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While still a total police state, 35 years of somewhat free markets with their attendant innovation have lifted literally hundreds of millions out of millennia of poverty. While material lives remain modest by our standards, 88 percent of households have television and seemingly everyone is yakking on a phone of some sort.

By contrast, shortly after the death of Fidel Castro, our neighbor Cuba - which has the talent to have the highest Latin living standard - remains in the pit. There are no cell phones; about 5,000 have internet access (which does not even rise to 0.1 percent). Not that there is anything to watch, but the number of households with television is a state secret.

To rub it in a bit, a large part of that Cuban talent is here working hard and paying taxes. Castro is one of history's bad guys, although praised here as one of the most charismatic figures of the second half of the 20th century. He gets no points from me on that. Think of who might get the prize for the first half?

I would give some leeway for idealism of his revolution in the 1950s, but when everyone in the world outside North Korea realized it didnt work, he stuck to the failed model and his people continue to suffer.

Communism is cool, read the headline. A generation has been born and entered young adulthood since what Germans call Die Wende, or the turn. That wall and the Soviet Union are gone. Surprising numbers of millennials hold favorable impressions of Marx, Lenin and even Mao. It is time for a look back.

My experience started with a glorious college year in England. I met this girl, now wife, at the foreign student club from Dresden, then communist East Germany. She had been able to leave, but left close family behind. Then there was that spring break student trip overland by train across Europe and into Russia. It was Moscow, Leningrad and a stop in Warsaw, Poland, on the way back.

Of things the Russians did right, trains were up there, as well as city subway systems. Their good impression was well planned. The student guide was always with us. At each stop, there were always friends to talk with us. They did not pretend it was a workers paradise but things were going fairly well and they supported the system. We felt free and would occasionally meet people on the street who were less content with things. No one in our group spoke other than English except me and my German. Russians are good at languages and if one spoke German we could talk. I recall three times the guide came up and interrogated in Russian as to what we were up to. They seemed a little suspicious. No one of us wanted to trade for their system but the show they put on was well choreographed. Poland, though, was an easier-going place.

Planning a trip to Cuba? You will get the same show. Fairly content people living a simple life and while not in paradise letting you know things are better than in 1959. Same line in Russia: 1967 was better than 1917. Wow! What an accomplishment!

Three years after the Russia trip, it became the real thing, visiting the sister left behind. We grew quickly close. They laughed, they loved and there was enough to eat but somehow in a black and white film with a heavy hand on our shoulder. Everyone knew, as Cuba today, that slight criticism of communism or the leadership meant jail. In 1980, we wound up on the not wanted list but were able to make a one-day visit in East Berlin. Our goodbye was a wave from opposite sides of the Wall. Happy ending when our State Department helped bring them to freedom in 1984.

Then there was Renata, the communist cousin in Berlin. We could only see her when she was with her parents near Dresden and later, as she rose in the party, not at all. In 17 years, one letter signed as though it was from someone else. It was 1980 and she and her daughter were watching a hockey game from the U.S. (you know which one) and she said it made them feel close to us. Those few words had to go a long way.

When we reunited after the Wall went down, her first words were the people choose freedom." I didnt say but sure thought that people have a funny way of doing that.

Recently, I had a student from Cuba. He had been on the Cuban junior tennis team. They went to Mexico, he bolted and headed north, probably making an illegal crossing of our soon-to-be-walled border, and on to an uncle in Florida. He planned the escape when he was 12. Keep that in mind when people down there tell you how happy they are.

How to help? We believe in face to face. Forget delegations and orchestrated cultural exchanges. Tourists are the answer and by the millions. American can be loud and disrespectful of certain local norms. With cell phones and laptops, it wont long before the communist masters will feel that they are very uncool.

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Carson Varner is a professor of finance, insurance and law at Illinois State University.

Originally posted here:
Varner: Communism is cool 2/26/17 - Bloomington Pantagraph

In my desperate attempt to avoid the clich that is person-sitting-in-coffeehouse-working-on-laptop, I opted for a slightly different food and drink outlet to write in: a bar. Not very imaginative or dissimilar to a coffee shop, you may think. And youd be right. But this bar caught my attention for a very specific reason: it was a celebration of all things communism.

Its walls were adorned with communist iconography; posters of Lenin and Mao, images of Fidel Castro draped in Cuban flags. Even Stalins picture made an appearance on the front of the bar. The dcor was also rather peculiar, with the bar itself made entirely out of wooden pallets, and camouflage netting suspended from the ceiling acting as a room divider. Sandbags and oil drums were also placed at varying spots on the floor to finish off the pseudo-revolutionary feel.

As I ordered my drink and took a seat, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that there in front of me were pictures of the most vile human rights abusers, collectively responsible for the suffering, misery and death of many millions (granted, Stalin and Mao are in a league of their own in this regard). And yet, the members of staff and fellow patrons never batted an eye. The food menu, too, read like a list of crass jokes: The Mad Mao and The Totalitarian. What next? Goulag Goulash? Pol Hot Pot?

This whole experience provoked a serious question: given the great suffering communism has inflicted, why does admiration for this totalitarian ideology frequently go unchallenged?

These attitudes are in no way restricted to South London taverns, either. Communists and their apologists are found throughout society. Only recently, and to many peoples bemusement, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell read from Chairman Maos Little Red Book in parliament in an effort to goad the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and Conservative MP George Osborne. To be clear, thats a British MP, belonging to a major British political party, deeming it acceptable to read from a book authored by a man responsible for the deaths of at least 40 million people. Despite McDonnell receiving criticism for his actions, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington Diane Abbott sprang to his defence, stating: I suppose, on balance, Mao did more good than harm. McDonnell responded to his critics, claiming it was just a joke a rather unsatisfactory retort.

Other political areas such as the May Day trade union parades have also come under fire in their failings to deal with the Stalinist and Maoist banners that still feature in the march. One must wonder as to how onlookers would have reacted if Nazi or fascist emblems had instead been flown. I suspect passing liberal-leftists would have, quite correctly, openly expressed their disgust and contempt at the rallys participants, with arrests being made shortly after. But this didnt happen, so why the double standard?

These same hypocrisies seep into other spheres too, with music and the arts being particularly blind to the ideologys ills. LA rock band Rage Against The Machine, who performed at many anti-Nazi and anti-fascist events, frequently sported the red star, hammer and sickle, and other symbols synonymous with communism. Speaking as a huge fan of the band, I was always mildly confused as to how a music group could directly quote George Orwells 1984, a polemic against Stalinist totalitarianism, all the while decorating their equipment and clothes with Soviet iconography. Cognitive dissonance at its very finest.

Communism, like other totalitarian ideologies, is troublesome because it treats people as infinitely malleable lumps of putty. But, as any cognitive scientist will tell you, this isnt how the mind works. As the great Steven Pinker puts it, we arent blank slates that can be forever shaped and moulded. And it is for this reason that so many perished at the hands of these dogmatic ideologues.

So why, then, is communism let off the hook? Why in contemporary culture are communist leaders not despised in the way fascist or Nazi leaders rightfully are? There doesnt appear to be a simple answer. Clearly the overall death count of these regimes isnt a deciding factor in peoples minds, particularly as the communist dictators body count is far largerthan any Nazi or fascist government. The great WWII historian Roger Moorhouse suspects Nazi Germany is thought of in a more negative light due to the putrid, pseudoscientific side to the killings carried out by the Nazis. Furthermore, even in its Nazi guise, Germany was a fundamentally civilized and educated society, adding to the shock when such an advanced country slid into dictatorship and genocide. Others, such as renowned entomologist E. O. Wilson, said of Marxism: Wonderful theory. Wrong species. My guess is no one would ever say this about the repulsive ideological underpinnings of Nazism.

Personally, I suspect that to many people communism represents an anti-establishment and rebellious ideal. Can you imagine Rik Mayall portraying a comedic Nazi version of his poetry-writing, anarchic character in The Young Ones? Me neither. But while to some communism remains a symbol of rebellion or nonconformity, this doesnt make up for the masses of bodies it has left in its wake. Its time to cease the flirtations with this totalitarian ideology. The double standard must end.

Read the original here:
It's Time To End The Flirtations With Communism - Conatus News

Calcutta has earned the doubtful distinction of being designated a dead city, its normal flow of life being continuously disturbed by an almost unending series of demonstrations, processions and meetings. Today it is not at all difficult for a left political party, particularly the Communists, to hold a meeting of a lakh of people on the maidan. They parade this phenomenon as evidence of their tremendous popularity and try to coerce psychologically the democratic forces of the country.

The latter sincerely deplore this increase in the influence of the communist camp in this key city and hold Congress misrule responsible for it. The faulty planning and the inefficient and corrupt administration of the Congress have imposed an almost unbearable burden upon the people, which has so much exasperated them as to make them an easy prey to the communists who are promising a millennium for them and are ever ready to fish in troubled waters.

Though this argument may appear plausible, it is however wrong to presume so. For it is really not unbearable misery, which generates discontent in the minds of people and tends to incite them to revolt. Those who live on the verge of starvation are too weak to resist or welcome any change or take any risk in life. In this sense we may speak of the conservatism of the poor, which is no less responsible than the conservatism of the privileged for the perpetration of the status quo.

It is an improved condition which leads- a man to protest and revolt. A taste of a few good things makes him hanker after more and more. Thus it is found that both in France and Russia there was comparative prosperity on the eve of the revolutionary outbreaks there. It is hope that rekindles hope. To say, therefore, that the contemporary mass movement in Calcutta under the leadership of the Communists is the consequence of an ever deteriorating economic condition of the people is not true. Had it been so, the same phenomenon would have been evident in several other parts of the country also since economic hardship is not a peculiarity of this city alone, while mass movement is.

The clue to the contemporary mass movements of this city has to be found not in the economic condition of the people but in their peculiar psychology. It is an oft-repeated dictum that man is a social being. In fact, however, he is more than a social being. He is a community being. A social life is possible even on impersonal cooperation. But a community life connotes a direct and personal relation among the members of the group. It is because man is a community-being that if he is released from the context of his particular community and its moorings, he becomes a victim to the terrible sense of loneliness and insecurity. The insecure and lonely individuals then seek a communal refuge of this sort or that and coalesce into anonymous faceless mass. That is why dictatorship has a great appeal to the masses.

During the post-Independence period there has been an unprecedented concentration of East Bengal refugees in Calcutta and the surrounding districts. They offer a spectacle of a huge mass and uprooted humanity. Family and neighbourhood constitute the two most important communal ties of man. The family life of the refugees has been mostly blasted. They live in colonies where neighbours are no better than mere night-dwellers. East Bengal had her own characteristic culture. These refugees have been divorced even from that cultural context. As a matter of fact, they have lost all the moorings of their life. In this part of Bengal they find themselves in an environment which is also not very friendly to them. Over and above this, many of the refugee families are also without an assured income and have hardly any prospects in life. In the circumstances it is but natural for these unfortunate people to turn into sprawling masses and serve as cannon fodder for the Communist movement. Truly speaking, the Communist movement of Calcutta is largely a refugee movement. This explains why the so-called mass movements constitute a characteristic of the post-Independence period.

It is not the correctness of the Communist doctrine which attracts these refugees. Rather they join the Communist movement because they find a psychological refuge there. A mass movement led by any other totalitarian party could as well serve their purpose. In fact, the refugees are often found to transfer their allegiance from this left party to that. That is why it becomes possible even for a small party like the Socialist Unity Centre to organize huge meetings and processions in Calcutta. The truth is that these left parties make their appeal to the same type of mind and draw their support from the same type of people.

The moot question then ishow to free the city from these disturbing mass activities of by the left parties. Our diagnosis shows the way in which the solution is to be sought. We must try for the integration of the refugees in the social life of Bengal as quickly as possible. This means both their economic and psychological rehabilitationrehabilitation in the fullest sense of the term.

Read the original:
From The Archives: Why Communism Thrives In Bengal - Swarajya

New York Times

What's Left of Communism New York Times Soon, popular views of 1917 changed entirely: Unfettered markets seemed natural and inevitable, while Communism appeared to have always been doomed to Leon Trotsky's dustbin of history. There might be challenges to the globalized liberal order, but ...

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What's Left of Communism - New York Times

Erasmo Calzadilla

Alexis Jardines

Yes, I know you from there, from Cuba. I couldnt believe your nerve when you denied that you were a Communist. You are incredibly shameless.

Make no mistake; these bullshitters are more Communist than the Castros. All of Erasmo and his gangs unhappiness lie in the fact that the Revolution and its leaders annoy them because, according to them, they moved away from real Marxism and Communism. Erasmo was in Cuba one of most active defenders of Marxism and Communism.

-Alexis Jardines PhD in Philosophy in a comment he placed on the article El sueno americano de un cubano de izquierda (The American Dream of a Cuban leftist).

HAVANA TIMES Well, there you have it. This important Cuban philosopher lost, for a moment, the prudence and moderation that defines the members of his profession.

The man dealt a blow and now we havent heard anything else from him, Im sure he went off to interpret one of Hegels texts and forgot about the loose end he left on the Internet. And he left me with this bad faith, which I, instead of denying it, will take advantage of.

It just so happens that Ive been asking myself for quite some time now whether Marxism maintains anything contemporary about it, and Jardines has led me to focus on this neglected issue for a moment. So, here goes.

It seems to be some kind of historic law that wherever a movement for concentrating power arises, the extreme opposite is also born: calling for redistribution, leveling out and socialization. In political debates and analyses, the terminology which reflects this never-ending confrontation is very common:

Up Down Vertical Horizontal Elitism Masses Individual Spirit Group Creation Network Distribution Pyramid System Social Movement vs Political Parties Monopoly Free Competition Popular Soviets Supreme Soviets Centralism Federalism

There is a kind of historic pendulum between the moment power is concentrated and that of when it is redistributed. One of them dominates for a while and then, when this model expires or reaches its peak, it gives way to the other.

Both trends evolve, change, and more interestingly, convert themselves into their opposite.

Primitive Christianity was a kind of Communism inspired by religion, but over time, this became an institution where power was concentrated and in the hands of a select few. Primitive Capitalism which gave birth to the US was a leveling economic process, and just look at what it has become.

Karl Marx

Marxism would be another variant of Communism, but with a philosophical base this time, which was born within the context of industrial capitalism: Concentrated power in the bourgeoisie needs to return to workers hands via a revolutionary leap which is driven by the progress of science and technology.

Real Marxism and Socialism have effectively fulfilled their intention to level society, at least for some time. After their disappearance the concentration of Capital the most dominant form of power today has gained great impetus, knocking down every obstacle in its path. Who can effectively take on this damaging trend today?

Stopping this tumor without dying in the attempt is one of the most important challenges that humanity faces. In order to manage this, we have to learn from all of those people who have had to come face-to-face with a similar monster throughout history: Anarchists, the first Christians, the first Capitalists, Robin Hood and even Marxists.

Marxists too?

Of course. Putting aside their authoritarian vocation and their desire to have progress as the motor behind change because it wont be possible anymore and also putting a large part of their outdated theories aside, we can rescue their vocation to fight against anything that attacks human empowerment.

For those who want to learn a little more about the process of concentrating wealth, I recommend reading this article by OXFAM.

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The Goodness of Communism - Havana Times