The issue of collaboration is an important one, and I think that this article, although coming from a political liberal, does suggest some interesting insights. She examines the use of crude authoritarian methods of the former Soviet Union, and arrives at this conclusion:
By forcing people to collaborate they made them ashamed, resentful, and eventually rebellious.From there her Western liberal bias reveals itself when she relates this phenomenon to contemporary authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, and Venezuela:
Since then, the most powerful and successful dictators of our era have learned some lessons from the Soviet collapse. Vladimir Putin's Russia, Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, and Communist China have all reduced the burden of collaboration imposed on the individual, so that the discomfort anyone feels is minimal. In these and other modern authoritarian societies you can travel, consume what you want, read or watch what you want and often even say what you want -- as long as you aren't too public about it and not too many people are listening. You aren't forced to attend party meetings and shout "long live Hu Jintao" or "long live Brezhnev." One element does remain similar, however: The legitimacy of all of these regimes still rests upon promises of economic growth and on arguments about the superiority of their systems which may not be sustainable in the long term. When the gap between ideology and reality begins to widen -- and when power has to be maintained by violence -- then cracks begin to open.I can't see why the same analysis does not apply to Western capitalist countries. However, her observation about situations in which ideology clashes with reality, that collaboration can change very rapidly into resistance, is absolutely correct. And, I think it profoundly applies to Western capitalist ideologues who promise material abundance (if one works hard enough) as well as civil liberties. The realities of both of the latter are increasingly at odds with reality in our Western societies. So, why shouldn't we expect increasing defections by Western capitalist collaborators?
Also, it seems to me that she is a willing collaborator who sings the songs of Western capitalism.
