Afterthoughts on the Socialist Countries

I agree that what attracts us to the idea of socialist or communist countries is the desire for human solidarity and for the perspective of human beings creating their own world. But the reality of countries like Communist Rumania or East Germany was the mass-scale pitting of citizens against one another. A huge percentage of East Germans were secretly spying on their friends, loved ones, comrades, etc. Imagine if a friend or relative did that to you!  That, not the failure to offer a greater variety of commodities, was the worst moral disaster of those societies, and I would not be surprised if this is also the case with the PRC. 

In my opinion, where the PRC defies western capitalist doctrine is in disproving the sacred tenet that state involvement hinders economic growth and development so that we are better off materially without it. That wasn’t necessarily true in the western democracies but China has massively refuted it in the last half-century. The fact that increased production was achieved, say, in wartime in democratic societies, is further evidence that the exploiters maintain their stranglehold on us by propagating facile lies. Without their production of waste and their “innovation” in the techniques of exploitation (see for example the Netflix documentary on Wells Fargo Bank, “Dirty Money”), without their thievery and manipulation we would be languishing in squalor. So they tell us. Bullshit.

Now that they have a massive echo chamber in social media I do not know how they can be counteracted. Certainly, not by giving up. Maybe the clever YouTube subversives that Andrew showed me are a start. I have a sense that a lot could be learned by reviewing the information wars of past ideological struggles. In particular, Brecht could teach the Left a lot. 

Here for example you can see that the genius of Bertolt Brecht lay in asking questions, not in fomenting dread or telling people what to think:

General, your tank is a powerful vehicle
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.

General, your bomber is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.

General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.

Signed,

Andrew (Weeks)