Why was Communism so scary?

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Yeah, but it was surprising to pretty much everyone just how quickly it came apart. In the span of about 18 months, half of Europe went from being an empire effectively ruled from Moscow to IKEA-buying, Big Mac-eating, Gap-wearing, Chuck Norris-watching, money grubbing imperialists; there was virtually no support for Communist ideology at any level, even among the upper crust leftist intellectuals, and even moderate economic socialism held a waning view (although people being human, they still wanted stuff for free). Communism was held together with bailing wire and cheap Russian duct tape, the kind that peels away when the humidity gets above 70%. It turns out that instead of broadcasting about how great freedom is over Voice Of America and threatening nuclear retaliation we should have been bombing Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with People magazine and Duran Duran videos.

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I think most of them knew about the West. When there was a route to escape, those who took it started pouring out, and clearly those who didn’t wanted to. I think liberalization was helped by the realization that if they didn’t, no one would be left.
However bad the Soviet economy was, there were plenty of people in the West who had good reason to make them seem stronger - for bigger defense budgets, for one thing. Plus, you don’t need a thriving economy to launch missiles. We were lucky that when the cracks became too big to ignore there was someone in charge whose reaction was toward freedom, not oppression.

The fall of the Iron Curtain and the transition in South Africa are two events I don’t remember being predicted by any sf story. Most that I can recall had South Africa achieving black rule by bloodshed.

I just remembered one. There was a novel about WW III taking place in the late '90s, written by a British general and a committee. (I can give the title when I get home.) The War ended with the exchange of bombs of two cities (Birmingham and Kiev, I think) after which the Eastern bloc collapsed much like it actually did. The authors recognized that the Warsaw Pact was papier-mâché. When I read it before the fall, it seemed unduly optimistic, but they got it right.

42

[QUOTE=Frank]
Look back on the prevalance of Christianity in the national culture of the 50s and 60s. Even Jews, though tolerated, couldn’t join most country clubs. Atheism was meant to be derogatory, meant to be an accusation.
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So if Communism had a state religion, say Eastern Orthodox, everything would’ve been hunky dory?

I was asking whether atheism was a contributing factor, or the foundation, as Der Trihs was arguing. Assuming you knew that, I take it you agree with him?

ETA: It just occurred to me that it may depend on who and what groups within the U.S. we’re talking about here. Obviously the general populace (which the OP seems most concerned about) probably had different reasons than the Washington folks. It seems to me that those in power might’ve pushed the atheist thing because of what you mentioned (and that said powers probably didn’t care that much about it themselves), but that still leaves me with the question of where the majority of the weight belongs.

43

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Josip Broz ‘Tito’ managed not to kill many people; aside from a little bit of political suppression (largely over ethnic issues which later tore the nation apart in the post-Communist era) Yugoslavia was largely free of the kind of human rights abuses found behind the Iron Curtain. Of course, Yugoslavia withdrew from the Warsaw Pact early on, engaged in liberal economic and social relations with the West, and Tito rarely missed a chance to thumb his nose at the Russians.

Fascist pig!

Stranger
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IIRC, though, Tito was actually one of our allies, believe it or not. If only because he was anti-Russian.

I had a professor who defected from Russia, who had previously been sent to Siberia. I believe at one point, the Reds kidnapped and held his son for ransom. All because the man had owned some records produced in the US-it got blown up into a big thing. Not because the actual RECORDS were outlawed, but because gradually, he was accused of disloyalty, and being a spy.
(Strangely, though, one of his closest friends is Dr. Sergei Khruschev, son of Nikita)

44

[QUOTE=Leaper]
I was asking whether atheism was a contributing factor, or the foundation, as Der Trihs was arguing. Assuming you knew that, I take it you agree with him?
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Ah. Well, Der Trihs wasn’t arguing that it was the foundation - I don’t think, anyway.

“… also …” suggests to me that he was stating it as a contributing factor, though given his particular bugaboo, I can understand that you might interpret it differently.

And, no, if anyone argued that that was the foundation of fear, I would not agree. I do agree with anyone who argues that it was a contributing factor.

45

[QUOTE=Leaper]
So if Communism had a state religion, say Eastern Orthodox, everything would’ve been hunky dory?

I was asking whether atheism was a contributing factor, or the foundation, as Der Trihs was arguing. Assuming you knew that, I take it you agree with him?

ETA: It just occurred to me that it may depend on who and what groups within the U.S. we’re talking about here. Obviously the general populace (which the OP seems most concerned about) probably had different reasons than the Washington folks. It seems to me that those in power might’ve pushed the atheist thing because of what you mentioned (and that said powers probably didn’t care that much about it themselves), but that still leaves me with the question of where the majority of the weight belongs.
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I suspect atheism was a necessary part of consolidating all power in the State – can’t have independent loci of authority. I don’t think that atheism was the basis or inspiration for communism, of course. They were right, too, in the sense that religious groups gave them some of their biggest headaches (think of the Church is Poland, which was so difficult to suppress that the “communization” there was the least successful of any of the Eastern European satellites – or think of the Jewish refuseniks).

Another factor that I think inspired fear was that communists believed that the ends justified the means, and specifically, that subterfuge and subversion were a-okay if they advanced the People’s cause. The “Red Scare” was not an exercise in mass paranoia, and pretty much everyone accused of being a communist agent turned out to be one. Well gee, when you see an ideology that is so cunning and effective (so it seemed at the time) that they have even managed to subvert high-ranking people within your own country to be spies or sympathizers – it induces a possibly-paranoid but not crazy sense that the commies could be just days away from attempting takeover from within.

46

[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
IIRC, though, Tito was actually one of our allies, believe it or not. If only because he was anti-Russian.
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Yugoslavia was part of the Non-Aligned Movement, which allowed it, like Egypt and India, to avoid doctrinal alliances and would engage with and accept patronage from NATO or the Warsaw Pact or members thereof as benefited it. (Members of the Warsaw Pact were mostly blocked from any dealings with Yugoslavia after its break Tito’s break from the Warsaw Pact mostly out of spite and to the detriment of the USSR.) At any rate, Yugoslavia was, in contradiction to statements made by a couple of posters, a Communist nation that did not engage upon a campaign of mass murder or widespread human rights abuses; indeed, Tito’s efforts to suppress ethnic strife and get Yugoslavians to identify as one people rather than vying ethnic groups prevented the kind of wholesale slaughter that occurred after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Even its political prisoner situation was less objectionable than that of many Western nations; Goli Otok wasn’t a pleasant place, but I’d rather be sent there than Île du Diable or stuck in an Argentine prison.

Stranger

47

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Yeah, but it was surprising to pretty much everyone just how quickly it came apart. In the span of about 18 months, half of Europe went from being an empire effectively ruled from Moscow to IKEA-buying, Big Mac-eating, Gap-wearing, Chuck Norris-watching, money grubbing imperialists; there was virtually no support for Communist ideology at any level, even among
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Can’t find it offhand and can’t remember whether it was Dennis Miller or A. Whitney Brown. And I’m probably not quoting it right;

“Who’d have thought the problem with Communism would be that there was no money in it?”

Googling shows a couple of variations after the fact.

Communism, and even hard socialism, is based on an alleged “equality” that is in fact, a negative. The flawed idea that we can reduce poverty by eliminating the rich. That’s like saying that no one will starve anymore if we just kill all the fat people. Ok, maybe that’s a flawed analogy, but even so. Confiscating wealth and property doesn’t eliminate poverty, it equalizes and institutionalizes poverty by impoverishing everyone and removing incentives to create and build wealth.
By way of an example of the counter-productive nature of Communism: Time and again we’ve seen that if you put one person on each of 500 plots of land and allow them to sell what they grow, they’ll out produce the 500 people on one large plot of land who get no share of the product; every single time, and very often by quite a large margin.

I can see how that works very easily, using something I read about the first disasterous years at the Jamestown colony and thinking how I and other would act in that circumstance.

A> Community farms. Ok, someone else has to work out all the details, figure out how much we need to grow, organize the manpower, equipment and seed. I just need to show up whenever they can convince me to do so and do what I’m assigned to do. It’s up to the management to work out how to get it all done and make sure we have enough to survive. Not My Responsibility. I’ll be in the pub.

Result: Massive Starvation.

B> Private Plots (after most die off in Plan A). Oh shit. I need to grow enough to live on for the next year? Without any clue as to the weather, the yields, the Indians, storage losses, etc? Fuck everything else, I’m growing every damned thing I can grow! If you want me, I’ll be in the fields, working!

Result: Hey, we actually have enough food!

48

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
At any rate, Yugoslavia was, in contradiction to statements made by a couple of posters, a Communist nation that did not engage upon a campaign of mass murder or widespread human rights abuses; indeed, Tito’s efforts to suppress ethnic strife and get Yugoslavians to identify as one people rather than vying ethnic groups prevented the kind of wholesale slaughter that occurred after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
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Yugoslavia was certainly less repressive than the Warsaw Pact states, but it did have slave labor and reeducation camps for political dissidents, like Goli Otok, as you mentioned, there was the Bleiburg massacre after World War II, there weren’t free elections or freedom of speech, there was censorship of the press, there was wiretapping of telephones, etc.

Communist Yugoslavia wasn’t exactly a respecter of human rights; they were just better than most of the other Communist states.

49

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Communist Yugoslavia wasn’t exactly a respecter of human rights; they were just better than most of the other Communist states.
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And better than most of the other nations of the world at the time, as well. But yes, they were an outlier of Communism, and are not representative.

50

[QUOTE=even sven]
And I suppose the socialist-ish systems in Scandinavia don’t count for whatever reason.
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None of the Scandanavian countries have ever had Communist governments. Norway and Sweden have been dominated politically by Social Democratic parties, and Denmark has flipped between Social Democrats and classical Liberals. They don’t count because Social Democracy and Communism are different ideologies.

51

Communism was about the most natural enemy of the U.S. as you’re likely to find. It’s almost the antithesis of American values. Americans value freedom and individualism, and Communism was all about subverting the individual for the good of the state.

In practice, Communism led to most of the worst horrors of the 20th century. As a philosophy, it’s evil. In practice, it’s totalitarian.

Also, Communism as practiced by the Soviet Union was expansionist. The Soviets saw the world as a huge struggle between the ‘orderly, planned’ soviet ideology and the chaotic west. Kruschev banged his shoe at the United Nations and claimed “We will bury you.” The Soviets attempted to park nuclear missiles off the U.S. coast, and heavily funded the Cuban dictatorship - not just to prop up the dictatorship, but to provide them with arms for use in attempting to destabilize Central and South America and attempt to pull it into the Soviet sphere.

In addition, the Soviets were subverting American culture. They were funneling money to the various peace movements and socialist/Marxist movements in the U.S., and installing moles and spies in the U.S. government.

In addition, they were expanding through Europe, and invaded Afghanistan, and caused all kinds of trouble in the Middle East.

The fear of Communism was fully justified, if you ask me.

52

[QUOTE=Frank]
And better than most of the other nations of the world at the time, as well.
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Maybe, but not better than the non-Communist nations of Europe.

53

Frank:

Semantics. No American would have thought about a communist government’s official belief on religion if they didn’t make an issue of individual religious freedom. The USA is built on individual freedom, and freedom to worship is very, very high on that list. The root of the fear/hatred was not OFFICIAL atheism, but ENFORCED atheism.

54

[QUOTE=Voyager]

I just remembered one. There was a novel about WW III taking place in the late '90s, written by a British general and a committee. (I can give the title when I get home.) The War ended with the exchange of bombs of two cities (Birmingham and Kiev, I think) after which the Eastern bloc collapsed much like it actually did. The authors recognized that the Warsaw Pact was papier-mâché. When I read it before the fall, it seemed unduly optimistic, but they got it right.
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The Third World War, August 1985 by Sir John Hackett.

55

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]

Also, Communism as practiced by the Soviet Union was expansionist. The Soviets saw the world as a huge struggle between the ‘orderly, planned’ soviet ideology and the chaotic west. Kruschev banged his shoe at the United Nations and claimed “We will bury you.”

[/quote]

IIRC, it was later reported that he was completely shit-faced at the time.

(NOT that I’m defending him, I’m just saying that the man was a total drunk, and that’s why he was such a drama queen on that particular occassion)

True, but NOT some of the reactions (McCarthyism, Vietnam, etc).

As far as Communism vs. Fascism, they’re merely two different sides of the same coin.

56

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Maybe, but not better than the non-Communist nations of Europe.
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Well, that’s the top tier, isn’t it? Kind of unfair to compare them to a set of nations in the major leagues. The Balkan nations weren’t in the major leagues before the Iron Curtain either. Even today Eastern Europe does not compare to Western Europe. I think they did well enough by world standards, and - honestly - I’d rather have seen Tito’s authoritarianism continue - Communist or not - than what did happen.

57

[QUOTE=Frank]
Well, that’s the top tier, isn’t it? Kind of unfair to compare them to a set of nations in the major leagues. The Balkan nations weren’t in the major leagues before the Iron Curtain either. Even today Eastern Europe does not compare to Western Europe. I think they did well enough by world standards, and - honestly - I’d rather have seen Tito’s authoritarianism continue - Communist or not - than what did happen.
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I don’t think it is unfair. Yugoslavia certainly has/had more in common with the rest of Europe than it did with the rest of the world. And the reason Eastern Europe doesn’t compare to Western Europe is because of Communism; because while Western Europe was spending the last half of the 20th century enjoying political freedom, relatively free markets, and economic growth, Eastern Europe was stuck under repressive Communist dictatorships that unsuccessfully stagnated under command economies.

Obviously Tito’s autoritarianism was better than the chaos and destruction of the Yugoslav civil war (although, that mostly happened in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. Macedonia was pretty much unaffected until spillover from the Kosovo war, and Slovenia has been peaceful throughout)

58

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Yugoslavia was certainly less repressive than the Warsaw Pact states, but it did have slave labor and reeducation camps for political dissidents, like Goli Otok, as you mentioned, there was the Bleiburg massacre after World War II, there weren’t free elections or freedom of speech, there was censorship of the press, there was wiretapping of telephones, etc.

Communist Yugoslavia wasn’t exactly a respecter of human rights; they were just better than most of the other Communist states.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Maybe, but not better than the non-Communist nations of Europe.
[/QUOTE]
France? Greece? Turkey? All of these nations have had serious human rights abuses and/or lapses in legitimate democratic governance in the post-WWII Europe. Yugoslavia was pretty middle of the road in terms of a practical metric of human rights and social freedoms, even in comparison to Western Europe. It is true that it did not enjoy representative government (Tito was eventually named “President for Life”) and many of the other fundamental freedoms of (some) Western democracies, but it also diverges from the claim that Communism is equivalent to mass murder made up thread.

Stranger

59

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Also, Communism as practiced by the Soviet Union was expansionist. The Soviets saw the world as a huge struggle between the ‘orderly, planned’ soviet ideology and the chaotic west. Kruschev banged his shoe at the United Nations and claimed “We will bury you.” The Soviets attempted to park nuclear missiles off the U.S. coast, and heavily funded the Cuban dictatorship - not just to prop up the dictatorship, but to provide them with arms for use in attempting to destabilize Central and South America and attempt to pull it into the Soviet sphere.

In addition, the Soviets were subverting American culture. They were funneling money to the various peace movements and socialist/Marxist movements in the U.S., and installing moles and spies in the U.S. government.

In addition, they were expanding through Europe, and invaded Afghanistan, and caused all kinds of trouble in the Middle East.

The fear of Communism was fully justified, if you ask me.
[/QUOTE]
Let me reframe your words slightly, if you don’t mind:*Also, democracy as practiced by the United States was expansionist. The Americans saw the world as a huge struggle between the ‘profitable, free’ capitalist ideology and the centrally planned East. Reagan joked that, “I’ve just signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. The bombing begins in ten minutes.” The Americans attempted to park nuclear missiles just outside of Russia in Turkey and Italy, and heavily funded the Argentine dictatorship - not just to prop up the dictatorship, but to provide them with arms for use in attempting to destabilize Central and South America and attempt to pull it into the American sphere.

In addition, the Americans were subverting Soviet culture. They were funneling money to the various dissent movements and democratic movements in the USSR and Warsaw Pact., and installing moles and spies in the Soviet government.

In addition, they were expanding through Europe, and invaded Vietnam, and caused all kinds of trouble in the Middle East.

The fear of capitalism was fully justified, if you ask me.*There are, of course, plenty of reasons to find Communism, and most implementations of it, to be terrible and often horrific, (aside from the all-too-common human rights abuses and the toll that the economic failure of centrally planned economies takes upon societies subjected to it) but all the reasons you list can be turned right back around on that shining icon of democracy and free enterprise.

Stranger

60

And let’s not forget, that the US was involved in Latin America and supporting dictatorships back when Karl Marx was still in diapers. It had jack-all to do with communism, and everything to do with money. Sam Stone, you might want to do a little research on something called the United Fruit Company.