Viewers of Dominic Sandbrook's series on the Cold War get the impression that the Cold War was a fight between freedom and totalitarianism which the latter lost. However, some things I've seen recently make me suspect that it was the totalitarians who really won.

One is Puffles' description of the Labour party's hapless efforts to use social media. He points out that the party's aim to "dominate the conversation" is simply oxymoronic, and suggests - echoing Jeffrey Nielsen - that one reason for the decline of grassroots party activists is a dissatisfaction with 'top down' "oppressive discipline".

Secondly are a series of accounts of the decline of British universities.The Telegraph reports that "university leaders" are condoning gender segregation in debates; Adam Ramsey describes how heavy-handed university "security" is suppressing protest; and Nick Cohen says:

Instead of producing confident students who can handle any argument you throw at them, universities are a production line for cowed conformists. Instead of being free spaces where ideas can be debated without restraint, universities have become like the private and public bureaucracies the young will go on to join: speak out of turn, or even wear the wrong T-shirt, and the bosses will make you suffer.

These stories have something in common. They both show how managerialist ideology is being extended into places where it doesn't belong. Political activism and social media lend themselves best to loose egalitarian networks, not to top-down management - which is why big business so often makes an arse of itself on Twitter. And universities should be repositories of liberal values which recognize that intelligent young people are (or should be) fractious, noisy and rebellious, not production lines for conformists run by control freaks with a phobia of disorder who kowtow to their most frightening customers.

And this is why I say the totalitarians have won. A totalitarian is a fanatic who believes that one ideology should dominate society. And (some) managerialists are - in this sense - totalitarians, who have extended top-down control freakery to places where it is counter-productive and destructive of traditional values.

Which raises a paradox. During the Cold War, it was believed that Marxists were the totalitarians and capitalists were on the side of pluralism. Today, though, it is the other way around. At least one Marxist is siding with pluralism, whilst it is the boss class that are the totalitarians.