Posted by Ed Folsom, August 31, 2024.
If This Sickness is Allowed to Metastasize Further, It Cannot Possibly End Well.
I have returned from Montenegro and Croatia to the rapidly cooling, late August climate of Maine. It was a real treat to sample the history and architecture of places once ruled by the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Venetian Republic, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the King of Yugoslavia, Mussolini’s Italian Fascists, Hitler’s German National Socialists (and their puppet regime), the single-party rule of Josep Broz “Marshal” Tito’s League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and, eventually, as independent nations ruling themselves under elected governments.
When I was last in that neighborhood, in October of 1975, Croatia and Montenegro were two parts of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, under Tito’s communist rule. Back then, I stayed at a safe distance on the Greek island of Corfu, just off the coast of The People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, which was then ruled by the more-Stalinist-than-Stalin communist, Enver Hoxha.
Perhaps, you might have noticed that these various places were styled as “Socialist” republics while they were ruled by “Communist” parties, much in the way the U.S.S.R. was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics although it was ruled by the Communist Party. That’s because communist parties, operating under Marxist theory, must advance through the inevitable post-capitalist stage of “socialism,” before they can reach the communist utopia that will inevitably come about at the end of history. It’s just that the various communist parties have never managed to make it past the inevitable stage of “socialism,” to the inevitable end-of-history stage where the state withers away and dies.
But in any event, 1975 was 30 years after the end of World War II. Back then, socialism on the way to the end of history under Communist Party rule had an iron grip on the Balkans. In August of 2024, I returned to the neighborhood 29 years after the end of Croatia’s War of Independence from Yugoslavia and the rule of Serbian socialist Slobodan Milošević. Croatia’s War of Independence lasted from 1991 to 1995 killing 14,000 people, injuring some 45,000 others, placing towns and cities under deadly and destructive sieges and involving an ethnic cleansing campaign and the detention of more than 7,500 people in concentration camps. It was no smooth transition away from Tito’s communism. I am led to believe that some are still nostalgic for the strong rule of Marshal Tito and his Communist League.
I happened upon a 2015 blog post by Croatian English-language blogger Ina Vukic, lamenting this nostalgia. In it, Vukic describes Yugoslavia in the 1970’s, when Tito’s socialist paradise was propped-up by massive foreign loans that Vukic argues mortgaged-away Croatia’s future:
“Way back in 1974, when seemingly Yugoslavia thrived as far as the individual was concerned (lifelong jobs regardless of whether one actually produced or worked a full day [hours-long lunch breaks were widespread practice], free healthcare at all levels, paid sick leave available easy and in obscene abundance, 12 months paid maternity leave, free university education where everyone who wanted to study found at least one university faculty to enrol [sic] in regardless of high school performance and marks, free movement/travel since 1962 border-opening, many had double incomes: Partisan war pensions dished out at age of around 40 and then holding a paid job as well, children of WWII Partisans in receipt of financial support/scholarships to go and study at a university, corruption and opportunities to steal from employing government owned company were widespread …) a friend of mine who was an Economist and worked for a bank in Zagreb, Croatia, said to me that the economy was at rock-bottom – 94% companies with accounts at the bank had to depend on loans to secure monthly wages for their workers! Month in, month out; year in, year out.
Tito’s regime permitted and facilitated a version of capitalist style consumerism in order to divert citizens’ energies away from political opposition and to create ground for political legitimacy. Tito’s regime failed miserably at teaching the people personal responsibilities that come with living and maintaining a life of such capitalist style consumerism.”
Wow, that has a very familiar ring. It reflects promises now being made by America’s own crop of “progressive”/“socialist” politicians. Free, Free, Free! It’s a human right! All this nonsense threatens to, once again and here, fail miserably at teaching the people personal responsibilities that come with living and maintaining a life of such capitalist-style consumerism, and it sure doesn’t teach people to provide for themselves outside a consumerist system.
Here, as it was there, if this sickness is allowed to metastasize further it cannot possibly end well. As Margaret Thatcher used to tell us, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. When that happens, it’s time to bring home the old socialist saying: “In socialism, those who don’t work don’t eat.” That’s such a rude rip-off for those who’ve been promised all for nothing — that the politicians will just make the greedy rich bastards pay their “fair share.”
You might ask a Ukrainian about the Holodomor, when those who grew the food under Soviet socialism weren’t allowed to eat anyway — Kulaks, all of them!!
