The Red Flag: A History of Communism by David Priestland. Published by Grove
Press, New York. 655 pages, 2009.
Reviewed by Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN
America's military leaders and counter-insurgency practitioners must not
only orient themselves to the tactics of adversaries, but the mindset that motivates
and even creates divides among insurgents. Delving into the ideological rationale
of such enemies as al-Qaida requires patient study, reflection, debate and analysis.
It requires the training of one's own mind to eliminate biases, and immerse oneself
in empathizing (not sympathizing) with the adversary. Why is it important
to empathize with the enemy? By developing such analytic rigor into the psychology,
and ideology that motivates and justifies violence one can begin to anticipate,
interrogate, and understand the landscape as well as decision-cycles of those that
challenge the United States and its allies.
British academic David Priestland teaches Soviet political history at Oxford
University. He has published a book entitled, "Stalinism and the Politics
of Mobilization." Priestland's latest book is a look at the ideological evolution
of communism, from its earliest manifestations as a result of interpretations of
the French Revolution, to divisions among the ideas of social democratic political
theory and communism, to the internal divisions among Marxists. Readers will
be able to understand the divisions and schisms that if understood at the time by
anti-communists could have provided options for undermining such ideologies during
the Cold War. An example of communist schisms utilized to America's advantage was
President Nixon's National Security team grasping the divide and animosity between
Chinese and Russian visions of communism. Readers will delve into French Revolutionary
Claude Saint-Simon (born in 1760) who first postulated the ideas of a planned society,
and that the goal of society was production. It is here that the Soviet model
of planned economies and societies was derived.
The book delves deeply into the ideas of Karl Marx (born in 1818), who reacted
to industrialization and humankind being reduced to cogs in a wheel, and work being
not an expression of creativity but to eat, drink and acquire material things by
advocating the abolition of the market and private property. That is the establishment
of communism. Marx ignored the conflicts of interests among citizens, and
individual advancement abolished. The chapter on the Russian Revolution picks
apart divisions between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, as well as reconciling Marxist
utopia with the realities of threats to their infant revolution. One example
is reintroducing military ranks by Leon Trotsky (born in 1879), ranks were initially
abolished but one could not fight a civil war without command, and it was not until
1935 that formal epilates were introduced into the Red Army. Trotsky would
use Joseph Stalin's failures in the Spanish Civil War, a fight the pitted the Communists
against the Fascists as a dress rehearsal for World War II, to form the Fourth International
which opposed capitalism and Stalinism. Trotsky would be murdered in 1940
by an undercover agent of the NKVD (the forerunner of the KGB).
The book's final chapter traces the evolution of Asian interpretations of communism,
chiefly Mao Tse Tung (born in 1893). This is not an easy book, but begins
to train your mind into distinguishing between ideological interpretations influenced
by events, geography, history and culture.
Commander Aboul-Enein is author of "Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding
the Global Threat," published this summer by Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland.