Russell Warshay

“Communism is great in theory, but doesn’t work in practice.” Still hear that a lot. But it’s like saying: “Well, the recipe is great but every time we bake a cake from it we end up poisoning everyone.” Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a great recipe actually. After many tens of millions dead, we should acknowledge that communism is bad in theory and bad in practice. It’s economic illiteracy combined with horrific ideas about establishing a dictatorship (oh, temporarily sure) and persecuting an ever expanding list of enemies, which will eventually include everyone who points out that it’s not working. The fact that it’s dressed up in sanctimonious, self-aggrandising rhetoric about freeing workers (who a lot of Marxists would shudder to have a conversation with) doesn’t make any of that better. It just provides an excuse to commit atrocities for the supposed great good - with that post-dictatorship utopia always at least one more murder away. If it can reach the point of justifying the Nazi-Soviet Pact and persecuting entire nationalities then there is no low to which it cannot sink. You know what is great in theory? Democratic institutions and norms, checks and balances, independent civil societies, freedom of speech and assembly, human rights, etc, etc. Those things are superior in theory, superior in practice, and there’s nothing remotely redeeming about those who would throw them away no matter where on the political spectrum they put themselves.