It's a screwy syllogism, suspect on any number of grounds -- not the least of which is the absurd reality that so many of these new economy entrepreneurs were themselves looking to rake in oodles of cash by giving away things for free -- but it has an undeniable immediate appeal, an appeal that has much in common with the collectivization of agriculture that so inspired the revolutionaries Kennan describes. Not that the "dot-communists," as their detractors termed them, harped much on the connection. "Communist," after all, is a dirty word, one that summons up images of gray concrete buildings surrounded by endless lines of weary-eyed socialists under the repressive thumb of a dithering bureaucracy.

Then again, if you'd asked a foot soldier of the Revolution in 1932 precisely what sort of a society he was forgoing the "pleasures" of youth to build, endless lines and repressive thumbs would hardly have been foremost among his replies. The conversion of a revolution into a failed revolution is a disheartening process, and for no one is the disillusionment sadder or more shocking than for the revolutionary himself. And however much dot-communism may have owed to its Soviet predecessor while it was in the ascendant, it was on the way back down that the truly telling psychic parallels emerged.

Five-year business plans for 30 percent annual growth in revenue recalled equally unrealistic Five-Year Plans for 30 percent annual growth in pig-iron production. The incompetently handled layoffs that have characterized the death of dot-coms read as farcical repetitions of the tragedies of Stalinist purges. If the Soviet Union bankrupted itself in an unwinnable arms race with the United States, dot-coms spent themselves out of existence trying desperately to carve out enough of a market share to survive their competitors.

In the end, in both Silicon Valley and the former Soviet Union, the hard-line capitalists smelled weakness and moved in, encouraging defections, manipulating the money supply, pulling out the supports. And then they started picking through the wreckage, buying up whole industries at pennies on the dollar while offering hypocritical advice on what should have been done differently.

	Print story E-mail story

To a true believer, it's hard for such advice not to rankle. To you, that "silly ideology" you're being asked to repudiate isn't just a bunch of economic ideas; it's an all-consuming system that justifies the choices you've made with your life, both public and personal. A sense of historical inevitability is potent stuff; it frees you from needing to think about the everyday details of life.

That said, as inspiring as the rhetoric of revolution may be, it had a very specific function at most Internet start-ups: to convince the employees that their late nights and lost weekends were sacrifices in the name of the revolution. Come the shakeout, though, they were left scratching their heads and asking precisely why they had given so much of themselves, when all they had to show for their sacrifices were a few nearly worthless scraps of paper, entitling them to some microscopic share of the assets of a defunct entity. Or, as Kennan put it:

The world will see a disappearance of the artificial conditions which now maintain the unlimited self-confidence, mental health, and happiness of the younger Russian generation ... introspection and mental perplexity will make short work of his self-confidence, once his faith in the mystic qualities of communism is ruined.

A questionable psychological analysis of the Soviet Union, perhaps, but not a bad summary of the prevailing mood in Silicon Valley. Revolutionaries in every age like to think they are ushering in something unprecedented in human history. And sometimes they are, but revolution itself, in all its forms, has precedent aplenty -- including more than a few harsh warnings for those who think that economics and business can forever stand in for the rest of human existence. And this is a trap into which both the dot-communists and their implacably capitalist foes have been known to fall.

The Free Software Project
Read Andrew Leonard's book-in-progress on Linux and open source -- and post your comments.