Let me say at the outset that I’m not a communist. I’m not
an anything-ist. I have no doctrinal affiliations whatsoever. Maybe that’s why
I always found it incomprehensible that Americans especially, and Europeans to
a lesser extent, allowed themselves to be brainwashed into believing that
communism was inherently evil.
There is nothing inherently evil about communism; it’s just
a different approach to the business of living together in groups. It harks
back to the days when life was simpler – when small communities pulled together
in a common cause and shared the bounty. But everything changed when the
working classes were enfranchised and capitalism extended its reach beyond the
merchants, the mill owners and the landed gentry. Capitalism is about
competition; it’s about winners and losers; any nod of the head towards notions
like shared effort and shared reward had to be scotched (except when a war came
along, of course, and it benefited the system to temporarily encourage such
notions.)
And so the brainwashing began. Before long, terms like ‘commie
bastard’ and ‘dirty commies’ became common currency; and McCarthy had his day.
When the Bishop of London famously said in the 1960s that Christianity was more
akin to communism than capitalism, he was howled down. The brainwashing had
worked, and it continues to do so.
The term ‘do-gooder’ arrived a few decades ago. ‘One who
does good.’ It was coined deliberately to be pejorative, and it still is. The
latest casualty is ‘welfare.’ Welfare is now a dirty word, and all to keep the
system rewarding the rich and marginalising – if not actually punishing – the poor.
Please understand that this is not a politically-motivated
post. I’m not political in the commonly received sense. It’s just a plea for
reason and free thinking.
2 comments:
Great post. Also, the word socialist is being thrown around a lot these days and people are 'accusing' the president of being a socialist. It really pisses me off... very few of those who throw the words socialism and communism around these days even know what socialism and communism even are.
I know. Socialism is the pink form of communism.
The point is well made, I think, and it's what I was getting at here.
When people hear a word like 'socialist,' they don't hear a word with a meaning that's open to honest consideration. They just hear a sound to which they've been conditioned to react adversely. And that's the very defintion of bigotry.
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