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The Kremlin, for many years the seat of the Soviet Union's Communist Party, overlooks the Moskva River in Moscow.

Though the term "communism" can refer to specific political parties, at its core, communism is an ideology of economic equality through the elimination of private property.

The beliefs of communism, most famously expressed by Karl Marx, center on the idea that inequality and suffering result from capitalism. Under capitalism, private business people and corporations own all the factories, equipment and other resources called "the means of production." These owners, according to communist doctrine, can then exploit workers, who are forced sell their labor for wages.

The working class or "proletariat" must rise up against the capitalist owners, or "bourgeoisie," according to the ideals of communism, and institute a new society with no private property, no economic classes and no profits.

Communism differs from socialism, though the two have similarities. Both philosophies advocate economic equality and state ownership of various goods and services. However, socialism usually works through the existing democratic structures of capitalist countries. Almost all capitalist countries, in fact, have some socialist characteristics, like the public schools and Social Security program in the United States.

In contrast, communists state that capitalist economic and political systems must be completely overthrown through revolution.

Historically, such communist revolutions have never yielded their intended utopias of equality. Communist theory predicts that, after the proletariat revolution, special leaders must temporarily take control of the state, leading it toward an eventual "true" communist society. Thus, the governments of the Soviet Union, communist China, Cuba and others were intended to be provisional. In practice, these "temporary" governments have held on to power, often subjecting their citizens to authoritarian control.

Communist ideology also states that these revolutions should spread across the globe, rather than be limited to individual countries. This helps explain the historical antagonism between capitalist and communist nations particularly the long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

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What Is Communism? | Socialism Communism Capitalism

Appearing on MSNBC this afternoon to talk about the Senates secretive health care bill that will finally be released this week, Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) wanted it to be known that the potential of millions of people losing health insurance coverage shouldnt be all that concerning. Why? Because communism, thats why.

After telling host Craig Melvin that he, much like many of his colleagues, doesnt know what is in the new bill, Brat began railing against Obamacare and the original version of the American Health Care Act, claiming that both were written around coverage and not price.

Melvin noted that while that may be the case, it was fair to say that there would be millions of people who would lose their coverage under either the House plan or whatever the Senate unveils. Brat responded by saying he didnt think it was all that fair because you have to look at things through a free-market lens.

Imagine the Soviet Union 20 years ago transitioning to a free market, the Virginia lawmaker explained. 100% of people under communism couldnt eat any food but they did have health care coverage.

He continued, What happens if you move to a free-market system? Everybody in your population loses coverage. So you lose 100% of coverage thats not good, right? But its also good if you have a free market in place where you can finally feed your people and they are 1,000 percent richer 20 years later. And so thats the truly fair narrative weve got to get out.

The Freedom Caucus member went on to bemoan the lack of cheap insurance products for younger people while somewhat defending the lack of transparency from the Senate regarding their bill.

Following last months House passage of the AHCA, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put together a group of 13 Republican senators to craft their own version of the bill. Over the past few days, with the legislation being drawn up in secret, there has been bi-partisan outrage over the lack of details and daylight.

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.

[image via screengrab]

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Dave Brat Compares Obamacare to Soviet Communism | Mediaite - Mediaite

Communism was not popularized in the West under the direct banner of communism. Instead, it came largely under the banner of postmodernism, and aimed to transform the values and beliefs of our societies through its Marxist idea that knowledge and truth are social constructs.

Under it, a new wave of skepticism and distrust was applied to philosophy, culture, history, and all beliefs and institutions at the foundations of Western society.

The postmodern philosophy came into vogue in the 1970s, according to Jordan Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, after classic Marxism, especially of the economic type, had been so thoroughly discredited that no one but an absolute reprobate could support it publicly.

Peterson said its not possible to understand our current society without considering the role postmodernism plays within it, because postmodernism, in many waysespecially as its played out politicallyis the new skin that the old Marxism now inhabits.

Even the French intellectuals had to admit that communism was a bad deal by the end of the 1960s, he said. From there, the communists played a sleight of hand game, in some sense, and rebranded their ideology under a postmodern guise.

Thats where identity politics came from, he said. And from there, it spread like wildfire from France, to the United States through the English department at Yale University, and then everywhere.Marxism preached that the natural and economic landscape is a battle between the so-called proletariat and the bourgeois. It claimed that economic systems were going to enslave people and keep them down, Peterson said.

In practice, however, communism repeatedly showed it made things worse. It was put into place in many parts of the world throughout the 20th century with absolutely murderous resultsa, Peterson said. It was the most destructive economic and political doctrine I think that has ever been invented by mankind, surpassing even the terror seen under Adolf Hitler, with its system of murder that would kill over 100 million people in less than a century.

Peterson said the full breadth of that catastrophe of communism is something students rarely learn in school. The students I teach usually know nothing at all about what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin and Lenin between 1919 and 1959. They have no idea that millions, tens of millions, of people were killed and far more tortured and brutalized by that particular regimeto say nothing of Mao.

By the end of the 1960s, he said, even French intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre had to admit that the communist experimentwhether under Marxism, Stalinism, Maoism, or any other variantwas an absolute, catastrophic failure.

Rather than do away with the ideology, however, they merely gave it a new face and a new name. They were all Marxists. But they couldnt be Marxists anymore, because you couldnt be a Marxist and claim you were a human being by the end of the 1960s, said Peterson.

The postmodernists built on the Marxist ideology, Peterson said. They started to play a sleight of hand, and instead of pitting the proletariat, the working class, against the bourgeois, they started to pit the oppressed against the oppressor. That opened up the avenue to identifying any number of groups as oppressed and oppressor and to continue the same narrative under a different name.

It was no longer specifically about economics, he said. It was about power. And everything to the postmodernists is about power. And thats actually why theyre so dangerous, because if youre engaged in a discussion with someone who believes in nothing but power, all they are motivated to do is to accrue all the power to them, because what else is there? he said. Theres no logic, theres no investigation, theres no negotiation, theres no dialogue, theres no discussion, theres no meeting of minds and consensus. Theres power.

And so since the 1970s, under the guise of postmodernism, weve seen the rapid expansion of identity politics throughout the universities, he said. Its come to dominate all of the humanitieswhich are dead as far as I can telland a huge proportion of the social sciences.

Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto

Weve been publicly funding extremely radical, postmodern leftist thinkers who are hellbent on demolishing the fundamental substructure of Western civilization. And thats no paranoid delusion. Thats their self-admitted goal, he said, noting that their philosophy is heavily based in the ideas of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who, I think, most trenchantly formulated the anti-Western philosophy that is being pursued so assiduously by the radical left.

The people who hold this doctrinethis radical, postmodern, communitarian doctrine that makes racial identity or sexual identity or gender identity or some kind of group identity paramounttheyve got control over most low-to-mid level bureaucratic structures, and many governments as well, he said. But even in the United States, where you know a lot of the governmental institutions have swung back to the Republican side, the postmodernist types have infiltrated bureaucratic organizations at the mid-to-upper level.

I dont think its dangers can be overstated, Peterson said. And I also dont think the degree to which its already infiltrated our culture can be overstated.

Communism is estimated to have killed at least 100 million people, yet its crimes have not been fully compiled and its ideology still persists. The Epoch Times seeks to expose the history and beliefs of this movement, which has been a source of tyranny and destruction since it emerged. Read the whole series at ept.ms/DeadEndCom

Originally posted here:
Jordan Peterson Explains How Communism Spread Under the Guise of Identity Politics - The Epoch Times

While President Donald Trump was elected in large part to reverse the policies of his predecessor, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) thinks there is one area where former President Obama actually got it right: normalizing foreign relations with Cuba.

For over half a century, we have had an embargo with Cuba, Paul wrote in a Reason Magazine op/ed published on Tuesday. Not only did the Castros survive it, but they milked it for everything it was worth. As the only source of information on the island for decades, they stoked the nationalism of those Cubans who remained in Cuba to blame America for any of their shortages, instead of the true culprit: socialism.

One of President Obamas signature achievements was opening up relations with Cuba, and he even visited the communist country last year. Trump will not be doing a complete about face from Obamas Cuban policies. He will not be removing the American embassy in Cuba, and will not be imposing any restrictions on items that Americans can take out of the island nationincluding their prized cigars. However, Trump will be ramping up sanctions, using course rhetoric, and applying other restrictions that could strain relations between the countries.

They made a deal with a government that spread violence and instability in the region and nothing they got, think about it, nothing they got, they fought for everything and we just didnt fight hard enough, but now, those days are over, Trump said. We now hold the cards. The previous administrations easing of restrictions of travel and trade does not help the Cuban people. They only enrich the Cuban regime.

Sen. Paul disagrees strongly with Trumps assessment of Obamas deal, and warns against the current path that Trump is following regarding Cuba.

We cant spread democracy through force, as we have shown time and again in our recent foreign policy, Paul wrote. But we can model capitalism to the world, export it through our people and goods, and win the debate without one bullet being fired Lets see what Cubans will choose when they come face to face with iPhones, modern cars, and tourists with fistfuls of dollars buying Cuban services and goods.

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Sen. Rand Paul Argues To Stop Communism In Cuba With Capitalism And Free Trade - The Liberty Conservative

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

This year marks 100 years since the Bolshevik Revolution took place in Russia. That year, the centuries-old czardom of Russia and the brief liberal democracy that replaced it collapsed and was soon replaced by the Soviet Union, the worlds first stable communist state.

It was that year, a long, bloody, century ago, that the class warfare and revolutionary ideas of Marxism went from being the fanciful talk of disaffected intellectuals to a serious international political and historical force.

Since that fateful event, which the title of John Reeds Ten Days that Shook the World so aptly captures, communism through its various forms and adherents has directly led to the deaths of well over 100 million people and the subjugation of countless more across the world.

With the end of the Cold War, many Americans may believe that communism has now been relegated to the history books, and as a tragic holdout in nations like North Korea and Cuba or as a curious aberration in nations such as China and Vietnam. Yet on this 100th anniversary, it is worth the time for Americans to reflect on the lessons of the incredible hardships of this past century as well as the challenges the future may pose.

Over the course of the 20th century, the United States was the center of human freedom and God-given liberty in polar contrast to totalitarian ideologies, most notably communism.

Tens of thousands of American service members lost their lives fighting for the freedom of peoples around the world from communism.

Conflicts in such places as Vietnam and Korea, and other countless anti-Communist expeditions and engagements, were unique because these were not conflicts in self-defense like almost all of Americas other wars but were wars waged in the name of moral dignity and truth.

The stark contrast between America and totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union clarified in our minds and hearts the ideals and values that made us different from them. This contrast also often pushed us to live up to our ideals whenever we strayed.

Yet we are already showing worrying signs of forgetting our past.

In 2012, movements such as Occupy Wall Street attempted to capitalize on the real hardships many Americans were feeling in the wake of the financial crisis. However, rather than promoting more insulation in the system, many sought to throw out the system all together.

Since then, many of these attitudes have not dwindled but grown.

A 2016 poll by YouGov showed that while millennials still saw communism very unfavorably, they did so at a rate (37 percent) that was significantly lower than Americans as a whole (57 percent).

Furthermore, many millennials expressed worrying sentiments, such as distrust of capitalism, ignorance of communisms record and history, and support of Marxs quote from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.

Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders ran on redistributionist policies and class warfare rhetoric. The shocking level of support he and other similar candidates and movements did and still receive, as well as the rise of far more extreme trends such as Antifa and campus free speech suppression, are warning signs for the direction some in our country are sliding toward. It is incredibly tragic that such beliefs are taking root in the center of liberty and freedom in the world. Over the course of this past century, the idea of class warfare and totalitarian ideas gaining traction in the United States was laughable. Efforts not only by the government but by the citizenry itself ensured that such ideas would never be able to take root in this fortress of human liberty.

Ironically, the fact that communism has never taken root in America is likely a major cause of current increasing comfort with and interest in some of its tenets. Many other nations have directly experienced the hardships of communist tyranny and war, and have been hardened against the extreme lefts siren song through direct personal, familial and societal experiences. In contrast, in modern America communism has largely only been an abstract idea seen on TV or read about in books.

Now that the pressing existential threat of nations such as the Soviet Union has seemingly been alleviated, many have stopped combating the collectivist ideals which fuel Marxist thought. However, many of those on the ultraleft have not stopped pushing their anti-liberty ideas.

On this 100th anniversary of the October Revolution, it is time for all of us to remind ourselves and others of the ideals that define America individual liberty, the Constitution, rule of law, and God-given freedom. The lessons of this past century have been learned with too much sacrifice to be forgotten so easily.

Erich Reimer, a lawyer, is a Republican activist and commentator.

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The tragic Bolshevik legacy, 100 years on - Washington Times