Critique of Commutopia: On an Economic Concept of the New Left

Communism, as a revolutionary economic concept, was introduced to the world via the writings of Karl Marx. In practice, it made its big entrance via the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Revolution was instigated and managed by Vladimir Lenin and led to the establishment of the Soviet Union. At its core, communism’s basic idea was to eliminate individual property rights today, while, at the same time, promising the comrades a paradise in the distant future.For the purpose of this preface, allow me to search for the word “communism†on my curriculum vitae to see what shows up.I was born in Vienna in 1944. The Soviet Union appeared almost immediately in my life in the form of tanks in the Russian occupied zone of Austria. When the tanks rumbled up the valley, where I lived near a small town in Upper Austria, my sister and I would run into the woods and hide. But, that remembrance, while frightening, was minor. A major nightmare concerned my mother. Once, when returning from the American occupied zone, where my mother had gone to obtain medicine, she was accidentally shot by a Russian soldier. She survived, but only after a few weeks of severe crisis. My sister and I learned to say our prayers at that time. Then, there was Hans Schimmelbusch, my grandfather. He had built a company that supplied machinery for the regulation of the Danube from Vienna to the Black Sea. He was murdered in cold blood on his front doorstep by Russian soldiers in 1945, when the Soviets confiscated his house in Vienna for use as a “Kommandatura.†My grandfather did not give in. It was not in him.In 1955, I was with my other grandfather, Erich Schlimp, the father of my mother, in a large crowd assembled below the Belvedere castle in Vienna. It was then that the Foreign Ministers of the four occupying powers were assembled on the balcony. They included Minister Vyacheslav Molotov from the Soviet Union. The Austrian Foreign Minister, Leopold Figl, declared from the balcony “Oesterreich ist frei†(Austria is free). The crowd sang the Austrian National Anthem. My grandfather did not sing. He had lost his two sons in the war. He also lost his buildings materials company in Slovakia, which had been nationalized by the communists.