October 23, 2026

Radical Chic

When it began to become clear that the West was winning what Khrushchev called the “peaceful competition,” the focus shifted from economic issues to what came to be known as radical chic concerns (though not among genuine communists), such as alienation and consumerism.

Yet these phenomena had existed before, and to a much greater extent.

Without going into the merits of the issue, I would simply point out that people have always been free to return to the past, as the family living in the woods has done, or, better still, as the Amish in the United States do. Yet very few people choose to do so.

If we were living 50 years ago, one could seek refuge in a country belonging to the real-existing socialist bloc: the walls were built to prevent people from escaping from those countries, not to prevent them from entering.