It would be interesting to compare and contrast the arguments the Fascists used against Democracy with those used by Communists, and compare both with the arguments being advanced today by the environmentalists. I think what one would find, laying one piece of rhetoric next to another, is that the claim is being made “we–or I–know better. Since the people are stupid, their sovereignty over their own lives should be sacrificed and ceded to their betters, against their will, if necessary, since they don’t understand their own interest.”
Ultimately, you have only two directions: voluntary compliance with laws you believe in, and forced compliance with laws you oppose. In the first case, very little government is needed. In the second, a great deal of government. In Cuba, for example, as many as one in three people may be informers. No one really knows. That’s the point.
And historically, what the Communists have really done is return us to Monarchy, Feudalism, and Mercantilism (whose core doctrine is that one man’s gain is necessarily another man’s loss), with none of the tempering virtues of those doctrines, such as noblesse oblige, faith in an eternal future in a better land, and honor.
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Look at use of word Reform. One could compare Healthcare Reform with Land Reform as used by the Soviet and Chinese Communists, which meant ceding all private land to that State, resulting in mass famine in both cases. Likewise, with so-called healthcare reform, we can expect the virtual famines of rationing down the road.
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The professor who taught the Teaching Company course on Chinese history really did a poor job of the Communist period. One particular theme I found very revealing.
Bit of background: like Lenin, Mao promised all the peasants “Land reform”. What they understood by this is that the land of the large land owners would be taken from them, and dispersed to them, the less well-off farmers. Where they had say 2 acres, they would now have 10 acres, and all they had to do was support Mao. Being short-sighted, they did.
In the short term, this is what happened. The land was taken from the “bourgeoisie”, and a great many of them were murdered after staged “trials”, where the “people” were expected to show no mercy, and express loud indignation at the supposed crimes of the rich for being rich.
Mao, though, was a liar, of course. All Communists are liars. They want absolute tyranny, and no matter what they say, they never stop until they get it. In this case, 10-15 years or so down the road, they took the land from the peasants, and placed it under the control of the State, which took everything they grew, then gave some of it back to them. Understandably, many of them were very upset. In the Soviet Union, many refused to grow food, and in retaliation Stalin condemned millions to starvation, by taking everything they did grow, and prohibiting all importation of food.
In the Chinese case, simple incompetence caused a similar result, with tens of millions dying of preventable hunger, after being “saved” by Communism. It is somewhat complex, so I won’t get into the details here.
(It is my sincere hope I can at some point induce in a previously commited Communist nausea at the extent of the horror they have sponsored).
In any event, relative moderate (read: incomplete psychopath) Deng Xiopeng forced Mao out as head of the Party (the ruling aristocracy), and implemented liberalization. One of the features of this was limited de facto land ownership.
On this point, our illustrious professor comments that whereas they had previously had to give up all of their food, now they had to surrender a certain amount, but were able to keep anything the raised over that amount. He viewed this as an improvement.
What is noteworthy about this, is that THIS IS FEUDALISM. You have the peasant and the Lord of the area. The peasant pays his taxes to the Lord, and keeps what is left. Tens of millions died to return to a system which was worse than what they had before the revolution.
It’s interesting that as a professional he couldn’t make that connection. All that has happened, when Communists take over, is you have deducted ideas of virtue and honor from what is otherwise a medieval system. Communists eradicated the “mandate of heaven”, which had been a key feature of Chinese political theory for nearly 3 millenia. That doctrine stated, in effect, the same thing our Declaration of Independence did, that when governments become abusive, the people have the right to overthrow them.
The Chinese Communists–like all Communists–have kept what was bad, and implemented it in such a way that all moral critiques have been disabled.