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Why I do not believe in revolution
By Daniel G. Jennings
I'm a strong believer in the concept of liberty and the rights of the
individual who doesn't believe in revolution. I don't believe in revolution
for the simple reason that history has proven that revolution is the road
It must also be added that in China, Cuba and Russia, conditions for the average person actually became worse after the revolutions carried out in their name. Late Tsarist Russia was no paradise but at least the people had a few rights, there was some free enterprise and freedom of dissent, and serious attempts had been made at creating a constitutional democracy. Furthermore, Russian society had experienced a great deal of material progress. All of that was basically gone by the late 1920s, a normal civil society was not reestablished in Russia until the 1950s and Russia saw nothing like the freedoms enjoyed under Nicholas II until after the collapse of Communism. China before Mao was taking rudimentary steps toward democracy, capitalism and modernization.
Within ten years of the Chinese Revolution, the Chinese people were starving to death because of Mao's agricultural policies. The famine in the early 1960s under Mao was actually worse than the one that the Chinese experienced in World War II when half the country had been occupied by the brutal and barbaric Imperial Japanese Army. Vast material progress has been made in China in the last twenty years because Deng Xiaoping essentially returned to the social and economic policies of the pre-revolutionary Nationalist regime. In Cuba, what was once a rich agricultural country is now importing food. Cuba is actually importing sugar from the United States forty years after the revolution allowed Fidel Castro to seize power.
At the same time those nations that have not undergone "revolution"
have experienced far more progress than those that underwent "revolution."
For example, Western Europe where there hasn't been a revolution since
1936, now has democracies and welfare states that are the envy of the
world. The United States, where there hasn't been a revolution since the
18th century, is the world's richest and most advanced nation. In Asia,
Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, all of which had not experienced
revolution, became peaceful and prosperous democracies. Compare them to
China, North Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Burma, which
all underwent Revolution.
Daniel G. Jennings is a freelance writer and journalist who lives
and works in Denver, CO. He has worked as a reporter and editor for daily
and weekly newspapers in five states.
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