Murti-Bing regime, stability at the expense of freedom

Even in the free world, the Communist totalitarian society put in place by the Bolsheviks was long considered as a viable option. As shown by the Communist success in the free elections held in Czechoslovakia in 1948, the Stalinist system appealed to members of the free civilization, and not only to proletarians. In Captive Mind Czeslaw Milosz depicts the interests that educated people find in the Stalinist “political formula” through a metaphorical drug, the Murti-Bing pill.

However, he uses arguments in favor of the pill to express a no to subtle criticism of totalitarian systems. Milosz implies that philosophers, even though they gain consideration, end up disapproving of the Murti-Bing system, because it controls the expression of their thoughts. Philosophers were faced with the disappointing fact that, in any society, the freedom of expression diminishes as the power increases. However, the ability to express the limits of a system gives the hope for a better future.

[...] The powerless as well as the powerful suffer from the lack of freedom in the Murti-Bing regime, because the ability to express the possibility of a different society allows the hope for a better future. The propaganda and the “threats against the future career” (Milosz, 13) on anyone who defies the Murti-Bing ideology are attempts to suppress different philosophies. However, suppressing the expression of opposite points of view does not restrain the thoughts of such views, Milosz writes: writer, in his furry and frustration, turns his thoughts to Western Communists. [...]

[...] The Murti-Bing pill conveys a philosophy of life, which is put to practice by those in power. Milosz writes that under the Murti-Bing regime “everyone considered socialist realism an officially imposed theory” (Milosz, 13). Thus, the way the society is governed depends neither on the current efficiency of the policies, nor on the way the public views these policies. The only matter is the correspondence of the policies with the interpretation of the Murti-Bing philosophy. Therefore, only people using the Murti-Bing pill, those who know the “political formula” can be part of the controlling class, or even dare judging the action implemented. [...]