn’t measured by our hellfire or platitudes or neat little system of thought. In the end, it comes down to how we choose, whether at the ballot box or in our sermons or in our giving. Do we side with the powerful, or with the powerless? If our Jesus is just there to tell the poor to stop whining while we sit at our desks and eat our fill while calling for lower wages, well, I’m with Sandburg. I don’t want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe by Anne Applebaum

Source of book: borrowed from the library

Totalitarianism (Merriam-Webster Dictionary):

1: centralized control by an autocratic authority

2: the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority

Totalitarianism (Benito Mussolini):

“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

Totalitarian Regime (Carl J. Friedrich & Zbingiew Brzezinski):

A dominant ideology, a single ruling party, a secret police prepared to use terror, a monopoly on information, and a planned economy.

If there is one political philosophy that I hold to without reservation, it is my hatred of totalitarianism. The Twentieth Century saw the rise of totalitarianism on a global scale, and hundreds of millions would be sacrificed to its need for control.

The names are familiar to all of us. Mussolini first coined the definition - and he meant it as a compliment and an aspiration. Hitler and Stalin seem to have competed as to who could slaughter more. (Stalin won, by the way.) Mao and Pol Pot and a host of lesser imitators added to the carnage.

This book was published just last year, and contains a wealth of information from recently opened archives throughout Eastern Europe. In addition, Applebaum interviewed a number of survivors of the Stalin era. Their words are often the most haunting of all.

I first became familiar with Anne Applebaum from her nuanced reporting and writing in the Washington Post and on Slate.com on foreign affairs. From 1988 through 1991, she chronicled the collapse of communism for the Economist, writing and reporting on location in Warsaw. She also wrote from first hand experience in the Baltic States when they were on the verge of independence. While on this assignment, she met and married Radoslaw Sikorski, currently the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Republic of Poland. One of her previous books (which I want to read), Gulag: A History, won the Pulitzer prize in 2004.

Iron Curtain covers the period from the last years of World War Two through the death of Joseph Stalin, (1944-1956) focusing on three Eastern European countries: Poland, Hungary, and East Germany. It is an excellently researched and written book. Although it is not exactly easy reading, it is compelling. While most of us are at least passingly familiar with the basics of how Stalin “perfected” the art of using violence to suppress dissent, this book shows just how it was done, and how Communism was able to destroy the existing civil society and attempt to replace it with an all-encompassing State that attempted to control the very thoughts of the people it conquered.

Probably the thing that struck me the most while reading this book was the similarities between totalitarian systems and cults. Here I use “cult” not in the sense of non-mainstream religious organizations, but in the sense of dangerous, controlling and destructive movements. Think Jim Jones or the Branch Davidians. These movements employ manipulative and authoritarian mind control over members, have a totalitarian and communal organization, aggressive proselytizing, and systematic indoctrination. Add the coercive power of the State, and secret police, and you pretty much have Nazism or Stalinism. (Raymond Aron makes a compelling case that Communism is a religion in The Opium of the Intellectuals. I think the case that it is a cult is quite strong as well.)

It wasn’t just the common features listed above, it was the way that Communist ideology was deified and made into an article of faith that was immune to all proof to the contrary. As a biographer of Walter Ulbricht of East Germany noted, “here was a seemingly simple, convincing formula that enabled him to categorize and explain everything he learned, heard and saw.” It was a complete worldview. A complete lens by which all truth could be perceived.

But how could such a cult take over such a large portion of the world in such a short period of time?

According to those Applebaum interviewed, it came about primarily because of the terror and destruction of the war, which caused a desire to return to “normal.” When combined with the apathy by the Allies, and the military force of Stalin’s army, it seemed inevitable.

In my review of They Thought They Were Free, I noted that the Nazis were able to gain power in the aftermath of World War One and the subsequent collapse of the German economy. Anything seemed better than the status quo. Similarly, in Eastern Europe, the Nazis destroyed much of the conquered nations, and the Soviets could appear on the surface as liberators, if only by comparison. After all, of the Jewish population in Poland, barely ten percent remained. Anything was better than that, right?

But it was an illusion. The Soviet army was every bit as brutal as that of Hitler. The old concentration camps, including Auschwitz, were simply repurposed for new political prisoners. As in wars from time immemorial, gang rape was used as a military and political weapon. (There are some heartrending first-hand accounts in this book. Not graphic, but awful nonetheless.) If there were not enough reasons to hate Stalin, his response to reports that soldiers were looting and raping, demanded to know how the complainant could not, “understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle.” (More than any of the other good reasons I loathe Sartre is that he defended Stalin’s evil behavior as justified under the circumstances. Ick.)

Another interesting fact brought to light is that the first thing the Soviets established was not a collective economy, or communist schools, or puppet leadership. It was the secret police. The basis for all that would come after.

This was necessary because the first order of business was to destroy all competition in the realm of ideas. This was the closest cult parallel, in my opinion. True cults - and cult-like organizations (such as the one I experienced) depend on limiting information. They depend on complete control over the ideas that are allowed to be heard. For Stalin, this meant eliminating everything that was not Communist propaganda.

It is probably impossible to overstate the degree of suspicion that the Communists had for all institutions other than the Party. As Christians, we have generally been aware of the atheistic nature of Communist philosophy - and also of the systematic campaign by Communist regimes to destroy the Church. However, this hatred and destruction was much broader than that. Any small group that met for any purpose was suspect. In Poland, there was a particular distrust of Chess clubs; but all civic organizations such as charities, sports clubs, literary groups, social groups were targeted for either destruction or assimilation into the Party.

For the same reason, those who owned books were often arrested - they might have unapproved ideas. Barbers and pub owners were suspected because of the informal “groups” that might naturally meet at their establishments. As Applebaum puts it:

In the end, the fate of the Polish Scouts, the Hungarian People’s Colleges, the German Christian Democratic youth, and a vast range of other institutions - mainstream and idiosyncratic, political and apolitical, from shooting clubs and fencing teams to folk-dance troupes and Catholic charities - was the same. The nascent totalitarian states could not tolerate any competition whatsoever for their citizens’ passions, talents, and free time.

Likewise, education itself became based exclusively on Marxist/Stalinist theory, and all “Western” influences (such as Montessori - which was popular in Eastern Europe) were purged. The idea was that acquired traits could be inherited. Thus, if the next generation could only be raised without any taint from “capitalist” ideas, this would then be passed on to succeeding generations, and presumably the Communist Utopia would follow. (This is roughly the same philosophy followed by the Christian Reconstructionists, in my opinion, particularly Douglas Phillips and Jonathan Lindvall, who advocate extreme restriction on reading materials and essentially forbid friendships outside of the group. If only one can shelter the children from all “secular humanist” ideas and control every influence, the slate will be wiped clean, and eventually a new Christian Utopia will follow. It’s kind of uncanny how totalitarian systems end up resembling each other.)

In the end, all organized resistance was either destroyed by force, assimilated, or faded away under threat. The book illustrates these options with the stories of the two Catholic cardinals that took different approaches. The cardinal for Hungary actively resisted, and was destroyed along with most of the church organization in that nation. In contrast, the cardinal for Poland played along to a degree in order to survive, but was accused of collaboration. In the end, the Polish church was to be a crucial factor in the liberation and rebuilding of Poland after the fall of Communism. Which choice was better?

For most, there was little day-to-day reason to resist. (I discussed this at greater length regarding They Thought They Were Free.) As Applebaum puts it, unless there were “dramatic circumstances,” there was no reason to buck the system. After all, they depended on the State for food, health care, housing, jobs, and pretty much everything. One defied the State only when circumstances demanded it.

Somehow, though, all of the rosy dreams of the doctrinaires never came to pass. As a Hungarian joke went, “The definition of socialism: an incessant struggle against difficulties that would not exist in any other system.”

One of the surprising things about this book was the wealth of information from those who hated the system, but had no power to change it. Particularly in the intellectual and artistic realms, the officially approved forms were stultifying, and the products laughable. (Some of the poetry quoted - later disowned by its reluctant authors - such as an ode to a steel foundry are so bad as to be impossible to parody.)

One of my favorites was this slogan printed on a banner.

Every artificially inseminated pig is a blow to the face of Imperialist warmongers.

The poor guy who had to come up with that - and the one that had to design the banner. Applebaum sums this up with another great quotable line: “The experience of living in a society that forced everyone to sound enthusiastic all of the time, and that forced many people to say and do things they didn’t believe in, eventually had profound psychological consequences.”

Naturally, such control over every aspect of life, and the attempt to control even thoughts would lead to subtle forms of protest. Eventually, the entire system would collapse as a result.

I love the chapters on the the passive forms of protest. Since everything was controlled, even the silliest things could be serious protest. For example, in a system of “enthusiasm,” and earnest seriousness, even ordinary jokes would be seen as subversive. Actually, the root of much humor is the absurdity of the status quo, so this was naturally alarming to the authorities.

I found it immensely interesting that jazz, of all things, came to be the music of protest. Because of its American roots, it was viewed as the very devil by the Stalinists. Here is the money quote from an East German musicologist (speaking the official position, no doubt):

"American entertainment kitsch" was a  "channel through which the poison of Americanism penetrates and threatens to anaesthetize the minds of workers." The threat from jazz, swing and big band music was, he said, "just as dangerous as a military attack with poison gases." After all, it reflected: "the degenerate ideology of American monopoly capital with its lack of culture ... its empty sensationalism and above all its fury for war and destruction ... We should speak plainly here of a fifth column of Americanism. It would be wrong to misjudge the dangerous role of American hit music in the preparation for war."

I just about fell off my chair when I read this. In a past post on Christian Patriarchy, I noted that Rousas Rushdoony (a holocaust denialist and segregation proponent) condemned jazz (and later rock and roll) as inherently evil. As I noted then, it was really the fact that it was derived from Africa that made it problematic. So, lo and behold! The communists hated it too, once again for its political meaning. I doubt Ellington and Gillespie were thinking specifically about Stalin when they performed - but Stalin thought so, and therefore, the music was political on both sides. It was shocking to see the exact same rhetoric in a different context. (I need to write a post someday about the political nature of music throughout history. Notes in and of themselves are not “good” or “evil,” but they have always been used as symbols - and have always been a threat to autocrats. Someday.)

Again, this protest was inevitable. One of the most powerful quotes in the book is from an anonymous blacksmith quoted in one of the semi-underground newspapers.

"How many times have I been obliged to accept the opinion of others, one which I perhaps don't share. As that opinion changes, it's demanded that mine change equally. And that makes me feel sick, sicker than if I'd been beaten. I'm a man, I too. I also have a head which I use to think. And I'm not a child. I'm an adult, who gives his soul, his heart, his youth and his energy for the construction of socialism...I do it willingly but I want to be considered like an adult who lives and knows how to think. I want to be able to speak my thoughts without having anything to fear - and I want to be heard as well..."

For those who have survived any autocratic system, this is at the heart of the issue. This is freedom of thought and speech in a nutshell - and it is what the First Amendment of the Constitution has at its core. Freedom to disagree.

Soon after Stalin’s death, some things loosened up in Eastern Europe. Applebaum considers the end of Stalinism in Poland to have begun with a festival wherein representatives of a variety of nations were invited. Things quickly got out of control (from the communist point of view), and there was spontaneous mingling and communication, and the cat was out of the bag. It was no longer possible to maintain the illusion that the capitalist nations were impoverished, or that there was no world worth having outside of the Marxist paradise. In contrast to the grey and humorless - gloomy even - officially approved clothing and conversation was the fun of spontaneity.

As a Polish newspaper reported, “It turned out that it was possible to be ‘progressive’ and at the same time enjoy life, wear colorful clothes, listen to jazz, have fun, and fall in love.”

(I hate to have to refer to this again, but this is exactly the kind of thing that my friends who have escaped from the Christian Patriarchy paradigm have been saying. In an ideology that controls clothing, music, and particularly love and romance, this is precisely the freedom one misses.)

Two quotes provide a good closing to this book.

The first is from Doctor Zhivago (the book, not the movie):

And so it was necessary to teach people not to think and make judgments, to compel them to see the nonexistent, and to argue the opposite of what was obvious to everyone.

This quote parallels the one I loved from Why Does the Universe Exist. The demise of any cult occurs when the members realize that they are being fed a lie.

The second, is Applebaum’s:

By trying to control every aspect of society, the regimes had turned every aspect of society into a potential form of protest.

I note that there are plenty of online reviews from people who hate the book because of its supposed bias. In response, I would note that the history of repression by the communist regimes is so well established as to be rather beyond dispute. The gulags were not an invention. The evidence from those who escaped, survived, or perished is overwhelming. Those who, like Sartre, continue to drink the koolaid continue to look at the flaws of the West and capitalism (and there are many) and cling to the dream that there is one “simple, convincing formula” explains everything - and shows the way to utopia. I would also note that, like the Party apparatchiks before them, these reviewers cite suppose Western sabotage of the economies of communist nations. Some things never change.

Note on the music:

Here are four musical selections which dovetail nicely with this book.

First, when the Nazi’s conquered Poland, the last broadcast from the radio was a live rendition of Franz Chopin’s Nocturne in C# Minor by Wladyslaw Szpilman (who would later write The Pianist). Upon liberation from the Nazis, he would repeat the performance on live radio, but the station would again be silenced by the Soviets.

 

The ludicrous interference with the arts led to some bad art, but many true geniuses managed to hide their protest within their “officially approved” works. Sergei Prokofiev wrote Lieutenant Kije for a film of the same name, which officially poked fun at the old Tsarist bureaucracy. A paperwork mistake is made, attributing great heroism to Kije, who doesn’t actually exist. In order to keep the mistake from being discovered, the bureaucrats invent an entire life for Kije - and eventually kill off their creation. (In other words, Manti Te’o wasn’t that original...) The music is full of humor, and clearly shows how ludicrous the whole thing was. The communist officialdom apparently never realized that the joke worked well on them too.

 

Bela Bartok fled to the United States ahead of the Nazis, and died there before the end of the war. Had he lived to see the Soviet tanks rolling through Budapest, he would have wept as much as he did for the German tanks. I love the Divertimento for Strings, and had the chance to play it a decade and a half ago. The middle movement is widely believed to represent his sorrow at the destruction of Hungary. Starting at the 3:45 mark, there is an ostinato in the lower voices that starts soft, but eventually overwhelms everything, while the higher voices scream in anguish. The machine has crushed all, and nothing is left but mourning. 

The final selection combines so many elements hated by totalitarians everywhere. Rock and roll. Check. African American musicians. Check. Atonality borrowed from “degenerate” classical music. (“Degenerate” and "decadent" were code for “Jewish” in the Nazi lexicon, and “American” in the Stalinist dictionary. And, I should add, “N------” in the Rushdoony paradigm.) And, well, it is about the Cult of Personality. I present Living Color, and some pretty rad 80s pants.