Ah, the naïveté of youth.
Count Texas State University’s Rudy Martinez among those quixotic dreamers who don’t believe that communism is a failed ideology, but that it merely hasn’t yet been done right.
Writing in The University Star, Martinez writes “The iconic figures associated with the revolution, such as Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, firmly believed this was the only way to achieve a lasting peace and avoid oppression.
“As a Marxist myself, I believe the assumption in its entirety. The revolutionaries were also correct in thinking if communism were to thrive, the rest of the world’s countries would also have to undergo their own revolutions.”
It was that dastardly “self-serving, authoritarian” Joe Stalin who ruined it all, you see.
Fear not, however, for all is not lost. Today, as “tyranny and nationalism are once more rearing their ugly heads,” Martinez says the so-called “resistance” can learn a thing or two from those Bolsheviks of yore:
Lenin’s form of international communism sought to usher in a new era for mankind. The revolutionaries did not want the rest of the 20th century to be defined by war between the old world’s empires, using peasants as their pawns. The Great War had already shown the world how frightening new weaponry could be. Instead, they had a desire to unite the world and perfect our newfound technologies—such as automation and flight—to do away with the exploitation of labor.
Much of our current mainstream activists simply seek to replace President Donald J. Trump with another member of the ruling capitalist class. Salvation will not be found in impeaching Trump or through the mid-term elections in November of 2018.
Likewise, stating, “don’t blame me, I voted for Hillary,” helps no one. Instead, salvation for our species, which faces a bevy of existential crises in the coming decades, lies in ridding ourselves of a suicidal economic ideology: capitalism. Trump’s election, Brexit, the tide of nationalism sweeping over Europe and the Syrian Civil War are a result of capitalism’s fundamental instability. It is prone to crisis, cannot exist without exploitation and thrives off conflict.
Alas, this unintentionally hilarious romantic escapade makes me recall an undergraduate anthropology class in which we were “treated” to an enthusiastic film about the Cuban Revolution. There he was, Fidel Castro, yammering about the glorious New Man ideal and at one point joking about “feeling like a bourgeois” because the chair in which he sat was too decorative.
Some joke that turned out to be. Guess Uncle Fidel didn’t do communism “right” either.
MORE: Student denounces communism after years of singing its praises
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