Why was Communism so scary?

Great Debates
101

[QUOTE=Shodan]
Because it sounds plausible. It seems to be a natural human failing to think that prices are something that can be set by fiat. Add to that the habit of assuming that middlemen play no useful role in the economy and that risk management is a worthless pursuit, and “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” starts to sound good. Especially since it is so obvious that I need everything I want.
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Well, and it’s also because, lets face it, in the industrialized world at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century (and most of the other countries where Communism got popular), living and working conditions for the average person tended to suck. There was a lot of exploitation and a lot of human misery there. So, when the Communists come along and call for justice; when they say that we have to overthrow the system where the people who own everything are exploiting you for profit, and replace it with one where there won’t be any more exploitation, where you’ll get a decent standard of living for the work you do, that starts to sound pretty good.

102

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
It’s worth asking, though, why so many tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people were so drawn to it around the turn of the century. What conditions made it look so appealing? To what degree have the conditions changed, and to what degree is it just that Communism no longer looks like an appealing alternative?

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A hundred years ago, people outside the upper class sometimes had it kind of rough.

Most people found work on farms, in factories, mines, etc. Not the safest or easiest jobs. It was easy to point to the hazards and shortcomings of that kind of economy, and to blame them on the capitalist system (rather than on the lack of education and economic sophistication that made capitalism of that era so unwieldy). No one back then seems to have had much realistic imagination about the fact that the economy, left to itself, would evolve to greater and greater sophistication, so it was easy for them to believe that they had a binary choice between toiling in the capitalist farm and factory system forever or making a historic break and creating an entirely new system of communal farms and factories (again, note that communism was always kind of romantic and old fashioned in the types of “labor” that it envisioned being important).

The populations of the countries that went commie were also stratified – not only economically, but educationally. Id dispute the notion that “hundreds of millions” were “drawn” to communism – the more likely pattern is that the bright local boy went off to school in Paris, filled himself up with indignation and Marxist doctrine at university, and came back and by hook or by crook beguiled, strongarmed, whatever the befuddled peasantry into accepting his Glorious Revolution of the People. Communist governments were imposed, not built from the grassroots.

Finally, people a hundred years ago believed some odd things. Think of all the stupid patent medicines, think of spiritualism, eugenics. Communism was just one of the too-stupid-to-believe theories that lots of people believed. “You mean after ten thousand years of wanting property and autonomy human nature is going to change overnight to surrender both? You’ve sold me.”

103

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Jesus, you’ll pull out of context, manipulate, or lie any time just in order to make your point, won’t you?
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[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Otherwise you go pound sand.
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Moderator’s Warning: Stranger On A Train, accusing another poster of lying is not allowed in this forum; nor are personal attacks in general. If you can’t continue to debate the posts and not attack the poster, please open a thread in the Pit.

104

[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
Communists had a little bit of influence in American labor before the war. After the war, most labor leadership turned decidedly anti-Communist, and labor unions were decertified if they were too leftist. The AFL-CIO leadership enthusiastically supported this, replacing radical unions with their own moderate ones with the support of industry.

George Meany hated Communists. So did Walter Reuther. So did Lane Kirkland. Ronald Reagan emerged from this labor environment a dedicated anti-Communist, and would take this conviction to a couple of other jobs.
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Communist Party USA - Wikipedia May not be like you remember.

105

Communist regimes have certainly been involved in mass murders. But I don’t really think it’s a specific aspect of communism. Most totalitarian regimes tend to use mass murder as a tool to suppress dissent - communist, fascist, theocratic, or whatever.

106

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Communist Party USA - Wikipedia May not be like you remember.
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Let’s actually read your cite:

107

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Communist regimes have certainly been involved in mass murders. But I don’t really think it’s a specific aspect of communism. Most totalitarian regimes tend to use mass murder as a tool to suppress dissent - communist, fascist, theocratic, or whatever.
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Well, at least fascism is honest about it:

Fascism: let us goose-step to glory and crush our enemies beneath our jackboots!
Communism: let us built a workers paradise of peace and plenty!

I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot either one of them, mind you.

108

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot either one of them, mind you.
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:stuck_out_tongue: !!

-XT

109

Well, I suppose that’s one way to show how highly you hold the sanctity of human life.

110

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Communist regimes have certainly been involved in mass murders. But I don’t really think it’s a specific aspect of communism.
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That’s very true, just like terrorism is not a specific aspect of Islam and genocidal crusades are not an aspect of Christianity. Ideals get corrupted by the “less than pure.” I think communism and capitalism are both great in theory, but I’ve yet to see an absolutely pure form of either one work out well, or at least as well as people would like.

111

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Well, I suppose that’s one way to show how highly you hold the sanctity of human life.
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Heck, you should hear me argue about abortion and capital punishment. I’m actually pretty casual on the whole “human life” thing.
As a minor bit of clarification, I’m not gearing up for my own personal commie-hunts (or fascist-hunts), but I am a member of the Canadian Forces Reserve, so it’s remotely conceivable that one day I might actually have to shoot some fascists or communists. Meantime, I’m not posing, nor planning to, for any Lee Harvey Oswald backyward photos.

112

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Well, and it’s also because, lets face it, in the industrialized world at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century (and most of the other countries where Communism got popular), living and working conditions for the average person tended to suck. There was a lot of exploitation and a lot of human misery there. So, when the Communists come along and call for justice; when they say that we have to overthrow the system where the people who own everything are exploiting you for profit, and replace it with one where there won’t be any more exploitation, where you’ll get a decent standard of living for the work you do, that starts to sound pretty good.
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That’s true enough.

Also, the upper ranks opposed, often violently, many of the things we now see as common sense and wise. Almost always on the grounds of “I don’t want to pay for it, your taxes will ruin me”, which is almost never true. Despite constant gloom and doom prophecies about how the latest Common Good laws will break the rich and destroy our society, they’ve never come true.

Companies didn’t want to pay a minimum wage, they didn’t want to pay health insurance, they didn’t want to stop employing children, they didn’t want to invest in safety measures…all these things would destroy their industries and break them financially. But all those industries still exist, and they make a profit.

Energy and mining companies don’t want to invest in equipment to reduce pollution. When new laws are proposed, they fiercely oppose them as being too costly, intrusive, etc. (One of the funniest damn things I’ve ever heard out of one of those “The Market Solves Everything” types a few years back was a bullshit claim that pollution regulations were completely unnecessary, because “Market Forces” were responsible for all of the pollution reduction in the last few decades.)

Now applying this to a Communist (Authoritarian) System: Who speaks for the Environment? What incentive is there to reduce pollution? What incentive is there to make anything but the most basic of worker support improvements?

True enough, from the shithole of the 19th century Industrial apparatus, the improvements promised by Communism were extremely attractive to the common man. But the improvements actually won by Free People in the last 100 years make the Communist promises pale in comparison. That’s not “Market Forces” or Capitalism, it’s the Power of Democracy and Representative Government.

113

[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
I think communism and capitalism are both great in theory, but I’ve yet to see an absolutely pure form of either one work out well, or at least as well as people would like.
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Capitalism is easier to tweak, though, by adding some well-established concepts:
[ul][li]Taxation - requiring citizens to kick into public coffers in proportion to their ability to do so (i.e. the rich pay more) but nobody is (or should be) made to suffer through taxation where they have to work harder just to pay taxes, or choose between starving and paying taxes, or have to sell of property just to pay taxes, etc.[/li][li]Charity - giving money to help the poor, weak, the starving, etc. in westernized democracies, this can be in the form of social security, medicaid, medicare, any number of entitlement programs, actually, supported by taxes.[/li][li]Public works - building and maintaining things for common use and benefit, including roads, airports, seaports, schools, a military, etc. also supported by taxation.[/ul][/li]
These take much of the edge off a capitalist society. Innovative and energetic individuals can still get rich meeting an unexpected demand for goods and services. In fact, it’s good if they do because they pay more in taxes.

The communist equivalent, though, is to tolerate some degree of free marketing when the planned economy fails. If Region A is short of bootlaces, it’s not a stretch that someone will realize that hauling surplus bootlaces from Region B to Region A will be useful. This gets labeled as a black market and is tolerated as long as local party officials find it useful, but shutting it down doesn’t require court orders - just a visit from the secret police.

China is struggling in the pro-market direction. I just hope that when another crackdown is attempted, many more individuals are willing stand in front of tanks.
Anyway, that’s my off-the-cuff take on it.

114

[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
Let’s actually read your cite:
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Did you completely read it or are you looking for a loophole. It is clear that communists were prevalent in the early union movement.
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/cpproject/grijalva.htm They were an important part of the union philosophy which helped create the middle class.

115

[QUOTE=Chimera]
That’s true enough…

…the improvements actually won by Free People in the last 100 years make the Communist promises pale in comparison. That’s not “Market Forces” or Capitalism, it’s the Power of Democracy and Representative Government.
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Well said, Chimera. I agree 100%.

116

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
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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Yup. I realized that watching Moscow doesn’t believe in tears, back in 1980. The movie is made in the USSR, and when it depicts what’s supposed to be “modern and upper class,” the music and clothes are outdated; the “spacious flat” would have fitted into ours several times…

I walked out of the theater saying “if that’s what the Russians sell when they’re trying to say how good they have it, I don’t want to see the un-glossed-over reality!”

117

I recently read Chris Dodd’s book which is comprised of letter’s his dad wrote home to his wife from the Nuremburg trials. He was certain the US would be at war with the Russians within 10 years or so. He had more disdain for them than the Nazi’s he was prosecuting.

118

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Did you completely read it or are you looking for a loophole. It is clear that communists were prevalent in the early union movement.
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/cpproject/grijalva.htm They were an important part of the union philosophy which helped create the middle class.
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I certainly read it.

Listen, frankly I could give you an education about this - my grandfather was involved in the steelworker’s union from the SWOC days. Gus Hall was organizing for the steelworkers union up in Youngstown at that time - he would later go on to lead the Communist Party, USA.

But Gus Hall never led a labor union, did he? And my grandfather never became anything more radical than a Democrat. Same as those labor leaders I mentioned above - indeed, one of them even got elected president as a Republican.

Communists were always a marginal force in American politics, and they were marginal int he labor movement as well. They became more marginalized after they were purged from the movement. And frankly, it is for the best that they were run out of labor - it led to labor’s greater acceptance in American politics and shop floors both.

119

[QUOTE=MEBuckner]
Moderator’s Warning: Stranger On A Train, accusing another poster of lying is not allowed in this forum; nor are personal attacks in general. If you can’t continue to debate the posts and not attack the poster, please open a thread in the Pit.
[/QUOTE]
You are, of course, correct; I allowed my frustration to color my prose. I will withdrawal from the thread so as not to further perturb the discussion.

Stranger

120

[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
I certainly read it.

Listen, frankly I could give you an education about this - my grandfather was involved in the steelworker’s union from the SWOC days. Gus Hall was organizing for the steelworkers union up in Youngstown at that time - he would later go on to lead the Communist Party, USA.

But Gus Hall never led a labor union, did he? And my grandfather never became anything more radical than a Democrat. Same as those labor leaders I mentioned above - indeed, one of them even got elected president as a Republican.

Communists were always a marginal force in American politics, and they were marginal int he labor movement as well. They became more marginalized after they were purged from the movement. And frankly, it is for the best that they were run out of labor - it led to labor’s greater acceptance in American politics and shop floors both.
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Wrong some more ,you are. My family was involved in union activities ,first in mining and then later in Detroit. The day my dad was born ,there was a union meeting in a church. The mining company closed up the church burning it down and killed every man woman and child in the building. If my grandpa wasn’t with my grandmother at the time we would have been wiped out. If a company sees you as a threat to their right to exploit, they will have you killed. I do not see corporations as benign.
In Detroit my family was at the Battle of the Overpass ,and many other battles when Fords goons beat and killed the union organizers. They were involved in the union all their lives. My grandmother died at the age of 95 and voted Socialist or Communist every time she could. I know what price many paid to get a shorter work week, vacation pay,safer working conditions and the benefits that todays workers take for granted. As unions die the benefits will dry up.
Many of the workers who started the IWW, Wobblies, etcetera were anarchists and socialists. They had many communists involved in the organizations.