Communism is simply a revolt by the masses of poor in a country to overthrow and redistribute the wealth held by a ruling elite. It's pretty crappy if you are one of that small class of the wealthy. But what communism accomplishes, often in one generation, is to bring across the board education, health care, and new sets of job skills to those masses of poor.
You've described the communist myth - "masses" of poor oppressed by a small rich elite revolt, redistribute the wealth and everyone is better off except for the evil villainous class who deserved liquidation. In reality,
a small very well organized and brutally violent party takes advantage of weak regimes to seize power and rule in the name of the masses in who reality aren't even aware of what is going on much less driving developments. Every rival source of power is liquidated violently.
It's hard for the average American, miseducated by liberalism, to view communism accurately but here are some misc. facts chosen at random re. the Bolshevik, Chinese, & Cuban revolutions which conflict with the rosy view
of communism.
First the Soviet Union - let's consider the liquidation of the kulaks:
Kulaks were former peasants in Russia who owned medium-sized farms as a result of the reforms introduced by Peter Stolypin in 1906. Stolypin's intention was to create a stable group of prosperous farmers who would form a natural conservative political force. By the outbreak of the
First World War it was estimated that around 15 per cent of Russian farmers were kulaks.
spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
[ Per wikipedia, 16% of Russian farmers owned 8 acres or more. ]
It turns out these little farmers are the "small class of the wealthy" which had to be liquidated.
Order from Lenin to communists in Penza, August 11, 1918, demanding that they publicly hang at least 100 kulaks and confiscate their grain, to set an example.
Execution Order page 1
Execution Order page 2
Execution Order translation
ibiblio.org
Joseph Stalin,
Speech on Agrarian Policy
Dec. 27, 1929
Excerpted from the Original Electronic Text at "From Marx to Mao."
(Embedded image moved to file: pic24155.jpg)
Food shortages were a serious problem in the early days of the Soviet Union, and in 1921 Lenin instituted the New Economic Plan (NEP) as a means of improving agricultural production. The NEP allowed peasants to farm for profit. A few (5% or so) became prosperous in the following decade. However the kulaks (prosperous farmers) were dissatisfied, in part because there were no manufactured goods available for them to buy with the profits of their farms. Sometimes they refused to sell their crops as a form of political protest. As illustrated by the speech excerpted below, Stalin blamed them for food shortages and ordered the collectivization of their farms. In theory only the kulaks were to be targeted, but in practice the government took over the farms belonging to any peasants who opposed collectivization. Angry farmers slaughtered their livestock and wrecked their farm machinery rather than turn them over to the state. A virtual civil war developed between the Russian military and the peasants, and by 1931 millions of peasants had died. -smv
....
To launch an offensive against the kulaks means that we must smash the kulaks, eliminate them as a class.
Well, Stalin probably just wanted to force them onto collective farms - right? Nope. When Stalin said eliminate, he meant eliminate.
{15} There is another question which seems no less ridiculous: whether the kulaks should be permitted to join the collective farms. Of course not, for they are sworn enemies of the collective-farm movement.
history.hanover.edu
Also see this on Soviet collectivization:
blake.montclair.edu
Next, China where the same thing happened:
Small landowners were called landlords and wiped out - along with anyone who offered resistance. Notice that the Soviet revolution took advantage of a regime weakened by WWI and the Chinese communist revolution one weakened by the Japanese invasion of China.
Here is a source on the human cost of the Chinese revolution - an estimated 35M people:
PRC democide 1949-1987:
hawaii.edu
Next the Cuban revolution - let's consider first the family backgrounds of Castro and Batista:
Fidel Castro has been the undisputed leader of Cuba since 1959, when his Marxist revolutionary forces toppled the regime of Fulgencio Batista. Castro was educated in Catholic schools and studied law at the University of Havana.
who2.com
...
Fidel Castro, son of a sugar planter from Oriente province
faculty.northseattle.edu
Fulgencio Batista. Another independence fighter, mulatto son of cane cutters and cane cutter himself, he attended a Quaker school before running away at age 14 to join the army. Moved up as an aide to officers and got assignments in legal affairs. In early 1930s, worked as a
stenographer in Machado's Kangaroo Courts. Joined ABC, a subversive group, and in September 1933, led the Sergeants' revolt that toppled Machado's officer-run government.
faculty.northseattle.edu
Enough of comparing these two - how about Cuba - what was it like before and after the communist revolution?
To better understand the social-economic background of the Cuban Revolution it is necessary to take into account class differences in rural Cuba. In this connection the views of Ramiro Guerra are well worth quoting:
. . . Cuba was precisely NOT a peasant country. . . to talk of Cuba's "peasantry" as if the population were an undifferentiated mass of impoverished peasant landowners is to miss entirely the complexity of rural Latin America. Peasants who by a swift process of sugar plantation
developments have been transformed into rural proletarians are no longer PEASANTS...there were, in 1953, 489,000 agricultural wage workers in Cuba and only 67,000 unpaid family laborers who were the wives and children of the small-scale land owners, the highland peasantry, Los Guajiros of Cuba.
. . the big sugar plantations are an urbanizing force within which the rural population must concentrate itself densely. . . by standardizing work practices, the plantations create a factory situation--albeit a rural one.
And factories in the field are urban in many ways, even though they are not in cities. A rural proletariat working on modern plantations inevitably become culturally and behaviorally distinct from the peasantry...its members have no land. Their special economic and social circumstances lead
in another direction. They prefer standardized wage minimums, adequate medical and educational services, increased buying power, etc...when it is noted that there were more than 489,000 agricultural laborers in Cuba in 1953...a gross indication of the difference between peasantry and rural
proletariat is provided us. . . (quoted by Sidney W. Mintz in the anthology Background to Revolution; New York, 1966, p. 182-183)
These views are confirmed by the fact that the agricultural laborers, primarily in the sugar plantations, constituted one of the strongest and most numerous federations affiliated to the Cuban Confederation of Labor
(CTC).
Cuba, the "Pearl of the Antilles," though by no means a paradise, was not, as many believe, an economically backward country. Castro himself admitted that while there was poverty, there was no economic crisis and no hunger in Cuba before the Revolution. (See Maurice Halperin: The Rise and
Fall of Fidel Castro, University of California, 1972, pgs. 24, 25, 37)
Armando Hart, a member of Castro's innermost ruling group, made the extremely significant observation that:
. . . it is certain that capitalism had attained high levels of organization, efficiency and production that declined after the Revolution.
. . (Juventud Rebelde, November 2, 1969; quoted by Rene Dumont, Is Cuba Socialist?, p. 85)
Paul A. Baran, an ardent pro-Castroite in the equally ardent Monthly Review pamphlet, Reflections on the Cuban Revolution (1961) substantiates what every economist, as well as amateurs like Castro, has been saying:
...the Cuban Revolution was born with a silver spoon in its mouth. . .the world renowned French agronomist, Rene Dumont, has estimated that if properly cultivated as intensively as South China, Cuba could feed fifty million people. . . the Cuban Revolution is spared the painful, but ineluctable compulsion that has beset preceding socialist revolutions: the
necessity to force tightening of people's belts in order to lay the foundations for a better tomorrow. . .(p. 23)
Theodore Draper quotes Anial Escalante, (before he was purged by Castro) one of the leading communists, who admitted that:
...in reality, Cuba was not one of the countries with the lowest standard of living of the masses in America, but on the contrary, one of the highest standards of living, and it was here where the first great . . .
democratic social revolution of the continent burst forth. . . If the historical development had been dictated by the false axiom [revolutions come first in poorest countries] the revolution should have been first produced in Haiti, Colombia or even Chile, countries of greater poverty for the masses than the Cuba of 1958. . . (quoted in Draper's Castro's Revolution: Myths and Realities; New York, 1962, p. 22)
....
Cuba was NOT a one crop country. In 1957, sugar represented only 27% of total agricultural income. Growing crops were only PARTIALLY listed above. Cattle raising, (per 100 head) increased from 3884 to 6000 in 1958 (University of Miami Studies)
...before Castro, Cuba was one of the richest underdeveloped countries in the world, with Gross National Product, per-capita income in the mid 1950s of $360, Cuba was well ahead of Japan ($254 per-capita) and Spain ($254 per-capita)... (Robert Blackburn, quoted in the anthology Fidel Castro's Personal Revolution: 1953-1973; New York, 1975, p. 134)
· Cuba had one automobile for every 39 inhabitants, compared with Argentina's one for every 60 and Mexico's one for every 91 people.
· Cuba had one radio for every 5 people, second in Latin America only to Argentina with one for every 3 inhabitants.
· the wage rate for industrial workers in Cuba was the highest in Latin America (as of 1957) and 9th highest in the world.
· agricultural wages were the highest in Latin America
· Cuba's mortality rate of 7 per thousand was the lowest in Latin America. Its infant mortality rate was by far the lowest.
· Cuba had one doctor for every 1,000 inhabitants, exceeded only by Uruguay with one for every 800, and Argentina for every 760 people.
· Cuba ranked fifth in Latin American manufacturing.
· Though living standards were much lower than in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe, Cuba's was the third highest in Latin America, and almost as high as Italy's.
· Cuba had more railroads per square mile than any other country in the world.
· Its one telephone for 38 persons was exceeded only by the U.S. with one for every 3 and Argentina with one for every 13; way ahead of Russia's with one for every 580 people.
......
The Castro government is directly responsible for the awful economic situation of the Cuban people. The rising standard of living is a myth. Rene Dumont, the distinguished agronomist and economist, marshalls overwhelming evidence that Castro and his bumbling amateurs wrecked the economy of Cuba. There is no serious disagreement on this point:
. . .Cuba's shortages of food and other necessities are to a large extent due to the dogmatism of its leaders. . . in 1963, the harvests were 25% lower than in 1960 although the number of days worked had been rising rapidly. . . The standard of living in Cuba remained stationary in 1961,
and with strict rationing, went down perhaps 15% to 20% in 1962. . . There are still, as I had seen in Santa Clara in 1960, no recognition of the difficulties involved in managing an economy . . . they were not trained and badly prepared. . . professors at the Institute of Technology did not even know the names of the most common plants or their requirements...the government is increasingly calling for more effort and sacrifices as well as the acceptance of increased authority...despite constant reorganization,
it is unable to put its house in order...(Is Cuba Socialist? pp. 100, 20, 92, 149, 29, 206.)
The economic consequences of transforming reasonably productive cattle and dairy farms and other agricultural enterprises into notoriously inefficient "people's" farms was predictably catastrophic...to the thousands of law-abiding families evicted without warning, it appeared to
be an arbitrary act of brutality. . .
[The peasants retaliated; Halperin writes that:] the impression obtained in usually well-informed government circles that over a period of several years, some 50,000 troops were engaged in liquidating peasant disaffection...a sizeable military effort had been under way to put down
the uprising, which was not finally liquidated until well into 1964
...Castro reminisced about "the uprisings that occurred mainly, but not exclusively, in the Escambray Mountains. . . organized groups existed all over the island...there were 1,000 bandits in the Escambray Mountains
alone." (Halperin, ibid. p. 283, 284. Halperin credits the Castro quote to Granma, June 13, 1971)
Maurice Halperin also reports that:
"...food riots occurred in a number of towns in the western provinces, including Cardenas, a sizeable urban center and seaport about 100 miles east of Havana. Here at a mass meeting, June 17, 1962, President of Cuba Dorticos had to be protected by tanks during a speech he made to calm the
inhabitants..." (The Rise and Decline of Fidel Castro; Univ. of California, 1974, p. 162)
dwardmac.pitzer.edu
....
Here's a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) report on Cuba circa 1957: "One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class," it starts. "Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than U.S. workers.
The average wage for an 8-hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent. 44 per cent of Cubans are covered by social legislation, a higher percentage than in the U.S."
In 1958 Cuba had a higher per-capita income than Austria and Japan. Cuban industrial workers had the eighth-highest wages in the world. In the 1950s Cuban stevedores earned more per hour than their counterparts in New Orleans and San Francisco. Cuba had established an eight-hour workday in 1933 – five years before FDR's New Dealers got around to it. Add to this a one-month paid vacation. The much-lauded (by liberals) social democracies of Western Europe didn't manage
this till 30 years later.
And get this, Maxine Waters, Barbara Walters, Andrea Mitchell, Diane Sawyer and the rest of you feminist Castro groupies: Cuban women got three months of paid maternity
leave. I repeat, this was in the 1930s. Cuba, a country 71 percent white in 1957, was completely desegregated 30 years
before Rosa Parks was dragged off that Birmingham bus and handcuffed. In 1958 Cuba had more female college graduates per capita than the U.S.
The anti-Batista rebellion (not revolution) was staffed and led overwhelmingly by college students and professionals. Unemployed lawyers were prominent (take Fidel Castro himself).
Here's the makeup of the "peasant revolution's" first Cabinet, drawn from the leaders in the anti-Batista fight: seven lawyers, two university professors, three university
students, one doctor, one engineer, one architect, one former city mayor and a colonel who defected from the Batista army. A notoriously "bourgeois" bunch, as Che himself might have put it.
By 1961, however, workers and campesinos (country folk) made up the overwhelming bulk of the anti-Castroite rebels, especially the guerrillas in the Escambray
mountains. And boy, would THAT rebellion make for an action-packed and gut-wrenching movie! If by some miracle it ever got made, you can bet these learned critics would pan it too. Who ever heard of poor country folk fighting against their benefactors Fidel and Che?
www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14511
Ironically, Batista though an autocrat too (less cruel than the communists would be) has a better record as a reformer than the communists:
Batista emerged as the arbiter of Cuba's politics. He ruled through puppet presidents until 1940, when he was elected president. Desiring to win popular support, he sponsored an impressive body of welfare legislation. Public administration, health, education, and public works
improved. He established rural hospitals and minimum-wage laws, increased salaries for public and private employees, and started a program of rural schools under army control. He legalized the Cuban Communist party and
in 1943 established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.(Embedded image moved to file: pic31361.jpg)
The army received higher pay, pensions, better food, and modern medical care, thus ensuring its loyalty.
bookrags.com
Summing up:
How many did Communist regimes murder?
....
Communism has been the greatest social engineering experiment we have ever seen. It failed utterly and in doing so it killed over 100,000,000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30,000,000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked. But there is a larger lesson to be learned from this
horrendous sacrifice to one ideology. That is that no one can be trusted with power. The more power the center has to impose the beliefs of an ideological or religious elite or impose the whims of a dictator, the more
likely human lives are to be sacrificed. This is but one reason, but perhaps the most important one, for fostering liberal democracy.
hawaii.edu |
