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Communists are atheists and don't believe in a stratified society. That's why I love them.
But they got pretty much everything else wrong. That's why I hate them.
And my hatred far outstrips my love for them.
Lord, who reads this garbage?!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Yeah man, I agree with you about the Commies........Vivek
Anonymous said…
Hi Deep and all of you who would care to read this comment,

I hope you all will excuse me for not being able to keep my word and succumbing to the lure of writing this comment on Deep’s blog as communism/ socialism is such a phenomenon that no man in his right mind can stay away from hurling a brick or two at.

Let me begin with these words of Winston Churchill: -
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings the inherent virtue of communism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
The concept of communism began with a noble thought from Karl Marx and
Frank Engels. Marx and Engels analyzed the modern society, especially the capitalist economy. Capitalism: was said to emphasize the rights of the individual and claimed to give equal opportunity for every person to succeed in life. Marx and Engels pointed out that capitalism creates classes among the citizens, and leads to the oppression and exploitation of the lower classes. More specifically, capitalism creates two classes: bourgeois, the owners of the means of production, and the proletariat, the laborers. They put forth the concept of communism or socialism, which they argued, was designed to cultivate a classless society in which everyone would be truly equal, and such social problems as racism, sexism and oppression would be exterminated.

Communists strive on complete equality of all the people in the society. Thus, communism gets very popular in societies where there are a handful of rich people who own factories, the govt. and all such important institutions while there are a lot of poor people who find it difficult to even manage a meal per day.

Although, this appears at first as a revolutionary new concept with powers to liberate the society of its ills, it is in fact ridden with a lot of problems. Marx and Engels failed to see that as a communist society tends to reach its goals of complete equality, productivity declines. People work to make money for themselves and for their loved ones and not for the greater good of the society and to fulfill the needs of others who choose not to work. In a capitalist economy, the person who works harder gets rewarded while those who do not have to sleep hungry. Although this may sound cruel and is argued to bring about inequality, it is perfectly consistent with the basic human nature and people thus work harder and longer to improve ones social status. In a communist economy, regardless of how hard you work, you end up getting almost the same rewards as a person who does not work at all. People choose to work less or not at all leading to less productivity (unless the state is able to sustain via coercion the labour force to some degree). Also the equal income that everybody earns would eventually fall to zero. Another problem is that communism necessitates people to follow its ideology blindly. There is no free will, one cannot express his opinion or question the policies being followed and worst of all, there is no alternative (except may be death).

The effects that communism has on the economy is also well known. Firstly, everything from land to factories to your children belongs to the state. Thus you don’t have any right on the land you till or on the house you have always been staying in. A communist society closes its doors to foreign goods and foreign investment. This means that consuming the goods produced in your country is the only option your people have. The economy steadily deteriorates, as your own people do not have the money to buy these products.

Communism often claims that capitalism “kills” the poor while on the contrary; history stands witness to the deaths of almost 100 million people throughout the world at the hands of proponents of this idea. Take the examples of the vicious rule of Stalin in Russia (formerly USSR) in which around 20-50 million people were massacred in the Gulags of Siberia (similar to Hitler’s concentration camps) for opposing his policies. Equally brutal was the rule of Mao Tse Tung (Mao Zedong). Mao’s dream of “a great leap forward” in which he laid immense stress on manufacturing such products as Steel while completely neglecting agriculture led to starvation deaths of around 20-40 million individuals. Then there was the Khmer Rouge and the rule of Pol Pot in Cambodia in the 70’s in which 3 million died or were tortured to death in the killing fields. Other such examples can be given of Tito’s Yugoslavia, Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Kim Il Sung in North Korea.

Communism has either failed or is failing around the world as the days pass. USSR has completely let off communism. China, which was another success story in the communist world, has had to modify a lot of its policies to survive the changes inside and outside China and is today on the verge of capitalism. Yugoslavia is no more communist so also with Poland etc. North Korea and Cuba, which stubbornly stay communist, are starving themselves to death.

Coming home to our country India, we find that communism has not left our country untouched. As we all know that India is a democracy. Although, democracy stands in staunch opposition to communism, it has allowed communist parties like CPI, CPM etc. to proliferate. Look at the way the rule of these parties in states like West Bengal has completely ruined them of their commerce and industry. It is only of late when Buddhadeb Bhatacharjee changed his policies like China did has the state started showing some good signs. The left parties as we call them have been consistently wrong in the past fifty years. They opposed computers in our offices, banned English from primary schools, and supported the License Raj, which created the present culture of corruption. They advocated such a foreign policy, which landed us on the losing side of the Cold War. Worst of all, they sided with the British during the Quit India Movement and with the Chinese in their invasion on us in 1962. They were silent during the Emergency in the late 70’s when the whole of our opposition was in jail. In my state of Maharashtra, the worker unions and people leading these unions like Datta Samant who were a progeny of the policies of the Left parties left a devastating effect on the economy of the state. Today the carcasses of the chemical factories in the Thane-Belapur industrial belt and those of the textile mills all over Mumbai are a grim reminder of the horrors that were once unleashed by the Left parties and their policies.

Today as India stands on the thresh-hold of becoming an economic super power and this cause is being aptly supported by a government, which is led by a dream team, all we seem to hear, is the Left’s strident criticism of the reforms and the reformers are being left with no option but to watch the show. As a thinking individual, I strongly believe that the Left parties and communism at large is the biggest roadblock to the greatness of our country.

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