If you look back through recent history the US had poured billions of dollars and millions of troops into preventing the ‘spread’ of communism, from the Marshall Plan and Berlin Air Drop to Witch Hunts to the Korean and Vietnam wars, as well as the actual Cold War itself.
My question is: why? Why had the US government devoted itself to stop communism for the past 50 years? Why should it concern them what style of government other countries have? Is it because the US is run by big business, or thinks the Russians are ‘bad’? Does it justify the enormous effort made by the government to stop communism?
Note: this is an honest question, not an excuse to bash America.
It’s more matter of opinion than factual, so I hope GD is a better home than GQ for this thread.
Well, Communism(at least in the form it took in the 20th century) is one of the most oppressive forms government mankind has come up with, and was very expansionistic as well. Areas that that the Soviet Union did manage to force Communism still have a much lower standard of living when compared to similar areas - look at West Germany vs East Germany, or North and South Korea - the US protected areas ended up much better off. Had the US not fought communism, then lots more areas would have ended up in similiar conditions. Futhermore, if communism wasn’t contained, then eventually it would pose a direct threat to the US.(Well, direct in a different matter than ICBM’s)
I don’t think the actual problem was so much communism (though that was CERTAINLY a large threat to American business when it first came about right up until, oh, WWII) as the Stalinist Soviet state, which was a perversion thereof. Lacking religious ideology to ignite on, Communism was the obvious next step down. Frankly, if the USSR had been totally capitalist, they would have found something else to catch on to. The issues were much more social and economic competition than anything else - the MAIN problem was the USSR’s intent to spread their version of communism around the globe, and America’s intent to defend its interests abroad. In many ways, if you go around and replace the word “terrorist” in the past 3 years with “communist” you get the same thing.
Another reason was the large numbers of refugees from Communist countries that came here. I’m not even forty and had several of them in my life: my aunt’s family who had fled Hungary in the 50’s, one Chinese classmate and roommate who had had her education ruined by the Cultural Revolution and had to start college at 32, and another roommate who had been a Vietnamese boat person. The human cost of Communism was living among us every day. We also watched as country after country fell behind the Iron Curtain after the Second World War. Any other country that could be saved from this was something we were prepared to make alliances with dubious people and/or use our wealth, generated by every principle the Communists preached against, to help.
Just a sidebar, not to confuse the issue, but it is amazing how many people equate Communism with Socialism and Democracy with Capitalism. One is a governing system and the other an economic system. I have often been called a socialist when I talk about economic and social reforms, which sometimes is accurate, tho I dont believe capitalism it totally flawed. But when I get called a Communist I am reminded of the ignorance we are fighting (at least since 1973) ;). Point being that it is easy to incite anti socialist rehtoric by using anti-communistic patriotism as a strike point. It is true, communism is a very oppressive form of governing a society. But we have yet to note the oppressiveness of capitalism in an economically driven global society
The fact that communists supported insurgencies in colonial holdings like africa, southeast asia, latin america, etc. played a major role im sure.
Also, the communists generally considered wealthy developed countries to be the oppressor, so perhaps we became enemies by default.
I know that there was some talk of overthrowing the USSR after WW2 among Allied generals but i never found out what their motivation was. Perhaps it was just as much anti-USSR & anti-stalinism sentiment as it was anti-communism, and the two got confused.
I think much of it had to do with Truman’s opinion of Stalin. Truman hated Stalin. Since, Khrushchev wasn’t much better, there was a natural animosity between the USA and the USSR.
I think I may have been a bit harsh in saying “Truman hated Stalin.” I think it is safe to say Truman felt betrayed by the puppet governments set up in all of Eastern Europe after WWII. Truman had agreed with Stalin that governments would allow the Communist party, but Truman expected the situation to be somewhat like Western Europe after the war with a mix of Socialist, Communist, and other parties in the governments of Eastern Europe.
Actually, three are economic systems and only one, Democracy, is a political system. Communism has never been able to be implemented in any country that did not have some type of one-party totalitarian political system to support it. So, I would say that the fear of communism is more related to the political system it requires for its existence.
Indeed. Russia’s economy has declined greatly since the transition to capitalism, but this is generally not looked at, since they are now democratic.
As for USA meddling with other people’s countries, I see it as part of the American history: not only because of WWI and WWII, but because of the nation built up by an eclectic european mix: representing a lot of ethnicities, USA act as a world police of sorts.
I’d say that in practice the difference between capitalism and communism, in terms of its effects on the people, is harder to define that you’d expect.
Also, if commentators such as Chomsky are to be given any credit, “halting the threat of communism” is analogous in its effects to “the war on terrorism”
Technically, communism has never ‘existed’ at all, in the sense of being the governing ideology of an entire nation-state. None of the “Communist” states ever progressed to the final stage of Marx’s model- true communism, where the machinery of the state ‘withers’ and everything becomes hunky-dory.
Why? Because the machinery remains necessary until capitalism has collapsed worldwide, because the naked communist state would be defenseless against Western agitators.
It would seem that growing up without the horrors of communism causes people to look back on the time period rather naively. Back in the 50-80s the Soviets were considered a very real threat. Stalin killed millions of his own people through terror and mismanagement. He had occupied most of Eastern Europe. The Soviets had a massive army and were stockpiling thousands of nuclear weapons.
It is irrelevant that Soviet “Communism” isn’t true communism in the hippy freak-o sense of the word. It was considered a threat because it was a system that replaced freedom with a totalitarian nation state where all things were controlled by the Communist party.
Calls for revolution that advocate replace more tolerant and moderate systems with totalitarian or fundamentalist systems should be alarming.
That’s because it sucks as a system. It’s a natural counterbalance of nature that those who most advocate true communist systems are usually the people who are the least threat to a capitalist system. It’s because a more efficient system for allocating scare resources has never been found.
To set the record straight, both the US and the USSR sponsored insurgencies and coups across the world. Many governments were toppled, some of them legitimate ones. Conversely, both sides propped up despicable regimes for their own benefit.
