1979 A critical year V1 W29

In Iran, Khomeini’s movement included both socialist impulses (revived under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) and the early capitalist ideology of the bazari class.

That collapse was also foreshadowed by the events of 1979 in Poland, where the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II encouraged the labour-led movement against Communist rule which shook the whole Soviet bloc and in 1981 forced the Polish army to take over from the Communist Party at the head of government.

This transformation looked forward to the collapse of Communism in the Soviet bloc a decade later.

And in Afghanistan, during 1979, the new Communist regime faced collapse in the face of rebellion under the banners of Islam, a collapse that was only warded off at the end of the year by the intervention of the Soviet army.

The events of 1989 make for two coherent stories (one for Europe and one for China), even if their lessons and consequences have often turned out to be different from what was assumed at the time.

Sharing the ideology of free market liberalism, Caryl cannot see that it is just as dedicated to a certain vision of human progress as were the old Communists, and therefore just as subject to the ironies of history that he evokes so well in his book when it comes to socialist illusions.

To examine American conservatism, however, would have complicated his account, which in the end (outside the Muslim world) is a rather simple story of the triumph of Western-defined free market progress.

The Afghan revolt during and after 1979 was largely a revolt against the perception of Afghanistan being reduced to a puppet of foreign infidel masters – something that has been equally true of the revolt since 2001.

In his words, “A look at the events of 1979 leads us to appreciate the myriad forms that counterrevolutions can assume”.

In Britain, 1979 saw the election of the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher, leading to the defeat of the trade unions, the partial (though only partial) dismantling of the welfare state, and the introduction of a much more radical version of free market capitalism.

The year 1979 was indeed of critical importance in the history of a number of countries, but weaving these national narratives into a set of global patterns is much more difficult.

In Iran, Khomeini’s movement included both socialist impulses (revived under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) and the early capitalist ideology of the bazari class.

The central argument of Strange Rebels is that the events of 1979 in various countries marked the end of socialist ideas of inevitable secular progress; and more widely, that they indicate the great unpredictability of history, and the inadequacy of grand intellectual schemes that claim to predict its course.

And in Afghanistan, during 1979, the new Communist regime faced collapse in the face of rebellion under the banners of Islam, a collapse that was only warded off at the end of the year by the intervention of the Soviet army.

The triumph of different kinds of capitalist economics was central to the story of 1979 in China and Britain, but had no bearing at all on what happened in Afghanistan, where the initial revolt against the Communist government was akin to previous violent reactions against attempts at modernization by the royal state.

Sharing the ideology of free market liberalism, Caryl cannot see that it is just as dedicated to a certain vision of human progress as were the old Communists, and therefore just as subject to the ironies of history that he evokes so well in his book when it comes to socialist illusions.

The Afghan revolt during and after 1979 was largely a revolt against the perception of Afghanistan being reduced to a puppet of foreign infidel masters – something that has been equally true of the revolt since 2001.

In Britain, 1979 saw the election of the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher, leading to the defeat of the trade unions, the partial (though only partial) dismantling of the welfare state, and the introduction of a much more radical version of free market capitalism.

The central argument of Strange Rebels is that the events of 1979 in various countries marked the end of socialist ideas of inevitable secular progress; and more widely, that they indicate the great unpredictability of history, and the inadequacy of grand intellectual schemes that claim to predict its course.