Soviets at [i]Rolling Stone[/i]

It was commonplace among later Soviet Communists to claim that it was not Communism that was the problem; it was Trotsky, or Lenin, or Stalin. A few bad men warped good ideas to selfish ends. Communism would prove itself the path of the future, if only it were done right.

That is the premise of Jesse A. Myerson’s addlebrained piece in Rolling Stone, “Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For.” Among his recommendations: “4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody.” Sound familiar? Over at National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg takes Myerson to task for his all-too-predictable rehash of Communism’s failed recommendations, noting, “It is a permanent trope of the Left that its ideas failed because we didn’t try hard enough. This time is always different.”

T.S. Eliot brought his poetic talents to bear on this problem in his Four Quartets, writing:

          It seems, as one becomes older
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.

These are lines that pierce to the heart of our modern delusions. Our “superficial notions of evolution” suggest that we are always “developing,” and that as we ascend we are entitled to slough off our baser past. But it is not so. The more intently we reflect upon the past, the stranger becomes its pattern. It has meanings that are only revealed to us in the re-consideration.

Attentiveness to the past—and humility before its wisdom—is a pillar of the conservative temperament. The Left is enchanted by grand notions of Progress and comfortable blithely disposing of the lessons of history—which is how its proponents can, with a straight face, recommend Communism a short quarter-century after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But conservatives are students of history, recognizing that the past informs the future, and that inattention to what has gone before spells trouble for what lies ahead.

There is a criticism out there that the Right, rather than “getting with the times,” still lives in the days of Communism. Well, yes—because we recognize that Communism, in its various forms, was yesterday, is today, and will be tomorrow.