Karl Marx: Opium of the People

[Wade]

If any may recall the Communists promised they would win the west but they would do it from the inside.

I remember this mostly from anti-Communist Cold War propaganda, not from Communists.

Take a look at our medical system of abortions, euthanasia, vaccines profited by abortions, and etc. You don't have to look further than if a person supports conventional medicine unreservedly and you can see easily who has been won into communist ideas "unknowingly" - unfortunately most North Americans seem to support these COVID vaccines that are benefited from abortions, they are completely experimental without proper full testing and the producers have no legal accountability and people are crying to get it and are content with absurdly inconsistent isolation restrictions - while saying they love their neighbours...

None of this has anything to do with Communism. It’s as if “Communism” is being used as a big scary word with no real meaning to it.

To the blind maybe. What else do you call the acceptance of medical procedures where the government pays for the research and then pays for the product and then bypasses regular approval systems and then grants immunity to any consequences and then limiting opportunity to earn a livelihood or potentially the ability to move around unless you submit to it? This is the acceptance of a Communist mindset, but because of so many compromises and situational ethics found in Christianity it goes easily undetected by the whole when it is right in your face - just like you look back at WW2 and say it was right in their face.

[HondurasKeiser]

If any may recall the Communists promised they would win the west but they would do it from the inside.

I remember this mostly from anti-Communist Cold War propaganda, not from Communists.

Which prominent communists do you recall that sincerely desired peaceful coexistence?

[RZehr]

Hutterites and Bruderhof? Small c.

[HondurasKeiser]

Hutterites and Bruderhof? Small c.

Maybe I am splitting hairs but the Hutterites and Bruderhofs are for me, in a very different category from Marxists/Communists. I would tend to term their organizing/animating ideas as communalism/communitarianism. Additionally, as far as I know, the West broadly speaking has never been engaged in a Cold War with the Hutterites.

[Ken]

If any may recall the Communists promised they would win the west but they would do it from the inside.

But history seems to have run in the opposite direction.

There are still some Communist countries: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. Other countries are not clamoring to join them.

The following countries were once Communist, but are no longer: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mongolia, Yemen, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany (East), Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Rep. of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Angola, Benin, Dem Rep. of Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Mozambique.

None of those is communist today. The world is not unifying under communism. Communism lost. I mean, steam engines still exist, but they aren't taking over the world.

Take a look at our medical system of abortions, euthanasia, vaccines profited by abortions, and etc. You don't have to look further than if a person supports conventional medicine unreservedly and you can see easily who has been won into communist ideas "unknowingly" - unfortunately most North Americans seem to support these COVID vaccines that are benefited from abortions, they are completely experimental without proper full testing and the producers have no legal accountability and people are crying to get it and are content with absurdly inconsistent isolation restrictions - while saying they love their neighbours...

Lots to unpack there, but none of that looks like Marxism or communism to me. Can you say something about how you are defining these terms?

There is no recognized definition of "communism" that would include private multinational corporations like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson developing and profiting from vaccines that are administered through private health care providers and corporate pharmacies. One may not like our current partnership between corporate America and the Federal government. But it isn't communism. Much the opposite in fact. It is what Marx warned against.

[HondurasKeiser]

If any may recall the Communists promised they would win the west but they would do it from the inside.

But history seems to have run in the opposite direction.

There are still some Communist countries: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. Other countries are not clamoring to join them.

The following countries were once Communist, but are no longer: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mongolia, Yemen, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany (East), Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Rep. of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Angola, Benin, Dem Rep. of Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Mozambique.

None of those is communist today. The world is not unifying under communism. Communism lost. I mean, steam engines still exist, but they aren't taking over the world.

Take a look at our medical system of abortions, euthanasia, vaccines profited by abortions, and etc. You don't have to look further than if a person supports conventional medicine unreservedly and you can see easily who has been won into communist ideas "unknowingly" - unfortunately most North Americans seem to support these COVID vaccines that are benefited from abortions, they are completely experimental without proper full testing and the producers have no legal accountability and people are crying to get it and are content with absurdly inconsistent isolation restrictions - while saying they love their neighbours...

Lots to unpack there, but none of that looks like Marxism or communism to me. Can you say something about how you are defining these terms?

There is no recognized definition of "communism" that would include private multinational corporations like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson developing and profiting from vaccines that are administered through private health care providers and corporate pharmacies. One may not like our current partnership between corporate America and the Federal government. But it isn't communism. Much the opposite in fact. It is what Marx warned against.

Agreed.

[Ken]

Hutterites and Bruderhof? Small c.

Maybe I am splitting hairs but the Hutterites and Bruderhofs are for me, in a very different category from Marxists/Communists. I would tend to term their organizing/animating ideas as communalism/communitarianism. Additionally, as far as I know, the West broadly speaking has never been engaged in a Cold War with the Hutterites.

Communism is a political ideology. It is all about overthrowing the existing order. As far as I know, these small collectivist groups have never been political and have never sought to replicate their ideals within the outside world.

[Szdfan]

If any may recall the Communists promised they would win the west but they would do it from the inside.

I remember this mostly from anti-Communist Cold War propaganda, not from Communists.

Which prominent communists do you recall that sincerely desired peaceful coexistence?

I’m going to point out a couple of super-obvious things:

1) Western Europe is made up of social democracies, all which fuse together elements of socialism and capitalism and most which have socialist/communist/far-left parties that have mostly peacefully coexisted since WWII.

2) While China is still officially a Communist nation with a controlling Communist party, at this point it functions more as an authoritarian capitalist country than a communist one. Gone are the five year planned economies and gone is the emphasis on class struggle. The conflict between the US and China is less about ideology and more about economics and dominance on the world political stage. The intention behind the current Chinese “Silk Road” initiative to build direct rail and road connections with Europe is not class warfare but to expand Chinese influence both economically and politically. I think that’s a form of “peaceful coexistence” and similar to the kind of “soft power” the US uses on a regular basis.

In regards to prominent Communists in the Cold War:

I don’t think Ho Chi Minh really wanted war with the US. My read of him was that he was less an ideologue and more of a committed Vietnamese nationalist who was primarily concerned with Vietnamese independence. In 1919, he attended the Paris Peace Conference, hoping to get support from President Wilson and the US for the end of French colonialism in Indochina. The US ignored him, the Communists listened. US involvement in Vietnam was essentially a continuation of a war of Vietnamese independence. In that case, the US were the aggressors.

Also, there are signs that Khrushchev was open to ”peaceful coexistence” with the West:

Khrushchev solidified the concept in Soviet foreign policy in 1956 at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The policy arose as a temptation to reduce hostility between the two superpowers, particularly in light of the possibility of nuclear war. The Soviet theory of peaceful coexistence asserted that the United States and USSR, and their respective political ideologies, could coexist rather than fighting one another, and Khrushchev tried to demonstrate his commitment to peaceful coexistence by attending international peace conferences, such as the Geneva Summit, and by traveling internationally, such as his 13-day trip to tour the United States in 1959. The World Peace Council founded in 1949 and largely funded by the Soviet Union attempted to organize a peace movement in favor of the concept internationally.

In addition to being a reaction to the realization that a nuclear war between the two superpowers would ensure the destruction of not only the socialist system but the entirety of humanity, it also reflected the USSR's strategic military disposition - the move away from large, and possibly politically offensive, military ventures towards a force centered on proxy wars and a strategic nuclear missile force. Although disquiet over this shift helped bring Khrushchev down, his successors did not return to the antagonistic contradiction theories of an inevitable conflict between the capitalist and socialist systems. Initially, this was China's main gripe with the theory, and the reason the latter from then on classified the Soviet Union as a "betrayer of the Revolution."

From the Soviet perspective, the US was the aggressor and represented an existential threat. A lot of what drove Soviet behavior in the post-WWII era in Eastern Europe was driven by fear from Western invasion. Just as memory of Napoleon had driven the decision by the Russians to build their railroads at a different gauge than the rest of Europe, the recent experience of Nazi invasion inspired the Soviets to create a buffer zone of satellite countries to protect them from the existential threat the US and it’s allies represented.

This dynamic continues today. One of the motivations behind Russia’s annexation of Crimea (which I abhor) was fear that if Ukraine became closer to the West, Russia would lose access to its naval bases on the Black Sea. Much of this fear has been driven by NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and the Baltics, despite assurances made by the West to Gorbachev that this wasn’t going to happen.

I tend to think the US and the USSR were flip sides of the coin. I think most of the time, neither side was super committed to “peaceful coexistence” if it meant losing power and influence to the other side.

[HondurasKeiser]

Khrushchev solidified the concept in Soviet foreign policy in 1956 at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The policy arose as a temptation to reduce hostility between the two superpowers, particularly in light of the possibility of nuclear war. The Soviet theory of peaceful coexistence asserted that the United States and USSR, and their respective political ideologies, could coexist rather than fighting one another, and Khrushchev tried to demonstrate his commitment to peaceful coexistence by attending international peace conferences, such as the Geneva Summit, and by traveling internationally, such as his 13-day trip to tour the United States in 1959. The World Peace Council founded in 1949 and largely funded by the Soviet Union attempted to organize a peace movement in favor of the concept internationally.

Wasn't that the same year that peaceful Mr. Khrushchev sent Soviet tanks plowing through Hungary? Wasn't that the same Soviet Premier that trained his missiles on Miami? His doctrine of "Peaceful Coexistence" is a strange one indeed; eminently better than Stalinism but rather unlike something approaching peaceful.

[Ken]

Khrushchev solidified the concept in Soviet foreign policy in 1956 at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The policy arose as a temptation to reduce hostility between the two superpowers, particularly in light of the possibility of nuclear war. The Soviet theory of peaceful coexistence asserted that the United States and USSR, and their respective political ideologies, could coexist rather than fighting one another, and Khrushchev tried to demonstrate his commitment to peaceful coexistence by attending international peace conferences, such as the Geneva Summit, and by traveling internationally, such as his 13-day trip to tour the United States in 1959. The World Peace Council founded in 1949 and largely funded by the Soviet Union attempted to organize a peace movement in favor of the concept internationally.

Wasn't that the same year that peaceful Mr. Khrushchev sent Soviet tanks plowing through Hungary? Wasn't that the same Soviet Premier that trained his missiles on Miami? His doctrine of "Peaceful Coexistence" is a strange one indeed; eminently better than Stalinism but rather unlike something approaching peaceful.

During this same era the US instigated a military coup and overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala (1954), attempted a failed military coup in Indonesia in 1958, a successful military coup in South Vietnam in 1963, supported a military coup in Egypt in 1952 in which Nasser overthrew the existing monarchy, and supported the 1953 coup in Iran which brought the Shaw to power and overthrew a democratically elected government that was threatening to nationalize oil companies. And intervened in a bunch of other countries of which I'm forgetting.

As for missiles in Cuba pointed at Miami? The USSR claimed they were in response to US medium-range missiles installed in Turkey that were equally close to the USSR. Turkey shares a border with several former Soviet states (Armenia and Georgia) as well as Soviet-block Bulgaria.

I'm not defending the USSR at all. It was a brutal and autocratic regime. But it took two to tango during the cold war. And the US was every bit as much of a bad actor on the international stage as the USSR was.