I have never seen the point in defending socialism. To me it is a very self-defeating exercise. For one thing, it means you’re arguing against propaganda.
For another, it means you’re making appeals to the lowest possible denominators.
And for a third, you’re acknowledging that these often very rabid nationalist doctrines have anything worth addressing to begin with.
There is a big difference between a person who isn’t a communist and an anticommunist. People who aren’t communists are usually normal individuals with their own opinions, that’s fine. But anticommunism is something you put effort into.
Most anticommunists are usually either cold war Jingoists or Neo-Nazis. Very few people beyond these two categories put active effort into explaining to the world how little they like communism, or how worried they are that the Chinese are going to parachute their way over their towns and hills. That’s because there’s very little evidence of such a thing actually happening, with the caveat of Axis-occupied Europe. So I suppose I can see why the Nazis would be worried.
In fact, that’s often a big paradox. Because anticommunists love to brag about how they won the cold war, and yet they also caution people to fear the east. That seems contradictory to me. If the communists were the villains of this story, then they would’ve won the cold war. The cold war wasn’t some contest in who could cure the most cancer or build the most orphanages. It was generally a contest of who could threaten and extort the most countries in order to consolidate broad geopolitical power.
And I’m not surprised the Soviets lost such a contest, it’s one of the reasons I like them. The fact that they tried to break out of the Napoleonic cycle of war and colonies is really the big appeal here. I think their efforts to explore an alternative way in which to exist as an independent power is actually a vital subject of study if we ever want to see a democratic peace not only in Europe, but also the world.
I think that when the Chinese use trade agreements and foreign investment where western countries generally use military coups and foreign debt traps then we are seeing a new stage of human civilisation. Why would I feel the need to defend that? There is nothing to defend. The clarity of the matter speaks for itself, which is precisely why we have men like Rupert Murdoch who carefully maintain his own interests by obfuscating the matter.
Moreover I would be very curious to see what some of these detractors would accomplish by living according to their own standards. A common thing to point fingers at in the USSR is the famines during the interwar period, but this completely neglects how those famines started decades prior during the imperial period of Russia when the Russian economy was under the management of western Europe. Including many foreign investors from Britain and the US.
In fact one rather interesting example was the Hoover family. If it wasn’t for the revolution, J. Edgar Hoover would’ve been one of the richest people in America.
In fact, the only reason the Bolsheviks rebelled to begin with was because of famine. As the civil war went on, overlapped by the first world war, it is no wonder that this famine lasted for a very long time. But liberal historians decide to draw an imaginary line between what happened prior to 1917 and following 1917 and suddenly they find some way to blame the victims for the crimes they suffered.
And when you deal with minds like that, who reduce these kinds of disasters and atrocities to numbers games, who say that if you starved to death in 1916, then you were just a financially irresponsible poor person, but when you starved to death in 1918, then you were a tragic victim of communism, then what argument is there to make against this?
If this is how you view life and death, and history and humanity, then how could I possibly make an appeal to rationalism?
This is actually a big problem for Marxists, because we don’t really manipulate people like this. It’s rare to find Marxists outside of perhaps western academia, who will play these games.
And once again I think reality speaks to this. Because if we were good at lying and manipulating people, then how come we never have any successful politicians? How come we never thrive in media environments that put people like Richard Spencer, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro on a pedestal?
I think it’s because we’re nothing like them. Usually we do quite poorly in places where all the TV networks are owned by Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates and similar moguls.
But then there are environments where we thrive too. Ernest Hemmingway, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Paul Robeson, Pablo Picasso and Miriam Makeba come to mind.
When it was time for the McCarthy to purge the communists, they rarely went to look for politicians. In fact it was quite hard to find a communist who didn’t have something better to do. It seems like for the most part when they wanted to purge the communists, it was school teachers, librarians, actors, musicians, writers and artists.
You didn’t find many communists who wrote op-eds for the New York Times, but you could find quite a few of them who wrote works such as The Grapes of Wrath or The Sun Also Rises.
That’s another reason why I don’t feel much desire to defend communism. What’s the use in looking over your fence at what your neighbor's doing? If the people who attend such prestigious events such as Rock Against Communism feel strongly about my thoughts on life, then let them. I don’t even want to think about them, let alone think about what they think about me.
I’d rather walk in the footsteps of the aforementioned. I’d rather do what Steinbeck and Hemmingway and Einstein did. I’d rather make things for my team rather than tearing down the opponent.
Because sure, maybe that’s how you lose the cold war. When you focus more on the betterment of yourself than the worsening of your rivals, but so what? It’s also how you win a bigger game of human civilisation. Because anticommunism struggles a lot at the moment. With the decline of the Soviet Union, we suddenly see rampant terrorism, ecological disaster, unprecedented economic crises, rollbacks on rights to privacy and personal freedoms.
We see how every accusation made by the anticommunists was the very crimes they themselves were looking to commit as soon as they started to rule the world. Why do I need to waste my time tearing down people who do such a splendid job tearing down themselves?
As they close down libraries, lower wages for teachers and nurses, as they privatise schools and pollute the environment. With every bomb they drop, with every budget they cut, with every election promise they break, with every bank they bail out, why should I open my mouth when all it will do is to distract people from witnessing the obvious?
