Karl Marx identified this revolutionary force, which alone could achieve a just society, with the proletariat. When it took power, it would create a revolutionary society different from all previous societies. Marx translates his utopian vision of the future society that would be built by the proletariat into the Communist Manifesto: He predicts that as soon as all property is in the hands of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie will be destroyed, and class warfare and contradictory social interests will disappear. In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. Just like all creators of utopias, he possesses the fantastic conviction that he has at last found the key to happiness, justice, abundance, and a dignified life — truth. It is possible that the struggle to create this happy society would require time, but the future would reward the people for it. The utopians managed to capitalize on people’s longing for impersonal guidance in order to persuade them of their vision no matter how unreal or even absurd. In backward and impoverished Russia, the resolute, fanatical adherent of Marx’s communist vision, Lenin, actually tried to build a communist society. In 1920 he did not hesitate to proclaim that the generation that is now fifteen will live to see a communist society.
In a Communist society, as Lenin understood it, each person had the right to satisfy all his needs. In ten to twenty years, the country in which prosperity was to reign was stricken with a famine that took the lives of millions of citizens. Further millions perished because they refused to proclaim, or did not sufficiently proclaim, their enthusiasm for the unreal vision.
The greatest danger threatens humanity when adherents of utopia succeed in seizing power in its name and try to realize their dreams of a better society. Their unrealistic visions make them blind to reality. The horrible crimes of communism and Nazism arose above all from the utopianism of these ideologies. This forced life into a brutal stranglehold of illusion. When the illusion collapsed, the regime could not disown it without forfeiting its legitimacy. Therefore, it suppressed life — that is, precisely the people whom it invoked.
Despite all the disastrous experiences, new utopian projects will emerge. People long to live in a better, kinder, and more just world, and are therefore prepared again and again to succumb to the seductive promises of tyrants, political or religious dreamers who promise it to them, either in heaven or in heaven on earth — in both cases, however, for eternity.
The Victors and the Defeated
Several days after the coup, the Communist weekly Tvorba printed an impassioned editorial. The 25th of February is one of the greatest days in our history. On this day our nation for the first time in the history of its thousand-year existence actually created a government truly of the people. A government dedicated to realizing all the just demands of the working masses, who will be hindered by nothing in their constructive labor. As one can see from this brief excerpt, the author, Arnošt Kolman, did not excel in literary style. It is likely, however, that at the time he believed what he was writing. (At the end of his life, he admits in his memoirs: Heavy thoughts force themselves upon me near the anniversary of Victorious February 1948, the day that unfortunately also predetermined August 21, 1968. For the rest, I admit that I too had a hand in that Pyrrhic victory.)
Meanwhile, the newspapers published a manifesto titled “Forward, Not One Step Back.” The propagandistic text full of phrases about the people and progress, undoubtedly created in the ideological department of the Communist Party, implored all of the creative intelligentsia to support the new regime:
The magnificent days during which the fate of our nation and our republic is being decided beckon all upstanding patriots, all people of goodwill, to a state of readiness and responsibility.
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At this historical moment, we turn to all the workers of the mind, to the entirety of the nation’s creative intelligentsia to take their place at the side of the Czech and Slovak people, who so readily rose to the defense of the country. The Czechoslovak working people
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in a powerful national uprising thwarted sabotage, prevented confusion and disruption, and are now flocking to the new and vital National Front, the genuine representative of the Czech and Slovak nation. Join the action committees of the National Front. Help exterminate the forces of darkness and obscurantism. Join us in the formation of the progressive powers of the nation, which will ensure a happy and joyful future for our glorious country.
Forward, not one step back.
This text, composed in the new language in which the proponents of democracy are referred to as the forces of darkness and obscurantism while the representatives of dictatorship are called honorable patriots laboring to create social progress, signaled the end of Czechoslovak democracy. Nevertheless, it was signed by hundreds of educated people — writers, actors, singers, and painters. Among the signatories devoted to the Communist Party, there were certainly opportunists, those with a bad conscience, but there were more who believed that the future belonged to socialism. Enchanted and confused by the illusion that existed only in the minds of dreamers, demagogues, and false prophets, they were prepared to sacrifice their own freedom as well as that of society.
Years later, on the anniversary of the February coup, we would see films of the ecstatic crowd in the Old Town Square. It is possible, by various means, to compel people to go into raptures. Enthusiasm can be feigned or organized, but one can assume that the enthusiasm of the crowd on this late February day was neither forced nor feigned. To bring the supporters of revolution to the square was not difficult for the conspirators behind the scenes.
The history of our modern era is permeated with revolutions and coups, which always proceed to the zealous consent of the crowd in the streets. The people of France thrilled to the execution of their king and queen. They then rejoiced at the beheading of the revolutionary leaders, and a few years later the same anonymous people welcomed Napoleon’s coronation as emperor. There were plenty of people who believed that the Bolshevik Revolution would inaugurate a new era of history; it would banish inequality and return the decision-making process to the people — that indefinable but repeatedly invoked societal entity. They sang the glory of the leaders: Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin. (The first died in time, the second was murdered by his comrades, the last two perished on the scaffold to the excited or enforced agreement of the mob.) And throughout Germany, the crowds hysterically cheered the victory of Hitler’s Nazi party, which promised to return glory and prosperity to the humiliated country.
It is as if a dream of paradise slumbers in our thoughts. Christian thinkers recognized that people would gladly believe in a new kingdom in which they would know more love and God’s forgiveness. This kingdom, however, was accessible only after death. Now came a new promise: an earthly paradise in which equitable relations would reign here and now. The poor would receive property; the silenced would receive their voice; the suppressed and the dissatisfied would receive satisfaction.
If the appropriate historical situation arrives, or if a sufficiently powerful group of conspirators manages to change conditions, someone will eventually appear promising to lead those who yearn for the unattainable to the goal of their longings. The crowds will go out into the street and shout in beatific anticipation that their lives, heretofore tormenting in their everydayness, finality, loneliness, and banality, will be transformed. The crowds will acclaim the glory of the leader, the idea, the future, which they believe they are just beginning to create. The crowds applaud; wave banners, slogans, portraits; offer freshly picked flowers to the leaders of the revolution; sing and dance. For a moment, hope wins out over life experience. There is something magnetic about the ecstatic crowd, not only for those who participate in it but also for those who observe it, often with fear. This attraction overwhelms them. It inhibits their will to resist the progression of events, even though they are convinced the events will be destructive.