Monument to the Victims of Communism?
Paolo Bassi | 09.03.2008 23:48 | Globalisation
Washington, aided by the corporate media, never miss an opportunity to re-inforce the dominant ideology of inequality. According to them only those oppose capitalism cause human suffering. Capitalism accordingly to our rulers has no victims. This mind-warping indoctrination demands a constant war on our memory and the truth.
Paolo Bassi
February 2008
Monument to the Victims of Communism?
In June 2007, George W. Bush solemnly dedicated a new monument in Washington DC to the victims of communism. It was a moment of tragic irony, but one which like the proverbial elephant in the room, was missed or ignored by the corporate media.
During the ceremony Bush lumped communists and terrorists together as "...followers of a murderous ideology..." This is the same blind rhetoric that for decades has served to sear into American minds the idea of a black and white world with American capitalism being synonymous with democracy and freedom —— and victim-free.
The monument which took ten years to complete, has nothing to do with human suffering but is just another simplistic symbol strengthening the capitalist doctrine that has dominated every aspect of American political and intellectual life. It is not as if the anti-socialist indoctrination imposed by the American ruling elites really needed reinforcement.
The concern for the victims of communism hardly seems genuine given Washington’’s relentless war on socialism at home and abroad for most of the last hundred years. Any nation that threatened global capitalism, whether directly as in the case of the Soviet Union or others, such as Cuba and Nicaragua which dared to use their resources for their peoples, were targeted. It has taken many decades but America’’s media, business and political elites have quietly achieved what right-wing dictators abroad only dream of — a docile population which regards socialism as foreign and unpatriotic.
If a desire to remember human suffering was the driving force behind the monument, the American media characteristically failed to ask the most basic questions. If communism caused so much suffering, are there victims of capitalism? And if the abuses of those acting in the name of an ideology are regarded as intrinsic to that ideology, then surely communism cannot be alone in causing suffering.
By this logic, the crimes of the Spanish Inquisition must be blamed on Christianity and not on the demented priesthood. Islam must bear responsibility for jihadist violence and the massacres of gentile tribes, so piously detailed in the Old Testament, must be the crimes of Judaism.
There certainly have been plenty of authoritarian communist governments and many ruthlessly disregarded human rights. However, to call them all true communist regimes is misleading. Stalin’’s rule in the Soviet Union degenerated into an oppressive form of state capitalism, in which the promises of Marxist emancipation were discarded in the quest for Soviet national power. Stalin’’s disregard for human life was real enough but he was not alone. Soon after the 1917 Russian Revolution, western capitalist governments, including the United States, invaded Russia to aid the "White" tsarist army in destroying the young Soviet Union. This invasion prolonged the Russian civil war with untold loss of life and suffering and must by definition be classed as a capitalist crime.
More importantly, if Stalin’s crimes are the crimes of communism, then the crimes of capitalist governments must be the crimes of capitalism. The victims of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco and every other right-wing, pro-business dictator, are the victims of capitalism. German capitalists had after all funded Hitler’’s rise to power and he had returned the favor by crushing the left and delivering over a tamed German working class (and later plenty of "racially inferior" free slave labor ). In the 1920s and 30s Mussolini did essentially the same things in Italy as did Franco later in Spain.
Looking further back in history, European colonialism itself was driven by a rapacious desire for resources, land and profit. In this maelstrom whole cultures in Africa, Asia and the Americas were violently uprooted and exploited. While the European bringers of civilization preached free market morality and sat on warehouses full of food, millions starved to death during famines in India and Ireland. All these holocausts must be laid at the feet of capitalism.
Along with colonialism came the slave trade –– a direct result of the business needs of the European elites who had taken control of the New World. By some estimates over 100 million black Africans were kidnaped and sold in the Americas and in Arab slave markets in the East. There is no greater crime in the history of the world and no more savage form of capitalism than the selling of humans to be worked to death.
More recently, in 1973 Augusto Pinochet, with the help of the CIA, violently overthrew the popularly elected government of Salvador Allende. After butchering thousands of suspect Chileans, Pinochet undid Allende’’s modest socialist reforms and turned Chile over to the multi-nationals. Would it not be reasonable and honest to declare Pinochet’’s victims as the victims of capitalism? The list of other countries invaded or destabilized since 1945 by Washington because they dared to oppose international capital is depressingly long as are the names of millions of forgotten victims. The people of Nicaragua, Cuba, Grenada, and Guatemala, to name but a few attacked nations, can attest to this.
In today’’s America working class men and women who are forced to choose between paying bills or feeding their families are all victims of capitalism ultimately. Every American who sinks into bankruptcy because of healthcare costs or who is made unemployed by jobs being exported abroad is a victim. Generation after generation, the tens of millions of ordinary Americans who break their backs all their lives but get no-where are all victims of capitalism.
Neither the self-muzzled and self-satisfied American press nor any mainstream American politician would dare to propose a monument to these sort of victims –– they are not supposed to exist. Even if the honesty and courage existed, there is not enough marble in this country to create a monument large enough.
February 2008
Monument to the Victims of Communism?
In June 2007, George W. Bush solemnly dedicated a new monument in Washington DC to the victims of communism. It was a moment of tragic irony, but one which like the proverbial elephant in the room, was missed or ignored by the corporate media.
During the ceremony Bush lumped communists and terrorists together as "...followers of a murderous ideology..." This is the same blind rhetoric that for decades has served to sear into American minds the idea of a black and white world with American capitalism being synonymous with democracy and freedom —— and victim-free.
The monument which took ten years to complete, has nothing to do with human suffering but is just another simplistic symbol strengthening the capitalist doctrine that has dominated every aspect of American political and intellectual life. It is not as if the anti-socialist indoctrination imposed by the American ruling elites really needed reinforcement.
The concern for the victims of communism hardly seems genuine given Washington’’s relentless war on socialism at home and abroad for most of the last hundred years. Any nation that threatened global capitalism, whether directly as in the case of the Soviet Union or others, such as Cuba and Nicaragua which dared to use their resources for their peoples, were targeted. It has taken many decades but America’’s media, business and political elites have quietly achieved what right-wing dictators abroad only dream of — a docile population which regards socialism as foreign and unpatriotic.
If a desire to remember human suffering was the driving force behind the monument, the American media characteristically failed to ask the most basic questions. If communism caused so much suffering, are there victims of capitalism? And if the abuses of those acting in the name of an ideology are regarded as intrinsic to that ideology, then surely communism cannot be alone in causing suffering.
By this logic, the crimes of the Spanish Inquisition must be blamed on Christianity and not on the demented priesthood. Islam must bear responsibility for jihadist violence and the massacres of gentile tribes, so piously detailed in the Old Testament, must be the crimes of Judaism.
There certainly have been plenty of authoritarian communist governments and many ruthlessly disregarded human rights. However, to call them all true communist regimes is misleading. Stalin’’s rule in the Soviet Union degenerated into an oppressive form of state capitalism, in which the promises of Marxist emancipation were discarded in the quest for Soviet national power. Stalin’’s disregard for human life was real enough but he was not alone. Soon after the 1917 Russian Revolution, western capitalist governments, including the United States, invaded Russia to aid the "White" tsarist army in destroying the young Soviet Union. This invasion prolonged the Russian civil war with untold loss of life and suffering and must by definition be classed as a capitalist crime.
More importantly, if Stalin’s crimes are the crimes of communism, then the crimes of capitalist governments must be the crimes of capitalism. The victims of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco and every other right-wing, pro-business dictator, are the victims of capitalism. German capitalists had after all funded Hitler’’s rise to power and he had returned the favor by crushing the left and delivering over a tamed German working class (and later plenty of "racially inferior" free slave labor ). In the 1920s and 30s Mussolini did essentially the same things in Italy as did Franco later in Spain.
Looking further back in history, European colonialism itself was driven by a rapacious desire for resources, land and profit. In this maelstrom whole cultures in Africa, Asia and the Americas were violently uprooted and exploited. While the European bringers of civilization preached free market morality and sat on warehouses full of food, millions starved to death during famines in India and Ireland. All these holocausts must be laid at the feet of capitalism.
Along with colonialism came the slave trade –– a direct result of the business needs of the European elites who had taken control of the New World. By some estimates over 100 million black Africans were kidnaped and sold in the Americas and in Arab slave markets in the East. There is no greater crime in the history of the world and no more savage form of capitalism than the selling of humans to be worked to death.
More recently, in 1973 Augusto Pinochet, with the help of the CIA, violently overthrew the popularly elected government of Salvador Allende. After butchering thousands of suspect Chileans, Pinochet undid Allende’’s modest socialist reforms and turned Chile over to the multi-nationals. Would it not be reasonable and honest to declare Pinochet’’s victims as the victims of capitalism? The list of other countries invaded or destabilized since 1945 by Washington because they dared to oppose international capital is depressingly long as are the names of millions of forgotten victims. The people of Nicaragua, Cuba, Grenada, and Guatemala, to name but a few attacked nations, can attest to this.
In today’’s America working class men and women who are forced to choose between paying bills or feeding their families are all victims of capitalism ultimately. Every American who sinks into bankruptcy because of healthcare costs or who is made unemployed by jobs being exported abroad is a victim. Generation after generation, the tens of millions of ordinary Americans who break their backs all their lives but get no-where are all victims of capitalism.
Neither the self-muzzled and self-satisfied American press nor any mainstream American politician would dare to propose a monument to these sort of victims –– they are not supposed to exist. Even if the honesty and courage existed, there is not enough marble in this country to create a monument large enough.
Paolo Bassi