When I was downtown yesterday I picked up the latest copy of Victoria Street Newz. It comes out every month it seems, and is distributed on street corners by sad looking examples of Victoria's unemployable underclass. The only truthful word in this rag is in the top corner next to the title: "All the news that fits, we print." That is to say, its entire content consists of material that is kneaded, chopped and stretched to fit its Marxist philosophy. The poor sots who sell this nauseating mess have no idea that they are being used, nor do they have a clue that the policies and programs advocated in the paper will make them poorer not richer. The history of the twentieth century is largely a story of the contrasting fates of countries that fall under communist rule compared with countries that embrace private property, free enterprise and individual freedom.
Communism isn't new. Different forms of it have been tried over the centuries by differing cultures. Medieval monasticism is a form of communism, as were many of the radical religious sects that settled in North America. Hutterite communities are quite prosperous. It seems that a religiously sanctioned code of behaviour helps ensure that everybody does his share of the work.
Marxism is a modern version of communism. It is anti-religious, claiming that religion has been an instrument used to enslave "the masses." Marxists never think in terms of actual human beings, who they despise, but of the masses, who they see as a dumb herd to be manipulated.
Russia was the first nation to have the misfortune to fall under the Marxist spell. A creaking absolutist monarchy, Russia in 1917 was nevertheless a rapidly modernizing state. Public education was improving, industrialization was progressing, and the country had become an important world power. All that was to change in the wake of the First World War. Defeats on the battlefield led to civil unrest and fledgling Marxist groups were there to take advantage of the situation by taking seizing control of the Democratic government that had overthrown the Romanov tsar. After several years of fighting, Lenin's Bolsheviks emerged as victors. One of the first things they did was to hire more police to arrest anyone who objected to the dictatorship they established. But this was just the beginning.
In 1929 Stalin, who became communist party boss after the death of Lenin, instituted collectivization on the farms of Russia and the Ukraine. What this meant was that all land owned by private individuals was taken over by the state. The farms were then reorganized along communistic principles. The results of this policy weren't long in coming. By 1933 and estimated 7,000,000 Ukrainians had died of starvation on what has been one of the world's premier grain growing regions since the days of the Greeks. Some way to fight poverty.
You would think that one such example would be enough to warn the world. But no. The next Marxist triumph took place in China. Stalin's Bolsheviks were pikers compared to Mao.
The Japanese attack on China in the '30's had disrupted its society sufficiently to make it susceptible to the new disease. After the Japanese were defeated by the U.S. in 1945 a civil war in China broke out between a number of factions. The Nationalist faction, led by Chiang Kai-Shek eventually lost to the more ruthless Marxists of Mao Tse Tung. This turned out to be one of the greatest human catastrophes of all time.
"The Great Leap Forward" was the Chinese version of collectivization in the Ukraine, but Mao's results far surpassed Stalin's. Accurate figures are hard to obtain, but well-informed estimates range from 20,000,000 to 45,000,000 dead before the program ran its course. Mao's response? "When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill." It's not so much different from David Suzuki's remark that half the world's population would have to die to preserve the planet.
These facts are well known. Let me emphasize- whenever and wherever Marxists have taken power the people's paradise of their promises turns out to be the people's hell. Why, then, are there still so many apologists for Marxism, or the Marxism-light version we know as big government? It's easy to come up with explanations but hard to say if any of them are true.
Most people would rather not think of these things. After all, what can the average person do? I don't know for sure, but at the very least we should pay very close attention to the personalities who vie for office, and especially the frauds who put out propaganda like the Victoria Street Newz. I have never been able to decide if they are motivated by malice or if they are just stupid. If it's stupidity, then it at least has to be willful stupidity. If it's malice then we have to ask why they hate the human race. If they do hate the human race, then I can only postulate that it is themselves they hate. Howe strange. They claim to represent the interests of the poor. In fact they are the poor's worst enemies. To them the poor are nothing but tools for their agenda and are completely disposable. I'll try to parse the contents of the magazine in my next post.
We have had a persistently grey and dull weather pattern here in Victoria recently so I suppose it's a good time to think about these dark things.
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