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Are we still worrying about reds under the bed?
The land beside the Supreme Court building on Wellington Street has apparently been earmarked for a memorial to "victims of Communism". There have been plenty of dissenting voices on the proposed LOCATION - suggesting, for example, moving it west a few blocks to the Garden of the Provinces - but considerably less uproar about the merits of installing such a memorial in the first place.
To my knowledge, it's never been illegal in Canada to belong to a communist party. If I'm not mistaken, we have even on occasion elected a Communist Member of Parliament. We don't have one at the moment, but people do quite often run for office under the communist banner, rarely garnering more than a sprinkling of votes. To be sure, the avowedly Communist regimes of recent memory have generally been rather brutal and totalitarian, but is that necessarily dictated by communist political theory itself? I thought the ultimate idea of communism was that government - ANY government - would eventually be unnecessary because everyone would just naturally do The Right Thing. Or should that be The Left Thing? I doubt that too many people believe that now. I do think a number of people believed it a century or two ago, and probably even more recently than that.
One could, I suppose, counter with the "what's in a name" argument. How is this different from a country calling itself the "German Democratic Republic" or the "Democratic Republic of the Congo" when in fact it is anything BUT democratic? If private interests wish to buy land somewhere to honour their loved ones, then isn't it up to them what point of view they express? It's an argument I actually have some sympathy for - I would never presume, for example, to question the epitaphs that are inscribed on someone's tombstone. So I guess part of my objection to this monument is indeed to its location, on a very public piece of land (though the alternate sites that have been proposed have been very public as well).
There are certainly NON-communist and ANTI-communist regimes that are brutal, corrupt and totalitarian as well. And that has, to a lesser extent, been pointed out in the case of this proposed memorial. But here's a heretical thought for you: Maybe we need a Memorial to the Victims of Capitalism? Or maybe that's a bad idea, because the land we'd have to set aside would be prohibitively huge?
Canada is basically a prosperous country and I consider myself very fortunate to have been born here and to continue to live here. In fact, I can't imagine being happy living in any system other than a western-style liberal democracy. We have some good government-sponsored social programs (funded by an at least somewhat progressive tax system) and many of us enjoy additional benefits through our employment or families' employment.
That said, a number of people still fall through the cracks. We are all to some extent at the mercy of a market economy. For some, the market works in their favour. For others, it doesn't. Whether we're talking about the "contingent workforce" stuck in minimum-wage jobs or white-collar professionals who can't access their pensions because the funds were poorly invested or their company has gone bankrupt or independent businesspeople who may have had a brilliant idea and a wonderful service or product that just didn't take off because the timing was wrong... these victims of capitalism are not necessarily the people you might expect.
Then there's the word "victim". Is someone - anyone - worthy of being memorialized just by reason of being the victim of some injustice? Would they not be more worthy if they were fighters against this injustice? Their descendants are certainly making an effort to fight it or at least publicize it, presumably in an effort to avoid its repetition, but I still cringe a bit at the word victim. As I do at the word communism or indeed ANY "ism" that they may choose to lump these injustices under. Because ultimately, it's individuals - PEOPLE - who are committing these acts. NOT "isms".
To my knowledge, it's never been illegal in Canada to belong to a communist party. If I'm not mistaken, we have even on occasion elected a Communist Member of Parliament. We don't have one at the moment, but people do quite often run for office under the communist banner, rarely garnering more than a sprinkling of votes. To be sure, the avowedly Communist regimes of recent memory have generally been rather brutal and totalitarian, but is that necessarily dictated by communist political theory itself? I thought the ultimate idea of communism was that government - ANY government - would eventually be unnecessary because everyone would just naturally do The Right Thing. Or should that be The Left Thing? I doubt that too many people believe that now. I do think a number of people believed it a century or two ago, and probably even more recently than that.
One could, I suppose, counter with the "what's in a name" argument. How is this different from a country calling itself the "German Democratic Republic" or the "Democratic Republic of the Congo" when in fact it is anything BUT democratic? If private interests wish to buy land somewhere to honour their loved ones, then isn't it up to them what point of view they express? It's an argument I actually have some sympathy for - I would never presume, for example, to question the epitaphs that are inscribed on someone's tombstone. So I guess part of my objection to this monument is indeed to its location, on a very public piece of land (though the alternate sites that have been proposed have been very public as well).
There are certainly NON-communist and ANTI-communist regimes that are brutal, corrupt and totalitarian as well. And that has, to a lesser extent, been pointed out in the case of this proposed memorial. But here's a heretical thought for you: Maybe we need a Memorial to the Victims of Capitalism? Or maybe that's a bad idea, because the land we'd have to set aside would be prohibitively huge?
Canada is basically a prosperous country and I consider myself very fortunate to have been born here and to continue to live here. In fact, I can't imagine being happy living in any system other than a western-style liberal democracy. We have some good government-sponsored social programs (funded by an at least somewhat progressive tax system) and many of us enjoy additional benefits through our employment or families' employment.
That said, a number of people still fall through the cracks. We are all to some extent at the mercy of a market economy. For some, the market works in their favour. For others, it doesn't. Whether we're talking about the "contingent workforce" stuck in minimum-wage jobs or white-collar professionals who can't access their pensions because the funds were poorly invested or their company has gone bankrupt or independent businesspeople who may have had a brilliant idea and a wonderful service or product that just didn't take off because the timing was wrong... these victims of capitalism are not necessarily the people you might expect.
Then there's the word "victim". Is someone - anyone - worthy of being memorialized just by reason of being the victim of some injustice? Would they not be more worthy if they were fighters against this injustice? Their descendants are certainly making an effort to fight it or at least publicize it, presumably in an effort to avoid its repetition, but I still cringe a bit at the word victim. As I do at the word communism or indeed ANY "ism" that they may choose to lump these injustices under. Because ultimately, it's individuals - PEOPLE - who are committing these acts. NOT "isms".