The collapse of communist states in Eastern Europe in 1989 and of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 was widely assumed to mark the end of the historical career of communist systems and movements; it was also expected to discredit durably the ideas that animated them. The remaining incarnations of "scientific socialism"--notably the grotesque North Korean dictatorship and the bankrupt patrimony of Fidel Castro--were hardly inspiring models of a "socialism with a human face" for Western idealists and sympathizers.

The fall of communist states has been accompanied by a growing amnesia about the human toll exacted by the attempts to implement socialist ideals in the not-so-distant past, coupled with a revival of anti-capitalist sentiments generated by the problematic results of globalization, stimulating a new susceptibility to socialist ideals.

Needless to say, no similar attempts have been made to downplay or reinterpret non-judgmentally other major historical atrocities, including, in more recent times, the mass murders carried out by Nazi Germany. Academics today are not attempting to parse the populist elements of Nazism from its genocidal practices in the way ideologues cull communism's egalitarian message from its sordid applications.

In Russia an abiding veneration of that great guardian of order and stability, Stalin, is coupled with ambivalence about the Soviet past and a yearning for the security and superpower status it provided. Maoist guerillas have become powerful in Nepal in recent years and remain entrenched in many parts of India. Market economies failed to solve all social and economic problems in the countries where they were introduced; as a result, left-of-center governments and movements made progress in parts of the world, particularly Latin America. Democratically elected leftist governments came into power in Venezuela and Bolivia, likely to be followed, according to some experts, by others of their kind in the region.

In the West no such trends can be discerned at the present time, but the rejection of capitalism and bourgeois cultural values continues to prevail among many intellectuals and in academic subcultures. Although specific communist states, extinct or surviving, are no longer widely admired by Western intellectuals, their anti-capitalism and egalitarian rhetoric are still attractive. There also remains a steadfast denial on the Left that Marxism was implicated in the moral and political-economic failures of the now defunct communist states. As Kenneth Minogue observed in 1990: "When regimes collapse . . . the principles and ideals which animated them can be glimpsed creeping stealthily away from the rubble, unscathed. Communism 'never failed'--its exponents can be heard muttering--it was 'never tried.'" This is especially the case when, as Enrique Krauze wrote in the New Republic a decade later, "celebrity utopians need a new address for their fantasies", and no such address is available because no political systems or movements exist upon which wishful fantasies can be readily projected. What remains are the good intentions and hopes that have proved impossible to realize. This is why Cornel West could maintain that "Marxist thought becomes even more relevant after the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe than it was before." A flickering loyalty to the ideals that promised to transcend sordid socio-political inequities persists, as the hard-core loyalists refuse to accept that the human condition cannot be radically altered and improved, and that the failed attempts to do so required huge amounts of coercion and violence--as the history of communist states has shown. Leszek Kolakowski's observation made in 1978 (in his history of Marxism) about the influence of Marxism remains largely valid: "Almost all the prophecies of Marx . . . have already proved false, but this does not disturb the spiritual certainty of the faithful . . . for it is a certainty not based on . . . 'historical laws', but simply on the psychological need for certainty. In this sense Marxism performs the function of religion . . . ."

The Old Guard

Present day radical leftists, anarchists and supporters of the (left-over) counterculture continue to draw inspiration from old-guard leftist thinkers, some dead and others of an advanced age--those prepared to minimize, deny or explain away a political system that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions.

Long before the fall of the Soviet Union, Western Marxists were compelled to find ways to protect their beliefs from the assault of the realities of existing communist states. The late historian and activist E. P. Thompson was one of them. He was deeply attached to communist ideals, despite disillusioning events (such as Khrushchev's revelations in 1956 and Soviet repression in Eastern Europe in the same year). In a hundred-page "letter" to Kolakowski, Thompson proclaimed that Marxism was not discredited by the depredations of Stalinism or flaws of existing socialist states; he emphasized the "utopian potentials" of Marxism. He argued that "our solidarity was given not to communist states in their existence but in their potential--not for what they were but for what . . . they might become . . . ." He rebuked Kolakowski for linking "actually existing" Soviet-style systems with Marxism. Fifty years, he said, was "too short a time in which to judge a new social system." He comes across as the prototypical true believer who regarded capitalism as the unchanging source of all evil and Marxism as its diametrical opposite: the solid source of all that is good and honorable.

Gus Hall, the general secretary of the U.S. Communist Party for several decades and a member since 1927, exemplifies unwavering commitment to the Soviet Union and a disciplined capacity to overlook its considerable blemishes. Following the fall of the Soviet communism he served all his life, he told reporters, "The world should see what North Korea has done . . . it's a miracle. If you want to take a nice vacation, take it in North Korea." He was not joking. His unwavering loyalty was rewarded by a $40 million subsidy between 1971 and 1990, provided by the Soviet authorities.

Herbert Aptheker, the Marxist historian, author of many books on black history and member of the U.S. Communist Party between 1939 and 1991, was of a similar generation. Although he broke with the party late in life, he remained a true believer in Marxism and the ineradicable evils of capitalism and American society. He believed, for instance, that higher education in the United States was "class- and race-based" and tightly controlled by the ruling classes. He succeeded in averting a major reassessment of his convictions because he managed to dissociate his pro-Soviet, communist beliefs from his lifelong struggle against racial discrimination that, he felt, legitimated all political stands he took.

Among the living, Eric Hobsbawm continues to offer another, better known example of the loyalties here discussed. Arguably his fame and reputation rest, in part, on personifying resistance to disillusionment in the face of the vast accumulation of historical evidence calling into question old leftist articles of faith. He has shown how one may admit the deep flaws of all communist regimes that ever existed yet continue to regard the ideals underpinning them as admirable and inspiring. As of 1994 he still averred that even if he had known in 1934 that "millions of people were dying in the Soviet experiment", he would not have renounced it because "the chance of a new world being born on great suffering would still have been worth backing." He wrote in his autobiography, "I belonged to the generation tied by an almost umbilical cord to hope of the world revolution and its original hope, the October Revolution . . . ." He saw himself as fighter for a better world trying to make sure that mankind "will not live without the ideals of freedom and justice."

The bedrock convictions of Noam Chomsky rest on different foundations: an exceptionally fierce hatred of the United States, rather than durable admiration of an alternative political system. Although not a professed Marxist, he detects economic interests at the root of American depravities and attributes exceptional ruthlessness and cunning to American elites and policymakers. He seems incapable of contemplating any moral outrage without comparing it to some allegedly greater, far more repellent atrocity committed by the United States. He would equate 9/11 with the American bombing of the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, the United States with Nazi Germany.

He has been tirelessly disseminating in his major message that no moral outrage could surpass those habitually committed by the United States (and its quasi-Nazi puppet, Israel). His attraction to communist systems has been episodic and based mainly on sympathy for the enemies of his archenemy. He repeatedly questioned the magnitude of Pol Pot's massacres in Cambodia and scorned the testimony of refugees both in an article published in 1977 in the Nation and a 1978 book. After all, Pol Pot was an enemy of his enemies, the rulers of the United States. While Chomsky and others denied the dimensions of Pol Pot's atrocities, similarly minimizing the human toll of Nazism is punishable by law in parts of Europe.

Chomsky also downplayed Eastern Europe's communist repression and said, "in comparison to conditions imposed by U.S. tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise." He considered Sandinista Nicaragua an inspiration for the downtrodden all over Latin America and even for the poor in the United States.

Chomsky's celebrity status helps explain the persistence of his political beliefs, reinforced by the favorable response of audiences who take pleasure in the combination of moral certitude and fulminations.

The Younger Generation

Nine years after the Soviet empire imploded, radical leftists and anarchists alike were thrilled by the publication of Empire (2001), written by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The jargon-ridden volume was not merely an example of resistance to disillusionment, it was a major effort to revitalize radical leftist values and beliefs. As Alan Wolfe put it, "Empire is best understood as an attempt, using Marxist jargon, to bring back to life . . . anarchism and particularly the more destructive forms of anarchism . . . ." Two major themes animate the book: the impassioned reaffirmation and romanticization of political violence, sanctified by the evil it was designed to combat. Negri and his supporters (and predecessors in the 1960s) argued that given the "essential" or "inherent" violence of capitalism, violent actions against it were morally unproblematic. Negri, a leader of the Red Brigades--which in the 1970s committed numerous high profile terrorist acts in Italy--was charged with armed insurrection and given a prison sentence (which only required him to spend nights in jail). In the 1970s he provided a remarkable example of false consciousness, imagining himself as a member of the Italian proletariat:

I live the life of the sniper, the deviant, and the worker who doesn't show up at his job. Every time I put on my ski mask, I feel the warmth of the proletarian, worker community around me . . . . Every action of destruction and sabotage seems to me a manifestation of class solidarity. Nor does the eventual risk bother me: rather it fills me with feverish excitement as one waiting for his lover. Nor does the pain of my adversary affect me . . . .

Negri's status as a convicted felon doubtless added to the attractions of the book, seen as he has been by his admirers as a fearless man of ideas as well as action. Rather than ignored as an expression of discredited revolutionary fantasies, Empire has "come as close to becoming an international best seller as a university press book . . . is likely to get", Alexander Stille noted in the New York Review of Books.

A shallow and muddled utopianism probably added to the appeals of Empire, as it promised "a revolution no power will control--because bio-power and communism, cooperation and revolution remain together, in love, simplicity and also innocence. This is the irrepressible lightness and joy of being communist."

Among other self-proclaimed former revolutionaries, the case of Bill Ayers is especially noteworthy. His memoir, Fugitive Days (2003), was a comprehensive record of the radical beliefs of his generation of activists. But he differed from many former radicals who, with the passage of time, retreated from their virulent youthful commitments and convictions. Ayers recalled the bombing of the Pentagon with undisguised nostalgia: "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them." Che Guevara was among his role models, who "spoke to us every morning from a huge poster above our bed." He was among the privileged youths coming of age in the 1960s who found middle-class life unbearably stultifying and inauthentic: "I think back to my childhood, to the houses in trim rows and the identical lawns and the neat fences. . . . Where we lived . . . the grass was always green, the moms were always smiling. . . . Our kitchen was sparkling. . . ." To overcome decisively such suburban, middle-class inauthenticity, he declared that "the personal is political, and we meant that . . . everything was part of a grand experiment in liberation. . . . I felt suddenly transported . . . swept along by the dream of peace and the captivating idea of social change . . . ." The disappointments of private and family life converged with the discovery of social-political injustices such as racism and the Vietnam War; these injustices vindicated the smoldering alienation from the suburban, upper-middle-class life that preceded the war and the discovery of racial inequalities.

Following his emergence from the underground, Ayers became a tenured professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. While his current way of life is not compatible with setting off bombs or hurling rocks at policemen or shop windows, his old beliefs and commitments remain cherished and a source of an enduring moral identity. The persistence of these commitments is further indicated by expressing admiration at the end of his memoirs for Jamil al-Amin (Rap Brown), Kathy Boudin, David Gilbert, Mumia Abu Jamal, Anthony Ortiz and Leonard Peltier--most of them convicted murderers.

The "Old Guard" sought historical justification for the sufferings imposed by communist systems and movements; the young radicals were enamored by heartfelt, authentic political violence in the service of noble ends.

The Islamic Factor

It is among the peculiarities of the present day cultural-political climate in the United States and other Western countries that old-leftist sympathies for various communist states and movements have to varying degrees been transferred to the Islamist movements and adversaries of the United States. This development has been rather paradoxical, since the progressive, secular beliefs of both the old and new Left are hard to reconcile with Islamic reverence for tradition and the religious fanaticism of contemporary Islamic radicals. Yet the Arab-Islamic adversaries of the United States have become new objects of sympathy and solidarity for some figures on the Left, enlisted among the many "victims" of American policies who further vindicate hostility to the United States.

Following 9/11, the "root-cause" school held the United States responsible for the terrorist attacks it was subjected to and simultaneously became a champion of Arab-Islamic causes. Lynne Stewart, a radical lawyer who belongs to this school, is best known as the unsuccessful defender of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the spiritual leader of the global jihad, sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for conspiring to wage a terrorist war against the United States. Like the late William Kunstler, she became "a movement lawyer" who "didn't just defend the legal rights of her clients; she also advocated their politics", as George Packer noted in the New York Times Magazine. She became Rahman's lawyer at the urging of Ramsey Clark, who also deserves our attention on similar grounds. Subsequently, Stewart was indicted for helping Rahman communicate from prison with his followers. In Stewart's eyes, Packer wrote, Rahman was "a fighter for national liberation on behalf of people oppressed by dictatorship and American imperialism. She came to admire him personally too . . . ." As other radicals, she was irresistibly attracted to the enemy of her enemies. She was propelled, she said, by her true goal to always be "on the right side of history." That entailed an abiding hostility toward capitalism, which she described as "a consummate evil that unleashes its dogs of war on the helpless; an enemy motivated by insatiable greed . . . ." She also said, "I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous." Her radical sympathies and support for convicted terrorists, domestic and foreign, did not make her an outcast in the legal or academic world.

Ramsey Clark, the U.S. attorney general under Lyndon Johnson, has in common with Lynne Stewart an avid interest in defending the adversaries of the United States, domestic and foreign, but the evolution of his political attitudes is more complex. After his career as attorney general, he joined William Kunstler to represent two of the so-called Attica Brothers accused of killing a guard during a prison uprising. He also provided legal assistance to Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb general indicted for war crimes, and gave legal advice to Slobodan Milosevic. More recently, Clark joined the team defending Saddam Hussein, of whom he made warm remarks while he was still in power: "I've met with him four times, probably averaged two to three hours at a time . . . . [H]e is reserved, quiet, thoughtful, dignified you might say, in the old fashioned sense", as he was quoted in the New York Observer. In a Face the Nation interview, Clark refused to describe Saddam as an evil force. "I don't judge people as good or evil", he said. He displayed no such reticence in his judgments of American policies and politicians.

It is not self-evident why Clark became an embittered critic of the United States. During the Vietnam era he prosecuted prominent opponents of the war such as Dr. Spock, William Sloane Coffin and Muhammad Ali, and he might have come to regret this, given his emerging political convictions. Also significant, soon after becoming attorney general, he dropped the case against Judith Coplon, who was charged with passing secrets to a Soviet lover. It was none other than Clark's father who brought the case against Coplon when he was attorney general. Approaching eighty, it is safe to predict that Ramsey Clark will persevere in his beliefs.

Beyond Reason

Several conditions may be identified that contribute to the preservation of the deeply held political beliefs and ideals discussed here. Most obviously, it is always easier to retain familiar, internalized beliefs, held over long periods of time, than to discard them. The greater the length of time invested in a political cause or movement, the more difficult it becomes to abandon it. Many of the well-known representatives of these enduring beliefs are of advanced age or are deceased. What they have in common are core convictions about the corruptions and injustices that, in their view, define American society. Hatred of the enemy--the United States--led to solidarity with the enemies of that enemy, who could be communist dictators, third-world autocrats, Islamic fanatics or domestic terrorists.

The other major factor in the durability of these beliefs is their centrality to the sense of identity of the individuals concerned. When political beliefs and actions satisfy important emotional needs and bolster a favorable self-conception, they are likely to endure. Resisting political disillusionment was important to Western intellectuals whose sense of identity rested in large measure on their self-conception as fighters for social justice and righteous critics of the corruptions of their society. Favorable disposition toward communist systems and movements often complemented this role. While the latter greatly diminished, the aversion toward their society did not. This aversion seemed to more profoundly determine their attitudes than the alternatives embraced.

Political beliefs are also more likely to endure when they are shared with a group or subculture. Breaking with the beliefs results in the loss of important human bonds, social connections and friendships.

Of further importance, Western intellectuals who resisted reappraisals of their ideological convictions were spared the personal experience of living in communist societies. For those in the West, the unappealing attributes of communist systems remained abstractions that could not compete with, or undermine, high political expectations nurtured by leftist ideals.

The single most important factor that enables the individual to retain radical leftist (or other radical) beliefs is the capacity to dissociate ends from means, theory from practice, ideals from realities. Such a capacity rests on what Arthur Koestler called "the doctrine of unshaken foundations"--the overwhelming, superior moral importance attributed to the ends, which allow the individual to overlook, or altogether dismiss, the human costs of their pursuit.

Paul Hollander is the author of the forthcoming work The End of Commitment: Revolutionaries, Intellectuals and Political Morality, from which this essay is adapted. His works include Soviet-American Society: A Comparison (1973), Political Pilgrims (1981), Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad (1992) and Political Will and Personal Belief (1999). He also edited more recently Understanding Anti-Americanism (2004) and From the Gulag to the Killing Fields (2006).