I just finished a book that is surprisingly funny, enchanting and educational. The title is “SOCIALISM…SERIOUSLY” by Danny Katch.
All my life, it seems, I have been trying to find good concise definitions of Socialism, Communism, Capitalism, Anarchism,etc. I must say that the author of this book doesn’t help much at all in that respect. He isn’t too sure what he is himself at the end.
But the book got me to thinking. I think that every government can be classified as either Socialist or Communist, if the terms are broadened out to their most macro meanings. Let me try.
Socialism could be any government whose primary focus is on people. The society is all about people. There are many variations, from authoritarian oligarchy, where one or a few people amass all the wealth and leave the rest of the people destitute, Or a social democracy, where ideally all people are equal and there are no rich or poor people.
Communism is focussed on property: land, money, etc. No ownership of property is allowed. No country on earth has ever accomplished communism in the long term. It has been tried countless times, and it always devolves back to some form of capitalism. People want to own things.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics transformed a backward, uneducated country into a world leading power of industrial production and space exploration. And then it collapsed into the worst kind of capitalist oligarchy which is unable to recapture its earlier successes and only expands its reach by invading its neighbors.
Chinese communism overcame the corrupt capitalist oligarchy of the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek and instituted a brutal communist government on the mainland after they drove Chiang onto the island of Formosa (now Taiwan). Somehow, between then and now, the government on the mainland of China still calls itself communist, but they have all the capitalist trappings of the US, including privately owned companies with a stock exchange and rich oligarchs.
I served in the Far East in the U.S. Army between 1965 and 1967. From my safe engine overhaul facility on Okinawa I got to meet and socialize with many soldiers from the conflict in Vietnam. One thing was immediately apparent to me was the propaganda bulls—t that the U.S. Army was putting out in the “Stars and Stripes” had no relationship to what was actually happening on the ground in Vietnam. Although the U.S. military had the advantage in technology and equipment, the glowing reports that Gen. Westmoreland put out were pretty much the opposite of the truth. The truth was that no matter how many thousand communists we killed, there were always many more to take their place. Few countries have fought so long and hard for the freedom to choose their own form of governance as Vietnam.
No, they weren’t dying to have our capitalistic government foisted on them. They were dying to found a new communist government that would feed them and house them and keep them alive and well.
The screaming irony to me is that many, if not most, of the career military men were in the military for the very same reasons. The Army owned the barracks, but you always had a place to sleep there. The army owned the kitchen and the food, but you were always welcome to eat there. If you got injured or sick, the medical corpsman was right there to assist you. And I thought the free U.S. Army uniforms were much better looking than the Communist ones.
I don’t know if the present government of Vietnam is communist or not, but I am gratified that we are developing a trade relationship with that country that we fought so hard to destroy.
I lived for nine years in a little town in Colorado, named Nucla. Say “New-Kla.” It was founded by a group of people from the East who were willing to invest in the Colorado Cooperative Company, move out onto barren mesa land with no water and accept the right to grow crops there after a ditch was dug 16 miles up the San Miguel River to provide irrigation to the land. If I remember the story, they started digging in about 1895.
The people were active and hopeful as long as they were digging on that ditch every day for over ten years. There were great celebrations on the day the water first flowed onto the top of the mesa. The land was parceled out to each family, and each was given a task or a crop to raise. Some raised cows for meat and dairy, some raised wheat or corn or other crops. It was supposed to all be gathered together and distributed in equal shares to each family from the Co-op building, which still stands on Main Street today.
As soon as the first crops came in, the arguments started. Everybody was loath to surrender their hard earned crops to give to the other families. The enterprise soon dissolved and the forty acre plots of land were deeded to each family. Descendants of those pioneers are still living there today.
Seems to me they went from communism while they were digging that ditch, to socialism, when they were supposed to be sharing all the crops, to capitalism, when they each got deeds to the land. Seems to be a pattern there.
If I liked cold weather more than I do, I might think of moving to one of the Scandinavian countries, who better than most seem to have mixed up the best combination of capitalism and socialism. You can own land and your own company there, but you are taxed to a level where you can’t get too rich, and everybody in the country has a roof over their head, enough food to eat, and warm clothing to wear. Medical is free or cheap, and education is free through college or university. Maybe they believe having a smart, educated, healthy populace is conducive to a great society.
I’m just not ready to learn to speak Swedish yet.
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