Gerard Henderson does a good line in questioning the bona fides of former communists. One of his favourite targets is Greens Senator elect Lee Rhiannon.
Today the Oz runs a piece in which Mark Aarons takes a similar shot.
I have no dispute with the many former Communists who erred in their judgement leading up to WWII supporting the Soviet pact with Germany, nor those who looked to Russia and saw nirvana not the gulag. None of us has perfect knowledge.
I do share the concerns of Henderson though about those who won't acknowledge their error.
The ideal of communism is fantastic, the historical analysis of Marx is great (as I've said Bobbitt's is similar) and his economics actually has some valid critiques of what eventually became the orthodoxy. But the practical implementation by terror - starting with Lenin - and its internal inconsistencies are worthy of damnation.
But by the same token, the practice of capitalism in the USA, the harm it inflicts on its poor, the number of its young black male citizens it imprisons, the number of people it executes or cannot keep safe from murder, the absurd rewards paid to people who run the scam known as the financial system and the corruption of its outsourced military means that is a state also worthy of damnation.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
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