<<Communism as does Fascism CONROL you unlike democracy. Why would you want to be CONTROLLED?>>
It's pretty complex, Professor. First of all, there is plenty of control exercised on you in this society right here and now, so it's not a choice between being as free as a bird or being locked up in a cell, (although that's the analogy people tend to use who know nothing about communism, in fact life under communism is a far cry from life lin jail.) The differences are noticeable, but minimal. For example, when I was in Cuba, it was almost impossible to get foreign newspapers and magazines and the local communist papers were "all Fidel all the time." I remember once was at the time of a sensational Japanese Red Army (a "terrorist" group) assault with automatic weapons on an Italian civilian airport, and it was buried in the back pages of Granma (the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, and the widest-circulated newspaper in Cuba) in an article about the size of a small classified ad. There was virtually no real news either in print or on Canal Rebelde (Rebel Channel TV).
Communism is sort of a work in progress. The basic aim is to end man's economic exploitation of man, which benefits only a very small minority of humanity and thus to end the terrible extremes of wealth and poverty that today condemn billions of human beings to lives of poverty, desperation and dehumanization. To achieve those ends, to build socialism, sacrifice is necessary, and one of the things we have to sacrifice is the so-called "freedom" that we think we in the West still enjoy. And of course, compared to life under Communism, we DO enjoy more freedom, but we are not really free. Most of us have to labour a lifetime in thrall to banks, mortgage companies and the insurance industry, eating foods which ruin our health, watching idiot boxes from which all originality and controversy have been edited out and never failing to congratulate ourselves on our "freedoms." We vote for candidates who all stand for more or less the same-ol'-same-ol', particularly as regards foreign policy or even the domestic economy, in a basically one-party state whose professional politicians have perfected the art of elevating minor differences into major differences at election times so that we can preserve the illusion of voting for a new path or (more pathetically yet) "for change."
Under Communism, some freedom is sacrificed. Not enough to make a difference in the lives of the ordinary working people, but enough so that an intellectual, artist or writer would definitely notice it. In return, a society is built in which every citizen has a right to decent basic housing (and gets it!) Has a right to basic medical care, education, and nourishment (and gets it!) We have met campesinos (peasants) whose kids have become teachers and technicians, studied at the university in Havana and at technical schools and colleges in Cuba and the Eastern Bloc (back in the days of the U.S.S.R.) Things to which their parents had never even been able to dream of. These small things might not seem like a lot to people raised in the culture of excess that is the United States of America. But they mean a hell of a lot to the billions of people born to live and die in abject poverty, like the Cubans or the Chinese before Communism saved them.
People who live under communism have a choice - - they can work together to build socialism, in which case they are hardly under control, because they are just one unit in a society of units all working toward the same basic goal. Or, for whatever reason they can choose to become enemies of the people, enemies of the Revolution and of the socialist state, in which case (thank God!) they WILL be "controlled" and IMHO with whatever degree of firmness is necessary, to prevent the undoing of the Revolution's many accomplishments by the boring of worms ("gusanos") from within.
You seem to place a huge importance on freedom, Professor, on not beng "CONTROLLED." You are quite right to do so. Freedom is a precious asset and if there is no socialist society to protect, there is no compelling reason to sacrifice any of it. IMHO, Amerikkka is much more controlled today than it was twenty years ago and in the direction it is currently headed, there will be even more "CONTROL" exercised over the population in the next 20 years than there is now. When comparing the relative merits of communism vs the American way, absence of control is a factor very much favourable to the American side of the balance, but it shouldn't be the only factor and there should be some recognition of the fact that as an advantage, it's a shrinking advantage.
