The beginning of one of the worst periods of American history is barely six decades in our past.
It was the hysteria over communism, a peril that would consume the entire world, the political right ranted, unless we surrendered our constitutional freedoms to combat it. Just as we are now being told we must surrender our constitutional freedoms to combat "terrorism."
But what is communism?
It is the oldest and probably the most-successful systems of government ever devised. It was a primeval system that served ancient societies well. It just didn't fit with an advanced economic world. The discord in the philosophy of Karl Marx is that one had to be highly intelligent to read and understand what he was saying, but one had to be a fool to think his visions would actually work in a modern world.
Ancient hunter-and-gatherer tribes used the collective to survive. The males would hunt in unison to track down and kill prey, to protect the village as warriors and to construct what was needed. The women would work in unison gathering herbs and berries, preparing communal meals and in raising children. For that society, collectivism worked well for hundreds of thousands of years. Marx and Friedrich Engels even praised American Indian tribes living in such enclaves for their internal peacefulness and absence of crime to argue for that social system to replace the misery-filled and crime-ridden capitalist society in which they lived.
The American political right praises the Iroquois Federation and its system of self-rule as the basis of the US Constitution. In "Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State" Engles did the same as a basis of scientific socialism; i.e. Marxism.
Marx advocated a meritocracy; that's what "from each according to his abilities" means. The political right argues that it favors a "meritocracy" in the United States although when it comes to inherited wealth, privilege, power and position in life, meritocracy is conspicuously absent from right-wing rhetoric.
Marx advocated a living income with "to each according to his needs." Okay, the political right is definitely anti-Marxist on this principle.
But Marx and Engels; despite their advanced educational degrees and finely honed intellects, never asked the most-fundamental question: If these two systems (communal society and technological economy) could be compatible, why did they not evolve together? The only logical answer is that they can't be compatible and the failure of the Soviet system proved that. Soviet leaders openly admitted that they were not practicing pure Marxism because they were surrounded by capitalist enemies and Marxism couldn't flourish until the enemies were vanquished. That was a copout; they didn't practice pure Marxism because they knew it wouldn't work. China abandoning Marxist economics while keeping a police-state society also shows that Marxism isn't compatible with modernity.
Marx never advocated a police state. He lived in a society in which everything was controlled by the propertied and monied classes, a totalitarianism of the bourgeoisie. Government, commerce, the legal system, the church, education were controlled by the ruling ownership classes to serve only those privileged classes. Marx envisioned a system in which those institutions would be controlled by the working classes and would serve the working classes; a "dictatorship of the proletariat." He only envisioned a reverse of the prevailing social order; not the brutal police state the Bolsheviks imposed on Russia and its fellow socialist republics. The society he inhabited differed little from the society in which America is saddled with today except that in his 19th Century, the aristocracy admitted that it was an aristocracy. America's democratic republic and other such nations managed to overcome the ills Marx railed against without becoming totalitarian states by building a strong middle class; that is, until the neo-con revolution beginning with Ronald Reagan began reversing the progress to form what we today know as "corporacracy".
The author is qualified to discuss this matter by virtue of involvement in the US intelligence community defending the nation from communism and studying Marxist philosophy at Georgetown University Graduate School of Government to enhance his employment at the National Security Agency.
While at Georgetown, virtually the entire class came to realize that communism ~ as practiced in the Soviet Union ~ would fail if it were not radically altered. When Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to reform the system, it failed.
The intelligence community felt that containment, not confrontation, was sufficient because it also could see communism self-destructing.
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, was one of the first to see the end of communism while all those around him were in a virtual panic. In a 1951 dissenting opinion, Douglas forecast the demise of communism. He wrote:
"There comes a time when even speech loses its constitutional immunity ... When conditions are so critical that there will be no time to avoid the evil that the speech threatens, it is time to call a halt ... The restraint to be constitutional must be based on more than fear, on more than passionate opposition against the speech, on more than a revolted dislike for its contents. There must be some immediate injury to society that is likely if speech is allowed."
In that case, American communists were appealing their convictions for organizing study groups to teach their beliefs with the aid of four books: "Foundations of Leninism by Stalin" (1924), "The Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engels (1848), "State and Revolution" by Lenin (1917) and "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union" (1939). There was no question about legality of the books; they weren't, and couldn't be, restricted. Only the communists' speech was involved because a foe of Marxism could have used the same books to teach opposition to communism without fear of arrest.
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Thomas Bonsell is a former newspaper editor (in Oregon, New York and Colorado) United States Air Force cryptanalyst and National Security Agency intelligence agent. He became one of American journalism's leading constitutional experts through years of study at Georgetown University Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C., and tries (without much success) to be patient with people who argue endlessly on subjects they have never studied. He is the author of "The Un-Americans: Trashing of the United States Constitution in the American Press", a critique of the mainstream media for ignorance of, or disdain for, our constitutional principles of self-government. He left newspaper work years ago, disgusted at the direction the Fourth Estate ~ under the mismanagement of ineffectual, out-of-touch, can't-do executives ~ was taking away from honest responsible journalism and the observation that there was no place in the mainstream media for a progressive, or liberal, constitutional "expert". Bonsell is an honors graduate of Woodbury College (Los Angeles, California) with a bachelor of business administration degree. He is profiled in Marquis Who's Who in America. (Self-portrait, above, was handled to make author/artist appear prettier than he actually is.)
Personal motto: Have brain; will use.
Lenin was right - he was right about Stalin. Stalin had nothing to do with Communism or Socialism - he had everything to do with power. Do not doubt that if Stalin were alive today he would be President Bush. Think about it - what's the difference? The power to inslave millions by economic or military force.
Lenin was afraid Stalin would replace him and many would suffer.
You are right that the Republican Party is Fascist and opposed to human rights. You are wrong that Rightists support the Republican Party. Have you heard of Ron Paul (as I have for some years) opposed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Have you heard of Alan Keyes (whom I went to see years ago and voted for in the 2000 primary) who states that man must serve his private duty and if he does not the State will do so?
I believe in free enterprise, not Fascism. You state that corporatism must be stopped because it produces wealth. For heaven's sake, look in the mirror!, if corporations produce wealth, than make everyone their own corporation! When Africans, Asians, Americans are free to start their own multi-national corporation we will all be better off.
by
Barker (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments)
on Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 8:31:10 PM
I have made my comments to the article when it was a diary entry. I also include the above link in which I argue against labels on the Russian revolution (delte the space after http:. I think neither Marx nor Stalin need to be defended. They are what they are. Same is with Ceasar Borgia, for instance.
by
Mark Sashine (47 articles, 19 quicklinks, 236 diaries, 3362 comments)
on Monday, June 25, 2007 at 7:56:02 AM
Yes, I have heard of Ron Paul ~ a long-time johnbircher ~ and Alan Keyes ~ a disgusting human being.
I never stated that corporatism must be stopped because it produces profit. I said that corporatism must not be allowed to control government because there is scant differences between a system in which government owns or controls all means of economics (communism) and a system in which economic interests control government (fascism).
"Free enterprise" is a dangerous concept because it would allow businesses to do anything they want regardless of the harm it produces to the nation. We need "private enterprise" in which all businesses are expected to be honest and be beneficial to all of society, not just themselves.
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to rchapman:
I never said that communism failed; I said that Bolshevism failed.
Right up front, I said that communism was a long-lasting and highly successful system of government, but it would only work in primitive hunter-gather societies. And I said that classic communism ~ Marxism ~ was never tried in the modern world. The term for Marxism ~ "Scientific Socialism" ~ is a classic oxymoron.
I hope you are not one of those who claim that Ronald Reagan was solely responsible for the failure of Bolshevism. That they were pushed economically into collapse doesn't make sense. Reaganites make that argument all the time saying out of one of their faces that Reagan's arms buildup forced the USSR into bankruptcy while their other faces claim his out-of-control spending in the US created an economic miracle.
In the article I cited several sources who foresaw the collapse of Bolshevism; as early as 1951 for Supreme Court Judge William O. Douglas and the mid-1960s for a class on Marxist theory at Georgetown University Graduate School of Government.
We spooks didn't push Bolshevism into the grave; we only contained it until it destroyed itself. It was only a matter of time, not of being pushed.
by
tabonsell (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 250 comments)
on Monday, June 25, 2007 at 1:38:41 PM
