The chilling idea that seemingly does not die… From an award-winning historian, a new global history of Communism

“When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world was certain that Communism was dead. Today, three decades later, it is clear that it was not. While Russia may no longer be Communist, Communism and sympathy for Communist ideas have proliferated across the globe.

In To Overthrow the World, Sean McMeekin investigates the evolution of Communism from a seductive ideal of a classless society into the ruling doctrine of tyrannical regimes.

Tracing Communism’s ascent from theory to practice, McMeekin ranges from Karl Marx’s writings to the rise and fall of the USSR under Stalin to Mao’s rise to power in China to the acceleration of Communist or Communist-inspired policies around the world in the twenty-first century. McMeekin argues, however, that despite the endurance of Communism, it remains deeply unpopular as a political form. Where it has arisen, it has always arisen by force.

Blending historical narrative with cutting-edge scholarship, To Overthrow the World revolutionizes our understanding of the evolution of Communism—an idea that seemingly cannot die.”

+ Military historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson delivers the most alarming warning ever heard.

James Lindsay on Marx and Hegel:

“Karl Marx characterized Communism as “the negation of the negation,” which is a peculiar turn of phrase he borrowed from his theoretical predecessor G.W.F. Hegel. What that means is that propertied societies, whether slave, feudal, or capitalist, negate our innate Communist (“social”) nature, and then Communism in turn negates capitalism as the highest form of development of the productive organizational modes of society.

Well, the negation of the negation experiment was run in various parts of the world through the 20th century and failed everywhere, and what we learned is that the negation of the negation is actually either collapse and then control by an oligarchy or, in other cases, Fascism. These two can be synthesized to create a negation of the negation of the negation, so to speak, that takes Communism as the theoretical ideal and “basic spirit” of historical development while utilizing Fascism as its practical mode of production, and that’s exactly what we see in China following the rise of Deng Xiaoping.

It’s also exactly what we see in the West under the ESG scoring model for corporate behavior and the United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals that it services. In this important episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay makes the development of “Communism 3.0,” a Corporatist Communism for the 21st century clear.”

Many a person’s heart is better than their political ideology

Note: when I meet a Socialist, a nihilist, or a recent illegal immigrant I ask God to help me look beyond the labels and to  see the persons as persons, beneath the labels, as I would want them to see me; and, not treat any as mere partisans or instruments of one ideology among many which exhausts their whole meaning and being.

When I see an illegal immigrant (and I see many and work with some) I don’t look down on them, but seek to find new points of contact and friendship. There’s always time to chat later about our differences of opinions, if they care to. And I will honestly explain to them why I would oppose any Revolutionary activity that devalues the imago dei in the human person, including those on the Right who say vile things about Immigrants.

My Irish ancestors were once persecuted for coming here at all. Our churches and convents were once burnt to the ground to show how unwelcome we were.

I pray I never, ever, treat others as too many of the tragic name-callers and people-dividers do on ‘X’ or on MSNBC. We can do better and try to find a way to make friendship possible always until the day when our political problem are resolved in some way. Ideology is one thing. Persons are another. SH.

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