Let us remember Stalin, Mao, Kim, Ceaușescu, Honecker, and others like them. Think of how much misery they created and oversaw, not to mention the loss of life under their regimes. It is totally right to declare “good riddance” forever to these communist regimes. My only concern is that once we lose sight of this bygone past, we then get stuck in a constricted present, with no clear vision for the future.
Capitalism is not perfect. After all, what is? As a professor of mine, Dr. Frederick Neuhouser, stated, in a capitalist regime, “everything has its price.” Even human beings can be sold on the market, like so many heads of cattle, or bushels of wheat. An essential aspect of human existence is deformed and degraded under these conditions. We should be careful not to think, nor to act, in this way. Still, it could be worse!
Today, those in the United States live in a socialist economy. Let me explain. In pure capitalism, the government owns nothing. In pure communism, the government owns everything. In the U.S., the government owns certain industries: health care, defense, Social Security... This is not a bad thing. A social safety net is what our country needs, especially when capitalism leaves people behind, as the Robber Barons did.
It is true that the Marxist predictions of the downfall of capitalism did not happen. And let us rejoice in that. Lenin claimed, “History will not forgive us tomorrow if we do not act today!” According to my Professor Richard Pipes, an expert on the Russian Revolution, it was not a People’s movement featuring an overthrow of the old regime by the masses, but rather a brazen power grab by a tiny minority: the Red Bolsheviks.
Communist agitators are dangerous. They cannot be reasoned with. You cannot sit at the same table with them and hash out your differences in a dispassionate manner. China spilled blood for North Korea; the U.S. spilled blood for South Korea. Nobody is going home anytime soon. If the U.S. and U.N. had not intervened during the Korean War, the entire peninsula would have been united under the Red Flag.
In a communist utopia, one could hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and critique literature in the evening, all without being a hunter, fisher, or literary critic. But that vision turned out to be hell on earth. Instead of a classless society, the Communist Party simply replaced the old. And instead of the invisible hand of capitalism, a centrally planned economy that could not even feed its own people.
True, the Marxist experiment failed and failed badly. But at least the attempt was made. We cannot fault them for trying! It certainly was not the best of times when Russians and Americans were suspicious of and hated each other. But at least we knew where we stood on the issues, and chances for reconciliation existed. Now that Soviet Russia has faded away into the history books, capitalism is its own worst enemy.
Let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater just yet. Marxism’s critique of capitalism is cogent. The lessons of Marxism teach us what not to do, if not necessarily what to do. Let us remember the past, take stock of the present, and move forward to a better future. We owe that to the countless men and women who suffered and perished under regimes that were hypocritical, unjust, and cruel.
J.J.
www.jasonjjpark.com