Earlier this month, the Dalai Lama told a group of Chinese students at the University of Minnesota, "I consider myself a Marxist . . . but not a Leninist." The comment struck some as odd—as if Lindsey Lohan had declared herself a Shaker. Students in the audience looked puzzled. One blogger wondered "if Pope Benedict and other world religious leaders are soon to follow."
But those who have followed His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, know that he regularly trots out a Marxist banner. When he came to Radio City Music Hall to lecture for a few days last year, he announced "Still I am a Marxist" even while thanking his good friends in the Chinese Communist Party for bringing capitalist freedoms to their land.
That stance leads to some head-scratching. Isn't this esteemed 75-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate the former "Boy King" who fled Mao's Chinese forces in 1959? Isn't he the 50-year exile whose fellow Tibetans suffered genocide, after some 20% of them died at the hands of Chinese forces or from starvation? Isn't Marxism a godless secular thing, and the Dalai Lama himself a manifestation of God on earth? If he doesn't know Marxism is false, who does?
The Dalai Lama explained his youthful enthusiasm in a 1999 essay for Time, mentioning that he even considered joining the Communist Party: "Tibet at that time was very, very backward. The ruling class did not seem to care, and there was much inequality. Marxism talked about an equal and just distribution of wealth. I was very much in favor of this. Then there was the concept of self-creation. Marxism talked about self-reliance, without depending on a creator or a God. That was very attractive. . . . I still think that if a genuine communist movement had come to Tibet, there would have been much benefit to the people."
It's an old, familiar position in Western secular intellectual life: Marxism wasn't a God that failed, and the Soviet Union and Mao's China don't count against it, because Marxism was never tried—Communism perverted it. The problem is that Marx wasn't just a Marxist—he was a Communist—and many of Mao's most destructive moves came right out of Marx's playbook for destroying self-reliance, among other things.
What makes the Dalai Lama's nostalgia for Marxism even odder is his distinctly non-mystical Buddhism. Although journalists and officials sometimes describe the Dalai Lama as a God-like figure, he expresses exasperation at such tags, insisting that he is a "simple Buddhist monk." He repeatedly describes himself as a "hyperrealist" and "empiricist" who rejects any religious belief not consistent with modern science. His self-description as an "experimenter" puts him shoulder-to-shoulder with William James and John Dewey.
The incoherence of his enduring Marxism isn't that it clashes with his religiosity, but that it violates his American-style pragmatism, his oft-stated belief that ideas must be judged by their consequences. Where has the Marxist experiment succeeded by the Dalai Lama's own criterion of, say, equal distribution of goods? Where has it exalted individualism?
Evaluating the politics of the Dalai Lama remains a challenge given that even Robert Thurman, the foremost American academic expert on the man, concedes in his new book, "Why the Dalai Lama Matters," that his subject is viewed "by his own followers to be the incarnation of a divine being." The rest of us, though, should take this likable, brave and realist leader at his word. We should hold his calloused feet to the fire, and press him on why an opponent of static truths and dogmatic certainties thinks Marxism still matters.
Mr. Romano, professor of philosophy and humanities at Ursinus College, is the author of "America the Philosophical," forthcoming from Knopf.
-End of first the article: Dalai Lama.
Countries committing the worst atrocities
Dr Larry SchweikartI don’t understand the argument that Socialism and Communism are good in either principle or practice. When you take the power from the people and you allow that power and the means of production to be controlled by government officials who do not have to answer to anyone there is always wide spread abuse of this power.
There have only been a handful of leaders, be they kings or other wise, who use their power to help the people. Instead they use this power to crush the people and make them submit to their will by force and even killing to make the rest submit to them. Such is the worlds experience with Socialist and Communist countries.
There are only 5 countries today that are considered fully communist countries: China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam
and Laos.
The political system in China is considered Communist, but they are continuing to shift away from a Socialist economic system and closer to a capitalist system. While this is a very gradual shift, they continue to struggle for balance to bring incentive to the workers and the businesses, but still maintain the overarching power that is a Communist Government.
Past Communist Countries have committed the worst atrocities on their own citizens than any other form of government.
Here is a list of current and former Communist countries with a staggering number of their own citizens that they have either killed or starved to death.
Communist Citizen Deaths: 149,469,610
People’s Republic of China
Body Count: 73,237,000
Chairman Mao’s great leap forward starved almost 40 million alone (conservative estimate)
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Body Count: 58,627,000 Murder, forced Starvation and genocide of the Ukraine, Kulaks, and others who disagreed with Stalin’s Communist vision
Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
Body Count: 3,284,000
Stalin’s execution and Siberian work camps for the Kulaks and the government created famine in the Ukraine known as the Holodomor.
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Body Count: 3,163,000
Cambodia
Body Count: 2,627,000
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Body Count: 1,750,000
Vietnam
Body Count: 1,670,000
People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Body Count: 1,343,610
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Body Count: 1,072,000
Chinese Soviet Republic
Body Count: 700,000
People’s Republic of Mozambique
Body Count: 700,000
Socialist Republic of Romania
Body Count: 435,000
People’s Republic of Bulgaria
Body Count: 222,000
People’s Republic of Angola
Body Count: 125,000
Mongolian People’s Republic
Body Count: 100,000
People’s Socialist Republic of Albania
Body Count: 100,000
Republic of Cuba
Body Count: 73,000
German Democratic Republic
Body Count: 70,000
Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia
Body Count: 65,000
Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Body Count: 56,000
Hungarian People’s Republic
Body Count: 27,000
People’s Republic of Poland
Body Count: 22,000
People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen
Body Count: 1,000
For more information visit:
http://freemencapitalist.com/communist-countries/
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