Communism

Commemorating (but not celebrating) a century of it:

It would be simplistic to blame all of these events on ideology. We live in an imperfect world and those imperfections have been unequally distributed. No conceivable government of Russia, or China, or Venezuela would have left no citizens impoverished or oppressed. Nonetheless, a hundred years of communism has presented us with an intimidating record of catastrophe, in a moral, political, and economic sense. Time and again, ambition has exceeded potential. Time and again, coercion has encouraged conflict. Time and again, violence has perpetuated itself. Time and again, absolute power has hardened into tyranny.

These disasters were concealed, excused and exacerbated by Western apologists and traitors. Walter Duranty of the New York Times lied to America about the scale of the Soviet famine. Intellectuals from George Bernard Shaw to Jean Paul Sartre to Eric Hobsbawm rationalised atrocities. Spies in British and American institutions betrayed military and intelligence secrets. As Europe reeled from the horrors of world war, and as the West endured the austerity of the depression, the impulse towards radicalism was understandable. But as the reality of communism was exposed even dull-minded apologists ran out of excuses.

A recent article in the New York Times offers a nostalgic account of growing up as a communist. Its author implies that the reality of Stalinism was made clear by Kruschev in 1956. But two decades earlier, Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge had exposed widespread starvation in the Soviet Union. The show trials had been reported across America and Europe. The Madden Committee had revealed the truth of Katyn. Orwell had published Animal Farm, and Koestler Darkness at Noon. By 1956, ignorance was abominable.

And it should be even more so today, but it has a sick appeal to something in human nature.

[Update a few minutes later]

I wish this were less related: The Cruelty Of Blue. As goes Puerto Rico, so will go many Democrat-run cities on the mainland.

8 thoughts on “Communism”

  1. Obama, spoke truth once that sent chills down the spine of those paying attention. Social Security can be cut to nothing and those that paid for it and now survive on it have no legal recourse.

    It amazes me that those that understand (even just partially) the dangers of socialism are really doing nothing to prevent it. The real tragedy is sound policy would be easy for an adult to enact. We have no adults. We just have mobs and pontificators.

    We are living the proof of the Fermi paradox. I wonder how low the world population will go and if we will remember any of this?

    We have a limited time during our lives where we are healthy and productive. That time pays for all the other times and can do it easily if govt. didn’t constantly change the rules. Instead we are going to destroy ourselves because we are not teaching the next generation about individual responsibility.

    It’s the adults fault. Not the mobs of imbeciles.

  2. “Santiago Domenech, a general contractor with $2 million of his savings tied up in bonds Puerto Rico just defaulted on…”

    Facepalm level: 2.7 Picards.

  3. Communism never escapes the universal truth that the effects of the scheme are never suffered by the elite. Same as here.

    So you have:

    Obama Uses Private Jet, 14 Car Convoy to Get to European Climate Change Speech

  4. “How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”

    Quote from Ronald Reagan

    1. So very true. The Left never seems to grasp the full outcome of their policies. … unless it’s their intent to be destructive.

  5. There was a cut/paste talking point or article going around about six months ago about the problems of Venezuela not being socialist policies but instead things like corruption, price fixing, siezeing companies, government control of the oil industry, and others. It was ten items long, of course.

    It led to some amazing comment conversations.

  6. “There was a cut/paste talking point or article going around about six months ago about the problems of Venezuela not being socialist policies but instead things like corruption, price fixing, siezeing companies, government control of the oil industry, and others. It was ten items long, of course.”

    Most of those are the outcomes of Socialist policy. As the centralized commands fail the Center issues more centralized commands and when that fails they start to throw their weight around.

    Corruption is everywhere, though.

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