Capitalism, communism both produced elite at the top
I would rather write about my support to Rebecca Hazell with her spot-on observation that we need the earth; the earth does not need us. I will disagree with some of the examples that she used, though but she is right that we need to do a far better job of protecting the only home we will ever have than we have done so far.
But alas, another person, Simone Black, has shown up to demonstrate that they have no clue that socialism and communism are two different animals as she attempts to vilify both.
No one has been here defending communism, although those of us with a better education know why communism came about in the first place. It came about because of the corruption and vast differences in political power and obscene levels of wealth between the peasantry and aristocracy headed by the czars. It was the autocracy of the czars, and enabled by the orthodoxy of the Russian church, that lead to the oppression of most Russian citizens.
I greatly enjoyed my courses in Russian history at university as it was a history that was partly familiar and exotic at the same time. I also took Russian literature and studied their classics as well as the subversive, at the time, modern writers who worked against the authoritarian regime of the Soviet Union.
Sad to see that under Putin, history has repeated itself. As there had been two revolutions in Russia, the first democratic one was quickly swept away by the more militant Bolsheviks. History is being repeated as Putin has more power then the czars did, and the wealth of Russia is concentrated in the hands of a couple dozen robber baron families. The fledgling democracy created after the Soviet Union fell has been hijacked by another psychopath. The same dynamics that caused the revolution are again back in vogue in Putin’s Russia. But I digress.
Had Lenin lived we would have had Russia developing into a social democracy after the fall of the Czar — who was unfit to be ruler as Trump is to be president — much like the democracies that define Scandinavia today where private enterprise exists alongside the state ones.
But he died too soon and a psychopath, Stalin, took the country down the path of absolute monarchy once more with himself as the supreme Jesus Christ personality cult leader. Ironic that if the Czar had not executed Stalin’s brother then Stalin (not his original name) would have continued studying in the seminary to become a priest. There I go, digressing again.
Point is, it is infuriating to someone like me who studied Russian history to have to read uninformed and politically biased ideas about what socialism and communism entailed. Jesus and Lenin had a lot in common as the whole ideal of the Communist Manifesto was based on the Jewish system of the Kibbutz.
Lastly, Ms. Black praises our capitalist system in unrealistic ways through her rose-coloured glasses. Seeing it as being virtuous while those nasty socialists and communists are villains out for themselves.
She mentions how their leaders have many homes. How many homes does Trump have as he forces the American taxpayers to cover with their taxes his $130-million golfing habit so far? How the one per cent have been enriched by a couple billion dollars with his budgets while the working poor and what is left of the middle class struggles to survive. How predatory capitalism has robbed the masses of their political voice and dried up the economy by transferring so much wealth to the one per cent class of carpet baggers. How the Trickle-Down Economy only works for the few at the top.
So yes, Ms. Black can point to evil excesses of those nasty communists, but she can stop with the selective baffle gaff that somehow many of our political and business leaders act any saintlier. After all, as Mussolini rightly observed, fascism is the union of the corporations and government. And I don’t know of any Fascist/Republican/Conservative who is for the common good, does she?
A mixed economy is the only economy that works best for most people. Our society benefits from selective use of policies and organizations that are socialist in nature and in origins like our universal healthcare coverage. The simplistic ideas of people like Ms. Black, Ms. Moen, and Mr. Innis lack any depth of understanding of the subjects that they talk about ad nauseum. And certainly don’t appreciate what makes for a caring and equitable society.
Robert T. Rock
Mission City