This summer, following after the Arab Spring that saw the ousting of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Foreign Policy magazine, ran their July/August 2011 issue with the cover story, "Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong". Since this is a Washington Post Company publication, not surprisingly they turned to Leon Aron, director of Russian studies at the neoconservative flagship: the American Enterprise Institute.
Aron's article was subtitled "And why it matters today in a new age of revolution" to tie the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Arab Spring protests. He did not foresee this "new age" of protests coming to the United States only a few months later and, what may have been even more of a surprise, his analysis, I think, explains why those in the ruling 1 percent, such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and their paid-for politicians are using violent police tactics to try to end the Occupy Wall Street movement.
A main reason to why the Soviet Union collapsed was, according Aron, because Gorbachev refused to use force to preserve it.
That reforms gave rise to a revolution by 1989 was due largely to another "idealistic" cause: Gorbachev's deep and personal aversion to violence and, hence, his stubborn refusal to resort to mass coercion when the scale and depth of change began to outstrip his original intent. To deploy Stalinist repression even to "preserve the system" would have been a betrayal of his deepest convictions. A witness recalls Gorbachev saying in the late 1980s, "We are told that we should pound the fist on the table," and then clenching his hand in an illustrative fist. "Generally speaking," continued the general secretary, "it could be done. But one does not feel like it."
The majority of America's ruling 1 percent seem to have no such qualms against using violence to keep their system going. America's conservatives despises the Occupy Wall Street message of economic fairness and justice. Aron also faults Gorbachev's "undeniably idealistic" enterprise of building "a more moral Soviet Union" for setting in motion a "hesitant liberalization" that would lead to its collapse. Glasnost and perestroika were the catalyst.
It was the beginning of a desperate search for answers to the big questions with which every great revolution starts: What is a good, dignified life? What constitutes a just social and economic order? What is a decent and legitimate state? What should such a state's relationship with civil society be?
Following this argument then even the slightest movement toward closing the economic disparity between the 1 percent and the 99 percent risks starting an avalanche that will bring more and more radical changes. For example, the 1 percent fears that even the tiniest increase in taxes may be the first snowball rolling down the mountain that ultimately undoes the rigged economic and political system we have today in the United States. Aron writes:
The role of ideas and ideals in bringing about the Russian revolution comes into even sharper relief when we look at what was happening outside the Kremlin. A leading Soviet journalist and later a passionate herald of glasnost, Aleksandr Bovin, wrote in 1988 that the ideals of perestroika had "ripened" amid people's increasing "irritation" at corruption, brazen thievery, lies, and the obstacles in the way of honest work. Anticipations of "substantive changes were in the air," another witness recalled, and they forged an appreciable constituency for radical reforms. Indeed, the expectations that greeted the coming to power of Gorbachev were so strong, and growing, that they shaped his actual policy. Suddenly, ideas themselves became a material, structural factor in the unfolding revolution.
It is the "ideas and ideals" that Occupy Wall Street has given a public voice and face to that are the most dangerous to the 1 percent. Therefore the fall of the Soviet Union is a cautionary tale to the 1 percent. Look what happens when leaders try to right moral and economic wrongs. Look what happens when leaders refuse to "deploy Stalinist repression" to protect the status quo. Aron underscores this point:
Delving into the causes of the French Revolution, de Tocqueville famously noted that regimes overthrown in revolutions tend to be less repressive than the ones preceding them. Why? Because, de Tocqueville surmised, though people "may suffer less," their "sensibility is exacerbated."
This lesson seems clear. By using force and violent repression, Bashar al-Assad has kept hold of power in Syria despite almost 11 months now of protests. While Mubarak in Egypt was deposed and now stands trial. Mubarak may have escaped his fate if he ordered a massacre of the protesters, but "I don't think he wanted to go down in history as a president with so much blood on his hands," Mohammed Abdellah, one of the last living founders of Mubarak's National Democratic Party, told McClatchy Newspapers in February. Muammar Gaddafi would likely still be alive and thousands of Libyans dead today, if the United Nations Security Council had not authorized "all necessary measures" to protect civilians and NATO enforced the resolution.
This is why I think the peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have been met by such brutal crackdowns across the country. Even the idea of accountability and the ideal of economic justice have the power to undo their corrupt system. As is evident in the Foreign Policy cover story, unwillingness to violently shut down protests will encourage even more dissent. From this ruling class perspective, the only acceptable response to nonviolent protests is violent crackdowns. The only answer to calls for justice is more oppression. Even letting the 99 percent get breadcrumbs risks the 1 percent losing control of the entire loaf.