EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
The spread of communism cannot be protected by the right to free expression.
Recently, questions have been increasingly raised in domestic social networks about whether the “innocent” victims of the totalitarian right-wing regimes in Bulgaria and around the world, who used repressive methods to save their countries from communism financed by the USSR, were justified. Poets, intellectuals or ordinary advocates of the red idea. These few thousand were morally equal to the hundreds of millions that communism wiped out in the 20th century alone, and which it continues to wipe out today in Venezuela. Since they did not hurt anyone, but only spoke, no civilized country should judge them, the rhetoric goes.
Communism is an anti-civilizational superstition
There is, however, something wrong with this argument. The most fundamental role of the state is not to protect free speech. Its primary duty is to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens from enemies, both external and internal. Communism is the antithesis of these values.
Taxes (nationalization of INCOME) are necessary in a minimal amount so that the state can protect our rights. However, the nationalization of our CAPITAL (factories, properties, lands, savings) is not carried out by any civilized country and cannot be justified in any case, except perhaps in an all-out world war. But not in peacetime. The nationalization of capital is a belated post mortem taxation of all those who lived before us, saved and built, so that we could inherit it.
This saving is the reason why in a day's work the American earns $300, and the Kenyan - $3. It is not because the American digs 100 times faster than the Kenyan, but because he has an excavator that scoops up 100 times more earth than the Kenyan. But in order for this excavator to be available, someone, sometime before today's American, saved up, built it for him, and left it to him, because this excavator did not always exist. Communism is the second death for our ancestors.
Their goal is to subjugate the human spirit, mind, and body to their perverted social experiment, thinking that they will succeed in creating “the new socialist man, free from primitive bourgeois needs.” The record of these efforts is eloquent - they have failed nowhere, everywhere the resistance has been enormous, and even after them people continue to think primarily of themselves rather than of the collective, which is normal for any autonomous, brain-controlled organism.
Communists are people who constantly focus on new and new problems in society, whether real or imagined. We eradicated poverty and now inequality has begun to annoy us. However, their solutions are the most elementary and intellectually lazy. We will take from Peter and give to Paul. So simple. And precisely because it is so simple, every country that has tried communism has lost its will to live, to improve itself and becomes mediocre. Because it takes abstract thinking beyond the immediate length of your nose to see that this is a slippery slope that will kill your society. And abstract thinking is not possessed by everyone. It is usually a trait of the smartest. By which communists prove that they are not. Or they are simply evil, as Ayn Rand said.
“Do you want money?” is nonsense
Pavel will never mind being given. Who will refuse money? That is why the question “Do you want money?” is nonsense. In a society, the relatively stupid and unambitious always outnumber the smart and insightful. If this society loses its mind to ask the majority this question, the answer will always be clear.
Therefore, capitalism is not a dictatorship of the haves over the have-nots, but an invitation from the successful to the uninitiated to join their ranks. It is with this invitation that poverty is eliminated. Because, seeing what your neighbor has, you desire the same, but not by taking what he has, but by doing the same for yourself.
Dangerous ideas are a provocation to us all
But let’s get back to the “innocent” victims. Is there anyone who would say that imams who preach radical Islam but do not harm anyone in the specific act are “innocent victims” of any government that wants to protect its people from Sharia? Even if this specific act does not lead to terrorist acts, would any normal person say that it is completely normal for their country to be filled with radicalized Muslims who believe that “the gyawors owe their lives, property and women to the faithful”? Would that same normal citizen say the moment they become more than 50% and proclaim their Sharia “Hey, chance, brother.”? That is why just as “do the gyawors owe their lives, property and women to the faithful?” cannot be a question, so “do you want money?” cannot be a question. This is a provocation that deserves a response. Just like “I will kill your wife and children” is a provocation punishable by law. Not free speech. The question is “What should we watch tonight - Levski:CSKA or Etropole:Belasitsa?”. “Should we destroy our civilization?” cannot be a question.
Unlike Islam, however, under communism things don't seem so totalitarian. In fact, they are. That's why we used the term "slippery slope" - it starts with "can't we provide free healthcare for everyone?". There's not enough money because centralized government never works. But they won't abandon the program if you're ruled by communists, they'll just try to seize more. Just like in South Africa. Just like in Venezuela. And it ends with the question "can Venezuela survive by hunting rabbits". That's why democratic, rule-of-law states can't tolerate ideas that would eliminate them the moment they're implemented.
Conclusion and recommendations
Augusto Pinochet, Francisco Franco and Prof. Alexander Tsankov are heroes for their countries, for not allowing their peoples to succumb to primitive passions. For stepping in at the right moment like a harsh parent, calming the hormones of his teenager until he matures enough not to kill himself out of stupidity. All three fought currents financed by the USSR, not with any spontaneous growth of their populations and glimpses of the “bright socialist future.”
As a clearer limitation of what is communism and what is not: The state should put a constitutional limit on the annual amount it can confiscate from its citizens as taxes. Anything above that is communism and people who hint at more should be tried for spreading communism. For example, X% of GDP. And, in order to avoid government manipulation of the GDP measure, it can be replaced with X% of the available liquid cash in banks and companies. That is, to equate it to the force from which progress actually starts - saving.
