by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Really? On the contrary but what we have seen disguised as communism since the death of V I Lenin was not communism at all and neither socialism. It was state capitalism.
Communism after Lenin, apart from being state capitalism, was Stalinism and that in – almost – all countries where it was “implemented”.
The American people, others that Communists, and people from many other Western nations, believe that socialism and communism equals what we have seen before in the Soviet Union when it was run by Stalin and Beria and their successors and in the countries that later came under the USSR's influence but what we saw was, in fact, state capitalism masquerading as socialism and communism.
It was always claimed that it was based on Marxism and Leninism but nothing could be further from the truth.
Stalin and Beria were two power-hungry warlords from the Caucasus and turned the USSR, after the death of Lenin, onto their private fiefdom with farms, workshops and factories being forcibly collectivized and confiscated by the state to become state-owned business.
The small farmers, the so-called Kulaks, were hounded to death, literally, and the co-operative farms of small farmers were forcibly turned into kolkhozy, collective farms. Although some kolkhozy formed immediately after the October Revolution in 1917 those, initially, were formed on a voluntary basis by the farmers. After 1929, however, Stalin forced all farmers to band together into such kolkozy which then, basically, became the same as the state-owned farms, the sovkhozy, though operated differently. But I digressed.
When it comes to economics in a communist society it needs to be true co-operatives which then means that the means of production are truly owned by the workers, and that regardless of the size of the business.
True communism is totally different to what we have seen masquerading as it under the name of socialism and communism or as scientific socialism/communism during the twentieth century ever since the death of Lenin and the take over by the Stalin and Beria clique at the Kremlin.
However, in order for true communism to work and benefit all it must be applied properly and it must be applied from below and not from above.
The system needs to be redesigned in a completely new way and primarily with consideration of the people and the state must be abolished once and for all and that also includes conglomerates such as the European Union and other such like bodies.
The state does not work and thus real communism has to be detached from the idea of the state and a government. It must be a system by the people for the people run by the people at a local level, a tribal level. Only in that way can people actually govern themselves and this personal governance can only work under true communism. And only under true communism can people run the economy in a proper way that will benefit everyone and the Planet.
The problem with revolution is, however, as was already evident in the French Revolution and later in the Russian Revolution, or better, in that case after, after the death of Comrade Lenin, is the usurpation of power by people hellbent in gaining and maintaining power over the people.
Those people are not true revolutionaries but counter-revolutionaries in truth and fact as they are actually usurping the will of the people, often murdering, as in the case of the French Revolution and also with regards to the death of Leon Bronstein, aka Leon Trotsky. The latter who was murdered, although he was the actually appointed successor of V I Lenin, whose testament was falsified by Stalin, on Stalin’s orders in Mexico to where he, Comrade Trotsky, had fled.
Neither true socialism nor communism are bad. The opposite rather. However, we, the people, must be careful that no one will usurp the revolution that must come from the bottom, from the grassroots, from the people, and to that end we must be ever vigilant against those that could aim to do just that. Communism is not bad but the people who bend it to gain power over the people and more than just the people of one group or place are.
And that was the case in the French Revolution and in the USSR after the death of Lenin when Stalin turned it, the country, into a fiefdom of his and of Beria. Communism was turned by Stalin and Beria from what it was meant to be into an oppressive system that killed millions of people. It was not communism that did that, and not just in the USSR, but it was Stalinism. Let's get one straight. And the problem with the economy? It was state capitalism, a system that, like capitalism per se, that does not work. But it was not communism as a system itself that caused the failures of the economy in those countries really. It was a failure of the way the system was created and, more often than not, due to sabotage.
If we want to get away from exploitation of both man and the environment and away from consumerism then the way to go is a proper – and the stress is on the word proper – planned economy and properly planned one. A local economy where only that what people really need and want is produced and not where products are made that then need to be sold to people requiring the creation of a need. The latter is the way the capitalist economy of today is created and where advertising is brainwashing people into believing that if they just have this or that product then they will be happy and their lives will be fulfilled only for yet another product to come along that advertising suggests to them they need. And fulfillment and happiness goes right out of the window.
True communism is the future. One where the state no longer exists and where people, in small groups and communities, govern themselves.
© 2013
