In addition to being the last day of the year, today is also the twentieth anniversary of the official end of the Soviet Union, when the last Soviet government institutions shut down. Today’s quasi-authoritarian Russia is far from admirable. But, despite Mikhail Gorbachev’s lame and self-serving claims to the contrary, it is still a vast improvement over the USSR. In addition to the benefits for Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, the fall of the USSR also created important benefits for the rest of the world. I covered the many advantages of the end of the USSR in more detail in this post.
With the demise of the USSR, we were spared a regime that slaughtered millions both within and outside its borders, inflicted numerous other human rights violations, and created a threat of nuclear annihilation that hung over the entire world. Compared to that, the very real dangers of the post-Cold War world seem minor by comparison. I recognize, of course, that the USSR in the last years of Gorbachev’s reign was much less dangerous and oppressive than it had been previously. But had the regime survived, it is far from clear that Gorby’s reforms would not have been reversed. Previous episodes of Soviet liberalization in the 1920s and 1956-64 had been followed by waves of repression at home and expansionism abroad. Moreover, Gorbachev himself was not as much of a liberal democrat as he is often portrayed in the West. He used force to try to suppress the independence movement in the Baltics, and otherwise sought to preserve the Soviet regime, not end it. He was certainly much less ruthless and repressive than his predecessors. But that is judging him by a very low standard of comparison. Nonetheless, it is fortunate that Gorbachev’s efforts at limited liberalization spun out of his control and led to a beneficial outcome that he did not intend.
Matt P says:
Today is a good day.
December 31, 2011, 4:36 pmHappy End-of-the-U.S.S.R. Day! says:
[...] Somin, writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: In addition to being the last day of the year, today is also the twentieth anniversary of the [...]
December 31, 2011, 5:03 pmKazinski says:
You’re just focusing on the negative. You aren’t considering the hope it gave western leftists and intellectuals that they could leverage the might and considerable covert skills of the USSR to do the same to us here, in Europe and in third world nations around the globe.
December 31, 2011, 5:04 pmgecko says:
Although beaten soviets left a huge negative imprint not only on tinpot third world countries but also on Western discourse through infiltration and propaganda. I wonder if we would be hearing about half the batsh*t crazy leftwing ideas and shenanigans we hear about every day in Europe and America if not for their influence.
December 31, 2011, 5:12 pmKarl says:
Can’t believe it has been 20 years. Good riddance.
December 31, 2011, 5:13 pmepluribus says:
I celebrate the end of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist system. I wish Communism would also end in Cuba and North Korea and China. But I remember that the evil system was ultimately brought to its knees by the post-New Deal, post-Great Society United States and its Western European welfare-state allies that libertarians decry. If Putin’s Russia compares favorably to the Soviet system, would you also admit that the United States system of mixed free markets and government regulation compares favorably to the present Russian system?
December 31, 2011, 5:43 pmAnonimus says:
So? What’s the connection between domestic welfare policy and national security policy you’re trying to draw?
The only correlation I see is that the US security umbrella allowed the Europeans to create a lot of unsustainable welfare programs, which chickens are now coming home to roost.
December 31, 2011, 6:33 pmAnonimus says:
December 31, 2011, 6:34 pmron nord says:
It’s amazing to me that people can still call themselves a Marxist without fear of immediate condemnation; communists have murdered 10 times more that the Nazi’s ever thought of killing and yet our Universities are allowed to teach our young.
Communists and their fellow travelers are lower than child molesters or killers and I use that simile because I can think of nothing worse. Here is one such Hero of the Soviet Union: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Blokhin May those that profess to be Marxist all roast in hell.
December 31, 2011, 7:02 pmKeith Waters says:
One of the most hilarious cover stories I ever saw was in the Nation, a copy of which I still have: “How the Peace Movement Ended the Cold War.”
December 31, 2011, 7:03 pmMark N. says:
Isn’t that what more or less happened, given the repression in Russia, recurring slaughter in Chechnya, and continuing strong-man regimes in Central Asia?
I can buy that the fall of the Warsaw Pact was a significant win in freedom for Eastern Europe, and the Baltics’s independence was a significant win there, but in the rest of the ex-USSR it seems to make little difference whether you call it “Russia” or “USSR”. Given the current regime’s roots in the KGB, it’s not clear it even is ex-Soviet except in name.
December 31, 2011, 7:15 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I was about to call that headline’s claim the single most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen, but then I remembered that some people have made the same claim about Ronald Reagan.
December 31, 2011, 7:20 pmOrson says:
Amen (and I’m a lifelong atheist)!
December 31, 2011, 7:26 pmDawnsblood says:
You would have been correct had you done so. . .
December 31, 2011, 7:33 pmOrson says:
Arthur is wrong: I lived through the 1980s, and history has vindicated that indeed, Reagan era diplomats WERE aiming to end the Soviet Union. The evidence has kept growing since the ’80s.
I disbelieved it back then, but I’ve come across memoirs from that era that make it clear that the hastening of its demise through imperial overstretch and high tech advantages of the US, as well as promoting internal dissent (eg, Poland, but elsewhere too) WERE the Reaganauts objectives.
One can claim it was incidental to internal failure, but that claim looks increasing unsupported over the decades.
Furthermore, libertarians have failed to secure the knowledge problem’s preeminence to EXPLAIN the fall of communism and the Soviet Union. This failure to get the Truth taught to the young in part explains the huge and embarrassing gullibility of the young in supporting Obama – and the repeat of communist era fatuities under crony capitalist/fascist guise today.
December 31, 2011, 7:36 pmLou Gots says:
“We will bury you!” they boasted, but in the end it was we who held the shovel. Te Deum laudamus.
December 31, 2011, 7:50 pmMartinned says:
Like who? In America, last I checked there is only one nationwide politician who dares to call himself a social-democrat. (O, the horror!) I’m sure there are non-politicians who call themselves socialists, but communist or marxist? Who?
December 31, 2011, 7:59 pmLarryA says:
Regardless of which version of history you prefer, having Reagan as POTUS was vital. There are several ways a government in trouble can react, one of them being to start a war in hopes the diversion will allow it to hold together longer. Whether he made the USSR fold or not, during the critical time when the country’s wheels were falling off we were a lot better off with the Soviet military trying to stare down a cowboy Reagan than having a conciliatory Carter at the helm.
Now if we can just keep from burying ourselves…
December 31, 2011, 8:04 pmMartinned says:
Sozhenitsyn wrote some great novels, but I’m not sure that I would go around quoting him otherwise, given that in real life he was bat-shit crazy.
December 31, 2011, 8:06 pmMartinned says:
Huh? Under Carter, US-Soviet relations reached the lowest point since the Kennedy administration, because bible-thumping Carter wouldn’t recognise pragmatism if it crashed into him at 100 mph on the freeway.
December 31, 2011, 8:09 pmLee Reynolds says:
Socialist, communist, marxist, social-democrat, etc, etc, etc: distinctions without a difference.
People on the left invent multiple terms to refer to the same ideas in order to sow confusion and have a ready-made lie to hide behind. Accuse them of being what they demonstrably are and they’ll say “Oh, I’m not that, I’m this other thing (that means the same thing as what you accused them of).”
I dream of a world without them in it.
December 31, 2011, 8:18 pmSteveMG says:
A very good post about a very good day.
Thanks.
December 31, 2011, 8:22 pmAnonimus says:
Calling dissenters crazy is typical of communists.
December 31, 2011, 8:23 pmSteveMG says:
because bible-thumping Carter wouldn’t recognise pragmatism if it crashed into him at 100 mph on the freeway.
This is the same Carter who told the American people that “they must get over their inordinate fear of communism”?
Or perhaps you’re referring to another Carter? Billy? Lillian? Rosalynn? I’ll stop at three.
Hardly words of a bible-thumping anti-communist.
December 31, 2011, 8:26 pmMr. X says:
Can we finally clear at least one thing up? Putin said that what accompanied the collapse of the USSR was a tragedy, he didn’t say Russians should mourn for the Soviet Union — in fact after Yeltsin died, he said he wasn’t sure if he’d have had the guts to do what Yeltsin did (despite the fact that the murder of the USSR, or at least the final death blow, was delivered by a troika of Politburo apparatchiks representing Belarus, Ukraine and Russia at a Belarussian hunting lodge, not by plebiscite until AFTER THE FACT).
Whether Belarus would have been better off under Putvedev the last ten years instead of Lukashenko had at least those two states remained in true union, I leave to your imagination. They’re already in one state for purposes of external migration (as anyone who’s ever flown into Moscow or St. Pete would know the migration card reads ‘Russian Federation/Republic of Belarus’). Obviously all the republics that had oil and Ukraine from Kiev westward were going to go their own way, and Russia in a historic act of restraint set those people free to pursue their own destiny, though they still have to pay their natural gas bills.
I see so many lazy ‘conservatives’ claiming Putin is hellbent on restoring the USSR on the basis of a mistranslation of what he said in his 2005 state of Russia speech that it’s ridiculous.
December 31, 2011, 8:38 pmMartinned says:
I didn’t say he was an anti-communist. He just insisted on lecturing them on their human rights record, which was an undiplomatic change from the Kissinger era.
December 31, 2011, 8:42 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I choose a different approach. I hope conservatives shake off the extremists to whom they surrendered the Republican Party and regain their footing as a force for (instead of against) competence, reason, limited government, and fiscal responsibility. In my judgment (or, at least, in my experience), our country functions best when both of the major political parties are functional (competitive in the realm of reality-based ideas).
December 31, 2011, 8:45 pmR Richard Schweitzer says:
No! Not quite so.
What we are observing is a “plateau” in the plateauing-down inherent in mediocracies. We are seeing a plateau of brief consistent competency, which is producing (by its nature) further and succesive mediocrity at the points of political powers.
This too shall (fall apart) pass.
December 31, 2011, 9:19 pmA. Zarkov says:
So what did bring down the Soviet Union? Was it the “peace movement” (a vague non-specific term), Ronald Reagan, bad luck, internal contradictions, or perhaps 70 years of bad weather? One of the very few who predicted the demise was Andrei Amalrik author of Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?
Amalrik came close on the date, 1984 instead of 1991, and the war he predicted involved Afghanistan, not China. Still not bad from 1969. The western Sovietologists scoffed as they scoffed at Reagan who also expected the USSR to collapse. Unlike Amalrik Reagan could help his prediction along. The deployment of the American Pershing II missile system in Europe put immense pressure on the USSR as these missile were about 12 minutes from their targets. Then the Lockheed Skunk Works Stealth Bomber rendered the whole Soviet Strategic Radar System obsolete. The American and European peace movements did their best to help the Soviet Union by trying to prevent the Pershing deployment– to no avail. By keeping the pressure up, RR forced diplomatic concessions and their withdrawal from Afghanistan shattering the myth of the regime’s invincibility. The rest is history. I think it was a combination of factors that brought them down, but RR’s efforts were indispensable.
December 31, 2011, 9:27 pmA. Zarkov says:
Please tell us exactly what he said that was “bat shit crazy.” He had a religious outlook and thought Russia would take a long time to recover.
December 31, 2011, 9:31 pmUSSR, Twenty Years Later | MarsBlog.net says:
[...] Good riddance. [...]
December 31, 2011, 9:36 pmMartinned says:
Now there’s an understatement if I ever saw one.
December 31, 2011, 9:43 pmA. Zarkov says:
That’s what makes him bat-shit crazy?
December 31, 2011, 9:46 pmAnonimus says:
Yes, too bad they closed the gulags, right?
December 31, 2011, 9:48 pmnewrouter says:
that’s funny
December 31, 2011, 9:52 pmMartinned says:
Now you’ve really lost the plot. Or rather, I have, because I can’t make heads or tails of that response.
December 31, 2011, 10:04 pmAnonimus says:
A) I posted a quote by Solzhenitsyn.
B) You called Solzhenitsyn crazy.
C) I pointed out the fact that communists typically call dissidents crazy.
D) Communists also typically put dissidents they call crazy into gulags.
December 31, 2011, 10:15 pmMatt P says:
Failure is an orphan but success has many fathers….
December 31, 2011, 10:17 pmDonM says:
Nit pick. Lockheed-Martin developed the Stealth Fighter. Northrop, later, Northrop-Grumman developed the Stealth Bomber.
Both used radar cross section calculation methods developed by Pietor Ufemsev, a Soviet. They were thought so worthless by the nomenclatura that his work was unclassified. That worthy gentlemen eventually was able to leave Russia, and became a professor at UCLA.
December 31, 2011, 10:19 pmAnonimus says:
By “they closed the gulags” of course I meant the Soviets. You still have Cuba, China, North Korea…
December 31, 2011, 10:20 pmMartinned says:
Like who???
December 31, 2011, 10:31 pmMartinned says:
That’s not an explanation, that’s just you saying the same thing again only shorter. What do C) and D) have to do with B?
December 31, 2011, 10:34 pmAnonimus says:
For starters, International ANSWER and World Can’t Wait were heavily involved in the Iraq war protests a few years ago.
Seems straight-line obvious to me…
December 31, 2011, 10:43 pmA. Zarkov says:
The Stealth technology came out of the Skunk Works under the Have Blue program. Others did the metal bending to produce actual production aircraft.
It was Skunk Works mathematician Denys Overholser who read the DOD translation of Ufimtsev’s book, Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction, and realized the significance of the work. To avoid classification, Ufimtsev had buried the core idea in a sea of abstractions. Overholser then convinced his bosses to pursue stealth technology and the rest is history. The U.S. mathematician J. B. Keller (Courant Institute) came up with something similar (I think) with his “geometrical theory of diffraction.” Stealth technology was going to happen one way or another. I should not have written that the Skunk Works made the Stealth bomber– their output was a proof of principle. But the fact remains, stealth technology came from the Skunk Works.
December 31, 2011, 10:54 pmBorealis says:
Maybe the USSR and nuclear war was scary, but today we face the end of the world as proven by computer models. Within a few centuries, the sea will rise a few feet and the weather will change. All weather changes will be bad — hotter, colder, drier, wetter, whatever makes it worse in a particular place.
We only need 50X the effort that won WWII, or 100X the effort that won the cold war, in order to change the predictions of the computer models. Why is that so hard to get? The whole world was united against the Nazis and the Commies, so why not against CO2?
December 31, 2011, 10:57 pmA. Zarkov says:
Give me the specific text that makes Solzhenitsyn “bat-shit crazy.” You pointed to his whole Harvard speech. Give me the place in that speech that you think qualifies him as being crazy.
December 31, 2011, 10:58 pmU.Va. Grad says:
Are we talking about the same Stephen Jay Gould who said that while his father was a Marxist, he himself was not a Marxist?
December 31, 2011, 11:04 pmA. Zarkov says:
Carbon is your friend. Without carbon modern civilization would be impossible because it needs cheap energy and liquid fuels with high energy density.
Carbon today, carbon tomorrow– carbon forever.
December 31, 2011, 11:08 pmA. Zarkov says:
The same Gould who had a picture of Lenin on the wall in front of his desk.
December 31, 2011, 11:09 pmMark N. says:
I wouldn’t say specifically “crazy”, but the speech is definitely suspicious of capitalism, even explicitly analogizing its ills to the ills of communism, arguing that commerce and party-dictatorship are both problems, and similar problems at that, as both suffocate spirituality.
From that speech:
We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.
December 31, 2011, 11:18 pmJohn Cunningham says:
Martinned says:
ron nord: It’s amazing to me that people can still call themselves a Marxist without fear of immediate condemnation
Like who? In America, last I checked there is only one nationwide politician who dares to call himself a social-democrat. (O, the horror!) I’m sure there are non-politicians who call themselves socialists, but communist or marxist? Who? (Quote)
December 31, 2011, 11:47 pmHow about Van Jones, former White House energy czar, leading force among ACORN? Bill Ayers, advisor and political mentor to Comrade Urkel? Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, admitted Communist terrorist murderers and pals of Ugo Chavez?
Angela Davis, a professor at UCLA? Working Family Party of New York, which claims publicly to be non-Commie, a transparent lie..
Steverino says:
I wouldn’t expect a child of the Bolshevik revolution to form a valid criticism of capitalism. Only a criticism of what he heard about capitalism.
What could anyone expect Solzhenitsyn to know about capitalism? It seems to me he was an astute observer of what happens to the soul during the long, dark night of oppression.
He was there. He wrote about it. He wasn’t everything to everyone, but that hardly adds up to “batshit crazy.”
January 1, 2012, 1:00 amChrisTS says:
Well, Hapy New Year, nonetheless.
January 1, 2012, 1:25 amGil says:
Who are the Marxists? Those who aren’t Libertarians and turning Europe and the U.S.A. into Soviet states. The tumour was the U.S.S.R may have been mostly destroyed it has still mestastising to much of the world.
On the other hand, maybe Solzhenitsyn was crazy like George Orwell in that he was Socialist but a different kind from the Soviets.
January 1, 2012, 5:41 amFederal Dog says:
“Like who???”
I thought virtually everyone went to college these days. Did you?
January 1, 2012, 6:33 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Did not realize The Gulag Archipelago was a novel.
But putting that aside, to dismiss a person who wrote The First Circle calling on his own experiences and the stories people told him first-hand as a good novelist is extremely telling.
January 1, 2012, 8:09 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Happy New Year, Chris.
January 1, 2012, 8:10 amDan Smith says:
Someone please educate me. Pretend I am reading this posting, and I am in 1984.
Don’t the Russians still have all their nuclear weapons? Don’t they control the nuclear weapons on the former Soviet territories? Aren’t they still pointed at us?
How is this significantly better?
Thank you.
January 1, 2012, 8:51 amrarango says:
Professor Somin–good of you to remember–thank you. Seems to be irrelevant who and what events brought down the USSR; I will leave it to future historians to bring the events in sharper focus.
And to all the VC commentariat, the best wishes for a happy and prosperous new year–I will have that southern tradition, hopping john and cabbage for my new years dinner.
January 1, 2012, 8:57 amRicardo says:
By this “argument”, George Orwell, Nelson Mandela and a large number of MLK’s advisers were Communists.
Are distinctions between various grotesque ideologies on the right also “without a difference”? What then are we to make of the National Review’s past praise of Gen. Franco?
It is a common characteristic of totalitarian ideologies to dream of one’s opponents being annihilated.
January 1, 2012, 10:07 amGiant Frog says:
Communist Party USA
Gould was a sleaze, though this is more about his unwarranted popularity than about his scientific dishonesty (quoting various biologists):
++
“Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on his side of the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists. All this would not matter, were it not that he is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory.”
“Note this is distinct from his deliberate obfuscation of topics like IQ in Mismeasure of Man. He wrote some incorrect things there about factor and statistical analysis, but perhaps those distortions were intentional. See The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias.”
“Although Gould characterizes his critics as “anonymous” and “a tiny coterie,” nearly every major evolutionary biologist of our era has weighed in in a vain attempt to correct the tangle of confusions that the higher profile Gould has inundated the intellectual world with. The point is not that Gould is the object of some criticism — so properly are we all — it is that his reputation as a credible and balanced authority about evolutionary biology is non-existent among those who are in a professional position to know…”
++
Some currently popular but incorrect ideas about humans and human nature are based somewhat on Marxist ideology; Gould helped spread ‘em, and Good Liberals vehemently claim to believe them.
January 1, 2012, 10:48 am20 year anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union | Command the Raven says:
[...] Ilya Somin sums up the benefits of a world without the Soviet Union: [...]
January 1, 2012, 10:59 amJesus Lives! » Blog Archive » 20 year anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union says:
[...] Ilya Somin sums up the benefits of a world without the Soviet Union: [...]
January 1, 2012, 11:00 amRandy says:
Anyone who says this really can’t be taken seriously. As though support for Obama is there only because people fail to understand communism. Sheesh.
January 1, 2012, 11:15 amA. Zarkov says:
You’re right, we should not lump people in those categories together, although a communist of often called a socialist in a hurry. As to your examples, Orwell was certainly a socialist, but he was highly critical of many British socialists like Lasker. Orwell’s anti-communism is of course well known, and he would never have sung the praises of mass murders like Castro and Mao. Not so for Mandela. In 1991 he said,
MLK also stands accused as being either a communist or overly tolerant of communists, but I think we lack hard evidence of this. However we do have hard evidence of his adulterous behavior and persistent career-long plagiarism. Writing on the History News Network, Ralph Luker (who directed research on MLK) wrote,
Of course plagiarism does not make one a communist, but it shows we can’t believe the MLK myths. His communism does bear further investigation.
January 1, 2012, 11:19 amRandy says:
I see. So *everyone* on the left is necessarily a communist who wants to murder millions of people, and if they deny it, it only proves they are lying.
But I will say this: anyone who finds the enemy lurking all around them, believes he can read their minds, calls them liars when he “exposes” them, and wishes a world without them, should probably not have access to a gun or any political power. He should also undergo some extensive therapy.
January 1, 2012, 11:24 amA. Zarkov says:
A horrible mistake on their part. The Spanish Civil War was a terrible tragedy. Both sides were about equally evil. See Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, and Ronald Radosh’s Spain Betrayed.
January 1, 2012, 11:28 amA. Zarkov says:
Gould did exactly what he accused others of– making up data. He was out of this depth, and did not understand factor analysis. Nevertheless he told a lot of people what they wanted to hear, so the MSM swallowed his story whole with no critical analysis. To this day many journalists think Gould debunked the whole field of differential psychology and the concept of IQ. Now Gould himself stands as thoroughly debunked.
January 1, 2012, 11:35 amragebot says:
For me it is black eyed peas and hog jowls with corn bread baked in a 12in cast iron frying pan, and can’t forget the iced tea; but since I grew up in the Florida Keys desert is Key Lime Pie.
And for all my VC friends greetings from my homie Spock who says “Live long and prosper”.
January 1, 2012, 11:48 amron nord says:
Martinned says:
ron nord: It’s amazing to me that people can still call themselves a Marxist without fear of immediate condemnation
Like who? In America, last I checked there is only one nationwide politician who dares to call himself a social-democrat. (O, the horror!) I’m sure there are non-politicians who call themselves socialists, but communist or marxist? Who? (Quote)
Every one knows “Bomber Bill” Ayers said the following and was proud of it, “I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist … [Laughs] Maybe I’m the last communist who is willing to admit it.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers
“In 1994 Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Michael Klonsky were among those listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence, an offshoot of the Communist Party USA.
In 1995, Ayers and Dohrn hosted meetings at their Chicago home to introduce Barack Obama to their neighbors and political allies, as Obama prepared to make his first run for the Illinois state senate. Also present at the meetings were Alice Palmer and Quentin Young.
There is strong evidence suggesting that Ayers wrote Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama’s 1995 memoir.”
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2169
The Universities are loaded with “Marxists” and these people are not benign, they are wannabe killers and they know where their homicidal insanity always has led. They are politically deranged but not stupid.
Something that is really scary is that “Bomber Bill Ayers” has as a friend the President of the United States. Knowing that communist have murdered over 200 million of their own citizens should give you pause; shouldn’t it?
January 1, 2012, 11:56 amron nord says:
Martinned says:
ron nord: It’s amazing to me that people can still call themselves a Marxist without fear of immediate condemnation
“Like who? In America, last I checked there is only one nationwide politician who dares to call himself a social-democrat. (O, the horror!) I’m sure there are non-politicians who call themselves socialists, but communist or marxist? Who? (Quote)”
Every one knows “Bomber Bill” Ayers said the following and was proud of it, “I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist … [Laughs] Maybe I’m the last communist who is willing to admit it.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers
“In 1994 Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Michael Klonsky were among those listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List” for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence, an offshoot of the Communist Party USA.
In 1995, Ayers and Dohrn hosted meetings at their Chicago home to introduce Barack Obama to their neighbors and political allies, as Obama prepared to make his first run for the Illinois state senate. Also present at the meetings were Alice Palmer and Quentin Young.
There is strong evidence suggesting that Ayers wrote Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama’s 1995 memoir.”
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2169
The Universities are loaded with “Marxists” and these people are not benign, they are wannabe killers and they know where their homicidal insanity always has led. They are politically deranged but not stupid.
Something that is really scary is that “Bomber Bill Ayers” has as a friend the President of the United States. Knowing that communists have murdered over 200 million of their own citizens should give you pause; shouldn’t it?
January 1, 2012, 11:56 amragebot says:
a Republican which seems to be correct and something lots of those on the left side of the aisle seem to want to ignore.
January 1, 2012, 12:01 pmcaptcrisis says:
The causes of the dissolution of the USSR (and its puppet states in Eastern Europe) are still opaque to the conservative mind.
It was non-violent, people-power revolution, by a disarmed populace using civil disobedience. The kind of stuff that is considered left-wing fantasy by conservatives, who go by Mao’s dictum, “Power flows from the barrel of a gun.” Yet it was one of the greatest eruptions of freedom in history.
January 1, 2012, 12:06 pmA. Zarkov says:
The people tried in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956, and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. They all failed because the Soviet Government was too strong. By 1991 the Soviet Empire was coming apart because it had become weak. Something had to have made it weak. You are confusing cause and effect.
January 1, 2012, 12:15 pm20th Anniversary of the End of the Soviet Union | Paul M. Jones says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » The 20th Anniversary of the End of the Soviet Union. This entry was posted in General. Bookmark the permalink. ← In a free-speech [...]
January 1, 2012, 12:15 pmHypnoToad says:
Randy, you’re obviously a smart guy, and I enjoy reading your thoughts (it is only from the considered views of those with whom I disagree that I ever seem to learn anything). But…it is deliciously ironic for you to suggest that those who indulge in over-the-top rhetoric on the internet should be stripped of their 2A rights, prohibited from standing for office, and forced to undergo extensive therapy.
January 1, 2012, 12:19 pmAnonimus says:
A good book documenting Democrats’ coddling of communists in the 1980s…
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895261391/thevolocons0d-20/
January 1, 2012, 12:43 pmAnonimus says:
*LOL*
January 1, 2012, 12:48 pmArticles for New Year’s Day » Scott Lazarowitz's Blog says:
[...] Ilya Somin: The 20th Anniversary of the End of the Soviet Union [...]
January 1, 2012, 1:28 pmTatil says:
Well, those are crazy enough to become a danger to society do get forcefully committed to in-patient therapy and lose their 2A rights along with many others. The following types of quotes hardly lead to good outcomes:
Dehumanizing political opponents is the first step towards political violence. It may not always lead to one, of course, but it is like a gateway drug in that sense.
January 1, 2012, 1:52 pmrarango says:
Ragebot: I grew up in Miami in the 1950s and fished the florida keys from Miami south to Islamorado–mostly the back country of Florida Bay–and key lime pie–unless it is made with eagle brand sweetened condensed milk and real key limes (brown, not green) it is a desecration!
Pardon to the commentariat for off topic, but some things are too important not to render comment.
January 1, 2012, 2:26 pmrarango says:
Damn–Islamorada I really am a florida cracker
January 1, 2012, 2:29 pmRandy says:
Yes, perhaps a realization of public that their governments were at best a joke, that their governments couldn’t provide basic human necessities, that the people were finally fed up, that a new generation grew up not willing to take the same old crap.
In other words, the USSR was always weak economically but militarily somewhat strong. By the time the 80s rolled along, it was really very weak economically and that undermined its determination to squelch dissent.
I would think that Mr. Gorbachev had at least something to do with the dissolution of the USSR, since he presided over it, and many Russians agree that he played a big role in it.
Of course, one could believe that the Soviet Union was a strong country but that once Reagan became president, he singlehandedly weakened their entire economy to the point of collapse. But such thinking is beyond any sort of reason.
January 1, 2012, 2:48 pmRandy says:
thanks for the compliment! If you have read my comments before, you will understand that I support 2A rights, and that I am firmly committed to democracy and free elections. That doesn’t mean, however, that no one is crazy out there and that they really shouldn’t have access to power. They still have a right to it, but that doesn’t mean they should access that right, for the same reason a would-be Hitler has the right to arm up and seek office, but he really shouldn’t.
I do have my standards, afterall!
(And BTW, I agree — it’s only after reading this blog extensively that I have come around to supporting 2A).
January 1, 2012, 2:53 pmA. Zarkov says:
He certainly played a part in the weakening of their economy. The War in Afghanistan was costly, and RR increased the cost by giving the Afgan fighters material support such as Stinger missiles. As I said in a prior post, RR successfully pursued the deployment of the Pershing II missile system, Stealth bombers, SDI etc. This did put a strain on the Soviet economy as they tried to match the U.S. military challenge. They couldn’t do it and were forced to make concessions and then they started to unravel. The people no longer feared the regime as they had in the past because it now looked a lot less than invincible.
It looks like you’re trying to write off RR’s contribution to a nothing, but that doesn’t match what happened.
January 1, 2012, 3:08 pmMarian Kechlibar says:
Gorbachev sincerely tried to reform an un-reformable jailhouse of nations.
But the system could not stand any liberalization: all the internal hatreds and grievances revived instantly, and the empire disintegrated.
Unlike the gerontocrats around Brezhnev, most of whom had blood on their hands, Gorbachev was a young cadre, with no real-world experience in Stalinist brutality. He was therefore ignorant about the worst atrocities that happened (not even young cadres had uncensored classes of USSR history), and somewhat naïve when it came to the willingness of the non-Russian nations to continue living under Moscow in absence of immediate threat of armed power.
January 1, 2012, 3:10 pmAnonimus says:
Yet another dishonest strawman from Randy. Maybe some extensive therapy would help.
January 1, 2012, 3:17 pmChrisTS says:
ron nord:
I am so tired of this meme. I have been an academic for 25+ years and never have met a genuine Marxist among my colleagues. I know some folks who studied Marx and Engels and found merit in some parts of their view (historical materialism of the non-vulgar sort and concern about materialism in the moral sense seem to be the big winners). I’m a fan of the idea of commodity fetishism, myself.
The only colleague I have ever known who expressed a proclivity to violence was a very conservative female economist. Ayers and Dorne are serious outliers – who, in my opinion, should never have been forgiven their sins to the extent of becoming tenured professors.
At any rate, the few socialists I know in academe are all social democrats; many of them are also pacifists.
January 1, 2012, 3:25 pmron nord says:
Marian Kechlibar says: “Unlike the gerontocrats around Brezhnev, most of whom had blood on their hands, Gorbachev was a young cadre, with no real-world experience in Stalinist brutality.” Gorbachev was a apparatcheki of the system and you don’t get to the pinnacle of power in a despotic regime that has murdered 25% of it own population and not know about it. There was over 150 gulags in the USSR and just one called Kolyama murdered by divers ways more people than Auschwitz; Nazi’s were pikers compared to communists when it came to deception and murder. We didn’t defeat communism it just went underground into academia to capture the young, media to propagandize the masses and a plan like Pivens to ruin the country from within. Sun Tze said there is many ways to ruin and enemy and the best way is from within, Bill Ayer’s friend has done a good job.
January 1, 2012, 3:49 pmChrisTS says:
No, but even anecdotal evidence is better than bare, uninformed assertion.
January 1, 2012, 3:57 pmMarian Kechlibar says:
Ron Nord: I don’t claim that Gorbachev was a saint.
Yet there is a huge difference between “knowing something about the history of atrocities” and “actively taking part in them with your own hands and gun”.
The Brezhnev politburo companions were from the latter group, and they obviously had no illusions when it came to the intense hatred of the subjugated nations against the regime, hatred only suppressed by credible threats of violence against anyone who stood out.
Gorbachev grew isolated from the real carnage scenes, thus was more susceptible to unreal expectations in this regard.
January 1, 2012, 3:58 pmChrisTS says:
One reason that few people with socialist/leftist leanings will call themselves ‘Marxists’ is the recognition of the failure of the labor theory of value, at least in its 19th century form.
Of course, one might encounter someone who had not really read much/any Marx who thinks s/he can be a ‘Marxist’ in a meaningful way absent the economic theory. I think that is sloppy.
Another reason many educated leftists do not self-apply the name of ‘Marxist’ is the openness to violence that Marx and Engels expressed and their readiness to embrace anti-democratic rule in the ‘socialist phase.’
Top all this off with tensions in the theory between historical determinism and humanism and with worries about the ‘inevitability’ of radical change, and there is not much good reason to self-label as a ‘Marxist’ rather than as a ‘leftist’ or a ‘socialist.’
January 1, 2012, 4:10 pmChrisTS says:
Anonimous:
As I noted, Ayers and Dorne are rarities.
That said, Anoni, I did not realize I was responding to you earlier. I try to avoid feeding you. I’m done.
January 1, 2012, 4:13 pmragebot says:
Tingler Island, just off Key Vaca, and I got my Key Limes from one of my Dad’s patients who lived on the Rock, which was the black section of Marathon, the largest town on Key Vaca. Here is a link to some pix from one my trip to the Ten Thousand Islands in October.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1862389699103.73412.1821804264&type=3
January 1, 2012, 4:17 pmAnonimus says:
At issue is what they are, not what they call themselves.
Which was an unsupported assertion.
January 1, 2012, 4:31 pmFifth-rate miler says:
So, people don’t label themselves Marxists? Or they are not Marxists? Or it is sloppy to call someone a Marxist who could not pass a PhD field exam on Marx’s views?
I’m not sure what you are getting at, except that you don’t agree that universities are filled with Marxists.
BTW, I don’t work at a university but I have some signficant interaction with academics/universities. There are lots of Marxists and near-Marxists in universities. Maybe 10 (?) times as many as in the general population.
January 1, 2012, 4:42 pmChrisTS says:
@ Fifth-rate miler:
One question that came up earlier was whether many people [still] call themselves ‘Marxists.’ Someone claimed that universities are rife with Marxists. My point was that very few leftists familiar with the work of Marx and Engels – educated or academic leftists, if you will – call themselves Marxists because of their recognition of problems in the theory. They might call themselves ‘socialists’ or some such, but not ‘Marxists.’
A separate, but related point, is my own belief that someone who claims to be an “Qist’ but who is not, in fact, familiar with the fundamental tenets of Qism is being sloppy. So, to claim that one is a ‘Marxist’ while being ignorant of the economic view or of the other major tenets of Marxism is sloppy, in my opnion.
I’m not sure what a ‘near-Marxist’ is, unless it is a non-marxist socialist. But that brings us back to the problem of denying differences across views.
I would not be surprised to find out that there are many more leftists, of various kinds, in academia than in the general population. The original claim to which I responded was that academia is full of ‘Marxists’ – and ones ready to do violence, no less.
January 1, 2012, 4:58 pmChrisTS says:
@fifth-rate miler:
P.S. What does your handle signify? (I’m probably missing some well-known reference.)
January 1, 2012, 5:00 pmA. Zarkov says:
I think that’s correct. One will find the occasional Angela Davis type in academia who fully embraces Marx the economist, but that’s rare. However I think that people mean “Cultural Marxists” when they accuse academia as being “loaded with Marxists.” Whether Cultural Marxism has a stranglehold on academia is a whole area of debate.
My problem with academics have more to do with the academic environmentalists, who have become anti-intellectual. They have strong opinions while remaining ignorant of fundamental scientific theories such as thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and electromagnetism. The green energy advocates seem especially uninformed. If I say “Poynting vector” to them I get a blank stare. They don’t realize they need to understand this to appreciate the difference between chemical energy flows and electrical energy flows. The substitution of the latter for the former lies at the heart of the green energy paradigm and it’s flawed. As a consequence, we are diverting billions of public dollars into projects that are doomed to fail.
January 1, 2012, 5:07 pmSherry says:
Dan Smith says: “Someone please educate me. Pretend I am reading this posting, and I am in 1984.”
That will be easy for me. In so many ways, I have always known we were living in a constant 1984.
January 1, 2012, 5:10 pmRandy says:
No, I agree that RR played a role, and I certainly agree with all your points. It’s just that some people claim that the RR was the sole reason the USSR collapsed, and I’m not willing to go that far. Collapsing empires rarely, if ever, have only one cause.
January 1, 2012, 5:53 pmrpt says:
We saw that movie; Mad Max.
January 1, 2012, 5:55 pmAnonimus says:
Who?
January 1, 2012, 6:20 pmcaptcrisis says:
The breakdown of the Soviet empire began in the 1970′s. The consistent pressure of nonviolent, unarmed resistance broke it down over a period of years, including the Solidarity movement in 1979.
January 1, 2012, 7:16 pmAnonimus says:
Revisionist hogwash.
January 1, 2012, 7:22 pmron nord says:
Communism has gone underground and has hired PR agencies to smooth over the rough spots here and there. They own the Universities and media, they have taken over a major political party it seems. Here is a good indication how you could end up if they ever took over: Cut and paste this one in your browser for one you will never forget.
January 1, 2012, 7:38 pmhttp://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/xinjiang-procedure_610145.html
ChrisTS says:
@A. Zarkov:
AHHH! I wish we all (self included) could clearly define our terms before going after one another. This ‘cultural marxism’ is a prime example of what I think of as sloppy use of the appellation. It’s especially weird when used in the service of gender studies.
I see this mostly in Soc/Anthro departments, with the occasional historian or lit crit type thrown in. Nary a one of them has read Capital – most think it’s a single volume. :-)
January 1, 2012, 7:49 pmChrisTS says:
AZ:
I understand your frustration with the non-scientist green academics. I admit to being one, myself, but I do not pretend to understand all the ins-and-outs of any part of it. In fact, I gave up working in the area of enviro phil precisely because I recognized I could not devote the time to getting close to up to speed to feel confident. I just listen to my science colleagues and smile encouragingly.
January 1, 2012, 7:58 pmTed S. says:
Gorbachev has blood on his hands when it comes to the January 1991 events in Lithuania.
To me, the difference in treatment between Communists and anti-Communists would be best exemplified by the fact that so many in the chattering classes of the world media were braying for Augusto Pinochet to be tried in Spain (?!) — but it was so important not to try somebody like Erich Honecker, who wound up in exile in Chile of all places.
January 1, 2012, 9:02 pmA. Zarkov says:
I recommend the book Powering the Future by Robert Laughlin who won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the fractional Hall Effect. You can read only Chapter 4 “Carbon Forever,” and Chapter 5 “Pipes of Power.” About half the book consists of End Notes which has the technical stuff and you can omit. I had many of the same ideas at about the same time, but he got into print first. The rest of the book is also very good, but Chapters 4 and 5 have the core ideas that really demolish the green energy program. You can also listen to an interview with him here. The interview is very good, but the book is better because it has all the calculations.
I have thought of a whole lot of new stuff, so I might pursue at least a long article. But first I’m going to have some experts have at me.
January 1, 2012, 9:48 pmHouston Lawyer says:
Ask the people of Eastern Europe what they thought Reagan’s contribution was to the end of the Soviet Union, not some leftists who miss its purity.
All the right people in this country reviled Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech and every other effort that Reagan pursued to weaken the Soviet Union. In the 80s, the leftists contended that the Soviet Union was forever and that we had to learn to live with it and not provoke it.
January 1, 2012, 9:49 pmGovernment Drone says:
About the only pressures in the 1970s were from outside governments with regard to the treatment of Jewish would-be emigrants & some famous dissidents (Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, etc.). And while there were various dissident movements emerging in the USSR during this time (including nationalist separatists, like those of the Baltic states), they themselves could not have toppled the Soviet Union; a Stalin, or even a Khrushchev, could’ve made short work of them.
January 1, 2012, 10:46 pmI think the biggest factor during this time was the progressive corruption of the Soviet government and/or Communist Party apparatus. Brezhnev was not a well-meaning liberal, but he did refrain from a Stalin-like mass purge of Soviet society; he merely insisted that people pretend that everything was all right. This weakened the USSR in 2 ways: one, in that dissident groups were never physically liquidated or completely suppressed; & two, that people quickly got into the habit of lying to each other regarding things like military readiness, or just how much economic sense the current Five Year Plan made. People quickly picked up not only on just how divergent the Official(tm) & actual states of the nation were, but also that they wouldn’t get into nearly as much trouble as before in telling each other about it. The government eventually could no longer inspire fear or love.
athEIst says:
If the price of oil had not doubled in 1973 and again tripled by 1978 the USSR would have ended by 1980. If the price of oil had not dropped drastically(as the Saudis took recontrol of OPEC) in 1985 and stayed low until 1998 the USSR would still be here.
January 1, 2012, 11:23 pmRR and JPII had nothing to do with it.
HarryEagar says:
He did a a lot more than lecture. He took action against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The delusional rightwingers here will never admit it, but Carter was tougher on communism than Reagan.
Reagan was tough on Panama, though.
January 1, 2012, 11:26 pmRandy says:
Houston Lawyer, for one.
January 1, 2012, 11:28 pmRandy says:
I think you’ve seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers too many times.
January 1, 2012, 11:30 pmHarryEagar says:
Inability to manage food production. Read Zhores Medvedev, ‘Soviet Agriculture.e’ Reagan had nothing to do with it. And even the Polish rebellion was an effect rather than a cause.
A country of 300 million that can produce food for fewer than 200 million has worse problems than the speeches of a delusional outsider like Reagan.
January 1, 2012, 11:30 pmHarryEagar says:
Oh, please. I marched with SCLC. Nobody asked my politics.
Better to investigate the fascists who opposed King, who were powerful agents in government, which communists never were.
Delusions pile on delusions.
January 1, 2012, 11:41 pmHarryEagar says:
You mean you disapprove of their stance. They never retracted and from their point of view, Franco was just ducks.
American rightwingers hate democracy, when you get down to cases.
January 1, 2012, 11:45 pmHarryEagar says:
Actually, they had stopped trying before Reagan was elected.
January 1, 2012, 11:50 pmRicardo says:
Mandela’s praise of Castro is certainly a black mark against him. On the other hand, we can observe what he did when he became head of state in South Africa: he pardoned whites who had committed terrible crimes under Apartheid (rather than subjecting them to show trials, summary executions and labor camps), oversaw the peaceful transition to constitutional democracy, and gave up leadership of the nation and of his party after serving his term. In actual practice, his life has been the complete opposite of Castro’s. His failure to condemn Castro has to be seen in historical context: Cuba was a long-standing supporter of the ANC and Mandela when they had few friends in the western world. A guy like Mandela deserves an indulgence or two and I am unaware of him ever having praised Mao.
What “further investigation”? King’s life is probably one of the most heavily researched of 20th century Americans, he was under FBI surveillance at the time and the Soviet archives have been open for some time. No evidence has ever presented itself up until now. His nonviolence and overt Christianity are very well-documented and are at odds with any recognizable Communist ideology.
January 2, 2012, 12:53 amRicardo says:
Incidentally, I would like to point out the above quote is listed by your source as “attributed” to Mandela but with no citation to a primary source. This is the problem with quoting wiki-style sources as if they were somehow authoritative: a wiki is only as good as its references and there is no reference provided for this quote.
As I pointed out above, it is well-known that Mandela has refused to criticize Castro publicly, but this quote may be a fabrication. I quickly googled the same quote and came across a book uploaded to Google books that provides as its only reference a freerepublic.com article. Caveat emptor. Or, you might say, this requires “further investigation.”
January 2, 2012, 1:36 amA. Zarkov says:
Passive voice. Who knows this? You evidently want a recording of the actual words. We can come close. This propaganda video introduced by the pro-communist actor Harry Belafonte shows Mandela and Castro together hugging and generally saying nice things about one another. It certainly makes the statement credible.
January 2, 2012, 3:15 amA. Zarkov says:
Zhores Medvedev is certainly a good source. I haven’t read that particular book, but I did read in full the book by his twin brother, Let History Judge. I read Zhores’s book on Lysenko, the one on nuclear disaster in the Urals. The Soviet regime had terrible problems with food production and distribution from the get go, which is why I made the crack about “70 years of bad weather.” If the “Inability to manage food production” was the cause, the regime would have fallen in the 1920s.
January 2, 2012, 3:23 amA. Zarkov says:
That proves nothing.
January 2, 2012, 3:26 amA. Zarkov says:
Further investigation by me. I have not had the time to read through his FBI file as yet. Sorry I’m just not an admirer of someone who plagiarizes and commits adultery. These are serious character flaws, and I don’t care that he’s popular with so many people.
January 2, 2012, 3:32 amA. Zarkov says:
What do you want me to say? I’m not a fan of National Review and not a reader except when pointed there. They don’t check in with me before they publish something. I do know that the Spanish Civil War has not gotten enough scrutiny. As I said both sides were evil. I certainly regard Stalin as worse than Franco. At least Franco didn’t turn Spain into a big prison camp. People were free to leave Spain. People were not free to leave the Communist dictatorships.
January 2, 2012, 3:38 amClark says:
Also, it bears further investigation where MLK, I mean, Obama, was born in Kenya. As you’ve repeatedly reminded us, Obama has been the president about which we know the least and his background has been completely hidden to us. Where are his college transcripts? Where is the afterbirth?
It must be investigated.
I don’t say these things about these blacks only because I hate them. My race does not hate their race, unlike the judge whose decision can be explained by the broad based Hispanic antipathy to the blacks, as you observed recently.
January 2, 2012, 4:26 amInstapundit » Blog Archive » THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED OVER THE HOLIDAY WEEKEND, if you were out, you know, having a life or som… says:
[...] Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Soviet Union’s demise. [...]
January 2, 2012, 8:49 amSarcastro says:
Yes, the other side is powerful, and all ascribe to the same evil ideology that requires many to die.
This is what I think about my fellows. It’s helpful, since it such a vile foe really lets the ends justify the means.
January 2, 2012, 9:01 amRicardo says:
I do. I don’t count myself particularly well-informed about southern African politics or history but if I know it, I’m pretty sure almost everyone who does count as well-informed on the subject knows it as well.
Here is my original statement: “This is the problem with quoting wiki-style sources as if they were somehow authoritative: a wiki is only as good as its references and there is no reference provided for this quote… I quickly googled the same quote and came across a book uploaded to Google books that provides as its only reference a freerepublic.com article.”
I consider the above statement pretty clear English — there are no jargon terms or words past a 9th grade level of vocabulary. Is there some part of what I wrote that you did not understand? If so, I can clarify it for you.
I don’t recall asking for your personal opinion of any of the figures mentioned. My statement was intended to draw out the distinction between Communists — who advocate revolutionary violence to achieve a Marxian society — and social democrats, who are a pretty broad category of people who seek to work within the democratic system for more egalitarian social and economic policies. What does your admiration or lack thereof toward anyone or any figure’s vices (which you have mentioned twice already) have to do with Communism or with that distinction?
January 2, 2012, 10:06 amfurious says:
“Gorbachev was a visionary like Hirohito was a visionary after Nagasaki.” – PJ O’Rourke
January 2, 2012, 10:58 amA. Zarkov says:
How do you know what Mandela didn’t say? Making one of these passive voice statements provides no information. If as you say you don’t know much about SA history and politics then you don’t know much about Mandela and what he might or might not have said. As we can see from the video, Mandela choose to be chummy with Castro. He didn’t have to literally embrace a dictator who turned his country into a prison camp. In my opinion, that does not speak well of him, and suggests he might be a communist too.
January 2, 2012, 11:03 amRicardo says:
Either your reading comprehension is terrible or you are trolling. In either case, I have no time to waste on this.
January 2, 2012, 11:16 amathEIst says:
A. Zarkov says:
People were free to leave Spain.
January 2, 2012, 3:04 pmYes, returning was the problem. If you had been a republican you could be, and often were, garroted.
Harry Eahttp://volokh.com/2011/12/02/our-frugal-forebears/#commentsgar says:
Zarkov is also wrong in thinking that Falangist Spain wasn’t a big prison camp. Selective outrage is the diagnostic character of the splenetic American anticommunist.
January 2, 2012, 3:25 pmChrisTS says:
@Zarkov:
Thanks.
January 2, 2012, 4:08 pmA. Zarkov says:
Lots of people who got to escape Cuba were happy to never return. How long after the civil war were Republicans still garroted?
January 2, 2012, 7:22 pmA. Zarkov says:
Why is my outrage selective? I condemned both sides. Franco lasted from 1936 to 1975. Are you telling me that Spain was a prison camp like Cuba all the way to 1975?
January 2, 2012, 7:27 pmDilan Esper says:
A lot of dumb stuff in this thread.
Marxism failed as a political theory, and good riddance to it.
But that doesn’t mean that every single idea associated with the label Marxism was wrong.
For instance, Marx gave us the idea of false consciousness, that sometimes people can be convinced to vote against their economic interests. Is that idea wrong?
Marx had a lot to say about the tendency of large enterprises to oppress the lower classes. Was all that wrong?
Marx said that societies tend to designate disadvantaged groups as scapegoats and blame them for conditions actually created by the privileged. Is that incorrect?
Seriously, Marx is A LOT different than the Nazis. There really aren’t any profound ideas in the National Socialist ideology; just a very reactionary pose against supposed insults to the dignity of the German people. But there’s a lot of interesting ideas in Marxism. Ideas that are still taught in universities, ideas that still form the basis of powerful critiques of our society.
Too many ignorant right wingers who haven’t read anything Karl Marx wrote want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
January 3, 2012, 2:23 pmHarryEagar says:
Zarkov, although the evidence that Martin Luther King was leading a communist plot is nil, in the interest of values clarification, let’s discuss it as if it were a fact. Then what?
That would have put the communists on the side of law, justice, decency and honor.
And the 100% redblooded American anticommunists on the side of oppression, violence and opposition to the law.
As it happens, the 100% redblooded American anticommunists did put themselves on the side of oppression, violence and opposition to the law, and all for nothing, since SCLC was not communist.
Based on my personal experience, the characteristic I most associate with anticommunism is stupidity.
You might want to look in the mirror and ask yourself, if communism was as bad as everyone agrees it to have been, how did American anticommunists (especially but not exclusively the rightwing versions) acquire their unsavory reputation?
January 3, 2012, 5:30 pmFederal Dog says:
“Based on my personal experience, the characteristic I most associate with anticommunism is stupidity.”
Do you think that’s dispositive?
January 4, 2012, 6:40 amHarryEagar says:
I think it needs explanation. Why did 100% redblooded American anticommunism start out antidemocratic, and why has it stayed antidemocratic for 93 years?
January 4, 2012, 2:14 pmHarryEagar says:
Sure. Does somebody want to argue that McCarthyism wasn’t (and isn’t) stupid?
But even if not, it needs explaining why 100% redblooded American anticommunism from its start, 93 years ago, till today has been antidemocratic.
Considering the record of 100% redblooded American anticommunists, the panegyrics to themselves that we see so often, including here at VC, are in poor taste.
January 4, 2012, 7:12 pmFederal Dog says:
Harry, you are really missing the point.
Do you really think your personal experience — or heightened emotions — tell anyone anything universal about anticommunists?
January 5, 2012, 11:58 am