The cities were berated as
hubs of moral turpitude, decadence and greed. Ironically, avowed
anti-communist right wing populists, like Hungary's former prime
minister, Orban, sought to propagate these sentiments, to their
electoral detriment.
Communism was an urban phenomenon - but it abnegated its "bourgeoisie"
pedigree. Private property was replaced by communal ownership.
Servitude to the state replaced individualism. Personal mobility was
severely curtailed. In communism, feudalism was restored.
Very like the Church in the Middle Ages, communism sought to monopolize
and permeate all discourse, all thinking, and all intellectual
pursuits. Communism was characterized by tensions between party, state
and the economy - exactly as the medieval polity was plagued by
conflicts between church, king and merchants-bankers.
In communism, political activism was a precondition for advancement
and, too often, for personal survival. John of Salisbury might as well
have been writing for a communist agitprop department when he penned
this in "Policraticus" (1159 AD): "...if (rich people, people with
private property) have been stuffed through excessive greed and if they
hold in their contents too obstinately, (they) give rise to countless
and incurable illnesses and, through their vices, can bring about the
ruin of the body as a whole".
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