Lack of intellect? I hear you. Before you know it, I will
think that if someone uses the name Lenin, they must be Marxists
Oh yes the left's twisted attempts to pull itself from the failure of collectivism
Socialism, communism, fascism, crony capitalism are all forms of some level of CPE's
and share little with a true free market system. The issue is one of statism
Hayek defined Fascism :
"It is simply collectivism freed from all traces of an individualist tradition which might hamper its realization"
which is one of the potential problems with CPEs and the onset of statism
Too often many call for ends with no appreciation
of the means to get there
It does appear, you are one of those types
Don't worry, I'm sure we will get it right, this time...
I see left/right and parochial indoctrination won't allow you to absorb anything that conflicts with your dogmatic ignorance.
Try this exercise: describe a conservative in Russia? Do you think the rest of the world is calibrated to YOUR parochial indoctrination? Would a staunch conservative in Russia want to 'conserve' capitalism? The US Constitution?? The Declaration of Independence???
Socialism is liberal. More people (preferably everyone) have some say in how the economy works. Democracy is liberal. More people (preferably everyone) have some say in how the government works. "Democracy," said Marx, "is the road to socialism." He was wrong about how economics and politics interact, but he did see their similar underpinnings.
Communism is conservative. Fewer and fewer people (preferably just the Party Secretary) have any say in how the economy works. Republicans are conservative. Fewer and fewer people (preferably just people controlling the Party figurehead) have any say in how the government works. The conservatives in the US are in the same position as the communists in the 30s, and for the same reason: Their revolutions failed spectacularly but they refuse to admit what went wrong.
A common mistake is to confuse Socialism, the economic system, with Communism, the political system. Communists are "socialist" in the same way that Republicans are "compassionate conservatives". That is, they give lip service to ideals they have no intention of practicing.
Communism, or "scientific socialism", has very little to do with Marx. Communism was originally envisioned by Marx and Engels as the last stages of their socialist revolution. "The meaning of the word communism shifted after 1917, when Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party seized power in Russia. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a repressive, single-party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies." (quote from Encarta.). Those socialist policies were never implemented.
Whereas Marx saw industrialized workers rising up to take over control of their means of production, the exact opposite happened. Most countries that have gone Communist have been agrarian underdeveloped nations. The prime example is the Soviet Union. The best thing to be said about the October Revolution in 1917 is that the new government was better than the Tsars. The worst thing is that they trusted the wrong people, notably Lenin, to lead this upheaval. The Soviet Union officially abandoned socialism in 1921 when Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy allowing for taxation, local trade, some state capitalism... and extreme profiteering. Later that year, he purged 259,000 from the party membership and therefore purged them from voting (shades of the US election of 2000!) and fewer and fewer people were involved in making decisions.
Marxism became Marxist-Leninism which became Stalinism. The Wikipedia entry for Stalinism: "The term Stalinism was used by anti-Soviet Marxists, particularly Trotskyists, to distinguish the policies of the Soviet Union from those they regard as more true to Marxism. Trotskyists argue that the Stalinist USSR was not socialist, but a bureaucratized degenerated workers state that is, a state in which exploitation is controlled by a ruling caste which, while it did not own the means of production and was not a social class in its own right, accrued benefits and privileges at the expense of the working class."
Communists defending Stalin were driven by Cognitive Dissonance. "The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, motivates the person to reduce the dissonance and leads to avoidance of information likely to increase the dissonance." They didn't want to hear any criticism, and would go out of their way to deny facts. The abrupt betrayal of ideals by Lenin and Marx left many socialists clinging to the Soviet Union even though they knew Stalin was a disaster. They called themselves Communist even though they espoused none of Stalin's viewpoints and very few of Lenin's revisionism. In Russia, Lenin remains a Hero of the Revolution. Despite having screwed things up in the first place, Stalin is revered by Communists for toppling the Third Reich.
Conservatives defending George W. Bush are in the same situation as Communists defending Stalin. Stalin was never a "socialist" and Bush was never a "compassionate conservative", but the conservatives just don't want to hear any criticism and will go out of their way to deny facts. The current construction of the conservative movement in the US descends through the anti-Communists during and after WWII, the George Wallace "America First" blue-collar workers, the racists that Wallace picked up that switched parties during Nixon's Southern Strategy, and the nascent libertarian movement championed by Barry Goldwater. Ronald Reagan's acceptance speech for Goldwater during the 1964 Republican National Convention laid out the insistence of a balanced budget: "There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States." And yet, like Lenin revising Marx, when Reagan was governor of California he didn't practice fiscal restraint. And when he was elected president in 1980 he did the exact opposite of his campaign promise and triple the deficit and there has been "no fiscal and economic stability" since his flip-flop. Fiscal restraint was never implemented.
Abrupt betrayal of ideals of Reagan when he got into power left many conservatives clinging to the Republican party even though they espoused none of Reagan's new policies. Despite screwing things up in the first place, Reagan remains a Hero of the Revolution and is revered by conservatives for toppling the Soviet Union.
Reagan isn't Lenin and Bush isn't Stalin, but the parallels are notable. George W. Bush, like Stalin, inherits a failed revolution that relies on a cult-like worship of his predecessors and a complete denial of the facts.
