on 30th september i went to see what is chavez, castro and morales all about. me and two friends of mine - jesús, the venezuelan and fraser, the canadian - went to this "solidarity conference with venezuela, cuba and bolivia". it was series of workshops and speeches on those three countries whose leaders, as we all know, oppose the idea of american capitalism and imperialism. in fact, it was a communistic gathering. so people wore buttons saying: "bush is a terrorist", "us/uk out of afghanistan", "che guevara: hasta victoria siempre" etc. etc. very red around, you know what i mean, right?
please, don't get scared and note: i went there with my liberal-central-but-slightly-left political opinions and so i stepped out of the conference. though, i must admit, it was captivating. the speakers, their ideas, even the examples. it was captivating and more than interesting to hear something good about cuba, for instance. because we only know the american perspective on cuba we acquire only american pint of views.
jesús is a communist-idealist, who fully believe in the beautiful set of ideas set by marx and tested by lenin. hmm... he was one of the reasons why did i break my principles and started discussing politics again (can you believe i had such principle?!) seeing his enthusiasm about a system which ruined my country.
i also observed some sort of weird tendency of latin and eastern european societies of shifting from one to another extreme. right now poland is having a nationalistic and conservative government which build their ideas around anti-communistic slogans. and society believes, just because they asociate communists with evils. in latin america, especially venezuela (chávez) and bolivia (morales) it is exactly the opposite. the suppression many the countries in that region suffered throughout 20th century was mainly due to conservative, right-wing regimes. what is happening in the mind of the crowd?
"the system Z didn't work and suppressed us"
"oh, that candidate seems to oppose it"
"ok, let's try that one"
they forget that between the far right and far left there's also the middle, center, a straight-way, damn it! why do people have to turn either left or right, why can't they just go straight on?
on one of the tok lectures back in red cross nordic, aseem (philosophy teacher from india) spoke of both extremes of political axis - capitalism and communism - as follows:
in capitalism it is a man who abuses another man
in communism it is just other way around
bitter? yes. but to me true.
also what interested me very much is wheather in cuba would it be possible to organize a conference in support of brave american soldiers fighting for freedom of the iraqi people. jesús immediately responded along the lines: "but who would like to support war and terror and that it would be not moral etc. etc." perhaps. yet that so much depends on your point of view and where your ass is. let us leave the morality aside and ask ourselves: is it possible to organize communistic gathering in a capitalistic democracy? yes. has it ever been possible to organize a capitalisitic or democratic demonstration in, say, eastern european or african socialst or rather pseudo-socialist state? budapest 1956, prague 1968, gdańsk 1980... few examples of the communists shooting at the crowd.
now, please don't get me wrong. i am not trying to defend capitalism, because i feel terribly disgusted towards it and generally i don't feel well in such egocentric oriented society. a society that is chasing its tail in an artificial money pursuit and running over every other society that stands in front of them. no, i am definetely not defending capitalism. indeed, i am against any sort of extreme.
socialistic ideas of brotherhood and equality really captivate me. i have lived couple of times in such small societies where a pure state of communism was possible for a short period of time and it was beautiful. however, i am really afraid of something that happened in russia after the bolshevik revolution and what happened in eastern europe after the wwII and in china in 1949, and in north korea and across africa: turning those beautiful ideas into a bloody one-party dictatorship. jesús would reply "but itany of the mentioned were a pure socialist state" right, but they were meant to be, weren't they? and then what happened? there was a cunning individual emerging from chaos and taking over the power and its benefits stumping over the beutiful ideas. every time. and here comes paulo coehlo and a quote from the alchemist:
Everything that happens only once might never occur again; but things that has happened twice are bound to occur the third time.
this is why i am so skeptic about the communist-enthusiasts.
even though, damn it, i have to hand it to them, their ideas are beautiful... people are too stupid to acquire them. and also they could work only and only if they had exactly 100% of the global population support. and is that possible? no. as human we differ. we differ in cultural background, in world's perception and we differ in political visions as well. i believe in the freedom of choice - forcing mexico to sign the free trade agreement with the usa is to me just as bad as "convincing" the crowds in budapest in 1956 about the righteousness of the communistic ideology. in politics, like in every other domain of life, one should seek the balanace and tranquility.
concluding, i would like to urge the nations to learn from the scandinavians. their "social democracy" systems work just right. the state protectionism is at the very high level, yet there's freedom of speech and choice. i had lived in norway for two years, i saw and experienced it.
ps. uff. sorry, for being very confusing, but i was trying to capture all my thoughts and impressions down on this blog.
