First They Came for the Socialists...

The Maverick's recent link to Robert Paul Wolff losing his mind brought to mind this delightful update on Niemöller's poem:

Obama Guevara

[Photo here]

“The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities and drink, the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent…The Negro has maintained his racial purity by his well known habit of avoiding baths."  ~Che Guevara, Motorcycle Diaries. 

I'm actually old enough to remember when U.S. presidents actively opposed communism rather than posing in front of murderous communist thugs which won't pose a problem with their base.  How much do you want to bet that "Black Lives Matter" doesn't protest over this at all? 

A Book I Just Read

Very well written and researched

Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much passion, controversy, and curiosity as Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was that rare combination of the man of ideas and the man of action. His role in history—his epic rise and fall, his fiery persona, his violent end in Mexico in August 1940—holds a fascination that transcends the history of the Russian Revolution. Based on extensive firsthand research, this groundbreaking biography examines Trotsky's remarkable life from the perspective of his last exile in Mexico.

Bertrand M. Patenaude masterfully interweaves the story of Trotsky's final years in Mexico with flashbacks to pivotal episodes in his career as a young Marxist, revolutionary hero, Red Army chief, Bolshevik leader, outcast from Stalin's USSR, and ultimately heretic of the Kremlin, targeted for assassination by its secret police. He vividly recounts the contentious Dewey Commission hearings and the passionate debates among liberals and Communists in the United States and Europe over the Moscow Trials and the charges made against Trotsky.

Drawing on Trotsky's private correspondence and diaries, as well as the testimonies of his American bodyguards and secretaries, Patenaude sheds new light on Trotsky's tumultuous friendship with painter Diego Rivera; his affair with Rivera's wife, Frida Kahlo; and his torment as his family and comrades became victims of the Great Terror. Patenaude also turns to KGB files to document Stalin's efforts to eliminate the man he considered his nemesis—including a failed commando raid on Trotsky's home three months before his death.

Gripping and tragic, Trotsky brilliantly illuminates the fateful and dramatic life of one of history's most captivating and important figures.

Loot and Plunder Economics

More from Marx's Manifesto:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

A Summary of Communism

"[T]he theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."
~Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

I just finished this short novel by John le Carre, the one that put him on the spy novelist map.  le Carre was himself a British spy during the Cold War.  Most of the novel takes place in Germany and in England.  le Carre has deep insight into the human condition and moral psychology, though his view seems rather bleak.  There is also a bit of social commentary on the U.S.S.R as well.

Excerpt (no spoilers):

   "Why don't you eat?" the [communist] woman asked again.  "It's all over now."  She said this without compassion, as if the girl were a fool not to eat when the food was there.
   "I'm not hungry."
The wardress shrugged: "You may have a long journey," she observed, "and not much the other end."
   "What do you mean?"
   "The workers are starving in England," she declared complacently. "The capitalists let them starve."
   Liz thought of saying something but there seemed no point.  Besides, she wanted to know; she had to know, and this woman could tell her.
   "What is this place?"
   "Don't you know?" the wardress laughed. "You should ask them over there," she nodded towards the window.  "They can tell you what it is."
   "Who are they?"
   "Prisoners."
   "What kind of prisoners?"
   "Enemies of the state," she replied promptly. "Spies, agitators."
   "How do you know they are spies?"
   "The Party knows.  The Party knows more about people than they know themselves.  Haven't you been told that?"  The wardress looked at her, shook her head and observed, "The English!  The rich have eaten your future and your poor have given them the food--that's what's happened to the English."
   "Who told you that?"
   The woman smiled and said nothing.  She seemed pleased with herself.
   "And this prison is for spies?" Liz persisted.
   "It is a prison for those who fail to recognise Socialist reality; for those who think they have the right to err; for those who slow down the march.  Traitors," she concluded briefly.
   "But what have they done?"
   "We cannot build Communism without doing away with individualism.  You cannot plan a great building if some swine builds his sty on your site."
Liz [herself a communist in England] looked at her in astonishment.
   "Who told you this?"
   "I am Commissar here," she said proudly, "I work in the prison."
   "You are very clever," Liz observed, approaching her.
   "I am a worker," the woman replied acidly. "The concept of brain workers as a higher category must be destroyed.  There are no categories, only workers; no antithesis between physical and mental labour.  Haven't you read Lenin?"

Labor Day Humor

From June 2nd:

I love this birthday girl.

Me: Birthdays are the dumbest day of the year.

Malea (12-yr-old): No, Dad, that's Labor Day.

Red Monday.

On What is Left of Our Culture

Theodore Dalrymple on his communist father, political correctness, feminism, and more here.

Excerpt:

FrontPageMag: You make the shrewd observation of how political correctness engenders evil because of “the violence that it does to people’s souls by forcing them to say or imply what they do not believe, but must not question.” Can you talk about this a bit?

Dalrymple: Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.  

I take it as given that man, having contradictory desires, is always subject to frustration, even when happy. For example, we want both adventure and safety, and when we have the one we long for the other. All forms of human happiness contain within themselves the seeds of their own decomposition.

Modern man particularly - or so it seems to me - is particularly bad at recognising that much of his unhappiness or discontent stems from this inevitable source. Rather, he blames the structure of society and thinks that a perfection that will resolve all contradictions and eliminate all frustrations can be achieved, if only we abolished private property or followed the example of the 7th century followers of Mohammed. The attempt to force people to do so gives meaning to their existence, and of course a lot of sadistic pleasure into the bargain.

FrontPageMag: You discuss the horrifying suffering that women endure under the vicious and sadistic structures of Islam’s gender apartheid. You touch on the eerie silence of Western leftist feminists on this issue, noting “Where two pieties – feminism and multi-culturalism – come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.”

To be sure, the Left has long posed as a great champion of women’s rights, gay rights, minorti rights, democratic rights etc. Yet today, it has reached out in solidarity with the most fascistic women-hating, gay-hating, minority-hating and democracy hating force on the face of the earth – Islamism.

What gives? It’s really nothing new though is it? (i.e. the Left’s political pilgrimages to communist gulags etc.)

Dalrymple: I think the problem here is one of a desired self-image. Tolerance is the greatest moral virtue and broadmindedness the greatest intellectual one. Moreover, no decent person can be other than a feminist. People therefore want to be both multiculturalist and feminist. But multiculturalism and feminism obviously clash; therefore, you avoid the necessity to give up one or the other merely by disregarding the phenomena. How you feel about yourself is more important to you than the state of the world.

This Might Be a Nice Banner for the Blog

Why Understanding Marxism-Leninism Is Important

Michael Valle, philosopher and Harley-Davidson mechanic, explains Marxism-Leninism here.

I am convinced that Marxism-Leninism is alive and well in spite of the death of the Soviet Union.  It has assumed new forms, discarded some ideas, taken some new ones on, but its spirit is healthy.  Its spirit is essentially a collectivist one that does the following:  It affirms that Man is infinitely malleable rather than limited by his nature, it denigrates individualism for the sake of collectivism, it de-emphasizes personal responsibility by making our behavior depend on things outside of our control, it relatives truth and morality by making them functions of group membership, it corrodes liberty for the sake of equality of results, it advocates the silencing of political opponents, and it is virulently anti-American (and anti-Israel, for that matter).

Read the whole thing:

Affirmative Action and Cuban Communist Utopia

Heather Mac Donald has a nice write-up on the recent Michigan affirmative action case.  Here is an excerpt:

Justice Kennedy, writing the controlling plurality opinion (joined by Justices Roberts and Alito), noticed something in the political-process doctrine that is even more lethal to the Court’s preference jurisprudence. By requiring courts to determine whether a policy is a “racial issue,” the doctrine makes courts stereotype minorities, Kennedy wrote. The “racial issue” test presumes that all minorities share the same interests and same points of view, he said. But “it cannot be entertained as a serious proposition that all individuals of the same race think alike.”

Uh-oh. There goes the diversity rationale down the drain.
According to the Supreme Court, the only reason why schools should be allowed to discriminate against more academically qualified applicants in favor of less qualified black and Hispanic applicants is that those “underrepresented” minorities will bring otherwise missing perspectives to the classroom and cafeteria. But if each individual is in fact sui generis, then there is no reason to believe that selection by skin color will lead to a non-random introduction of additional viewpoints. The next case to challenge racial preferences should quote Kennedy’s words back to him as the death knell for the “diversity” conceit.

Also at City Journal, Michael Totten writes about his recent visit to Cuba:

Leftists often talk about “food deserts” in Western cities, where the poor supposedly lack options to buy affordable and nutritious food. If they want to see a real food desert, they should come to Havana. I went to a grocery store across the street from the exclusive Meliá Cohiba Hotel, where the lucky few with access to hard currency shop to supplement their meager state rations. The store was in what passes for a mall in Havana—a cluttered concrete box, shabby compared even with malls I’ve visited in Iraq. It carried rice, beans, frozen chicken, milk, bottled water, booze, a small bit of cheese, minuscule amounts of rancid-looking meat, some low-end cookies and chips from Brazil—and that’s it. No produce, cereal, no cans of soup, no pasta. A 7–11 has a far better selection, and this is a place for Cuba’s “rich” to shop. I heard, but cannot confirm, that potatoes would not be available anywhere in Cuba for another four months.