Inverted Stagism

Trying to sort out views I realised the other day that I have always been a liberal but just thought that in order to achieve it, it was first necessary to go through the stage of Communism. I guess I have now come to see that this was probably wrong, though that may also be a very complacent and contemporary euro-centric view of things. Things were different in 1917 after all. The cataclysm of the First World War and the collapse of liberalism at the first hurdle made Communism look like an inevitablity to many. The hangover lasted the whole of the 20th century.