The God That Failed

by Arthur Koestler, Richard Crossman, André Gide

Book Overview

The God That Failed is a classic work and crucial document of the Cold War that brings together essays by six of the most important writers of the twentieth century on their conversion to and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231123957
• ISBN13: 9780231123952
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Why Do People Become Communists?

This is one of the great political books of all time. The authors of THE GOD THAT FAILED consist of three former Communist Party members, and three "fellow travellers." All were attracted to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and '30s. All eventually realized it was a horror, and left it. In this book, they try to explain how they were able to love a dictatorship, what they had to do, mentally, to preserve their vision of a shining future, and how, in the end, they couldn't avoid facing a dismal reality. These are moving and human stories that illustrate the decency and meanness that exist side by side in the human soul. Read and learn.

Faith and Apostasy in the Realm of Politics

For readers interested in the intellectual history of the twentieth century, this book is a fundamental document. "The God that Failed" refers to Communism as it manifested itself in the USSR between 1917 and the time of the book's publication in 1949 (and as it was established in the USSR's satellite states after 1945). In their own phrase, the Russian experience was "real existing socialism", based on so-called Marxist-Leninist principles, whose most adept pupil was Josef Stalin; unfortunately it became the inflexible model for future developments elsewhere. The book is an anthology of six "confessional" essays by three continental writers (Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, and Andre Gide, all novelists and essayists), one English writer (Stephen Spender, poet) and two American writers (Richard Wright, novelist, and Louis Fischer, political journalist). All of them had either joined the Party and worked on its behalf or had been prestigious foreign fellow-travelers of the Russian regime, speaking and writing on its behalf. By 1948 they had all rejected their earlier intellectual and emotional commitments to the Party and to communism (but not to their own ideal versions of socialism - they never became conservatives). The broad appeal of theoretical Marxism and its first "instantiation", Russian Communism, to intellectuals all over the world, regardless of their very different individual life histories - nobody could have experienced his own youth and its surrounding society more differently than Gide and Wright, for instance -- was presumably based on its utopian goals regarding social justice. It aimed to bring about a reformation of man and society by supplying human beings with a political and ideological framework in which economic exploitation would vanish and all men and women would have freedom and equality in a world where the state had "withered away" since it was no longer necessary. This comprises a theology in which private property and the division of labor (hardened into class structure) are original sin and its consequence. The miseries of the Great Depression, a typical phenomenon of the boom and bust cycles in capitalist societies, increased the allure of totally planned societies. Marxism also had a "scientific" appeal (really, a pseudo-scientific one since it was not open to validation or disproof in the same manner as theories in the physical sciences it wished to ape; special reasons could always be advanced for why the history of economies and political developments did not follow Marx's highly deterministic pathway -- dialectics came in handy here). But most of its intellectual proponents experienced it as a faith more than a set of discursive propositions about man and society which might be contradicted by reality or rational argument. It was a faith that motivated men to particular actions - sometimes heroic, sometimes despicable (always "justifiably so" in the latter case) -- in the struggle to esta

Reflections on the destructive nature of Leninism and Stalinism

The famous collection "The God that Failed" contains reflections by three famous writers/activists who were members of the Communist Party in their nation (Koestler, Silone and Wright), and three who were, at least in the view of some, fellow travellers (Gide, Fischer, Spender). Each of them explains in short anecdotal style, mixed with philosophical and political musings, how they came to be an orthodox Communist, and how they came to leave this position. All of these contributions make for excellent reading, and together they form an entirely and incontrovertibly damning picture of both the strategies and the mindset of the various Marxist-Leninist Parties and their leading adherents. In that way this book forms an excellent companion to the works of Orwell, Edmund Wilson and similar people who were also sympathetic to socialism of various kinds, but came to see the "official" Marxism of the USSR and its followers as a destructive and evil force. Because that is what goes for all these writers as well as for Orwell - despite the claim of conservatives to books like this, all of the contributors to this collection still supported socialism at the end, only a different kind of socialism, more humane, more sensitive, and for some even more religious. None of them regretted their initial motives in joining the Party, but all of them felt that the Party is rather the kind of thing they wanted to fight against in the first place - the ultimate deception, caused by the political methodology of Marxism-Leninism. It is well-known by now, but it wasn't so evident then. Marxism-Leninism necessarily rests on two main axiomas: first, that the Party is inherently the most progressive force and representative of the struggle for socialism and the proletariat's role in this; and second, that the ends, as embodied in the Party, always justify the means. Together, these two rules form a deadly recipe for totalitarianism and tyranny over the mind, regardless of how well-intentioned its adherents may or may not have been. One need but look at the many revealing 'incidents' mentioned in this book, or even at Orwell's excellent memoirs of the Spanish Civil War (which Koestler has also written about), to see why this is true. Conservatives and liberals use this book as ammunition, incorrectly assuming that this is meant for them and to support their views. That is not so. All of the writers in this collection despised professional anti-communism and went on doing so until their death. It is not they who should read this book, but all socialists in this world who should read it, so that we know what happens when we abdicate the search for truth and make it subservient to opportunistic politics, regardless of what goals we have in mind in doing so. People of unfree mind can never build a free world.

Glad The 20th Century Is Over!

Anyone who is a fan of George Orwell or P.J. O'Rourke should enjoy this collection of essays from intellectuals who made the journey to communism and back. Arthur Koestler's (sp?) essay captures perfectly the confusion of Weimar Germany before the rise of Hitler, and shows that the communists actually helped the Nazis to power. You will come away from the book wondering how some intelligent people believed - and still believe - that communism was the way of the future. If there is a book that will turn a diehard leftist into a subscriber to the "National Review", TGTF is that book.

The title itself is suggestive of the failure of communism.

The book is must for a history as well as philosophy students. In this book you will find how at one time Author is facinated by communism turned against it after finding it very oppressive.