Today global communism seems just a terrible memory, an expressionist nightmare as horrific as Nazism and the Holocaust, or the slaughter in the First World War. Was it only just over a decade ago that stone-faced old men were still presiding over "workers" paradises in the name of "the people" while hundreds of millions endured grinding poverty under a system of mind-controlling servitude which did not hesitate to murder and imprison whole populations in the cause of "progress"? Or that the world seemed under threat from revolutionary hordes engulfing one country after another, backed by a vast military machine and the threat of nuclear annihilation? In the 1970s, with the fall of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the march of Marxism-Leninism across the world seemed irresistible. Less than two decades later the experiment had collapsed, leaving perhaps 100 million dead, as well as economic devastation spanning continents. Even China now increasingly embraces free market economics. Only in a few backwaters does communism endure, as obsolete as rust-belt industry. This book is the first global narrative history of that defining human experience. It weighs up the balance sheet: why did communism occur largely in countries wrenched from feudalism or colonialism to twentieth-century modernism, rather than--as Marx had predicted--in developed countries groaning under the weight of a parasitic middle class? Were coercion and state planning in fact the only way forward for backward countries? What was the explanation for its appeal -- not least among many highly intelligent observers in the West? Why did it grow so fast, and collapse with such startling suddenness? A Short History of Communism sets out the whole epic story for the first time, a panorama of human idealism, cruelty, suffering and courage, and provides an intriguing new analysis.
In the aftermath of the cold war, political commentators spoke ebulliently of the triumph of liberal democracy over its ideological rivals. Shortly thereafter, however, a surge of ethnic and religious violence raised doubts about whether democracy could survive outside Western culture. Similar concerns were soon raised even in Western nations by widespread citizen disengagement from the political process. Voter apathy, ideological conflict, and debates about cultural diversity intensified doubts about the continuing viability of democratic institutions. Throughout the whole world, then, few questions have come to define more clearly the challenge of our age than this: how to facilitate civil, free, and democratic interaction among citizens of multicultural societies.Democratic Civilityexamines the core requirements necessary to make democracy work. Subtly interweaving case studies and theoretical reflection, Hefner and his contributors examine the ideals, culture, development, and organization of civil democracy. Against a historical background, they consider today's challenges to democracy, asking whether international politics is destined to lead to a clash of civilizations, or whether civil and democratic ideas are indeed realizable in a multicultural world. Essays by Adam B. Seligman, Robert Wuthnow, Brigitte Berger, and Anton C. Zijderveld address subjects germane to the 'culture wars' controversy in the United States and other Western countries. And Daniel Chirot, Jose Casanova, Robert P. Weller, and S. Gordon Redding examine the prospects for democracy in non-Western, post-communist societies, in particular Chinese society and the Muslim world.Hefner's highly readable volume reaches the core of the ongoing debate between Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and Francis Fukuyama's The End of History - whether liberal democratic values are generalizable to non-Western societies, or realizable only in the West. Democratic Civility will be of interest to those in the fields of anthropology, sociology, history, political theory, and philosophy.
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