WWI exacted a terrible toll....and one result was a feeling on the continent that there was nothing worth fighting and dying for.....'better red than dead.'
Ronald Reagan came along and convinced many Europeans otherwise.
And, before Reagan...
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. "
John Stuart Mill
There seems to be this pervasive pattern of you quoting people who do not agree with you in order to support spurious arguments. It is sad really.
"The restraints of Communism would be freedom in comparison with the present condition of the majority of the human race"
--
John Stuart Mill; from 'Principles of Political Economy' (1852)
1. In stretching to try to find some way...any way....to get away from the intellectual beating that I administer to you on a regular basis, you do what so many imbeciles do....
....you evince a lack of understanding of the history to which you appeal.
It is clear that you don't know in what meaning that quote uses "communism."
Now....watch as I rip a new one for one who is one:
The quote is dated 1852.
2. "In its modern beginnings, socialism was optimistic and well intentioned,
without the overlay of its contemporary varieties that tend to bemoan prosperity, romanticize poverty, and promote a view that place individual rights are a secondary concern. This is to say that
the earliest socialists sought the fullest possible flourishing of humanity, “the common good.”
3. A half-century before Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto, there was Gracchus Babeuf’s Plebeian Manifesto, which was later renamed the Manifesto of the Equals.
Babeuf’s early (1796) work has been described as socialist, anarchist, and communist, and has had an enormous impact. He wrote: “The French Revolution was nothing but a precursor of another revolution, on which will be bigger, more solemn, and which will be the last…We reach for something more sublime and more just: the common good or the community of goods! Nor more individual property in land: the land belongs to no one. We demand, we want, the common enjoyment of the fruits of the land: the fruits belong to all.” Here, then, are the major themes of socialist theory. It takes very little interpolation to find that opponents profit at the expense of the environment, and conditions of inequality in society.
4. For Babeur, socialism would distribute prosperity across the entire population, as it would “[have] us eat four good meals a day, [dress} us most elegantly, and also [provide] those of us who are fathers of families with charming houses worth a thousand louis each.”
5. Oscar Wilde: “Under socialism…there will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings…Each member of society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society…”
6. Marxism rested on the assumption that the condition of the working classes would grow ever worse under capitalism, that there would be but two classes: one small and rich, the other vast and increasingly impoverished, and revolution would be the anodyne that would result in the “common good.”
But by the early 20th century, it was clear that this assumption was completely wrong! Under capitalism, the standard of living of all was improving: prices falling, incomes rising, health and sanitation improving, lengthening of life spans, diets becoming more varied, the new jobs created in industry paid more than most could make in agriculture, housing improved, and middle class industrialists and business owners displaced nobility and gentry as heroes.
7. These economic advances continued throughout
the period of the rise of socialist ideology. The poor didn’t get poorer because the rich were getting richer (a familiar socialist refrain even today) as the socialists had predicted. Instead, the underlying reality was that capitalism had created the first societies in history in which living standards were rising in all sectors of society."
From a speech by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, President, Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.
Delivered at Hillsdale College, October 27, 2006
So, dolt, the bright promises of "communism" of 1852 is hardly the oppression and slaughter of the 100 million killed by same in the last century.
In short, the meaning of communism then, was not how any enlightened individual sees same today.
And, of course, I exclude you from "enlightened."
It is sad really.
