A History of Ideas of the Cold War?

[This essay was started some time prior to 5/12/2009. It is a bare beginning of an exploration of the idea of a History of Ideas of the Cold War]

It looks to me like the confusions of the cold war are coming back to haunt us again.

To study the ideas that had major impacts on the Cold War looks to me like entering a funhouse hall of mirrors. It is particularly obvious in the case of the USSR and its satellites that by the time of the Cold War, Socialist ideals were at best confused and warped out of recognition by expediencies, and at worst (in a certain moral sense at least) downright lies manipulated to maintain power.

The "Free World" was far less coherently structured, which sometimes resulted in a sort of inferiority complex, inspiring secretive and ruthless Machiavellian processes -- sometimes propagandistic manipulation of the public, and sometimes conspiracies within branches of the U.S. government, and others aligned with it -- justified by the supposed need to "fight fire with fire", or to be as merciless and Machiavellian as the forces we believed we were fighting.

On the other hand, many people in the "West", inclined to wish for a better world were taken in, and worked for the USSR's spy organs, with such results as Russia producing atomic bombs very soon after the U.S.

Maybe it is best to start with various interpretations that purport to give a straightforward view of both sides. I suspect Whittaker Chambers' view may have had a huge impact.

It is practically inevitable that today we have even more confused ideas of the phenomenon of Communism than we had when it was a worldwide phenomenon.

Today there are just remnants of the old "Communist Bloc", the most significant of which might be Cuba and North Korea. Then there is China, which is still semi-tyrannical, but doesn't make much pretense of being Communist. It seems to me they're mostly just ambitious for world power in an old fashioned (sort of 19th century?) way, and they are starting to have the resources to attain some very serious power.

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There were many misperceptions of the USSR -- that it was stronger or weaker, or more or less scientifically advanced than it actually was. Probably the biggest misperception was that they were driven in any meaningful sense by ideals of a socialist utopia. In part, I think that is part of a general tendency to see nations, and other social phenomena, such as "the terrorists" as like a person, driven by one set of ideals. Some people I've listened to recently on NPR have described the forces arrayed against the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan as a coalition of a small core of zealots, a lot of people denied any normal economic life by current circumstances, who are basically hired soldiers, and whatever else.

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5/12/2009
Just finished listening to an abridged version on tape of Atlas Shrugged. I am interested in the mindset of those for whom the book seemed like a blinding flash of revelation. Ayn Rand's imagined world is a very strange one. It seems modeled to some extent on depression America. Certainly economic conditions are depressed and becoming more and more so throughout the book.
The America of Atlas Shrugged is a strange parody of itself, with states treated as semi-autonomous, and no electoral politics in sight. The heroes are industrialists, though only some industrialists, and some engineers. Those who are smart and have a "can do" attitude are initially the success stories. At the start of the book, there are pernicious, more or less socialist, or altruistic ideas in the air though they are not dominant, though there is a lot of envy and disparagement of the successful industrialists as scandalously selfish. The many weaklings in the book, including many in industry frequently throw up their hands and say "You can't blame me -- such and such happenned; I couldn't help that". The also promote really silly business policies in the name of "fairness".
There is no Wall Street in evidence, and no dynamic of fickle stockholders affecting business. Ownership seems to rest with a handful of individuals. There is no USSR, though all countries besides the U.S. are called "People's Republic(s)" of France/England/Mexico/whatever. The U.S. seems to be some kind of microcosm recreating the early history of the USSR, except that it starts out as a somewhat successful industrial society (despite all the decline, it seems better than other countries, and towards the end of the book references are made to the U.S. supporting the other nations. Large numbers of stores are closing. There is an odd lack of pressure from the poor and working classes; at least half the rich just seem to want to give away what they have, to make arbitrary loans irrespective of borrower's credit worthiness in the name of "fairness". As the story moves along though, in the course of I think just a couple of years, the nation starts taking on aspects of Stalinist Russia - there is even a fantastic torture machine out of James Bond.