Politico had a stimulating thought piece last week. Warning against Bernie Sanders’ Socialism, Marion Smith, executive
director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, wrote:
The process of transforming
“capitalist property”—that is, something legitimately purchased, inherited or
otherwise earned—into “social property” for everyone is when socialism becomes
sinister. This promise of redistribution always involves winners and losers
picked by the government. What if one has acquired capitalist property and does
not wish it to become “social property?” Well, then the government might have
to step in and take it.
The loss of private property—which
ensures one’s independent livelihood—perforce erodes one’s ability to exercise
free speech. What if the owner of some capitalist property taken by the
government dares to protest its seizure? That sort of dissent must be stifled
to maintain order, so free speech is replaced by government-sanctioned
propaganda. Unpopular opinions are shamed, and those expressing them are barred
from forums like colleges and universities.
How do we know? Because we’ve seen
it happen time and again. Ninety-nine years ago the Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia showed the danger of combining socialist ideas with totalitarian
violence, which created modern totalitarian communism.
Politico, March 22,
2016
During my eight years in the post-communist Czech Republic
there were ample opportunities to hear the stories and see for myself that all Mr.
Smith states about communism is true.
And yet,
Socialism and Communism may be one and the same, but they
are both an outgrowth of Capitalism and are intelligible without it. Neither
Capitalism nor Socialism/Communism gives proper value to work and the person
who works. Rather the question is always, “Will the ownership of the means of
production be owned by a group of capitalists or by the government?” The worker
remains the “slave” of one or the other.
The United States entered into its current Age of Militarism
as it prepared to join the Allied forces in the winter of 1916-1917. People were
being robbed of the wealth their work created, arrested for threatening the
order of society and shamed as unpatriotic for urging peace. The son of Leo
Tolstoy was banned from Columbia University where he intended to speak on his
father’s thoughts on peace. Conscientious objectors were vilified as cowards and,
sometimes, murdered by their prison guards. Over 2,000 publications were banned
by the Federal government and hundreds of people, especially anarchists and IWWs, received
long prison sentences for expressing views of the war contrary to those held by
President Wilson and his militarist cronies.
As we conclude our first century of militarism, it is too
comfortable to sink back into Marxist “science,” the binomial political climate
of the Cold War with each side of the class struggle vying for power and
control.
Let’s look deeper: to the dignity of each person, the value
of human work, and the viability of a society organized on the principles of
mutual cooperation and subsidiarity.
