“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” – Margaret Thatcher
Nikita Khrushchev in 1963
Photo: Wikipedia
|
Those asked
about their views on socialism, generally have no ability to explain it, or why
they desire it; they just think it’s a good idea and they want “free stuff.” Such
advocates of socialism have never opened a history book on socialism, nor have
they studied the basic Principles of Economics.
They hate
capitalism while enjoying the freedom to say so without fear of being sent to a
gulag, and owning goods produced by the very capitalism they loathe. To say
that they are uninformed fools and tools of the few who are designing the one-party
state (Democrat Socialist), is an understatement.
None of the
advocates of socialism understand that the European socialist welfare they admire,
is supported by high taxes and strong capitalist corporations with shareholders
and investors, who pay taxes to the state in order to support such lavish
welfare.
In 1903
Lenin founded what was to become eventually the Communist Party with a group of
“close knit dedicated professional revolutionaries” who would blindly follow without
question the decisions of the leaders. It is important to focus on the word professional,
indicating people who were well-trained in political activism, community organizing,
and manipulation of the masses. Their goal was to establish “the one-party state”
better known as the Party.
The Party allowed
“democratic centralism,” meaning that discussion was permitted within certain
parameters, until a decision was reached. Once the decision was “adopted,” all minions
had to follow it faithfully. The Party was illegal as they were aiming to
overthrow the Czarist regime, an act which eventually came to pass.
In 1905 the Party
had 8,500 members and a few months before the October 1917 Revolution only 23,000.
By 1961, statistics indicate that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had
8,708,000 members, about four percent of the population. (Conquest Without
War, Pocket Books, Inc., 1961)
Membership was
limited to those who wished to join. “Only workers, peasants, and
intelligentsia who are enlightened, active, and devoted to communism are
admitted.” They had to understand communism and be “its active soldiers,”
supporting its ideas as Karl Marx had envisioned.
One
representative (deputy) per 300,000 Russians was chosen to be in the Soviet of
the Union, one of the two houses of the Supreme Soviet. These representatives
were nominated by the Party, trade unions, cooperatives, youth and cultural
organizations, all under the boot of the Party’s control. An electoral
commission could reject any candidate without giving a reason. The unopposed
candidates always received 99 percent of the votes.
In the long
line of communist leaders of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev is less known today
than Stalin, his contemporary who is responsible for the death of millions. I’m
not sure how many victims Khrushchev left behind during his tenure as supreme
leader.
During Khrushchev’s
formative years, the socialist propaganda was intended for the working class,
quite a “minority in overwhelmingly rural Russia.”
The
socialist propaganda in today’s America is aimed at affluent college indoctrinated
Millennials who decry their “whiteness and white privilege” which happened at
the expense of other races. How that suddenly occurred in the 21st
century in one of the most tolerant and law-abiding countries in the world
where discrimination of any sort is punishable by law, is unclear and irrational.
The “Party
schools” in the Soviet Union were indoctrination centers for the Communist
Party membership. It was a privilege to be admitted to such schools, not
the phony variety “white privilege” Democrat Socialists in America suddenly claim.
Soviet privilege consisted of living in substandard conditions in
crowded, unheated dormitories with little food, setting the standard for future
modest living conditions under communist dictatorships around the world.
The
curricula were composed of interminable meetings during which daily life was deconstructed
into Marxist terms and the students’ behavior and attitude toward the “class
struggle” was carefully monitored and dissected. They were taught how to better
control “the lives of others” through carefully scripted guidelines of mental
and physical oppression, depriving the population at large of any choice and of
their freedom.
After the
Russian Revolution of 1917 and Lenin’s death in 1924, a contagion spread across
Europe - Russian communists stirred upheavals in Germany, and in other
capitalist nations.
The Soviet
leadership offered a new brand of “socialism for a new class.” Stalin launched
the slogan “socialism in one country,” a socialism that would not turn out to
be the promised egalitarian society, but a society in which the Communist Party
members would be the sole beneficiaries.
Subservient
communist functionaries became the apparatchiki, the bulldozing machine
of control through fear, snitching on neighbors and relatives, jail, repressions,
and purges. Even the Marxist Trotsky was beaten and exiled as a “left winger,”
and the “right wingers” were labeled “petty bourgeois” by Stalinists.
Apparatchiki forced peasants to give up their
land, equipment, and animals into collective farms (kolkhozes). If apparatchiki
wavered, they were swiftly eliminated as “untrustworthy elements.”
Apparatchiki
also watched one
another. “Socialist vigilance required the uncovering of deviations and
deviationists, the unmasking of the class enemy who might have wormed his way
into the Party.”
When the Ukrainian
peasants were not delivering enough grain in 1927 and 1928 to feed the urban
population, Stalin sent the Party apparatchiki and the secret police on
a requisition drive, “liquidating” with machine guns the “kulaks,” peasants
they saw as enemies because they were “unwilling to satisfy the demands of the
Party agitators.” Peasants resisting collectivization were not just attacked as
“kulaks” but as “enemies of the people.”
Stalin “decreed
the liquidation of the kulaks as a class,” and peasants, who could hire workers
and owned their farms and agricultural equipment, existed no more.
After “squashing
the enemy” of the Party, the “socialist construction” expanded by building up
Stalin’s “cult of personality.” The purges that followed eliminated people and
confiscated their property which was later distributed to loyal party members
for their personal use. The Communist Party was infallible, so scapegoats were
found for every failure of the system.
When Stalin
died in 1953, a period of “de-Stalinization” began. Khrushchev promised a “great
leap forward” for his proletariat who would outproduce the U.S. in per capita
meat, milk, and butter and “to make Soviet toilers wealthier than the
capitalist slaves.”
Not at any
time did the Soviet proletariat live better or wealthier than the “capitalist
slaves.” To this day, the Russian overall standard of living is lower than the
American standard of living even though the cost of living in Russia is cheaper.
The average monthly disposable salary is five times higher in the U.S. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Russia/United-States/Cost-of-living
By the end
of the 1960s Khrushchev “stopped the terror of the secret police, emptied the
concentration camps, gave his people enough to eat, new apartment housing, and promised
détente and peace.” He even wore a very
bourgeois sable-lined winter coat. (Conquest Without War, pp. 39-41)
In his
lifetime, Khrushchev failed “to see the communist flag fly all over the whole
world” as he so zealously desired, but progress is made in the 21st
century U.S.A. through domestic communist activists, anti-American politicians,
and the MSM.
Communism, conceived
as a world philosophy and a world movement, “Proletarians of all lands, unite”
(The Communist Manifesto), declaring that social class, not nationality,
not race, is the important link between humans, has killed 100 million innocents
in its quest to conquer the whole world.
Krushchev
believed in the “inevitable triumph” of socialism because, he said, “Capitalism
is a worn-out old mare while socialism is new, young, and full of teeming
energy.”
Having experienced
and endured a tough life and severe hardships under the socialism he spoke of,
I can honestly say that I would choose capitalism any day over socialism. Nobody
will be able to “bury capitalism” as he so enthusiastically desired. Humans are
born entrepreneurs.
If the Soviet
version of world-wide socialism were to triumph, it logically follows that large
countries like Russia, China, or both, with plenty of experience in socialism, would
become the world power.
I should
also mention that Lenin taught followers in his lifetime that war was
inevitable if “imperialism” existed.
An interesting
question begs asking, if the socialist proletariat, prompted by the elites of
the Communist Party, does conquer the whole world, what are they going to do
with it?
Thank you for the back story of how the communists took over in Russia. This article's a keeper, there's so much detail about the bureaucratic noose they used. This kind of information is essential in comparing where we are in this process. As I write this citizens in Hong Kong are desperately battling the juggernaut. They are even singing our national anthem, waving Old Glory and have a mini replica of our Statue of Liberty-exemplifying it's true meaning, not as a refuge, but as an ideal of freedom. I am moved beyond count, when it's most difficult not to be negative and sad about what's happening to our youth, the idea our forefathers birthed 243 years ago is still vibrantly alive, fueling that entrepreneurial spirit you note we are born with. God bless them, and keep them safe.
ReplyDeleteMy heart is saddened too, Caro. This is such a wonderful country and there is no other in the world like it. Sadly, we are losing it every day and the enemies of freedom seem to be winning.
DeleteOne thought to consider is that the American flags in Hong Kong and the singing of our National Anthem is propaganda to make it seem like the U.S. is backing the protestors.
Delete