(yeah, it’s another one of those current events/political ones)
I don’t hide the fact that I’m an atheist. I can be quite militant about it, though I try to keep that in check, as I know plenty of perfectly lovely religious people who are not, in fact, stupid and bigoted. I’ve never seen the point in not being open about it; quite frankly my opinion tends along the lines that those that have a problem with it are just proving my point about the harm done by religion. What I’m not always so open about is politics. Oh, sure, a five-minute conversation will tell you that I’m pretty liberal, but I tend to hesitate with actual labels. Largely because the actual label tends to cause some pretty negative kneejerk reactions. I am, at heart, a communist.
Yeah, that tends to get people’s attention, and not often the sort of attention you want.
However, I am also a misanthrope. The misanthropy makes me believe that human nature is not yet, perhaps not ever, at a place where communism can work on a large scale. There’s just too much greed and selfishness in humans, and there’s no telling if it’s innate or learned behavior. Both, I suspect. Regardless, while we can find small indigenous populations that do seem to have their communist utopia, it’s yet to work on any sort of large scale. I would argue that is, at least in part, due to the fact we’ve yet to see it evolve naturally. The communism of the Soviet Union was forced. It was a forced revolution by idealists (or they at least started that way) who didn’t think about the consequences of bringing that system to a group of people who weren’t ready for it yet.
But now…
Clearly, the capitalist system we are currently under isn’t working. The rich are getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer and more numerous. And people are starting not only to notice, but also to protest. I look at the Occupy Movements around the country and I have to wonder if we’re not seeing what could be the start of the closest thing to a Communist Revolution as Marx saw it as is possible in a post industrial society. I don’t think it’s going to go all the way to full on communism, and I’m not sure I would want it to (see above and the human nature stuff) but I do think—hope—that we might see an end to the unregulated capitalism. An end to a system where it is legal and ok for companies to lay off employees for economic reasons or to take government handouts but still give their executives huge bonuses. And end to a system where corporate welfare is good, but helping out people is bad because people are just lazy when they need help.
Then again, it might peter out and die long before then. But I hope not. Things are going to be worse. With luck and perseverance it’s just getting worse on the way to getting better. We are already witnessing brutal police attacks on unarmed protestors. So far, no one has died. I question how much longer we’re going to be able to say that. When it happens (because I do think it is a when, rather than an if) all hell is going to break loose. It’s a terrifying thought to entertain, what might happen from this.
