What Are We Left With When Communism Goes? : Ideology: As the evil empire sinks, we scan a horizon that seems empty of challenge : and plumb the hollowness within ourselves.

After decades of planting moles in Western defense ministries, sneaking missiles into Cuba and otherwise employing means foul and fair in pursuit of their global goals, the Communists have indulged in the ultimate “dirty trick”--surrender. Judging by the nervous smiles in the West, it may prove to be their most unsettling move.

The sudden collapse of communism as a world force has left Westerners oddly joyless. Instead of exhilaration at winning a struggle that has lasted the better part of this century, there is a vague sense of emptiness. It does not so much stem from the uncertainties evoked by a suddenly unstable Europe as from a glimpse of our own image on the victory podium.

The name emblazoned on the victor’s wreath is Market System, which has proved so intrinsically right as a vehicle for human initiative that it has not even needed war to bring its hardened ideological enemies to their knees.

But something inside asks: Is this really what it’s all about? Is the pursuit of self-interest the culmination of human political wisdom? Is such a smashing victory really coming to us--a bland, smug consumer society that has elevated a Dan Quayle to within a heartbeat of the leadership of the democratic world?

Without an evil empire to kick around anymore, we are left to scan a horizon that seems empty of challenge and to plumb the hollowness within ourselves.

What makes us feel so naked on the victor’s podium is that while man may be fueled by self-interest, he also has a need to be part of something bigger than himself. This is a paradox that sends history spinning on its crazy orbits.

Communism began as a thrilling dream that ignited the imagination and ended as a nightmare. In snuffing out the nightmare, however, we have, as it were, also snuffed out the last dream around. An Israeli political leader, musing aloud about events in Eastern Europe, said that despite long-running political differences with Moscow, he was deeply touched by its current situation. “Russia today is a giant with tears in its eyes.”

In burying communism, we are also burying the only other militant ideology that has animated the world scene in recent decades--anti-communism.

So what are we left with? The free- enterprise system was once a beautiful dream, unleashing vast human potential. Success, however, has deprived it of its sense of mission, making it more a reliable formula for attaining material comforts than an ideology. There must, we feel, be a better measure by which to judge a society’s moral condition than the Dow Jones. Are Wall Street traders and Japanese industrialists to be our new high priests? Will yuppiehood be the ultimate aspiration of our grandchildren? It is a safe bet they won’t, given man’s ornery nature.

President Bush’s declaration of space exploration as a national goal is a transparent public-relations contrivance, a video game thrown at the public to keep it occupied and safely off the streets. A new generation will seek headier stuff to fill the human void--religion, nationalism or perhaps some new political ideology. For good or ill, that future direction may well be determined by the long-suppressed energies now being unleashed in Central and Eastern Europe.