Thursday, February 15, 2007

The Great Encyclopedia Debate

Encyclopedias are, one would imagine, repositories of knowledge where the non-expert can quickly find and read a factual and concise treatment of a subject by an acknowledge specialist in the field.

Don't bother reading Danish publisher Gyldendal's on-line encyclopedia if you want to learn about Communism.(Mind you, just like the Basement Timewasters they never ask Communists to write about the subject.)

Right-wingers have for roughly five years pressured the publisher to re-write the entry on Communism and finally succeeded. It made front page news in the paper "Information" last Sunday.

Gyldendal's writers and editors had come up with the naive notion that "Communism" should be an article about the ideology. Other subjects such as the atrocities committed by Communist Parties, e.g. during the Stalin era, would have entries under other headings, e.g. Soviet history. The right-wingers were appalled by this and wanted the Gulags, famines et al directly linked to Communism as an idea. Gyldendal finally gave way with its net edition of the encyclopedia, which prompted the Conservative Brian Mikkelsen, Minister for Culture, to rejoice.

This can hardly be called veiled propaganda from the bourgeois lickspittles. Perhaps Mikkelsen ought to reflect on a central message of "1984" before he acts as a Commisar for Culture too.

Confusing workers about Communism suits the ruling class because Communism is the most dangerous idea that band of thieves has ever encountered and they know it. For Communism is nothing other than the political idea that a majority of politically educated workers, organised democratically and using means at hand such as parliaments and the ballot box, aim to abolish class society, buying and selling, exploitation and instead establish common ownership and production for use.

One can only imagine the Rama scream that would have arisen had Free-Market or Keynesian, interventionist Capitalism been directly linked with World Wars, mass starvation, global poverty, etc, etc.

Gray

1 comment:

finding part-timers who pretend they're socialists, but would rather sit around talking and playing power games said...

very good point, they would never link those together, yet find it acceptable to lump the ideology of communism with those who never even practised it.
It suits the ruling class to let the workers think they are free in their democracys and that communism is authoritarian, yet the truth is that wage-slaves are not free, and under communism we would be much freerer with proper participatory democracy