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Friday, July 3, 2009 12:00 AM

The un-American way of life

A controversial new history of Communism suggests that most everything we think we know about it is wrong

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  • Thursday, July 2, 2009 07:36 PM

    Caribbean communism

    Would that have been in Cuba or Haiti?

    No, but my point was that everyone who was a member of that community got an equal share of the resources regardless of individual wealth. Because large numbers of people were being fed, great economies of scale made it remarkably cheap relative to eating in individual restaurants, and presumably much more energy efficient than each family cooking its own food. Since everyone had equal access to whatever goodies there were, the problems related more to distribution than to supply.

    Sometimes it is very tempting to think that life would be better in communes with everyone specializing in certain tasks, rather than multitasking as, perhaps, physician, cook, housekeeper, and chauffeur, the physicican could just heal and then live socially, and the cook could just cook and then live socially. The physician gets fed and the cook gets medicated.

    Of course I realize that in reality the dream of socialism is much harder to implement than it would appear to be in theory, but was this really so apparent to factory workers and impoverished school teachers or coal miners in the 1930's who saw landowners and offspring of inherited wealth living at ease?

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