I must be paranoid; I still believe in communists
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JULY 22, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
I must be paranoid; I still believe in communists
Last month, here in Las Vegas, Clark County officials finally caved in to union pressure and ended their system of merit raises. (Now the guys who sit with their feet up will get the same raises as those who stay late to get the job done ... assuming any of the latter can still be found.)
The bosses of Nevada's teachers unions have long wailed and ululated against any similar proposal to differentiate by awarding pay raises based on "merit" among their own number ... after all, this would allow school principals and other administrators to show "favoritism."
(I asked Nevada State Education Association President Elaine Lancaster recently whether it should really be "from each according to his ability, to each according to their needs"? "Well, it may be politically incorrect to say it," replied Ms. Lancaster, not blinking an eye, "but yes, it's the duty of those who have, to take care of those who do not.")
It was in this context that I found myself cheered to receive the galley proofs of the new paperback book, "Communism: A Brief History," by Richard Pipes, Baird Research Professor of History at Harvard University (due from the Modern Library this fall.)
I thumbed through this slim volume, stumbling on a telling paragraph about a noted world leader who confronted similar proposals in 1931, when he was trying to get the factories running and his nation out of a serious economic depression.
"In 1931," Professor Pipes writes of this noted economic and political visionary, "he assailed the principle of 'egalitarianism,' which called for workers to be paid identical wages regardless of competence, as an 'ultra-left' notion. It meant, he went on the explain, that the unqualified worker had no incentive to acquire skills, while the skilled worker moved from job to job until he found ones where his talents were properly rewarded; both hurt productivity. Accordingly, the new wage scale drew great distinctions between the least and most skilled workers."
Who was this enemy of worker solidarity, this promoter of dog-eat-dog competition who stood so far to the right of the enlightened leaders of today's Clark County public employee unions?
Joseph Stalin.
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Professor Pipes, who reminds us in his preface that "No clear distinction can be drawn between 'socialism' and 'communism' " ... in other words, that the collectivist politics of Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein and Shelley Berkley will lead inevitably to the same results gained by Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot, no matter how winding or flower-strewn the path ... finds that "Just as the Holocaust expressed the quintessential nature of National Socialism, so did the Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia (1975-78) represent the purest embodiment of Communism: what it turns into when pushed to its logical conclusion. ...
"The leaders of the Khmer Rouge received their higher education in Paris," the good professor notes, "where they absorbed Rousseau's vision of 'natural man,' as well as the exhortations of Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre to violence in the struggle against colonialism."
When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge threw out the American puppet Lon Nol in 1975 and took over the nation's capital Phnom Penh, "The carnage began," Professor Pipes reports. "Unlike Mao ... Pol Pot did not waste time on 'reeducation' but proceeded directly to extermination, by category, of ... all civilian and military employees of the old regime, former landowners, teachers, merchants, Buddhist monks, and even skilled workers. ... The executions involved entire families, including small children. ..."
Collectivism breeds such immorality -- and can't stand close observation by those who reject euphemisms and stubbornly insist on calling things by their proper names -- because it rests on the foundation of armed robbery, no matter how intricately disguised.
Fail to pay your school taxes or your redistributionist "income tax," and eventually armed men will set your belongings on the sidewalk and auction off your house.
What elected official in America today (possibly excepting Ron Paul of Texas) hesitates to gleefully spend the proceeds of the redistributionist income tax? They have thus embraced both the principles and the methods of the Bolesheviks. Yet neither the elected thieves nor the beneficiaries of such redistributionist (that is to say, communist) schemes face any social disapproval for "stealing our stuff." No, they're merely "receiving their entitlements"; it is WE who are loathed as selfish, anti-social deviants if we endeavor to keep some larger share of what we earn to feed and clothe our own families, shouted down for "hate speech" if we call their theft ring by its proper name.
Pipes quotes Kenneth M. Quinn from Carl D. Jackson's 1989 book "Cambodia 1975-1978: Rendezvous With Death" on the typical conduct of Pol Pot's armies:
"Khmer Rouge soldiers would rape a Vietnamese woman" (Vietnamese were a disliked racial minority in Cambodia), "then ram a stake or bayonet into her vagina. Pregnant women were cut open, their unborn babies yanked out and slapped against the dying mother's face. The Yotheas (youths) also enjoyed cutting the breasts off well endowed Vietnamese women."
The victims could not defend themselves because it was illegal for civilians to own firearms of military utility, of course -- precisely the state of affairs that folks like Charles Schumer and Madames Feinstein and Berkley would like to see prevail on these shores. (Ever heard them propose the repeal of a single "gun control" law?)
In only 44 months, Pol Pot managed to reduce the population of the country from 7.3 million to 5.8 million, eliminating nearly a fifth (some say a quarter) of a nation's population. And it was all done in strict adherence to the doctrines they'd been taught by the most respected Leftist intellectuals of the universities of Paris, who to this day are still required reading (in translation, of course, language skills having long since been abandoned as undemocratic, elitist and unnecessary) in the most prestigious American universities.
"It may be noted that there were no demonstrations anywhere in the world against these outrages and the United Nations passed no resolutions condemning them," Professor Pipes notes. "The world took them in stride, presumably because they were committed in what was heralded as a noble cause."
# # #
Finally, the bloodstained geriatrics who run Red China, taking time out from beating to death more imprisoned Christians, Tibetan nuns, and other "cult members," sponsored a concert last month in Beijing's "Forbidden City," featuring those world-class yawners the "Three Tenors."
The concert was meant to promote Beijing's desire to host the 2008 Olympics, by showing what a civilized place it is. But a protester showed up.
American photographer Stephen Shaver, there on behalf of Agence France-Presse, photographed the protester. So, in the routine performance of their "put on a happy face" public-relations duties, Beijing police knocked Shaver down, dragged him along the ground, and hit him in the head and chest.
The United States filed a protest. From the French, who educated most of Asia's leading Communist revolutionaries? Silence.
Except that three weeks later the International Olympic Committee -- the same folks who honored Hitler's little racial purification experiments by awarding him the 1936 games -- announced the locale of their 2008 Olympic games.
Yep. Beijing.
You see, there are no communists. The paranoid right just imagined them. They "see them under every bush." They picture them "hiding under the bed." Poor, deluded fools. Always good for a chuckle at the faculty cocktail party.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
