In a comment on an earlier blog, the writer wanted to know why the fall of the Berlin Wall didn’t trigger disillusion among lefties.
I find my answer in the Dawn Bible Students Association. The Dawn Bible Students Association was founded by C.T. Russell in 1872. It was a Christian sect with several distinct and unique teachings. Russell began predicting the Second Coming of Christ in 1889 to a growing group of followers. The predict Second Coming was to occur in 1914. The prediction gained Russell and his group a large and devoted following.
My blog readers already know that 1914 was probably not the year of the Second Coming; just as they know that the ultimate scientifically forecast triumph of Communism over capitalism was unlikely to be credible after 1991.
C.T Russell died two years after his prediction failed. Before he died, Russell explained that the correct interpretation of his 1914 prophecy was that the Second Coming would occur during the life of those alive in 1914.
Russell was succeeded by Joe Rutherford. In 1931, at the beginning of the Great Depression, Joe renamed the organization: Jehovah’s Witnesses. You probably know them from their publication the Watch Tower.
About fifteen years ago the Watch Tower announced that the Second Coming date was not knowable. The announcement came at the time when more than 90% of the people alive in 1914 had died.
Jehovah’s Witnesses number over 4 million today.
The Left saw the failure of communism in China, Vietnam, the Soviet Union and a few other places in a very short period 1989-1991. Yet the number of Lefties, fifteen years later, is large. They tend to hang out together just as Jehovah's Witnesses do.
There are psychological explanations for Lefty survival, there are sociological explanations; my explanation is based on Social Thought. All institutions, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Lefty Fundamentalism resemble a tent with several tent poles to hold it up. The nature of the tent poles defines the structure and appearance of the tent. When any tent pole burns down, it is replaced with a new tent pole of similar dimensions and the tent continues to stand.
Utopia on earth is the main tent pole on the Left. That idea never fell. The idea of the triumph of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, another tent pole, did burn down. It was replaced with the triumph of the underdogs over corporate global giants and imperial nations.
The failure of the Left was not even noticed by the Left, anymore than the failure of the Second Coming was noticed by Jehovah’s Witnesses.