Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/04/2021
19:45 - 21:30
A Zoom meeting held jointly by Hastings Humanists and Liz Coleman’s discussion group.
To join the meeting click on this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7880482930?pwd=djZsWk91S0ZrZW1DUlhBNU02a0tVQT09
Meeting ID: 788 048 2930
Call Stephen Milton on 07973 312422 if you have problems.
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Hastings Humanists ask: Why is communism treated as a bad word – almost a taboo?
Definition: A theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.
There is a lot to be said for the principles of communism, writes Stephen.
Unfortunately it got a very bad press because of the way it was implemented by Stalin and Mao Zedong:
- Stalin’s purges killed over 1 million people in the period from 1936 to 1938.
- In the early 1930s, over 91% of agricultural land became collectivized as rural households entered collective farms with their land, livestock, and other assets. The collectivization era saw several famines, many due to the shortage of modern technology in USSR at the time, but critics have also cited deliberate action on the government’s part. The death toll cited by experts has ranged from 7 million to 14 million.
- In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward that aimed to rapidly transform China’s economy from agrarian to industrial, which led to the deadliest famine in history and the deaths of 15-55 million people between 1958 and 1962.
- Communism became synonymous with state control by the Communist Party and the party became a small self-serving elite maintaining power by repression of the individual and dictatorial control. As economies became more diverse with the explosion of innovation after World War II, state control became a severe impediment to economic development.
Communism was an attempt to prevent the gross inequalities that arise from the entrenched power that comes with the accumulation of wealth.
And that is still an issue today.
There are a couple of ways in which we can earn a living. One is from selling our labour and the other is by renting out our assets
Over the last 30 years the return on labour has barely changed and the return on assets (property or shares or intellectual property) has risen very fast, accelerating as a result of the process of ‘quantitative easing’ following the 2008 banking crisis , vastly increasing the gap between the wealthiest 0.1% of society, and just about everybody else.
There is a lot to talk about – hopefully this will be a wide ranging discussion!
All are welcome.
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