“.....In 2007, in response to criticism from a former banjo student—historian Ron Radosh, a former Trotskyite who now writes for the conservative National Review—Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, “Big Joe Blues”:
“I’m singing about old Joe, cruel Joe. / He ruled with an iron hand. /He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land. / He had a chance to make / A brand new start for the human race. / Instead he set it back / Right in the same nasty place. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Do this job, no questions asked. / I got the Big Joe Blues.”
The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, “I think you’re right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R [in 1965].”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger
No, Pete didn’t like Joe. But there is one thing that eludes these “intellectuals” who think they can make communism work if only the “right people” are in charge: governments are constantly changing hands. Even if you get a string of really good people who will rule benignly, eventually a really bad one will come along and forever lock the cycle of government into a tyranny.
In short, there is one major flaw that dooms socialism and communism to inevitable failure: too much power in the hands of government. In a perfect socialist society, all property is collectively owned. But there is one problem: who enforces this collectivism? It can’t be voluntary, or you will just have what we have today: free market. Socialists themselves refuse to admit this one flaw, and by overlooking a problem it doesn’t go away; it gets bigger. When government collectively owns all the resources which the people depend upon for basic survival, it has total power over life and death. It owns the people like prisoners, and there is a psychology that always accompanies that. Stockholm syndrome. It applies to the captors just as much as the captives, and it doesn’t turn out well for the captive.