Reds.
The Communist October 1917 Russian Revolution overthrew what had been a corrupt Czarist regime and doing so, captured the worldwide intelligencia’s imagination.
Liberation from history’s “Devine Right of Kings” tyranny comes in two basic forms, defined by philosopher Isaiah Berlin in 1958 as “positive liberty” and “negative liberty.” “Positive liberty" is freedom "to do" certain things; “negative liberty” is freedom "from" things (especially government power). Positive liberty is idealistic, associated with grand political dreams from great minds, from Hegel, Rousseau, Marx. Positive liberty says: "I know what’s best for you.” Positive liberty would if necessary overcome negative liberty’s God-given protective rights, rights enshrined in America’s Bill of Rights. Positive liberty is, at its worst, totalitarian.
Negative liberty’s "from" is the 1776 American revolution. Positive liberty’s "to do" is both the 1789 French revolution and the 1917 Russian revolution. It’s Communism, carrying out the grand dreams of great minds.
Enduring the 1929-40 Great Depression, the U.S. suffered economic collapse. By contrast, the Soviet Union under Stalin’s “Socialism in One Country” created an administrative-command system that insulated its economy from capitalism’s external shocks. The U.S.S.R. underwent rapid economic growth and industrial transformation. Following a “Five Year Plan” deliberate development strategy to generate rapid industrialization, executed by administrative actions rather than markets, the Soviet economy went from private ownership in agriculture and small-scale industry to almost total state ownership, from producing agricultural products and industrial raw materials to manufacturing heavy industrial products, transforming Russia from a predominantly rural society to an urban society.
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| Heroic Soviet Union: Dr. Zhivago’s daughter working new hydroelectric dam. |
This Soviet transformation had a profound impact on American intellectuals. By 1936, the Communist Party USA’s front units supported President Roosevelt and Democrats as the lesser of two evils. Party members also rallied to the defend the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), with many going to Spain with Party backing to join the Lincoln Brigade. Intellectually, the Popular Front period saw the development of a strong Communist influence on American intellectual and artistic life.
The U.S.S.R. won World War II, their spies captured the A-Bomb secret, Communists gained China, Soviets developed the H-Bomb, launched the first satellite, advanced Socialism throughout the Third World, orbited the first man in space, emerging as our Superpower rival. Between 1956 and 1980, the Soviets won 5 of 7 Summer and 6 of 7 Winter Olympics.
During the 1946-91 Cold War with the U.S.S.R. our chief enemy, Soviet Communism was out of fashion in America, even as revolutionary “Red” appeared on the American left behind Castro’s Cuba 🇨🇺, Mao’s China 🇨🇳, and especially Ho Chi-Minh’s Vietnam 🇻🇳.
By the 1980s Soviet Communism was dying.
Look closer at the Harris/Walz team, rising up from the 2024 Democratic Party Convention.
Sen. Harris, Iowa, November 22, 2019 (@32:33):
“So for any drug, if they fail to play by our rules, [] I will snatch their patent, so that we will take over. Yes we can do that, yes, yes we can do that, yes we can do that! It’s the question of do you have the will to do it. I have the will to do it.”
Tim Walz said during a school lesson on China's communist system in November 1991:
Chinese communism “means that everyone is the same and everyone shares. The doctor and the construction worker make the same. The Chinese government and the place they work for provide housing and 14 kg or about 30 pounds of rice per month. They get food and housing."
As one avid reader posted, “absolutely genius”. I don’t think I have ever seen anything like it!
ReplyDeleteexcellent historial background
ReplyDeleteExcellent analysis, as far as it goes. But your analysis is flawed by its presentation. Positive and negative liberty give you a framework to fault communism, rightly so, but there is no room for the other extreme, fascism from the right. The danger for us, for democracy, is from the extreme--right or left. The dangers of the right, white nationalism, anti-Semitism, racial cleansing, war, police state and Gestapo tactics, demagogic rule, are every bit as real as those from the left.
DeleteThe answer is for those people who center themselves against both extremes and resist demonizing one extreme while taking refuge in the arms of the other.
I suggest Eric Hoffer's classic, The True Believer, or if not that, then this line from the ancient Keener's Manual:
"Interest is the key to life, interest in the clue.
Interest is the drum and fife, and any God will do."
To Gary L: Jews Berlin and Arendt ( -- she a refugee from Nazi Germany!) both saw the "freedom to do" as dangerous from the right or left. The word "Totalitarianism" covers both threats. I apologize for not making that clear in my discussion of Communism. Hoffer also there, with much of his focus on Communism, as you imply.
ReplyDelete