I don't think that communism is evil or that capitalism stands for all the good and right in the world.
Some people claim that communism is anti-god or anti-religion, but I think that communism is just secular - as how capitalism itself is secular - in that it separates religion from governance.
If communism is anti-god or anti-religion, just because it is secular, then capitalism, on account of being secular, must also be anti-religion or anti god too.
If capitalism is not anti god or anti religion, then neither is communism.
As a matter of fact, we know that communism is not anti-god or anti-religion, because communist countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam or the former Soviet Union, were clearly not anti- god or anti-religion, anymore than how capitalist countries like the UK or the US are anti-god or anti-religion.
Rather than contradictory, I also tend to think of both communism and capitalism as complementary ideologies.
In the way I see, capitalism is an ideology that says that the best way to take care of the world is by taking care of yourself first. Much of its ideas like private property, free market and individual rights come from this founding principle.
On the other hand, communism is an ideology that says that the best way to take care of yourself is by taking care of the world first. It is because communism puts the world first, that communist nations implement such ideas like collective responsibility, government regulated market and common property, to run their society.
Personally , I believe that there are merits in both of these ideologies. I do believe that we will be better off is our world is a better place and that our world will be better off will be a better place. It is surprising to how diametrically different our approach to life and nature of being will change if we choose one approach over the other, but at the end of the day, I still believe that both the fundamental premise of both these ideologies are true, irrespective of how diametrically opposed the approach they induce.
As a matter of fact, because I also believe that we are today at the end stages of capitalism, where the principles of capitalism has been taken to such extremes , that it has become corrupt, excessive, debt ridden and degenerate, I am much more in favour of communism today than I was in the past, because I believe that to mitigate the negative effects of this end stage capitalism, we might need a dose of resurgent communism.
I know that the capitalists and the communists in our country have had a long running civil war in the past - we euphemistically call it the emergency period, but for all intent and purpose, it was a civil war - where tens of thousands of people were wounded or killed, while fighting against each other in the jungles of Malaysia.
Although the capitalist ended up as the winners, I don't think that that makes the communists evil.
Rather than evil, I think we should just see the communists as the losers of the war.
When we are competing against our opponent, in the heat of the contest, it might be inevitable that we might develop a lot of hatred towards our opponents. But when the contest is over, regardless of whether we won or lost, we should be magnanimous towards our opponents.
It is true that a lot of our soldiers were killed and wounded when we fought against the communists, but it is equally true that a lot of communists were killed and wounded in the fight too.
The communist who were killed were as much our people as were the soldiers.
I don't think that even our soldiers who fought the communists truly hated communism - I think they just fought the communists because they were on the side of the government, and the government at the time, as it is today, was more influenced by the principles of capitalism than socialism.
If you ask me today, what do I think about Malaysian communists figures like Shamsiah Fakeh, whose memoir has been recently banned by our government , I think that she belonged to the side that lost, not the side that was evil.
I don't think that to ban Shamsiah memoirs is the best move we can make as a nation , because In life, we have to learn from those who have lost as much as we learn from those who won, because in our own life, we also will face both victory and defeat.
As a matter of fact, you can even argue that you need to learn from the side that lost much more than you do from the side that won, because in life, it is quite likely that you will have to face a lot of losses before you win.
Other than that, I also think that it is a mark of maturity for us to be able to accept that it is not wrong for other people to also want what we want, and not label everybody who wants what we want and competes with us to get it, as evil.
Mahathir is not evil. Anwar is not a saint.
Dap doesn't represent light. Pas is not darkness personified.
In the same light, the communists are not the devils, nor are the capitalists angels.
It just so happened that they all had aims to rule the country, and because of that, they had to fight each other viciously to fulfill their ambition.
When the dust settles, rather than see their dispute as a fight between good and evil, I reckon that it will be much more beneficial to us to see it as just a contest between two sides, with one emerging the winner and the other relegated as the loser.
It is best for us to see it in this light, because in our own lives, we will also face disputes and quarrel, and when faced with such disputes and quarrels , rather than see ourselves as good and our opponent as evil, and cause the fight to become vicious and never ending , it is better to just see all of us - be it ourselves or our opponents - as just people, with ambitions, wants and desires , who have to sometimes fight with each other to fulfill our wants, aims and ambition.
Seeing ourselves in our opponent and seeing our opponents in ourselves, let us at least try, to forgive ourselves as we forgive our opponents, and forgive our opponents as we forgive ourselves.
Even if we can't do it immediately, let us at least give it a try after some time has passed.
It has already been decades since the war between the government and the communists ended - perhaps it is time to bury the hatchet.
On another note, let us not forget that in this time and age, the capitalistic west is set to decline while the communist east is set to rise. Other than being the morally right thing to do, we should perhaps consider making our peace with our communist past for practical reasons - when China spreads its influence in the SEA nations, which as surely as night follows day, it will do, perhaps it would be best for us to show the communist dragon, that we have made peace with our communist past.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
The User Content (as defined on Newswav Terms of Use) above including the views expressed and media (pictures, videos, citations etc) were submitted & posted by the author. Newswav is solely an aggregation platform that hosts the User Content. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact creator@newswav.com.