The most destructive political system of our time, and likely any other, is communism. In the 20th century alone, it’s been estimated that communist governments were responsible for 94 million deaths. It’s a staggering number but, sadly, believable. We’re reminded of genocides perpetrated in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and Cambodia. The fact that these countries conspired to kill their own citizens is a sad indictment of humanity. The reason is both senseless and chilling. Communist governments are methodical. They target their victims based on an assessment of one’s political identity. Like the Nazis before them, they hunt down and exterminate people who fail a purity test.
As we shed a tear for the millions who died under communist rule, we’re left to consider the millions of others affected in those countries and around the world. It’s more common for political ideas to be contained by geography. Based on customs and traditions, local politics will often guide a region but lack the appeal to travel further. Communism is different. It taps into the dark recesses of the human condition, inspiring an envy and hatred of “the other.” Communism can make a home in any town, city, or country.
Western governments in the 20th century understood the threat. The United States once engaged communism across the world to keep the ideology from spreading. The US sought to beat back communist governments, but more than that, to discredit the communist ideal, even to humiliate it. Communism was recognized to be a disease antithetical to a healthy society. The tragedy of the US-Vietnam War was a result of a strict anti-communist policy.
American foreign policy was fanatical about communism while undervaluing its psychological nature. As a mind virus, communism could infiltrate a society through social contagion carried by trendy intellectuals. Hollywood and academia shot more holes into the boat as the US military bailed water.
The Senate hearings of the 1950s were ridiculed. McCarthyism became a label for fascism and hysteria. The United States had only one remaining defense: the American dream. Its unique opportunities and its promise of attainable affluence would need to repel the dark grievances of communism.
If communism were a rational idea, any country with a high standard of living would be immune. And yet, the twisted logic of Karl Marx would prove persuasive in the land of milk and honey. Americans raised on liberal values were drawn to its fantasy of universal equality. The United States had afforded wealth to more underrepresented groups than any other country in history—as evidenced by the millions who sought to enter every year, even illegally. It wouldn’t matter. Grievance-filled Americans would join communism’s ranks, elevating Russia, Cuba, and China while seeking to dismantle the freest society in history. Pro-communist Americans suffered cognitive dissonance: while reaping the rewards of a capitalist society, they pined for its destruction. They were a free people striving to enter a gulag.
Westerners who supported capitalism counted on educated people who feared communism’s deadly reputation. They couldn’t fathom those who nonetheless admired its theoretical promise. Ninety-four million people had been murdered under communism. Did supporters take leave of their senses?
My father fit the profile of a leftist communist sympathizer. From his viewpoint, support of socialism/communism was common sense. People were too selfish. A wise government distributes resources based on what is fair, a view of equality uninformed by experience. My father was not a student of the Soviet Union or China. He rarely traveled. He was an American and, more fortuitous, he was a Californian born in the middle of the 20th century. It was akin to being born into United States royalty.
California was then a charmed state boasting aerospace, Hollywood, world-renowned tourism, and a budding Silicon Valley within the boundaries of one economy. It was rich, intellectually diverse, and widely middle-class. People from all walks of life could afford a home and a car. As a member of the Boomer generation, my father enjoyed all the luxury and opportunity America had to offer. Futuristic postcards showed slender, happy citizens of tomorrow. My father resembled one of those idealistic figures.
The prosperity that welcomed my father would never leave him. He would begin in a starter home and retire to a gated community. He would purchase a new car every few years once the warranty expired and pay cash. He only lacked a swimming pool in his backyard because he would have to clean it.
It’s a familiar, welcome American story. A humble man rises through the ranks at a corporation to support his family. Or, he strikes out on his own, starts a company, works around the clock, and takes advantage of the American capitalist market. By competing with others, he becomes better.
My father would be neither a corporate hotshot nor an entrepreneur. Instead, he worked in public service, a job where it was difficult to fail. A position with a California utility fell into his lap right out of high school. There, he followed the requirements and arrived at work on time. He wore a necktie when he graduated to the office. Later, he drove to the job in a company car.
My father’s standard of living and today’s economic decline reflect different realities. The Boomer generation was the last to receive a guaranteed American dream. My father owned a home and two cars, took vacations, paid alimony, remarried, and raised another family—all on one income. My ordinary father lived better than any historical king. His kitchen was always full. His health was protected by first-world medicine. He spent time on the golf course. It was all due to California’s largess, not his high school diploma.
Why would someone like this want anything to do with communism?
“He realized he had too much,” the classical liberal would reply. “He wanted to right the balance. Communism is about being selfless, the common good.”
Selflessness would prove to be untrue in my father’s case, but like many in his generation, he was restless. Affluence was easy to take for granted. It wasn’t enough to define a life. He could see the underpriviledged missing out while politicians in Washington, D.C., followed their agendas. What could someone do? An idealistic political movement was growing in America, from JFK to MLK, to the anti-war movement. John Lennon challenged people to imagine a socialist utopia. Something needed to be done about social and economic injustices. My father couldn’t, in good conscience, enjoy his life too much.
Only, my father wasn’t about to give any of it back. Altruistic in intention, he was a capitalist in practice, among the legion of 1970s fathers who fell behind in child support (and never caught up). He was a natural complainer, conscious of his income versus other people, and aware of his status. There was no evidence he gave charitably. His “Me-Generation” of the 1970s would give less per capita to charities than in any other decade after it.
My father sounded high-minded when he talked about politics, but contradicting the classical liberal viewpoint, he was a materialist. He didn’t want to lose what he had worked for. In his view, he had less than others, and they deserved it less than he did. The scapegoat for Califorrnia liberals was fat cat Republicans, who they accused of getting rich off of hardworking people. Communism promised to fix society with their money. It would strengthen the government, which my father believed was the only altruistic institution. Outside of a coercive government, individuals would be selfish.
A memorable lesson I learned from my father was about public utilities. He told me they were regulated by the government but privately owned. I didn’t know this. I thought, my father is letting me in on his career. I expected he would be protective of the trade that brought him along. Instead, my father believed the government should take over all utilities and keep the profits.
It sounded wrong to my young ears. The suggestion stuck with me, the cavalier way he asserted it. The United States should take a page from the USSR. It should seize control of the utilities we rely on to survive. What would happen to states that voted against the ruling party? Would they lose power, water, or sewer? What kind of oversight would be in place? Where would this new financial windfall be directed? Down the well like our taxes?
I began to wonder what my father was made of. His grievences sounded selfless. For example, he was outraged by the treatment of minorities and women in the United States, the rights they had been denied until recently. Simultaneously, he was an absentee father. He could have poured his time into the lives of two children. He could have made a big difference. He had other concerns and, years later, was comfortable with his selfish choices.
A young man tried to make sense of it. How could a prosperous man have so many grievences? He had benefitted from a lifetime of California socialism carrying him to a healthy retirement through a modicum of effort. It wasn’t enough. He wanted to see the United States adopt a version of communism.
There was a final example of my father’s actions belying his idealism. At the tail end of his career, his CEO invited him onto the corporate board. It was a crowning achievement for a man who started work as a meter reader. A seat on the board would improve his situation, his standing. The position had no downside.
My father said no. He didn’t need a board seat. It wasn’t important to him.
I was dumbfounded. Old enough to form an opinion by then, I saw that his decision made little adult sense. Here was a man who obsessed about what he had, what others had, and the big disparity he always pinpointed. He had an invitation into the inner circle. It was a chance to earn a better opportunity.
Only years later would his answer make sense. In a communist mentality, earning something wasn’t satisfying. It was taking things away from the undeserving. He didn’t only want more. He wanted others to have less.
It was a foreign way of thinking. I wanted nothing handed to me. Perhaps because I grew up with an absent father, I wanted to earn everything myself. I sought out challenges on competitive stages in the biggest cities. I would succeed a little and fail a lot. It was a result I had to live with. It was life.
The difference between my father and I was vast. As we shared DNA, the difference wasn’t due to talent. It was psychological, even spiritual. He was filled with bitterness for not having enough. I had even less but was driven to succeed. Did I achieve the goals I set for myself? No, and yet, I was free to continue trying to earn them, a foreign concept to my father who lived in a free country, in a gulag of envy, another historical casualty of a failed ideal.
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