FCL Series - Communism: A History - Harvard Prof Richard Pipes

**NOTE** - The reason for including this one in the FCL series is very basic, and will not require much commentary. The fact is, a lot of people coming up in the world (born after about 1970, I would guess) have no real memory of just how much communism / socialism SUCKS. It’s just a dusty topic that gets a few minutes in a history class – you young’uns don’t turn on the news every day and see the mistreatment of millions in a dozen different lousy regimes. Most of your teachers are lefties who extol the loveliness of some aspects of socialism. The record number of youth votes for Obama demonstrates that most of them don’t understand or believe that socialism is a bad thing. Too simplistic a statement? Tell ya what – study the history of communism contained herein. See what it promised, what it actually delivered, how easy it was for the cynically power hungry to shove aside the idealistic dreamers (you NEED those checks and balances, kids!), and the lifelong misery of those forced to live under it. Then think long and hard on whether we should bring it here. I ask only that you keep one fundamental idea in mind: not the “wouldn’t it be great if it DID work” question, but the “given human nature, could it possibly work?” question. Personally, I find it to be the height of ironic comedy that the capitalist West’s utter defeat of communism was so total that our own next generation of children do not have sufficient memory of its inadequacies and horrors so as to be disposed against it. It is as if we spent 75 years eradicating smallpox so our kids could deliberately attempt to get sick. -Rambam1776 Communism: A History – By Harvard Prof Richard Pipes (unabridged) Narrated by George Wilson 2001 – 48 kbps Among his many accolades, Prof. Pipes was called by the Russian people as an expert witness in the early 1990s when they put Communism on trial. The “FCL” Series – For some length of time now, I’ve given some thought to putting out something like this. A principal problem is that of labels, and another is the lack of room in a torrent description to write anything approaching even a SYNOPSIS of a clear manifesto. Therefore, I have decided to call this FCL (an acronym for Fiscal Conservative Libertarian) for the sake of brevity and clarity. There are in America (and to a lesser degree in Europe) a huge number of people who would largely fit into this camp. We are the practical, the scientific, the skeptical and the truly logically analytical. We are IN NO WAY dogmatic or organized, but we generically agree to a certain extent on some core ideas. We think people who attend rallies or protests are shmucks. We think people can express their political opinions on bumperstickers are too stupid to vote. We think whenever we hear the phrase “there ought to be a law!” that there probably shouldn’t be. We have differing opinions on abortion, gun control, the death penalty, flag burning, and gay rights, but agree categorically that such decisions ought not to be Constitutional issues and are best left to the local voters. We think that the Federal Government ought not to do much of anything other than core responsibilities, especially if they have no idea how to pay for it. We don’t vote with out hearts but with our heads. We are never loyal to any party. We are very pro-military, and most of us have served. We don’t trust any politician and we despise empty symbolism, ignorant populism, and idiotic sloganeering. We are all about practical economics, actual freedom from the leftist nannies and rightist religious police, and we like individual responsibility. People like me have been going nuts for a long time with the economic stupidities of our government and fellow citizens, the general inability of these to understand real long term effects, and we are sick to death of people blaming US for George Bush instead of the RELIGIOUS and SOCIAL conservatives who elected him. We are NOT “neo-cons”, “dittoheads”, or lovers of Fox News, and we are sick and tired of lefties telling us we must be supporters of Limbaugh and Falwell. WE are the people who watch Penn & Teller’s BULLSHIT and love SOUTH PARK. We think Obama is a very nice fellow whose economic policies at best will lead America on a path in the long run to a low rent failed soft-core Socialism. Finally, we think that the 40% on either side that make up the core of the two major sides are usually reaching bad conclusions and voting stupidly because they listen to propaganda and don’t truly understand some complicated issues with an honest degree of depth. Therefore, since there is no shortage of people here with an agenda (some of which borders on the insane), I am going to put out a collection of material that gives a good accounting of the fiscal conservative point of view. Some of it I personally take as gospel, some of it is merely generic. Speaking as a history and social studies teacher, I feel qualified to select materials that reflect this point of view. It is my hope that many will increase their knowledge of complicated historical and economic events by this effort. I do not seek to foster argument or win converts, but merely to explain to the right wingers why we would rather have freedom than ban abortion or marijuana, and to get it through to the left that not everyone who doesn’t toe their fantasy line is a flat-Earther or fascist. Most of this material will be conservative, and most will deal with economics. There will be no political diatribes from dogmatic and non-practical people (Sorry to all the Coulter and Chomsky fans) who are more intent on pushing a fantasy utopia than pursuing practical liberty.

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4lib3rty (2009-05-05)

Thank you for this. Click on my username to see other important uploads regarding our freedoms.

nikko1 (2009-05-05)

Rambam, good stuff - as always.

SSPink (2009-05-07)

Great upload, a good history of communism (Marxism-Leninism). Very interesting listen from a real expert in the field.
But as to your comments, the connection to what we call "socialism" today is non-existent. The "socialism" in places like Sweden is indistinguishable from what was simply considered "liberalism" in the 1800's.
In the context of time "socialism" meant the end of private property, the end of ownership in both concept and reality, the end of a "mine and yours" mentality.
To compare this to what is considered "socialism" today, a capitalist system with high tax rates and some public services, especially in the fields of education, health, workers rights, transportation, and welfare, is intellectually dishonest in the extreme.

delahaya (2009-06-17)

SSPink,
Socialism and communism ARE related, AND there are bona fide socialist countries today. The socialism of today bears NO resemblance to classical liberalism. You are the one being intellectually dishonest.

 rambam1776 (2009-07-15)

I'm not a fanatic here, I have only a few key points:
1 - Most of the young people have no idea just how bad communism was/is.
2 - The worst of these states generally began with a beneficent set of dreamers (Prez. Obama springs to mind) who were elbowed aside by the power-hungry during bad times.
3 - The current US admin is edging down a road we should be pretty bloody careful about.
I 'm sure we have little to worry about in reality, but we've already gone farther than I would have liked to. If the French had stomped on Hitler during the Rhineland move in 1936, there would have been no WWII or subsequent Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. By screaming our heads off NOW before the American left gets too cute (just as THEY do when the right tries to plaster the Bible everywhere), we can help to keep things nice and central. I don't need no nanny-state, and i don't need no socialized medicine.