As a rule the intellectual ex-communist ceases to oppose capitalism. Often he (sic) rallies to its defence, and he brings to this job the lack of scruple, the narrow-mindedness, the disregard for truth, and the intense hatred with which stalinism has imbued him. He remains a sectarian. He is an inverted stalinist. He continues to
see the world in white and black, but now the colours are differently distributed. . . he denounces even the mildest brand of the 'welfare state' as 'legislative bolshevism'. . . Having once been caught by the 'greatest illusion', he is now obsessed by the greatest disillusionment of our time.
(Deutscher, 1957 in Mills, 1963:346)
And, as Deutscher showed, the ex-communists of the 1950s were themselves repeating the history of those liberal European intellectuals of the late 18th and early 19th century who had initially welcomed the French Revolution, but were driven by Jacobin excesses to become embittered, tragicomic opponents not just of the Revolution,
but of liberalism in general, and of the entire project of democratic modernity. Thus the liberal pro-Jacobin English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge became a reactionary member of the House of Commons who opposed each and every democratic reform, and in his most memorable moment denounced as "the strongest instance of legislative
jacobinism" a bill for – wait for it - the prevention of cruelty to animals!
That's something to bear in mind the next time Paddy McGuinness compares the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission to the KGB - or, indeed, when one of his Quadrant contributors denounces sympathy for stolen Aboriginal children as a case of succumbing to "the Jacobin
temptation".
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