DO 2552 7/89

1. You know what the problem is in nearly all of these Communist countries where they have all these shortages, particularly food shortages?—They're now reaping what they sowed a long time ago. They persecuted & killed off the farmers & then turned the farms into collectives run mainly by poor serfs who didn't really know how to manage them. All they did was what they were told to do, "Plow this, reap this, do this‚ do that!"

2. The Kulaks‚ the gentlemen farmers of Russia before the Revolution, were the ones who made farming pay & they were really prosperous. Before the Revolution, Russia was one of the great breadbaskets of Europe with tremendous harvests etc., but they started having problems with the food supply because of WW1. Russia got into the war on the side of the Allies, & took five million farmers away to fight the war, so they were bound to have food shortages. That was the beginning of the end for Czarist Russia.

3. Then, because food was in short supply, the Communists came along & incited the population to rebel with the demands of, "Bread, land & peace! Bread, land & peace! We'll give you bread, land & peace!", & they overthrew the Czarist government. Then the moderate Kerensky government, a democratically elected government, was also overthrown by the Bolshevik Communists just a few months later. The Bolsheviks then murdered a lot of the deputies in the Parliament, massacred the Czar's family & organised a systematic massacre of all the rich gentlemen farmers who ran the big farms that had produced so much of Russia's food.

4. Of course, all this greatly crippled agricultural production, & then on top of it, the Communists put these little poor serfs who had been working the farms, the actual labourers, in charge of these farms & even bigger‚ collective farms! But these serfs didn't know how to run a farm, they didn't really know anything about it! The Kulaks, the owners, were the ones who knew how to farm, & without them food production plummeted‚ & has never recovered. Communism promises so-called equality, & everybody gets the same whether they work hard or not‚ so why work?

5. These collectives & farms were so inefficient because these formerly poor serfs were sitting around on their behinds not really producing, not really working, because they had nobody like the Kulaks over them to really crack the whip! Therefore, production of food took a nosedive & has been very poor ever since, to the point where today they have to stand in long food lines to get anything, & just about everything is rationed!

6. In many of these Socialist & Communist countries, the government has kept the prices down on basic foodstuffs etc. by huge subsidies. The government pays the stores to keep their prices low, so the stores don't really have to worry too much about making a profit, because the government pays them their profit, the difference between the low price that the food is sold for & the actual higher cost of producing & marketing it. Lots of countries do this, they sell basic food stuffs at artificially low prices to keep the people happy, & the government pays the farmers etc. the difference.

7. In the Soviet Union, they never really gave the land to the people, the government kept it in big cooperatives or collectives. So there was never any real incentive for the serfs to produce‚ to grow the food. The people don't own the land they work on, & so they are lazy & there's no incentive to really work hard & produce.

8. That's what the main problem is in the Soviet Union, China & all the other Communist countries. When you say, as they do, that, "Everybody's equal, everybody should get the same & it doesn't matter whether they work hard or not," it doesn't work! This is what happened to that experiment in Socialism that Eleanor Roosevelt was financing in Valley Farms, Arizona when we lived there. The people who really worked & made it work got mad because there were too many lazy loafers there, migrant labourers who'd been taking time off, lying under the trees & never really working, but rather coasting along while all these other real serious farmers were doing all the work.

9. So the hard-working farmers complained & were giving up in disgust, & finally Eleanor Roosevelt had to just sell it off because it was a total failure. Just about everywhere that this kind of system has been practiced by modern selfish Man, it has totally failed.

10. (Maria: Is Socialism the same?) Well, it depends on what kind of people are practicing Socialism. For example, Sweden is Socialist, but the Swedes have made it work because they're honest hard workers.

11. But in most of the other Socialist & Communist countries‚ the people were told that they wouldn't have to work so hard & they'd still have lots of money & blah, blah. So they just quit working & loafed on the job, & now countries such as China & the Soviet Union have got a tremendous shortage of products because the people just don't produce. You have to produce in order to have products! Production produces products—but they didn't—& don't!

12. Under Communism, there was—& is—no real incentive for people to work hard, because they figure they're going to get their money anyhow, if they just do the minimum. They're going to get their free apartment & free schooling & everything anyhow‚ so why really work hard? Why really try to produce all the things that they have shortages of?—Which is almost everything now! Why really try & take the initiative to progress & change & do things better? They have no incentive to work hard, so they just became lazy & unproductive.

13. Unsaved worldly people either have to have someone holding a club over them, or they must have some strong incentive such as a system of payment in which you're paid according to what you produce. They've got to have either a sword of Damocles hanging over them, or have their own little plot of land which belongs to them & them only‚ on which they can produce food for themselves as well as be able to sell it to others at a fair price where they can make a profit.

14. They've got to have that incentive! The minute China turned over land to the farmers, after the Cultural Revolution‚ there was a tremendous boom in the production of food & agricultural products. This is what they're going to have to do in the Soviet Union. For 70 years, people have been so lazy there, it's doubtful they're going to really change.

15. So that's what's wrong with modern Communism, & why it just doesn't work! Without private incentives, private ownership, payment of wages according to what you produce, Communism just will not work! True‚ sacrificial, unselfish Communism will only work in cases like our own Homes, where we share everything & we work hard for the Lord & each other, we're conscientious, we're Christians, & we love Jesus! Our kind of Communism & Socialism & sharing through our unselfishness‚ willingness to work for each other & the good of others, works, & we prosper! TTL!

16. But their kind, trying to make selfish, unregenerate Man share unselfishly with others & work hard to help others, just doesn't work. But if they have some kind of a set-up where they work for themselves & reap the results of their labours themselves selfishly, then they'll work their heads off or their hands off to make money & make products, because they know they're going to profit from them!

17. These modern, selfish‚ unregenerate worldly people, the "me" generation, they've got to know they're going to benefit from it.—And under the Communist system they don't. What they need is private ownership, private enterprise, capitalistic profit & to know they're working for themselves & reaping immediate tangible benefits.

18. That's the only way to get modern selfish worldly people to work—for themselves, not for the State! Not for a nondescript, anonymous so-called "State" & the so-called "People." Most of the "people" they know, they despise & wouldn't think of working for them‚ & so they don't! They don't give a damn about them! But they do care for themselves & they will work hard if they are going to get the benefits, the profits, if they know that they're going to get something out of it!

19. But this so-called working for the "State" & the "people" that they hate anyhow, just doesn't work. So they just loaf along & do as little as they can. That's why they have these tremendous shortages of foodstuffs, manufactured articles & everything else throughout the Communist world!

20. There's not one worldly Communist organisation or country that has worked! The only kind of Communism that will ever work where people get together & cooperate in a cooperative or in a colony or in their homes is that which works by love, sharing with each other because of love for each other. And that kind of love only comes from the Lord. That's the only place you get it! The only other kind of love that gets results is love of self, but it causes all kinds of trouble.

21. People will work hard for themselves but they won't really cooperate with each other or help each other. Communism tries to force them to & that causes all kinds of corruption in the Communist government, just like in every other system. Communist government bureaucrats often rob the people blind & live luxuriously, just like the rich Capitalists.

22. So the Communist System just doesn't work in a selfish, worldly World. Capitalism is the only thing that really works in a World of worldly, selfish, unregenerate people, because they have to work for themselves or they won't eat!

23. So that's what's wrong with the non-production in the Soviet Union‚ China & other Communist countries. They have such terrible shortages of everything & the people are finally getting sick & fed up with it.

24. They look at the rich Capitalist countries & say, "What in the World did we go Communist for? Look at all they've got! Look how prosperous they are, how rich they are, while we're as bad off as ever!" So they're fed up with Communism, & it seems like they're ready to dump it!

25. The Lord is showing the World that anti-God Communism doesn't work. Next the World's going to get the AC System, the ultimate System‚ & that's going to fail too! PTL!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family