"What Communism Teaches Us"

Bruce Sterling in Wired HERE "What Communism Teaches Us"

This is a thoughtful piece on the aftermath of the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia and of interest to anyone who thinks that transitions from one status quo to another that they prefer is the end of society’s problems.

I note this opening paragraph summarising Havel's life:

“What’s so interesting about this speech by a dead dissident? Well, he slew Communism and buried it, and then he looks around at Western politics and he sees a related slave morality. You dump historical materialism and you just transfer the whip to the Invisible Hand of the Market.”

No, I am not going to make my regular post on the “invisible hand”; I am simply noting how one version of “the system” people live under has its myopic visions of what’s going on which do not bear much relationship to the realities that all systems promote as an explanation of what their current experiences are and should be about.  Adam Smith, for one, was also a moralist with a far more realistic approach to analysing how society operated without making predictions for an unknowble future. Ideology trumps the daily experience of everyday life.  The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ – was actually dictatorship by its resident Communist Party dictators and is as much an imaginary image of what communism was really about as is the soothing fatalistic balm of those who mouth the equally imaginary assurances of “invisible hands” at work in markets.  

Lusty renditions of the Internationale from middle-class activists, whose personal acquaintance with real poverty is limited to their tourism among the poor – for them but not of them – are unconvincing and quaint.  It is phoney for them to sing about “starvelings” awaking from their “slumbers” to arise as “prisoners of want” in 21^st century Europe, as heard on May Day tv news, as if the “teeming masses” were or ought to be awaiting the call to join the barricades.  Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority in market economies live in relative affluence compared to the fate of the majorities in many parts of the world elsewhere.

I should make clear here that like many of my centre-right associates (including in the Adam Smith Institute), as well as many of my friends among centre-left fellow Scots, I welcome rich and poor immigrants into our country, seeking a better life - recall the enormous contribution made by the penniless Ugandian Asians who came here as refugees in the 70s. 
I also think tv footage of the dictator of Syria celebrating 'May Day' was somewhat nauseous – I trust everybody, except our own George Galloway, felt the same.

So follow the link above and this one too: HERE