I’m about two thirds of the way through (an abridged version of) Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago… one wishes to believe that if we taught this in our schools in the United States, we would produce adults more wary of both communism and utopian dreams of all kinds. I thought I’d share a few quotations from the mid-section and how they bring to mind analogies with our situation. The point here is not to argue that the US is becoming a communist nation (cultural Marxism seems to have replaced economic Marxism now anyway, as progressives have decided that the hammer of Big Corporate is really their best friend in the culture war and that’s just fine), but rather to point out that the same human tendencies play themselves out, again and again and again, in just slightly different clothing.
Not having read Archipelago, I won't comment on it. But, I re-read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in April. And, on your 8th point: It is striking how much life in Ivan's camp revolves around improvised transactions, which frequently go beyond bartering goods, and instead involve small personal kindnesses that an inmate gives to a fellow prisoner in exchange for, say, keeping a place in a line for him, or not telling a camp guard about some illegal personal item that he has stashed away in a mattress or under a rock. There’s a petit market economy that cannot be captured by statistics.
Not having read Archipelago, I won't comment on it. But, I re-read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in April. And, on your 8th point: It is striking how much life in Ivan's camp revolves around improvised transactions, which frequently go beyond bartering goods, and instead involve small personal kindnesses that an inmate gives to a fellow prisoner in exchange for, say, keeping a place in a line for him, or not telling a camp guard about some illegal personal item that he has stashed away in a mattress or under a rock. There’s a petit market economy that cannot be captured by statistics.