Thinking the Twentieth Century [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

I thought that "Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945" was one of the finest behind the scenes explanations of what was really going on and what judgement errors were made by political leaders. Now this book provides an autobiography of Judt so we can see the basis of his analysis. Here are some of the things he discusses so you can figure out if the book is of interest to you. I did not find political dogma espoused but rather an attempt to show how two groups could look at the same situation and draw different conclusions and where the holes were in both sides.

Short version:
John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek were economists and political philosophers. Keynes' ideas were shaped by the pre-WW1 poverty and social programs of Britain. He saw capitalism as unstable, requiring government intervention. Hayek's were shaped by the post WW1 disorder in Austria. He saw the welfare State as the road to Hitler.

"Fascists and Nazis assumed that you could mix property-based capitalism on the one hand and government intervention on the other." P347 Communists were obsessed with power and therefore wanted the State to control the economy. All three tried to create self-sufficient economies. USSR planning failed so badly no one copied it.

Judt is a Zionist who believes that both the Israeli and US government policy is wrong.

Intellectuals write for their audience without personal experience.

The 20th century went from world war to the collapse of most of the belief systems. P.393

"The vast majority of human beings today are simply not competent to protect their own interests." P.366

"The tendency of mass democracy to produce mediocre politicians is what worries me." P.309

The long version:
He believes that the pre-WWI generation was the first to reject religion and thus based their values on secular values. His Jewish family originated in Russia and Eastern Europe and were Socialists and Communists. They moved to Western Europe before the Russian Revolution. Judt explains why Jews were so receptive to Marxism. That was something I always wondered about but could not find an explanation.

He says that those who accept Marx believe that the "ends justify the means"- it is the utopian dream that matters (including the destruction of the present order) and how civilization gets there is of little concern. Thus the excuse is provided for mass murder and violating all the "rights" Communists say they are fighting for. There are "good" Communists (Trotsky) and "bad" Communists (Stalin). Between the world wars Fascism (not democracy) was viewed as the alternative to Communism.

P.26 " It took until the mid-1970s for even the core economies of prosperous Western Europe to get back to where they had been in 1914."

P.28 "Both the Nazis and the Soviets were consumed by the attraction of scale as the condition of well-being." And they wanted a self-sufficient State to go it alone if need be.

Tony observed that Communism had way more followers in Catholic countries than Protestant ones. Britain is Anglican but that religion is much closer to Catholic than Protestant and he says that is why Britain was such a fertile place for Soviet spies. France and Germany have areas where Catholics dominate and Communist enclaves exist. There was an intense feeling of community among the believers. P.83

Although he spent time at an Israeli Kibbutz in the 1960s, Tony was never a religious person. He says that he is a Zionist but thinks the Israeli government and the US have used the Holocaust as an excuse to push too far. He faults American Jews and Liberals for encouraging others to "fight the good fight" while sitting back and waiting for the opportunity to step in as governing bureaucrats. P.118

As with the other reviewers, I found Judt's discussion of the differences of Fascists from Communists in his first attempt was convoluted and confusing. It might be clear to him but it does not come across that way in the text. This is what I got out of it: both groups are composed of angry minorities with their own causes but united by power obsessed leaders who unite them in common cause. The Fascists emphasize procedures (such as coordinating with business) to reach their goal while the Communists just want to get there by any means (such as taking over business to force change). The primary Fascists were Italy and Germany who really had their separate agendas to empower the State while Communists were internationalists pushing world revolution. Later in the book he is very clear about the differences.

He notes that many Communists felt betrayed when the USSR invaded Hungary and then Czechoslovakia. P.222 And Communism shifted from exploited workers to exploited peasants after WWII which was contrary to Marx's vision of the disintegration of Capitalism. When Judt taught at Berkeley the students wanted him to explain how the beliefs had gotten off track. And he notes that students have a difficult time understanding the difference between "activism" and "Marxism".

The European Union concept was initially opposed because many thought it was a Vatican plot or a German plan to reassert its dominance.

Keynes and Judt attended the same college. What Judt writes about Keynes are things I have never read anywhere else.

"Hayek's argument for the unrestricted market was never primarily about economics. It was a political case drawing on his experience of Austrian authoritarianism and the impossibility of distinguishing between varieties of freedom. From a Hayekian perspective, you cannot preserve right A by sacrificing or compromising right B however much you gain by so doing. Sooner or later you will lose both rights. This buttressed the Reagan-Thatcher view that the right to make any amount of money unhindered by the State is part of an unbroken continuum with the right to free speech. It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that this is not what Adam Smith thought." P.247

"Historians tend to be intrigued by arguments which either confirm what they think anyway or in some provocative way dismantle what a lot of other people think." P.261 He personally saw that tenure is based on parroting what other professors have written, not on competency, and thinks the US system is pathetic.

"The 20th century is the century of the intellectuals, with all of the accompanying treasons and accommodations and compromises. The problem is that we live today in an age when the illusions, disillusions, and hatreds take front and center. So it requires a conscious effort to both identify and save the core of what was good about intellectual life in the 20th century." P.285

From about page 300 Judt is looking back over the 20th century to draw some conclusions. Like me, you will probably disagree on some points but the value of his writing is to make you think and come up with your own reasons so I took no offense. I think you will like the comparisons between the state of the US compared to Europe or China.

When the distinguished historian of Europe, Tony Judt, was diagnosed with ALS -- or rather, when the disease robbed him of functioning hands -- another eminent historian, Timothy Snyder, proposed that they write a book together about the 20th century, a wide-ranging book that could draw on the extensive, careful research that Judt had been doing his whole career. Snyder and Judt created the book by recording a series of high-level conversations in Judt's home which were then transcribed and polished up. The result is remarkable: two of the greatest contemporary minds speaking freely about all the controversies of understanding the last century, speaking on a level of detail and sophistication that is never matched by enjoyable amateur writers like Steven Pinker or by "men-of-letters" intellectuals like Gore Vidal. These guys are the real thing.

The book has a nice personal touch -- it is partly autobiographical, with Judt talking freely about his own life, in passages that reveal Judt's deep and sometimes ambiguous connections to many of the places and events he describes. As a non-historian, what I value most about the book is that I feel it gives me something which otherwise would've taken me forty other books to get (in other words, which otherwise I would never have gotten), namely, a non-superficial overview of the twentieth century, motivated not by ideology but by knowledge. Judt and Snyder have done the hard work, and all the rest of us have to do is to read their book.

This is, admittedly, one of the harder books I've had to read in a long time. The language can seem dry at points, and you'll likely feel challenged reading it. However, as Judt and Snyder take you through the last 100 years of history itself as well as exploring economic history, you will find your mind exploring and realizing how we got from 1900 to today, and all the influences that went into such a transformation. They explain this by imploring that our current problems and issues cannot be properly addressed or explained without going back to the early 1900's, around World War One. If this sounds interesting to you, and you want to know the roots of the twentieth century and their effect on today, consider buying this book. I came away enlightened with a new perspective on why things are the way they are in today's world! It's worth reading, just don't expect to blow through this. Savor and ingest every page to try and understand what the authors are saying - you'll be rewarded in the end!