Looking back at the history of Russia during the early 20th Century, those who came to power calling themselves Bolsheviks were responsible for creating conditions under which mass starvation ensued among the Russian population, ultimately leading to the horrific practice of cannibalism.
"The Russian famine of 1921–22, also known as Povolzhye famine, occurred in Bolshevik Russia. Civil war and Lenin's policy of seizing food from peasants caused the devastating man-made famine. Around 30 million people were affected and around five million died" (1)
Who were the Bolsheviks?
"The Bolshevik party led the Russian Revolution, and under the new name of the Communist Party, would be the only ruling political party of the Soviet Union. The party championed its vanguard role, and operated under the organizational principle of democratic centralism."
"Meaning "majority" in Russian, the Bolshevik party was formed after the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903. The Congress as a whole had agreed on the tactics for the coming revolution: the need for a revolution in Russia was clear, and members agreed on the ultimate end: to establish Socialism. The party adopted a stagist theory of societal evolution; that with the yoke of feudalism thrown off, a capitalistic system should be built; i.e. society needed to naturally evolve along a set pattern of progression: from feudalism to capitalism to socialism to communism; one stage needed to be completed before the next was possible." (2)
Just like many today, the Bolsheviks espoused the 'revolutionary' ideals of socialism under a democratic society. But did they come to power organically through force of truth, or by virtue of some ulterior motive? Writing in 'The Creature From Jekyll Island', G. Edward Griffin explains,
"One of the greatest myths of contemporary history is that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was a popular uprising of the downtrodden masses against the hated ruling class of the Tsars." (p. 123)
"The top Communist leaders have never been as hostile to their counterparts in the West, as the rhetoric suggests. They are quite friendly to the world's leading financiers and have worked closely with them, when it suits their purposes. … the Bolshevik revolution actually was financed by wealthy financiers in London and New York. Lenin and Trotsky were on the closest of terms with these moneyed interests both before and after the Revolution. Those hidden liaisons have continued to this day ..." (p. 263)
Yes, the Communist revolutionaries had ties to and were bankrolled by Western finance capitalists. The same is happening today, sadly, with the various social movements and color 'revolutions' having veiled connections with wealthy globalists such as George Soros and his Open Society Foundation.
What became of the early Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is by no means an isolated example. There are other first hand accounts of cannibalism arising due to mass starvation under the socialist/communist regimes of Ukraine, China, North Korea, and even under the early communal/collectivist settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. (3)
Socialist Venezuela today is fast approaching the same fate. Will we someday see similar accounts of cannibalism surfacing from its survivors?
It is said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Unfortunately that is the fundamental nature of ideological, state-sanctioned collectivism, which always brings about the destruction and degradation of human life, regardless of what it's proponents publicly proclaim to be advocating. Commonly, they argue to be doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people, but this is not what the record shows. Nor is it even logically consistent under close scrutiny.
The fundamental problem with collectivism is that it elevates the priority of 'the group' (a nebulous, abstracted concept) above that of the actual individual. Yet what is a group other than a collection of individuals? If the well being of individuals were to be taken care of first and foremost, then one need look no further to fulfill the well being of the group at large, for if each individual is cared for then is not the whole? However the reverse does not follow. Collectivism puts the cart before the horse..
As Professor Jordan Peterson explained in his seminal TedTalk on human potential:
"Sometimes being a 'good citizen' is not so good, because if you were a good citizen of Nazi Germany, or a good citizen of the Soviet Union or of Mao's China, you were narrowed in a particular way, and maybe in a necessary way, but also in a very pathological way, and so it seems to me that even though adopting that restricted viewpoint (of being a 'good citizen') is necessary, there has to be something above it ... and that's the issue of being a good person. It's above being a good citizen. It's something else. It has something to do with the development of individuality."
The development of individuality cannot be brought about through coercion. The attempt to force individuals to behave in some ideal fashion, according to a fixed pattern, destroys individual goodness since it amounts to treating people as slaves, depriving them of autonomy and free will. So long as this is the prevailing attitude there can never be any real peace or justice in the world.
This however is not to say that state-sanctioned Capitalism (or Corporatism) as a competing ideology is the antidote to state-sanctioned Socialism or Communism. As already stated above, we must allow that in most cases it has been the moneyed financiers or financial capitalists (ie bankers) which have controlled the purse strings of and financed the wars and revolutions of the various political ideologues on both sides throughout modern history.
How have these powerful banking financiers managed to accumulate such vast amounts of wealth so as to tempt others with the same lust for power and greed with which they have corrupted themselves?
The answer to that question is: Through gaining a monopoly over money itself.
The global banking cartel is able to dominate all competition by imposing a monopoly on the creation and regulation of currency, known as fiat money, by using the institution of Government as their enforcement arm since the State holds a monopoly on the use of force. Yet all of this desire for ultimate control prevailing at the top is no different from the desire of the political revolutionary who in turn seeks to harness the same apparatus of the State as a means to exercising their own brand of domination, under a banner of benevolence. It should be called beneviolence!
It's all comes down to control.
Returning to history for a moment, the early settlers of Jamestown, Virginia had virtually starved themselves to death under communal rule. Yet it is worth asking why the American Indians, as native inhabitants of that same geographical area, had been living off of the land for hundreds if not thousands of years under what was also an essentially communal lifestyle. What was the key difference between themselves and their western counterparts?
I will suggest that although communal in nature, Native American societies were more or less voluntary, and not the result of edicts to be followed at pain of imprisonment or death coming by way of the direct exercise of top-down, command and control ideologies of their elders. While individuals no doubt observed rules and rituals, I do not believe they gave sanction to any one member or group of members (a 'majority') of the tribe to wield violence over others in order to forcibly impose their will. I imagine they held a deeper reverence for life than that. Thus they were not ordered to be communal, yet they achieved a natural order that was able to sustain their communities across generations. It was not a utopia, but it was a way of life that was sustainable. Native Americans also tended to live in relatively smaller, closer knit communities. We could say of their culture in toto that it was more or less decentralized. That is my view, at least.
Ideology is always about the ideal, which is to say it is the projection of an idealized version of the future, of how we would like the world to be, or how we might wish for others to behave, rather than dealing with the world as it actually is and accepting others as they actually are. This projection away from what is toward what one desires entails conflict. The same holds true for the individual psyche, when one is not able to unconditionally accept themselves as they are. That which we don't accept is that which we seek to control, and that which we seek to control is that which we wish to dominate through the will of the ego. The problem pervades every level of human existence.