Academic Counselor for Libertad y Progreso
LA RAZÓN SPAIN – One of the most remarkable efforts of prestidigitation in the world of ideas has been and continues being communist propaganda. The first thing the communists did was to insist that their system was better than capitalism because it offered not only political freedoms but also economic benefits. Really. And, seriously, for decades numerous western intellectuals spread such a hoax. (Paul Hollander, Political pilgrims).
Finally, and with incredible delay, the deception was revealed as such, and it was seen that communism had been the opposite of what its epigones proclaimed: it systematically translated into political dictatorship and economic misery. Then, the strategy changed. The communists became defenders of human rights, feminism, the environment, indigenous peoples and of democracy, that is, of all the objectives that were massacred in all the countries where communism was applied. That effort of deception was also successful: many people believe it, just as many people believe that the evil of communism is only the Stalinism or that communism is good because it fought fascism.
Another variant of communist magic is to argue, believe it or not, that the ill-doing of communism is because of capitalism: seriously, they talk about “state capitalism”. Or ensure that communism, despite its undeniable crimes, served to “soften capitalism” through the intervention of the State, a hoax without any basis, precisely because this intervention had nothing to do with the protection of capitalism but with the political usurpation of wealth created by entrepreneurs and workers.
When confronted with the criminal reality in which their ideas are materialized, and the usual trick of considering capitalism alone in its worst results, and socialism only in its best objectives, communists perpetrate the supreme art of the denial of the reality: they proclaim that the crimes were not committed by communists. A leader of the left in Spain said that if a communist was a murderer, then he was not a communist. The cheating shield is endearing.
But communist countries didn’t apply capitalism but communism because private property and voluntary market contracts were limited or removed. Millions of workers, for that reason, died of hunger. Magic can not hide them. They will try to attribute them to capitalism when they were victims of clearly anti-capitalist policies. The show will continue. Ale hop!
This article was originally published in La Razón (Spain) on February 16, 2018.
Written by Carlos Rodríguez Braun
