Editorial -- The Problem With Communism

No, the person who disagrees with you on policy is not a Communist. Communism refers to a specific ideology and process. While Communism purports to be for the little guy (Dictatorship of the Proletariat), there are many aspects of it that are totally antithetical to our way of life.

Communism asserts that Capitalism is not sustainable as a system. In other words, it drives the poorer classes off the land and into a state of complete dependence on the whims of the wealthy elites for food, clothing, and housing. The only responsibility for capitalists is to keep us peons barely alive so that we can keep the profits coming for the capitalists. All these assertions have some truth to them. There are gigantic multinational corporations and bosses who refuse to treat employees like human beings. 

The problem with Communism is with its solutions. First, it calls for mob violence against the state and the ruling classes. The problem with that is that it is too easy for it to spread over to innocent parties. Secondly of all, it envisions a transition state which owns everything, which will turn into a stateless utopia where everyone will be happy.

But what Communism envisions is an impossibility. That is because every gargantuan enterprise, Communist or not, will take on a life on its own and find every excuse in the world to justify its existence. For instance, friends of the Pentagon, which is burning through $800 billion of our taxpayer dollars every year, are happy to whip up hysteria against Russia, China, or other people they deem to be enemies to justify the continuation of the gravy train.

And instead of transitioning into the stateless utopia envisioned by Karl Marx, the USSR, under Stalin, transformed itself into a gigantic bureaucracy which actively sought to suppress and destroy dissent. Millions of people were killed who Stalin and his henchmen deemed to be enemies of the working class. The killing could not go on indefinitely, so the USSR stagnated for decades before devolving, not into the stateless utopia envisioned by the architects of Communism, but into an oligarchy, in which power is concentrated into the hands of a few oligarchs. Think of Bill Gates, George Soros, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffet directly controlling the reigns of power in DC.

China, which adopted market-based reforms in the 1970’s and 1980’s following the death of Mao, and which mended fences with the US for a time, is undergoing a slower devolution, but it, too, is transitioning into an oligarchy. 

And on top of that, Karl Marx opposed many things that we take for granted. For instance, he opposed private property. In his own words, “In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” He tries to split hairs by saying that Communism is not about the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of what he calls “Bourgeois property.” But the problem is, how do we define it? If a Marxist government were to take over the US, for instance, where do we draw the line? Would, say, Country Corners have to shut down because it depends on the labor of people to stay open? Or Snakebite? Or Casey’s? Or just bigger stores like Wal-Mart?

Under Communism, instead of everyone owning their own houses and growing their own food and making their own living, everything would be planned by the state. Everything would be subordinate to the needs of the state. For instance, Hy-Vee would be owned by the state, and whether or not it would still have stores in Grant City or Maryville or Mount Ayr would be dependent on the whims of the government, not on the values and the bottom line of the company. 

Marx also supported the abolition of the family. He believed it was where patriarchy and capitalism worked in tandem to produce new workers. While it is now a minority view in leftist circles, it is still held by some. Soviet dissident Boris Pasternak wrote the book, “Dr. Zhivago,”and one of his themes was how Soviet policy separated families.

Marx also supported the abolition of the church. He viewed religion as the opium of the masses, and religious worship was actively suppressed in the USSR and China. Walter Ciszek, a Polish-American priest, did clandestine missionary work in the USSR between 1941 and 1963. For that, he was imprisoned for 15 years before finally being released. He wrote a riveting account of his work, entitled, “With God in Russia.”

We feel that everyone should own their own house and property, grow their own food, run their own business, and be given the resources they need to succeed. The government’s function is to be big enough to help people in need and small enough to stay out of peoples’ lives. A government which does not trust its people to determine what is best for their own lives is one that will become less and less free. That is why Communism is not sustainable.