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commun[s85,jmc]		Young people's guide to communism

	When a young person begins to think independently, he questions
his parents' views or even has a positive desire to reject them.
This has a good side, because progress depends on the independence
of mind of the younger generation.  It also has a bad side in that
knowledge won by experience can be lost.  This is particularly true
when the knowledge is about something that cannot be immediately
experienced by the young person.

	One of the beneficiaries of young people starting over is
communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular.  Older
people who have paid attention to international events all their
lives are often amazed at how the same mistakes about communism
are repeated over and over again.  Moreover, it isn't only young
people who ignore experience but also middle aged people who haven't
been paying enough attention to the news.

	The object of this little book is to explain what is known
about communism and the Soviet Union.  The last chapter tells about
additional sources of information and argument including those sources
that give a much more favorable picture of communism than I do and
including the communist sources themselves.

	The slogan of communism is ``From each according to his ability,
to each according to his needs''.  The slogan has an immediate
attractiveness when one notices that the world contains both rich
loafers and poor people who work hard.  It also provides for people
who are handicapped in various ways and demands more from the talented
than from ordinary people.  The slogan itself is ambiguous about whether
the desired result is to be achieved by the able voluntarily working
hard and sharing with the less fortunate or whether this is to be
enforced by law.  However, all communist movements have emphasize
enforcement but often make the further claim that once people are
brought up right, enforcement won't be required.

	Many people disagree with the slogan itself and especially with
the idea of enforcing it.  They say that each person should be entitled
to work as much or as little as he pleases, should face the full consequences
of these decisions and should help the unfortunate only as a matter
of generosity.  More moderate people favor graduated taxes that take
more from the successful and use some of the result to help the unfortunate
but resist trying to realize equality of result, especially by law.
Even the communists propose a preliminary stage they call socialism
according to the slogan ``From each according to his ability, to each
according to his work''.  (Note that language is slippery, and not
every person who calls himself a socialist will subscribe to that
slogan.  It is necessary to read or listen carefully to see what a
person actually believes apart from the label he or others attach
to his belief).

	The libertarian philosophy emphasizes individual freedom
including economic freedom and proposes to let the rewards achieved
by different individuals turn out as they will.  Some hold to this
strictly and others are willing to compromise in order to achieve
greater equality or fairness.  People differ about what is fair.

	The slogans of a society are important, but even if a society
is governed by sincere advocates of a slogan, there is no guarantee
that the slogan will be realized.  The leaders of the society may
be incompetent or corrupt or their ideas of the consequences of the
policies they adopt may be mistaken.  Here is where experience is
important, because human society is very complicated, and no-one
can forsee all the obstacles that arise in achieving social goals.
Indeed no society has fully achieved the goals of its founders and
leaders, but some do better than others.  Just about all, probably
including even communist societies, have learned enough from their
experience so that a completely random change is more likely to
make things worse than better.