TOTALITARIANISM AND IDEOLOGY #6: Nathan Pinkoski on François Furet’s The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism of the Twentieth Century

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship.

Nathan Pinkoski, Research Fellow and Academic Director at the Zephyr Institute, and I discuss François Furet’s terrific book The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism of the Twentieth Century—first published in English in 1999. We talk a bit about Furet’s biography—he’s regarded as one of the greatest historians of the French Revolution. Like many French intellectuals who came of age in the years after the Second World War, Furet became a communist during that period and then became disillusioned shortly thereafter. The book is not a straightforward history of communism, but an account of the communist idea and how it managed to attract so many disparate figures into its fold. This gives Passing an Illusion a very distinctive character—it’s by turns philosophical, political, and historical and includes wonderful miniature biographical sketches.

Nathan and I examine Furet’s account of the revolutionary passions that provided the fuel for the grand ideological movements of the twentieth century: bourgeois hatred and bourgeois self-hatred. We turn next to Furet’s account of ideologies and ideological governments which he argues are novel, twentieth century political phenomena. Nathan suggests that Furet roots the unprecedented character of these movements in their prioritization of action over thought. We also spend some time discussing the crucial role that anti-fascist discourse played in raising the world-wide reputation of communism to its greatest height.

We end with some thoughts of the continuing relevance of Furet’s book. In the final chapter of the book, Furet notes, “The end of the Soviet world in no way alters the democratic call for another society, and for that very reason we have every reason to believe that the massive failure of Communism will continue to enjoy attenuating circumstances in world opinion, and perhaps even renewed admiration.” Listeners should be sure to check out Nathan’s essay “The Strange Rise of Bourgeois Bolshevism” (indebted to many aspects of Furet’s analysis) which appeared as the lead essay in Law & Liberty’s Forum series in May of 2020.