The age-old fight against ‘oppressive’ government – Chicago Tribune

Clarence Pages piece on dystopiabrought to mind thoughts about similarities between nihilism, communism, libertarianism and dystopia.

Upon retirement, I got to reading 19th century Russian literature: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev and others. During the period when these men were active, there was also an active Russian intelligentsia. The intelligentsia were social critics, so to speak.

Some of them developed the political theory we call nihilism. Broadly speaking, the big idea was that the czarist system, serfdom, the church, and all the supporting institutions were oppressive. They all needed to be destroyed root and branch. Only then would the people be able to see how to rebuild a new society, the main feature of which would be minimal government. Some hoped for no government.

What happened in Russia was that communism came along with a much more detailed and developed ideology. Communism, like nihilism, intended to produce a classless society in which all central government would melt away along with the old class system. But before that could happen there would have to be a period during which a benevolent communist government would lead the people out of that outmoded class system and into the governmentless communist paradise. Somehow, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and their successors didn't make this happen.

While reading about all this, it occurred to me this love of the idea of living without a government, or with minimal government, appealed not only to the old time Russian intelligentsia and their successors, but to many in America, namely those who came to call themselves libertarians.

The difference being that here in America it was the rich and, finally, some white middle-class workers who were longing to get rid of government. They saw democratic government, the function of which was to serve all the people, as oppressive.

So our libertarians subscribe to a nihilistic-like movement, as did the old Russian intelligentsia, hoping to crush the government and its attendant institutions in order to make a better life for themselves.

This idea didn't work out for the Russians, and I doubt it will work for the libertarians. They are now crying out that democracy, in its attempt to balance all interests, is, to the contrary, dystopian.

Dennis Beard, Evanston

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The age-old fight against 'oppressive' government - Chicago Tribune