{"id":4,"date":"2019-12-16T20:25:56","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T00:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/?p=4"},"modified":"2020-01-14T22:41:39","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T02:41:39","slug":"communism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/2019\/12\/16\/communism\/","title":{"rendered":"Communism!"},"content":{"rendered":"<header><\/header>\n<header><\/header>\n<p>The revolutionary idea of\u00a0<em>Communism<\/em> fueled one\u00a0 of the most powerful and, yes, successful political movements of modern times.\u00a0 Indeed, for more than a century, it was this revolutionary movement was the principal challenger to liberal democracy.\u00a0 <span style=\"font-size: 16px\">The regimes that embraced it transformed their societies in ways that appeared to advance the well-being of millions of people.\u00a0 As we know, there was also a huge cost to this experiment. Communist true-believers committed acts of inhumanity that violated their movement\u2019s founding principles. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px\">Today, <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 16px\">the dream of communism is mostly over. However, this doesn&#8217;t diminish its relevance at all.\u00a0 <\/span>All political identities and regimes are mortal.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s face it, liberal democracy is not in such great shape today.\u00a0 Given the possibility that we may already be experiencing its last moments, the demise of its chief competitor provides an invaluable opportunity to ask questions about the limits of politics.\u00a0 In the words of a great philosopher:\u00a0 &#8220;All things must pass.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The rise and demise of communism presents us with a number of challenging questions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li>What was the communist era all about?<\/li>\n<li>Why did people believe in this revolutionary movement?<\/li>\n<li>Where did it go wrong?<\/li>\n<li>Despite its flaws, how did the idea of communism last for so long?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Lessons for the Study of Politics<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The study of communism is no different than the study of any political movement.\u00a0 Politics is about nothing more than the examination of conflicts over three ways of binding human beings together: Ideas, Rules, and Incentives. \u00a0Whether we are talking about the U.S. Congress (speak about conflict!), the Vatican, the Boy Scouts of America, the NCAA, or the University of Notre Dame <em>du lac<\/em>, political systems differ only in how their leaders define these factors and put them into practice.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li>Ideas:\u00a0 What constitutes a good society?<\/li>\n<li>Rules:\u00a0 What rules are required to realize this idea?<\/li>\n<li>Incentives: \u00a0How do rulers get what they want?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>My aspiration<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By the end of this seminar, I hope you will see that we have talked about much more than communism.\u00a0 We will address themes relating to the entire human condition:\u00a0 what is truth?\u00a0 how should we get along? what are our obligations in living with other human beings who are no different than we are?\u00a0 For me, these themes are directly related to Notre Dame&#8217;s distinctive identity.\u00a0 There is no better wrestle with these big questions.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>NOTE: Please leave your technology at home. This includes electronic devices of any kind, such as laptops, Kindles, i-Pads, I-phones, video cameras, video games, dog fences, or other personal digital devices.<\/p>\n<p><em>My class is a no-tweet zone. Some things are just not dignified!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The revolutionary idea of\u00a0Communism fueled one\u00a0 of the most powerful and, yes, successful political movements of modern times.\u00a0 Indeed, for more than a century, it was this revolutionary movement was the principal challenger to liberal democracy.\u00a0 The regimes that embraced it transformed their societies in ways that appeared to advance the well-being of millions of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/2019\/12\/16\/communism\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Communism!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/communism-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}