You Can’t Fight Human Nature — By John Reed

You Can’t Fight Human Nature
With the recent election in New York City, we’re hearing a lot more about socialism and communists. Once regarded by some as the future of all human governance, the last half century has seen it in decline.
A thousand years ago, when I was in high school, Florida required us to take a course called “Americanism vs. Communism.” Sure, it was purely a propaganda class, usually taught by a football coach like all other social studies courses in my school.
But beyond all the obvious polemics, we did get a decent background in the history and philosophy of socialist doctrine. And to be honest there was a lot that looked good, at least to idealistic young people who could identify the “oppressed proletariat” with their own experience with dictatorial parents.
The ideal of sharing the fruits of everyone’s labor equally sounds good, at least on paper. It’s the actual execution of the concept where things go south, because Marx, Engels, Lenin, et al failed to take in one critical factor: human nature.
The altruism required to give up ownership in everything: work, possessions, property for some theoretical “greater social good” is rare. We are by our very nature greedy and possessive, looking out for number one.
Whether you believe in Eden’s Original Sin or survival of the fittest, most people at their core are hard-pressed to share.
Sure, most successful marriages are partnerships, and our own history shows small religious communities that have had communal success, at least for a while. But on a national level, there’s not been a single example where communism hasn’t deteriorated into dictatorship. To paraphrase Orwell, in the supposed egalitarian utopias some people are more equal than others.
Stalin and Mao killed millions to enforce their workers’ paradise. The leftist experiment playing out in New York is doomed to fail. The question remains how many will suffer because of it.