Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'communism'

A Lithuanian Mother’s Testimony of Survival

Recently I read Leave Your Tears in Moscow, a harrowing and ultimately triumphant account of Barbara Armonas’s time in a Soviet Siberian prison camp. Armonas, who passed away at the age of 99 in 2008, was separated from her American husband and daughter in Lithuania at the outbreak of World War II. Continue Reading...

Black Ribbon Day and the Victims of Communism

Lord Acton’s famous dictum, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” has been proven true time and time again throughout history, most vividly in totalitarian systems. The worldwide destruction caused by communism is perhaps the prime example. Continue Reading...

A Cultural Case for Capitalism: Part 12 of 12 — Beyond Marxism

[Part 1 is here.] That most colossal blunder of Marxist experiments, the Soviet Union, collapsed more than twenty years ago, and yet Marxist thinking still penetrates the warp and woof of contemporary culture, so much so that it’s easy even for avowedly anti-Marxist conservatives to think from within the box of Marxism when considering the problem of cultural decay. Continue Reading...

Pete Seeger, 1919-2014

Pete Seeger performing the Woodie Guthrie song “This Land is Your Land” at President Obama’s “We Are One” Inaugural Concert, January 19, 2009. Environmentalist, agent provocateur, leftist activist, recovering Communist and ardent redistributionist – all apply to the folksinger who died Monday in New York at the age of 94. Continue Reading...

The Once Great City of Havana

I find the new investigative essay by journalist Michael J. Totten about Havana before and under communism poignant and beautiful, a must-read for anyone interested in Cuba, communism and the universal hunger for liberty. Continue Reading...

Perfect Equality and Extreme Despotism

From Main Currents of Marxism by Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009): Marx took over the romantic ideal of social unity, and Communism realized it in the only way feasible in an industrial society, namely, by a despotic system of government. Continue Reading...