Every now and again in our grand world
history, magnetic personalities have had insights so stirring they
just had to try to share. These sharings sometimes resonated broadly
and created movements based on the master's teachings, as they
understood, or misunderstood, them. The truth shall make you free,
for example. MLK said it, not sure where he got it, Jesus? Dunno.
This example so begs elaboration that all kinds of factions can get
behind it. The truth for some is Jesus... or Yaweh, or Mohammad,
Buddha and on through all the variations, usually blossuming out of
some monumentally charismatic guy (few women... why's that?). His bad
days may have produced grumpy proverbs and his disciples, not perhaps
as enlightened, took literally what the poet meant as metaphor, maybe
even making a few edits here and there to express some prejudice that
they were sure the master must have overlooked.
The obvious question regarding this insight
is, what is truth, what did all the prophets mean by that? And how
will it make you free? Was Dale Carnegie onto the answer with his
self-hypnotic hyper confidence? How to win friends and influence
people... that strategy represents the material answer. The uses of
friends and influence is in how much stuff it allows you to
accumulate... and keep, so you can be “happy”, free of want,
envied, fixed for life.
The interpretation that makes sense to me,
since we all know by now, except perhaps the Koch brothers, the
Walmart family and their minions (in the millions, hell, maybe
billions), materialism beyond a point becomes meaningless. The
“truth” in this view would be the eternal interconnection beneath
the transient, passing illusion, out of which it manifests. Once one
feels that interconnection, that truth (the
point of meditation), one is free of the terror created by the
illusion of separation. This is the insight the great mystics have
tried to pass on.
I've been looking at some insights of
another sort, writers that impress me with their analytic and
literate skills, applying them to that area within the illusion
called justice. The above view would claim that peace and justice
comes out of enlightenment. When we are enlightened our behavior is
consequently just, fair, compassionate. We don't need a check list.
The writers I'm thinking of here, Parenti, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein,
see that desired state as not so automatic but something one must
work at, overcoming dysfunctional received wisdom, educating others
and organizing mass action.
Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds
takes a look at Fascism and Communism. He challenges the reader to
rise above orthodoxy and examine the significant differences between
the nouns in his title. Fascism he would argue, serves the existing
elite, distracting the populace with patriotic fanfare, the cult of
the great leader, light entertainment and, for those who don't buy
in, who insist on another vision involving more sharing, why there
are prisons, torture, execution and war. The intent is to
serve the wealthy (and for the leadership to join them of course).
The
intent of communism is (was) to create an egalitarian society
where poverty, class and exploitation are non-existent, where food,
clothing, shelter, education, health care are available for all. In
actually existing or late communism (Parenti is writing in 1997)
there is much to criticise and capitalism has spent a lot of energy
doing just that. This effort been very successful at equating the
word with the gulag and further attempting to associate their
demonized version also with socialism. The word is so loaded that
Donald Trump hurls it, socialist/communist! at Bernie Sanders to
discredit the presidential candidate. There'll be more to come no
doubt. Greed does not like limits. Those most successful in the greed
game are anxious to stomp out all notions of fairness and sharing.
This, at root, is their objection to communism and socialism but of
course they can't say this out loud so they focus on issues such as
secret police brutality and long bread lines, all the while doing
what they can to force feed these attributes, like the arms race -
remember the Reaganites boasting about “winning the cold war” by
spending the USSR into bankruptcy? After the Russian revolution the
U.S. and Britain sent troops to support those opposing the so-called
Bolsheviks. This might produce a little paranoia. Similarly the
monarchies around France rallied to defeat the French Revolution,
fearing as always the falling dominoes.
Parenti
argues that capitalist criticism has been dishonest, inflating
numbers of purged, murdered and imprisoned citizens and burying the
positive aspects. He isn't an apologist for he offers a scathing
critique of the many problems of that experiment, laying out numerous
instances of why it didn't work, not least outside meddling. He also
adds that Soviet citizens took for granted what they had, thinking
they were going to move into a U.S. style consumer paradise with the
fall of communism. Many, very many, came to yearn for the days when
they had guaranteed jobs, housing, medical care and education.
Parenti claims 20% of the Russian population were “desperate
for food and shelter in the new gangster-ridden capitalist paradise.”
Even when communists have been elected in the aftermath of the
ruthless theft of state property, power now resided with the
oligarchy in control of the police, army and resources of the
country. It reminds me of the U.S. union workers who supported the
government against those who were questioning its values, as
expressed in Vietnam and elsewhere, only to be systematically
betrayed later, once the ground work had been laid for the counter
revolution. The U.S. oligarchy nursed its grievances over the
Roosevelt New Deal, biding its time until finally hiring Ronald
Reagan to begin the serious business of roll-back. They will not
easily give up what they have gained, neither in Russia and its
former satellites, nor here.
