‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism’ by Paul Kengor: An Amazon Review

Communism Is Decay and Death, EVERYWHERE It Is Tried

Communism had a nine-figure body count in the twentieth century, and in this volume author Paul Kengor rightly excoriates it as the worst idea in history. It leads to crushing poverty, mass murder, loss of civil liberties, and, of course, no right of exit for those trapped in the evil regimes it establishes, wherever those regimes are established. America has faults, but they are minuscule compared to those of Communist societies. In the West the squalid Communist record has been buried and hidden, especially from our young, and Kengor admirably exposes it in this book.

Kengor provides the basic history of the Communist movement, illustrating that such a terrible system was produced by terrible individuals such as Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and others. He describes Soviet terror and quotes Soviet leaders who acknowledged the obvious, that mass violence and slaughter would be necessary to implement Communism. The author describes the damage that Communism wrought in Russia, China, and the Third World, and notes that such a hideous system actually had adherents in America (and, yes, the CPUSA was run from Moscow).

Because Communism tries to change human nature, it has failed in all of the cultures and climates where it has been tried, and not because “it wasn’t real Communism” or “the wrong people were in charge,” as the more unserious boosters of the system attempt to explain away its failures. Kengor notes that some young people today are so miseducated and naïve that they think that socialism and Communism are merely “people being kind,” but there is nothing kind about Communism or its leaders—elites and the ruling classes in Communist societies never live under the conditions they inflict on everyone else, and the only morality the ruling classes observe is that which serves their own interests. The chief product of Communism, Kengor observes, is death.

Kengor examines socialism and the resurgent interest in Communism in the twenty-first century and describes the reminder (as if the world needed one) of how evil and unworkable Communism is by its recent affliction of Venezuela. The author covers Communism’s modern associated cultural parallel movements, Cultural Marxism and the Frankfurt School.

The final test of Communism is what happens when the gates are raised. If those in the Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam, and China had been given a chance to leave in the twentieth century, millions would have fled. Conversely, apart from a tiny handful of eccentrics, no one would have left a capitalist country to go “live” under Communism. This book should be required reading for everyone under 30 today, and those who are interested in further reading can follow the book suggestions offered throughout, especially Kevin Williamson’s “Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism.”