The conservative fear of the implications of ‘socialism’.

American Conservative Union chair, Matt Schlapp was featured on the ABC ‘The Drum’. He certainly knew how to articulate his points of view, especially those held on his hero Donald Trump and in general his Republican Party. The arguments put against him by fellow participants on this program did come across somewhat paltry and weak. It just struck me that he came well prepared and seemingly knew all the answers. He said he was open to all points of view but vehemently opposed anything to do or associated with the idea of ‘Social’. I have noticed before that the word ‘social’ seems to bring out a kind of fear of a murderous Stalinist communism in some people. Mr. Schlapp and I believe his wife, Mercedes, are both of the firm belief that only Trump and his Party will bring happiness back again to the people of America.  His final words on the program was that when things are left to free market forces, problems will resolve themselves for the good of America if not mankind as well.

In Australia we have a move that seems to try and wedge people against China with some politicians barracking for the US to be allowed to install medium range missiles on Australian soil. The implication was that our choice in any conflict anywhere, ought to always be wedded to whatever the US might want to do.

We cannot change our geographical situation and are much closer to the Asian world than the West. Indonesia is rapidly growing and holds almost 300 million people which all live closer to Darwin than Darwin is to our biggest cities in Australia. With the present trade war between China with 1400 million people and the US with 325 million people, I doubt that China’s economic might will knuckle down before the diminishing US economy. Would it not make much more sense to try and stay friends with China? They are a growing nation with its own unique culture and history. But again, in Australia too, we seem to still have a fear of the ‘Social’ ideology. You know’ sharing and caring’ for people less well off, or less fortunate. I just don’t like that  we are being wedged towards choosing one against the other. We ought to stay friends with all.

With Helvi, things are improving. The infection in het left arm has healed and the plaster in her right arm should come off with a week or two. It will involve a lot of physiotherapy for another 6 months or so. We are both in need of a good break and are waiting for a period without appointments or chemo. It is amazing how we managed to get through it all which is more due to Helvi’s Finnish ‘Sisu’ than my own rather cranky demeanor.

 

A furtive glance at Socialism

A furtive glance at Socialism

 

.May we just ponder what Trotsky said back in 1937 and Quote:

But all those for whom the word ‘Socialism’ is not a hollow sound but the content of their moral life – forward! Neither threats nor persecutions nor violations can stop us! Be it even over our bleaching bones the future will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth; because, my friends, the highest human happiness are not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future.”

— Leon Trotsky, ‘I Stake My Life’, opening address to the Dewey Commission, 9 February 1937 ^[60][61]

We know that the Socialist-Communist system of workers getting a fair share of the pie didn’t quite work out. The pie grew fatter and richer but the portions were still unequal. There wasn’t any tom- sauce with it either. Some did not get any pie.  The mean Stalin and his gulags with Siberian winters and the Babushkas wheel barrowing the frozen bodies of sons and husbands out of trenches were not the rewards that Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) promised the world’s peasants while he was roaming around London during 1902-1906. Nor did the highly idealistic Trotsky envisage coming to his end with an ice pick embedded in his brain many years later.

The failure of communism has been expanded upon by many historians, writers and students of political science. The general idea was that Russia would get rid of its Czars and that its long suffering peasantry would rise up, change and revolutionize the status quo. The poor would gain their share and the rich lose much of their share. They would finally chuck off the shackles of the Czar’s imposed grinding poverty, be given plots of land and everybody would share. The hammer and sickle, a symbol of the alliance of workers and peasants finally bringing riches and tickets to freedom.

 The idea was noble but the execution of it was marred by wars and power struggles between those that meant well and those that didn’t. The result was the inevitable implosion of the ideals matched with an equal rise of opportunistic tyrants. The whole sorry saga of its failure was due to infighting and relentless squabbling by those seeking power and control. The counter revolution against the proletariat was taken over by power hungry future proletarians. And so it went.   

In another part of the world, freedom of expression and the right to rewards for individual efforts were being trail blazed by T-ModelFord,Socialism,cowboys on horses and cowboys behind the wooden steering wheels of T-.Model Fords. Westinghouse fridges soon followed. Everybody was also given the freedom of a gun to protect all that hard-won glorious liberty as well.

 God bless America. Land that I love, Stand beside her, and guide her…To the oceans, white with foam…My home sweet home

. And so on… And America kept on dreaming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Bless_America

 Millions still believe that today, but many more are getting a bit skeptical as well. Despite its Constitution enshrined freedom and the protection of that by gun and law, there are more prisons in the US than universities, more incarcerations per capita than anywhere in the world. America’s poverty is growing, expressed by the millions living in the over 35000 trailer parks and even more millions of sick and disabled without a health insurance.

Can we still say that democracy and capitalism is working in the US and other developed countries? Is it still the success it was so enthusiastically touted many years ago, today? Globally, there are signs that the promised wealth is getting bigger but into fewer and fewer hands. Somewhere I read that some individuals are so rich, they own as much as the GDP of entire countries. In fact, many probably own entire countries.

The level of poverty in many undeveloped countries is as bad as ever. Millions still have to walk for miles to get a bucket of water or scrape together enough food to keep their children from dying. The idea of rewards for individual efforts doesn’t seem to have spread to those.

In Australia the richest man now owns more than he could possibly ever spend or use up, even if he ate stone crabs at $60.- a claw, for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a 1952  Grange Hermitage  (at $ 12.500 a 375mls bottle) and drove a brand new Ferrari every day.

 What’s more, his riches have come compliments of resources that I thought belonged to Australia and therefore to all of us. How can that be right? This single individual could supply Australia’s entire Mental Health budget at present about 100 million a year for the next 40 years. That’s just one individual’s wealth against tens of thousands of sufferers with Mental Health problems for forty years. How did the spreading of goodies pan out in such an unfair manner>.

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3164029.htm

Let’s not be jealous, but the top 10 wealthiest in Australia now have a kitty of over $27 Billion. Could we reflect also, that the richest man was also the most vocal in opposing the resource tax not long ago? A bit rich, don’t you reckon?  The latest sad news for the majority of those on wages and paying fair taxation is that there is a promise in the air by the present Government for the big companies to even pay less taxation in the future. Hoorah, I can hear the top ten richest roar in unison; pop the champagne once more…

Is there an answer to this seemingly endless inequality in sharing that which we all own?

 The second largest economy, China, seems to have propelled its population to a better life for hundreds of millions astonishingly fast. Yet, it has achieved this as a Communist country with a Communist Government. The people seem happy; they talk on mobiles, wear jeans and go to nightclubs. Sure, there are issues of human rights. We have our human rights abuses as good as anywhere. The unresolved, year in year out struggle we have dealing with boat people at detention and ex-army camps, the plight of indigenous people. The UNHCR points this out repeatedly. The US was no saint with the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the ongoing Guantanamo Bay detention camp with over two hundred people still languishing without trial for years. We are on shaky grounds if we cast stones or call for black kettles to Communist China on that ground.

Perfection is elusive, none more so than in political ideologies. In our own domestic world, the greens no doubt will offer some hope for a better future world. The liberals are hell-bent on sending the world into an environmental death throe.  Labor will have to make up its mind to lead or dither.