To Overthrow a Review
I do not usually respond to book
reviews unless there is a significant point of scholarship at issue, but in the case of Ronald Granieri’s utterly tendentious review of my book, To Overthrow the World (“From the Finland Station,” June/July 2025 Chronicles), I am inclined to make an exception.
To begin with, Granieri is the third reviewer to accuse me of partisanship because, in my discussion of CCP influence operations in the U.S., I mention the Democratic politician Dianne Feinstein and her husband “to score a partisan political point.” This is so silly I let it pass until now, so let me give Granieri the honor of pointing out that, if he had read more carefully, he would have noticed that I also mention both President Bushes, Brent Scowcroft, and Henry Kissinger, Republicans all—in fact, the role of GOP heavyweights in the story was so obvious that I made a point of emphasizing that it was not only GOP figures who kowtowed to Communist China, but that “CCP appeasing in Washington has been wholly bipartisan.”
Granieri’s main critique of my book seems to be that, in a history of Communism, I do not spend enough time discussing things other than the history of Communism, such as “the history of French aristocrats, who spent centuries defending their privileges,” or “the history of 16th-century Europe,” or “the protestors killed in the Peterloo massacre in Manchester in 1819,” or “the fate of the residents of Ludlow, Colorado, killed by capitalist mercenaries.” So far as I can follow the thinking here, Granieri’s complaint seems to be that I do not pay enough attention to the sins and problems of the world that preceded Communism, or that (in some extremely roundabout way) may have motivated Communists to commit their own crimes in protest at, or to rectify, these injustices.
There are two things to say about this. First, to accuse an author of a history of Communism of ignoring abuses that (allegedly) motivated Communists is like accusing a historian of the Holocaust of failing to give equal time to crimes committed by the Reds during the Russian Civil War, or Czech and Polish mistreatment of ethnic Germans in the 1920s and 1930s. At best, this is a violation of the laws of proportion that must inform history writing. At worst, it is a giant non sequitur.
While I would like to give any reviewer the benefit of the doubt, it is hard to see how with Granieri. The closest connection I can think of (one that Granieri does not draw; I am trying to help him flesh out his critique!) is that Gracchus Babeuf, in launching the Conspiracy of the Equals that so inspired Marx and Lenin, was inspired by the injustices of the French tax system, of which he had intimate knowledge from his job as a clerk managing manorial property rolls. In the early years of the French Revolution, Babeuf did rail against unjust French tax laws—and he was granted his wish, when the manorial-feudal system was abolished on Aug. 4, 1789. Did he rejoice at the rectification of this injustice?
No, instead Babeuf quit his job and became a full-time political activist, railing not against specific injustices, but trying to destroy French society root and branch, calling for a violent class revolution in which “all opposition shall be instantly put down by force. The parties resisting shall be exterminated. Also shall be put to death all those…” etc., etc. Was this a principled protest at unjust tax laws—which had been repealed seven years earlier?
In any other case, the examples of social injustice Granieri cites are non sequiturs. Was Lenin moved to act by unjust French tax laws, or the Peterloo massacre? Like Marx, like most of the Communist theorists and leaders I discuss in the book—like most Communist sympathizers in Western universities today, for that matter—Lenin was well-born, prosperous and “bourgeois” enough to devote time to devouring Marxist literature. The history of Communism was not made by farm hands or factory workers, but by bourgeois intellectuals and the disaffected soldiers and urban malcontents they recruited as Red Guards and secret police enforcers—few of whom had any knowledge of history at all.
Certainly, as Granieri suggests, we must try to understand why this simplistic pseudo-religion responsible for so many deaths and horrors continues to attract adherents, but the idea that would-be Communists are motivated by long-ago injustices to French peasants does not strike me as a promising way to begin grappling with the problem. Rather, to the extent young activists today know any history at all, it is probably the very kind of crypto-Marxist social history now taught in many schools which Granieri seems to favor: i.e., aristocracy and other benighted old class systems were unjust and unequal, capitalists are evil oppressors, the world is unjust! So we might as well throw bricks through windows and burn down Teslas. No thank you! I’ll stick to real history, that challenges rather than flatters the ignorance and moral vanity of young readers and students.
—Sean McMeekin
Author of To Overthrow the World
Clermont, N.Y.
Give the Rich a Break!
Mark G. Brennan’s review of Revolt of the Rich (“How Wealth Co-opted Conservative Politics” May 2025 Chronicles) is a good demonstration of what happens when one tries to apply a conservative worldview to leftist premises.
The shift toward wealth concentration that Brennan suggests resulted from the decline of unionized labor completely ignores the impact of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. As many articles in Chronicles and other research have demonstrated, this has done far more damage to wages, particularly to those in the bottom income tier, than Right to Work laws. The 1965 immigration change was not pushed by conservatives or even big business but by Democrats, specifically Senator Ted Kennedy.
Private sector unionization peaked in the mid-1950s and began a steady decline long before the “class compromise” Brennan spoke of ended in the late 1960s. It is also important to note that the Taft-Hartley Act, was broadly bipartisan. Fifty-eight percent of the Democratic Party members of Congress voted to override President Truman’s veto. Compulsory unionization of the workforce is neither an American nor a conservative ideal.
Those of us who came of age during the 1970s and early 1980s were battered by inflation and high unemployment that resulted from progressive policies driven by the spending and regulatory surge initiated by President Johnson. “The striking decline in the rate of profit,” in the 1970s would seem to run counter to the loss of union power, if that were the cause. And Brennan would have us believe that taming inflation and the Reagan economic expansion somehow hurt working- and middle-class Americans. The New Deal “class compromise” that Brennan refers to came apart because of the many policy failures of progressives; including but not limited to higher crime, inflation, unemployment, and a general sense of malaise. The conservative think tanks gained traction because of these many policy failures which did far more than just discredit New Deal labor policies. For example, much of what President Reagan preached on economics was tied to excessive regulations on production which really had nothing to do with unions and labor one way or another, except to drive manufacturing overseas.
The welfare state is bigger than ever, net taxation after income transfers more concentrated on the higher earners than ever, and regulations more intrusive than ever. This hardly seems like wealth co-opting conservative politics.
—Fred Birnbaum
Ivans, Utah
The Russian Perspective
Regarding Paul Gottfried’s May editorial, “Why the Right Likes Russia,” analysis of the Russo-Ukrainian War should begin with and must include a study of the legitimate traditional national interests of Mother Russia.
In the early 1960s at my alma mater, Colgate University, the late Douglas Reading lectured on the national interests of Russia. Some are obvious, like gaining access to warm water seaports. Another, equally obvious, is establishing a level of security on Russia’s western border.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Russia suffered grievously when Napoleon and Hitler ran essentially unchallenged across the vast agricultural plains of Poland, Belorussia and the Ukraine. Invaders from the west encounter no significant natural barriers to their military forces until they reach the foothills of the Ural Mountains.
Vladimir Putin understands Russian history and is motivated to defend, as best he can, the traditional invasion route into Russia. The security of that route has been seriously diminished by the easterly encroachment of NATO into areas formerly included in the Warsaw Pact. And NATO has placed hypersonic missiles in easy reach of Moscow. Also, the United States has stationed airborne troops in Poland. No leader of Russia, whether it be Peter the Great or Vladimir Putin, could let this incursion go unchallenged, which is why Putin sent the Russian army into Ukraine.
Sadly, very few in the West understand that what is motivating Putin is the reality of geopolitics, as taught by Haushofer early in the 20th century. Those who fail to study and learn from history are doomed to repeat it whether they occupy seats on the left or right side of the aisle. Invalid ideologies of both the right and the left have obscured the harsh realities of geopolitics.
—Hugh T. Guillaume
Amherst, N.Y.
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