The favorite expressions of condemnation always point to the old: “superstition,” “medieval,” “backward,” and “anachronistic”; the favorite adulatory term is, of course, “modern.” It goes without saying that everything—in both communism and liberal democracy—should be modern: thinking, family, school, literature, and philosophy. If a thing, a quality, an attitude, an idea is not modern, it should be modernized or will end up in the dustbin of history (an unforgettable expression having as much relevance for the communist ideology as for the liberal-democratic).
