Sunday, February 22, 2009

Revolt of the Producers

Jay Stevens at Left in the West is like many on the Left, taking Rick Santelli to task for railing against Obama's plan for people facing foreclosures. Titled "A Tea Party for Redcoats" the basic gist of both Jay's article and the self satisfied comments below, seem to be how dare anyone complain about a fiscally insane policy if its meant to help poor people. While Dave Budge does a good job in the comments section of correcting at least some of the most obvious errors (and these people that are being corrected want to run economic policy?) there is no sense that they are open to any opinion other than their own.
I only bring this up because I came across an article titled "The Revolt of the Kulaks Has Begun" and the comparison of what Jay and his ilk want to do compared with Lenin and Stalin is remarkably instructive. From the article:
The best example of this phenomenon is the forced collectivization of farms in the Soviet Union. At the time of the Revolution, Russia was a largely agrarian society which allowed more productive farmers (so-called "kulaks") to prosper. Since the kulaks represented a political threat to communism, the collectivization of farming was a focus of communist policy. From the start, the kulaks resisted, requiring Lenin to resort to repression:

Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak volost's must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us our final decisive battle "with the kulaks." We need to set an example.

1) You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers.
2) Publish their names.
3) Take away all of their grain.
4) Execute the hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram.

This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let's choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks.

Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this.

Yours, Lenin

P.S. Use your toughest people for this.
and:
But the peasants, particularly the kulaks, refused to submit willingly, despite the promise that the contribution of their property would increase the collective good. "How did peasants initially respond to the idea of collectivization? Party agitators sent to the villages to persuade peasants of the benefits of collectivization often met with skepticism and mockery. Peasants who resisted the pressure of regional party officials to enroll in collective farms were labeled as kulaks; those who feared confiscation sold off their property as quickly as they could, in effect self-dekulakizing."
Obama's policies are being met with skepticism and mockery already. It's only a matter of time before the producers start to figure out that it is counterproductive to make more for the government to take. As a natural result, they will not make more.
If you read the whole thing you will find that it is human nature to avoid having your efforts confiscated, much as the proposed tax hikes of Obama will incur. Sometimes, it seems that people who are supposed to be so darned smart, sure do act stupid.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I tried to read the post, but the blog was a formatting disaster. I couldn’t tell who was saying what, not that it mattered all that much.