Recently, I've begun doing History again. Kind of a stupid sentence because we exist within history, it is impossible to escape it. However, the point of this is that America has managed to act throughout the 20th century with little respect to history, and therefore continually made bad decisions that have resulted in much unnecessary conflict. I would like to address three points that to me show an inability of the world's only super power to transcend a basic and irrational fear of communism. Occurring mainly in the industrial revolution of the late 19th century, America was brain washed that socialism was bad. With the social upheaval during the tumultuous years of boom and bust economy between the 1870's and early 1900's, the worker was vilified by the press into an enigma of society to be repressed. This indicates a highly stratified society- which it was, 10% of families owned 73% of the wealth at the turn of the 20th century America- that was trying to remain the hegemonic influence in society. They achieved this, and socialism and communism has since become a threat to the 'American lifestyle'. As a result, America has been unable to geopolitically manoeuvre without the 'threat' of communism entering into its foreign policy decisions. Ultimately I cannot understand how this fear of communism has managed to perpetuate. Not a single communist nation has ever existed in the history of this planet. What's more, taking democracy to its extreme- every person represented- is in itself a form of communism. The term has been demonised, much like how the term liberal was the late 1980's, so that when I find myself discussing it with people, we are no longer talking about communism, but the dictatorships that have precipitated from nations trying to achieve a socialist ideal. I don't think this will ever happen, that people will be equal, because people aren't equal- we can have equality under the law, but equality between humans will never be achieved. Back to the main argument. When America intervened in the Bolshevik Revolution in the 1920's it did so with the aim of reinstituting a monarchy. This despite America's anti-imperial stance. The action was diametrically opposed to what the people wanted, it was an effort in reclaiming the hegemony of the aristocracy and keeping the masses down. The ultimate cause of this action can be perhaps witnessed in the development of the Cold War at WWII's end. But nonetheless, America's action did not equate with its ideological paradigm. Even given situations where America could have taken appropriate action, such opportunities have been shut down by the discourse of communism colouring it's foreign policy. During WWII America supported Ho Chi Minh in his insurrections against the Japanese occupation. Such was the relationship that Minh was made a special agent of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)- the forerunner to the CIA. Given all this, and America's anti-imperialist stance, the logic would have been to support the Democratic Republic of Vietnam that was declared at the defeat of the Japanese and the close of WWII. Ho Chi Minh even sent eight letters to Truman, pleading that he and America reconised the new nation of independent Vietnam (not to mention the numerous testimonials Minh was given by the OSS to the American Government). Instead America chose to help return Vietnam to the French as a colonial outpost. Again breaking with its own ideological paradigm and acting in the interest of redeveloping France so that it wouldn't slide into a socialist nation, America chose the path that made the least sense. Maybe in the context of the Cold War does this make sense, but this occurred before the Cold War was a tangible conflict. By the end of the French-Vietnam conflict America was footing 80% of the French war expense. Nearly a decade had passed since America had snubbed Vietnamese independence, and again America was to act with the poorest of intentions. As a result, Vietnam was split along the 17th parallel, and democratic elections that were supposed to have occurred were ignored by America's puppet leader in the South. However, Ngo Dinh Diem turned out to be something of a little dictator, and the context for the American war in Vietnam was set in stone. How can America justify it's past? How will history treat it? Especially given America's inability to learn from its mistakes. Ever since establishing Ngo Dinh Diem in Southern Vietnam, America has continually supported the wrong people, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to name two of many. I think eventually the Vietnam conflict will not be seen as a part of or a result of the Cold War, but a conflict that had its origins in America's early adoption of a base diametric opposition to an ideological paradigm that would fundamentally redistribute wealth in America.
The communism America was fighting was the false one despots everywhere adopt in able to gain support and then control. Even the mention of communism or socialism rings like music in the ears of those people on hard times. TThe allure that this concept has on people can make them do anything for anyone. They give all power, economic and otherwise, to the government. Then corruption sets in everything rots out from the inside. Just like Russia, nobody knows how to keep things running once the government isn't in the position to help. Capatalism, on the other hand, is at least self sustaining even in the worst of times. While it was strong, the Soviet Union began sending out its tendrils. It gained one ally after another and, in many cases, turned them into mini-me carbon copies. States started voting in line with communist party objectives with little real independence. They stop talking to non-communist countries and restrict both travel and trade. Needless to say, this was frightening as hell. It was like the USSR was a real life version of Star Trek's Borg. If you saw this wave of silence coming at you, you would be scared too. When the USSR collapsed overnight, I couldn't believe it. I laughed, it was so strange. This force of nature which had been consuming an ever growing hole in the world, one country at a time, just up and died for no apparent reason. The problem was that the government had to take care of everything, not letting the self propagating and self refining forces of the free market take care of things. America could stumble and let the economy handle itself for a while. In a communist dictatorship, a stumble means all the gears will grind to a halt and there is nothing left to put them back in motion.
Sure there were. But all the recent ones that lasted for more than a couple decades were smart enough to let their people take care of themselves, at least to a large degree.
As I said: to a large degree. Micromanagement is bad. Our government doesn't order you where to work, where to live, what to buy, how many kids to have, or what to say. It does not manufacture goods, not even its own military hardware. Law enforcement is largely handled by the police, not the military.
In the initial post staples asserts the position that Americans were "brain-washed" to fear and reject socialism and communism. Aside from the dubious effectiveness of "brain-washing" (especially on large groups) I conjecture that the concepts of socialism and individual liberty are by their very natures incompatible, and that a people who believe in individual liberty, as Americans have done since Independence, will reject socialism without needing to be told to do so. This is why the cancer of Soviet Communism never caught on.
This is just a personal opinion, but I think the main reason soviet communism never really caught on is because the CP in Russia was based on a small urban clique instead of becoming a truly peasant and rural-based peoples' party as in China. The problem was, both Marx and Lenin (in my view) had no respect for the peasants, and Stalin was just a raving psycho who was terrified of everyone and killed them if they sneezed. Also, trying to get rid of religion among a people who are as spiritually-inclined as the Russians is a non-starter.
No time now but I will reply. Valid points. But of course I disagree Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
This would be the time where you would try to reinforce your stance against our counterpoints while trying to poke holes in our stances.
The British Empire, for example; (and every empire preceding them that had any more than an ounce of brains) The Brits used the local tribal elites to help keep control of the ructious elements in the population. It wasn't so much a matter of no government, but a secondary level of government where the African (or whatever) tribes were left to police themselves, based on inate respect for the pre-existing power structures, which were already in place when the English arrived in the country.
This is probably opening a whole new can of worms, and maybe I should start a new thread, but I have a strongly tenacious belief that tribalism is the root cause of all of what we perceive to be problematic in the third world. RSVP to this post if you want me to go into more detail, but for now I'll leave it at that. I enjoy ruffling feathers, but this topic runs up onto deeply held cultural beliefs and I don't want to piss people off needlessly. That being said, I did write a post yesterday that shrugged off the potential annihilation of an entire continent, and no one blinked, so maybe I'm trying too hard to be sensitive. It's not easy for us dark hearted neocon propagandist bastards to know where the lines are.
And furthermore, as for the former Soviet Union, corruption was rife in the system from top to bottom of the society. The problem with Russia was stated very well by one of its poets, Gogol. Paraphrasing him, the Russian soul is either a quiet pool or a rushing flood. In political terms, that means that either everything's completely under control (as during the times when the autocracy are in complete control)--Tsarist or Communist, it makes no difference 'cos they're all essentially the same. The problem with autocracies of whatever nation or race (look at Zimbabwe for a good example) is that the state and the government are indivisible--your point about micromanagement being a Bad Thing, Clockwood. The government essentially becomes the head of a vast body, and every part of the body becomes intimately connected to the government so as to allow total control. When things go pear-shaped though, as they inevitably do, the government tries to excorcise the demons by lopping off parts of the body, which is exactly what President Mudgrubby is doing at the moment. His style of repression is usually the last stage of any autocracy's life--the shtook is going to hit the fan majorly in Zimbabwe before the end of the year, I predict.
You're totally right, BHS. The whole she-bang in Africa, with tribe annihilating tribe, is all down to the colonial penchant for divide and rule. That's why the borders of Africa are like they asently--the map makers (so I'm told, anyway) deliberately drew the maps so that they would include more than one tribal territory in one country. The colonial governments understood very well (because they had operated along the same principles in Europe for centuries) that your neighbour was your enemy, and your neighbour's neighbour was your friend. The theory in Africa was that if you had a whole lot of traditional enemies all stuck together under the same government, they wouldn't put aside their traditional animosity to fight the colonial forces. If they did of course, we had Maxim machine guns, they had spears, bows and arrows. Hard luck if you ran up against a 600-rounds-a-minute Maxim if you were only armed with an assingai club or a tomahawk.
Clockwood, I don't have the luxury of time to spend hours debating on the internet, but I will properly respond when the time presents itself. But again this is not the time, so I'll try make a go of it tomorrow. Sorry if I move slowly in the digital world, staples
That's silly! The damned tribes were fighting each other centuries before the white man ever even knew that Africa existed! When the whites first arrived, it was the blacks who were selling their black enemies into slavery! Where is your good sense? Or are you just searching for something to blame the white man for? Divide and rule? The fuckin' continent was already divided into a gazillion fuckin' warring, violent nations long before the white man came along. Get you history together before opening you mouth. Baron Max
Clockwood, I slightly disagree. I don't think Lenin was a despot, nor Mao Zedong, nor Ho Chi Minh. If you believe they were despots, that is your first problem. I do believe however that Stalin took advantage of the state Lenin setup and that Mao Zedong went crazy and everybody loved and respected him too much to protest. Ho Chi Minh on the other hand had every right to hate the U.S. America fucked with Vietnam for nearly half a decade. Not cool. As to the despots America was fighting everywhere, I would like to know who you think these people are. Ngo Dinh Diem was the despot of Vietnam, and America placed him there to fight against things like democratic elections. WTF? I won't dispute Stalin was a despot of the highest order, but at the end of WWII it was America that provoked the Soviet Union. And please try and argue the other way, because who back in 1920 tried to re-establish a corrupt and ineffectual aristocracy against the wish of the country's people, and who owned the exclusive rights to the atomic bomb. Not to mention using the bomb as a political weapon to cut all reparations to the Russians even though their nation was by far the most devastated by war. Exactly. Once this happens it is not communism or socialism but a dictatorship. Neither of those ideals will work because humans are corrupt and abuse positions of power. You think trying to industrialise one of the poorest nations in the world with no international help is the fault of the government? I think all things considered, Russia was instrumental in winning WWII, and that can be attributed to Stalin who, whether through methods right or wrong brought the nation kicking and thrashing into the 20th century. Capitalism also has the corruption and rot where everyone can see it. You think 10% of families owning 73% of the wealth of a nation (as a direct result of unchecked capitalism) is good? You are wrong. The Soviet Union was a dictatorship, not a communist nation. Realise this and you'll understand my argument better. As to the Soviet block, Russia annexed those countries to give it a buffer between it and an extremely hostile world- namely the U.S. It was wrong to do so, do get me wrong. But none of the nations were "voting in line with communist party objectives", they were controlled by a vicious leader whose power was unchecked, and sanity lost. If by tendrils you are talking about the Domino Theory, you are wrong once again. The Domino Theory was first used on the 7th of April 1954, the same month as the Geneva Convention of 1954. Eisenhower established the term in line with the policy of 'containment' that surfaced in X article in 1947. The reason he did this was to set a precedent for American intervention in Indochina (i.e. Vietnam). From that point, America went into the Geneva Convention, divided Vietnam along the 17th Parallel, placed Ngo Dinh Diem as the RVN's leader, and two years later helped Ngo to defy the Geneva Conventions that demanded a 1956 election to reunite Vietnam. Elements of Viet Minh that had settled in Southern Vietnam distressed at the continuing separation and growing dictatorship of Ngo began organising counter insurgency against the illegal government. Everything from this point was lost, and America eventually supported a military coup and Ngo's assassination to try and stop the RNV from further destabilisation. This is not to mention the false belief that Ho Chi Minh was a 'Soviet Puppet'. He was a special agent for the OSS, and agents of the OSS testified to Ho Chi Minh's strength of character and independence from Russia's influence. Whatever you may believe, it is not as simple as you think. There was no big wall of silence approaching America, and if there was, America caused it. As to the Borg analogy, I think you have it all wrong. To me the Borg analogy shows one reality of what communism could be. The notion that we are all equal is pure bollocks, and this concept of communism is why I always think it will fail. If anything, the Borg represents the mass, faceless culture of spreading American consumerism and capitalism, and that nations should avoid assimilation into a homogenous group that does not celebrate diversity. The USSR collapsed because the Regan administration re-amplified the Cold War in the early 1980's, then out spent the Soviet Union till it collapsed. Simple economics. No magic. Up until that point the Cold War had been cooling off nicely, and then dumb fucking conservative Republicans went and got elected and restarted the goddamn arms race. Who is the aggressor once again? And for what? Ultimately, a communist nation has never existed. The fear of communism does not therefore make sense to me. This is perhaps the main point I am trying to make, as it debases much of America's historical motivation throughout the world. The need to question should always come first, and in America I believe this has happened far too little. staples
staples: I've read through your last post and I'm having trouble picking out what you're point is, aside from the unworkable nature of communism. You appear to be against everything and everybody that you've mentioned, except Mao, who you let off the hook for being a lovable nut, and Lenin, because Stalin was so corrupt it made him look good by comparison. My question is: do you know what changes you would make to either communism, or dictatorship, or capitalism, to make the system work as opposed to the ways that they've failed?
BHS I accept that 'brain-washed' was an inappropriate term to use. But explain to me the vehement diametric opposition of America to communism? I can't actually fathom it myself, but I think that the media as it was back in the late 1800's, controlled by the ruling elite, managed to persuade the American public that communism was its mortal enemy. That perpetuation has probably been helped along by a continuing fear of the ruling class that a step towards socialism would be a step towards their recession. But I don't see why that is bad. Where does socialism detract from individual liberty? In fact, does it not help to enhance it? Is socialism not the representation of all men (slash women)? And if you believe America has been living in the lap of individual liberty since Independence, you are sorely mistaken. Where was the liberty of black Americans up until the 1960's and even today? Or the Native American Indians that were forced as a civilisation to die under the oppression of the expanding Anglo-American advance? Was not '40 acres and a mule' supposed to redress this lack of individual liberty? Does it not sound like a socialist idea? Did it happen? Of course not, the Southern man needed his slaves and his land- what magical liberty all American's have had. I think, if anything, America has come to worship the 'individual' at the expense of the people. And you reveal your lack of understanding. Soviet 'Communism' was exactly the opposite of what Communism is- a term more appropriately describing Soviet rule springs to mind in the form of 'dictatorship'. The reason it never caught on is because Stalin was a fuck, who sent more people to their deaths than any other man in history and controlled a nation and nations through fear. Not for any of the righteous ideals you believe in. Please, understand the fact that I don't believe in Communism, or it's weaker form, socialism. It requires the notion of equal humans, which we clearly are not, as a basis for its discourse. I do believe however in social justice, and capitalism has always failed to help that ideal. staples
BHS, My bad, I'm enjoying the freedom of being a bit looser with my arguments now that my semester is over. Bascially I'm questioning America's history and it's justification of itself. Vietnam for instance, people still defend how America acted- how is this possible?! This is not to mention America's inability to learn from it's past or act without some quantity of fear making its actions into reactions. Examples, the people that America have continually backed who have either turned against America or the people of their country- Saddam, Osama, Ngo Dinh Diem. Combine this fact with the fact that most American's don't know this or chose to ignore this. Dangerous is a nation that acts without the lessons of it's past. I don't let Mao off, he was a great leader before he went insane, but he should've seen the failings of his government that were centered solely on him. The result has been bad of course. Lenin was a part of his time, which at the time included revolution. I don't mean to compare any man to Stalin because he, no matter what he'd done, would come off looking like a saint. Nonetheless, Lenin was acting for the people. You cannot change communism to fit humans. It is like utopia- it will never be achieved because people are different and there perceptions of utopia will be different. One persons uptopia may very well be another persons hell. What I would like to see in captialism is greater social responsibility. America as a nation could achieve this, but Republicans don't care about helping people who can't help themselves. And they are trying to weaken the federal Government to a point prior to the 20th Century. Everyone needs someone to tell them what they are doing is wrong. Had their not been those people, slavery would still exist in America. To me, the Federal Government needs to be that person keeping the States in line, but under the control of Bush, individual liberty is being undone. I wonder at the possibility of being in a position where I would have the power to do good, a dictatorship say. I would like to believe I could do good, but I'm not sure if it would be possible. Few in history have ascended to the status of dictators through pure means with righteous goals. So I could not judge whether this would be for the better. It's difficult question that you pose and I will have to think about the answer, if indeed there is one. staples
