Comment by mike_hearn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mike_hearn | Hacker News Reader

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Like most discussions about politics, the words are too imprecise to enable meaningful conclusions.

Consider the history of the United Kingdom in the second half of the 20th century. Between the 1950s and end of the 1970s the UK was implementing something quite close to communism. The government owned vast swathes of industry, everything from coal mines to steel mills to removal companies and hotels. Government policy was to target full employment at the cost of all else, including inflation. The country was in the grip of extremely powerful unions who had the ability to topple governments.

By the end of this era, the UK was being called the sick man of Europe. In 1976 it had to go to the IMF for a bailout.

Starting with the election of Margaret Thatcher this all started to change. She was someone who would in the UK have been described as a "liberal" except unfortunately political words get mangled the most in the trans atlantic crossing. Americans would have called her a libertarian except minus the gun fetish. She believed in a small state, in individual enterprise, etc.

Amongst her many libertarian decisions after winning the election was to end the policy of targeting full employment in favour of inflation targeting, to engage in massive privatisation programs, and to take on the extremely powerful and outright communist coal mining unions (which had previously toppled any government that tried to engage in reform).

By the time she left power the UK was in recovery and almost universally agreed to be in much better economic shape. Still, lots of people truly despise Thatcher and her libertarian policies, especially in the post-industrial north that was most heavily left leaning. And the UK is by no means some kind of Randian vision of anarcho-capitalism. Thatcher didn't touch the direct government provision of health care and there are virtually no private roads in the UK.

Regardless, I present it as a case study in one countries journey from quasi-communism to more libertarian ideals with an associated economic recovery.

Between the 1950s and end of the 1970s the UK was implementing something quite close to communism.

This is a pretty ridiculous statement to make. You might want to look up any generally accepted definition of 'communism' (as opposed to Western European-style socialism) at some point. (Hint: it doesn't simply mean the idea that it might be advantageous for the government to own certain major industries).

She believed in a small state, in individual enterprise, etc.

"A small state and individual enterprise", indeed:

Thatcher was a fierce Cold Warrior, and when it came to Chile never mustered quite the appropriate amount of compassion for the people Pinochet killed in the name of anti-Communism. She preferred talking about his much-vaunted “Chilean economic miracle.”

And kill he did. Pinochet’s soldiers rounded up thousands in the capital’s sports stadiums and, then and there, suspects were marched into the locker rooms and corridors and bleachers and tortured and shot dead. Hundreds died in such a fashion. One was the revered Chilean singer Víctor Jara, who was beaten, his hands and ribs broken, and then machine-gunned, his body dumped like trash on a back street of the capital—along with many others. The killing went on even after Pinochet and his military had a firm hold on power; it was just carried out with greater secrecy, in military barracks, in police buildings, and in the countryside. Critics and opponents of the new regime were murdered in other countries, too. In 1976, Pinochet’s intelligence agency planned and carried out a car bombing in Washington, D.C., that murdered Allende’s exiled former Ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, as well as Ronni Moffitt, his American aide. Britain regarded Pinochet’s killing spree as unseemly, and sanctioned his regime by refusing to supply it with weapons—that is, until Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister.

In 1980, the year after Thatcher took office, she lifted the arms embargo against Pinochet; he was soon buying armaments from the United Kingdom. In 1982, during Britain’s Falklands War against Argentina, Pinochet helped Thatcher’s government with intelligence on Argentina. Thereafter, the relationship became downright cozy, so much so that the Pinochets and his family began making an annual private pilgrimage to London.

"Neruda, Pinochet, and the Iron Lady." -- The New Yorker, April 9 2013

State / collective ownership of the means of production is pretty much the definition of communism.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...

com·mu·nism ˈkämyəˌnizəm

noun

a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

There's not technically any requirement that communist countries be dictatorships, even though they normally are. A country with outright Marxist union leaders who could topple actual governments - sounds pretty close to me.

I don't know what your second part has to do with anything. We are discussing economics, not Thatcher's foreign policy. The UK has always sold weapons to tyrants.

Again, it sounds like you're basically unaware of the distinction Western European-style democratic socialism, and communism (Marxist or otherwise). Yes there's some overlap, but the differences are greater than the overlap, and are really quite fundamental.

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