From the BBC comes this story of Americans emigrating to a socialist nation:
Nightmare in the workers paradise
It was the least heralded migration in American history.
At the height of the Depression, several thousand American emigrants left New York on the decks of passenger liners waving goodbye to the Statue of Liberty, bound for Leningrad.
Over 100,000 Americans had applied for jobs working in brand new factories in Soviet Russia, ironically built for Stalin by famous American industrialists such as Henry Ford.
Those American emigrants who entered the "workers' paradise" were certain that they were leaving the misery of unemployment and poverty behind them. They considered themselves fortunate.
Their optimism would prove to be short-lived. Most were stripped of their American passports soon after their arrival.
Considered suspect by Stalin's paranoid totalitarian state, the foreigners were swept away in the Terror.
The American jazz clubs, the baseball teams, and the English-language schools set up in cities across the USSR, would quickly vanish with them.
More at the site - this is what communism or socialism looks like when the nice mask is dropped. How close are we here? This list gives a sobering example:
- Abolition of Property in Land and Application of all Rents of Land to Public Purpose.
- A Heavy Progressive or Graduated Income Tax.
- Abolition of All Rights of Inheritance.
- Confiscation of the Property of All Emigrants and Rebels.
- Centralization of Credit in the Hands of the State, by Means of a National Bank with State Capital and an Exclusive Monopoly.
- Centralization of the Means of Communication and Transport in the Hands of the State.
- Extension of Factories and Instruments of Production Owned by the State, the Bringing Into Cultivation of Waste Lands, and the Improvement of the Soil Generally in Accordance with a Common Plan.
- Equal Liability of All to Labor. Establishment of Industrial Armies, Especially for Agriculture.
- Combination of Agriculture with Manufacturing Industries; Gradual Abolition of the Distinction Between Town and Country by a More Equable Distribution of the Population over the Country.
- Free Education for All Children in Public Schools. Abolition of Children's Factory Labor in it's Present Form. Combination of Education with Industrial Production.
These are Karl Marx's Ten Planks of Communism - we are pretty close for some of them.
Tip of the hat to Ed Driscoll at the Puppyblender for the link.
