Just as bad, the Bolsheviks murdered the last Czar, Nicholas II and his family, brutally ending nearly five hundred years of monarchial rule of Russia. Within a year of the demise of the Russian aristocracy, two other of Europe's venerable royal houses - Germany and Austria - met the same fate, all three casualties of their insane decision to participate in World War I. The end of the German Court and especially that of Austria came at the vengeful insistence of then President Woodrow Wilson, who brought the US into the conflict on the pledge to make the "world safe for democracy."
The triumph of the Bolsheviks and the downfall of the German and Austrian monarchies ushered in the Age of Democracy as other Western constitutional republics at the time and in each passing year began to resemble and adopt features of their supposed Communist foe. As the 20th century wore on, each Western nation state became more "democratic," increasing their welfare/warfare state apparatus, imposing more and more radical egalitarian social and economic measures, and adopting greater amounts of economic planning mostly through central banking. Not only did economic activity become increasingly effected by monetary policy, but the central banks were instrumental in the eradication of the gold standard throughout the Western world.
Not only did Communism prove to be a disaster economically in Russia and everywhere else tried, but socialism had other debilitating effects. The quality of the population declined along with the numbers of ethnic Russians, a trend that ominously continues to this day. While ingenuity was stifled by the Soviet command economy, its culture, although never as advanced as Western Europe, became sterile and overshadowed by the heavy hand of the commissar. The only memorable literature produced during the period were accounts of the gulag and the repression of dissent. Music and the arts were similar cultural wastelands.
The West, too, as its nation states became more socialistic and egalitarian, witnessed retrogression in every aspect of society. The catastrophic drop off in the size of the native populations can largely be attributed to crazed feminism, where women were encouraged and given privileges to pursue careers and become "working moms," which led to the phenomenon of the "dysfunctional family" and declines in the number of child births. Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains this effect in the American context:
In the U.S., . . . less than a century of full-blownHoppe's seminal demolition of Democracy
democracy has resulted in steadily increasing
moral degeneration, family and social disintegration,
and cultural decay in the form of continually rising
rates of divorce, illegitimacy, abortion, and crime.
As a result of an ever-expanding list of non-
discrimination - 'affirmative action' - laws and
nondiscriminatory, multicultural, egalitarian
immigration policies, every nook and cranny of
American society is affected by government
management and forced integration.*
A primary reason why the quality of Western life has crumbled so markedly has been the replacement of its "natural elites" with "political elites" via the democratic process. Every society is led by its leading individuals who through talent, hard work, brains, foresight, moral fortitude, fairness, and bravery come to the top and are looked to for guidance. Under democratic conditions, however, the natural elites have, in a sense, been "voted out" by the political class who, instead of out competing their rivals, secure their status by politics mostly through demagogy.
Comment: Andrew Lobaczewski calls this process "negative selection". Not only does it allow untalented hacks into positions for which they are wholly unqualified, it lets in wolves too.
In Soviet Russia, the natural elites were ruthlessly purged by Lenin's forces and over time any sort of advancement or achievement had to come via the Communist Party.
Despite the overwhelming failure of socialism, Western nation states continue to practice many of its features, a most notorious recent example being that of the passage of Obamacare, the first step on the road to universal health care in the US. America, itself, resembles more of a police state than ever before with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and the passage of draconian legislation such as the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The October Revolution should be remembered for what it was: the inauguration of mankind's first total state. It, and the social system which it spawned, should be condemned by all those who seek prosperity and an advanced civilization.
*Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order. New Brunswick (U.S.A.): Transaction Publishers, 2001, p. xiii.
Comment: An antidote for all those Leftists who still think that - despite its flaws - the Soviet state was a good thing: Political Ponerology. Anti-communist propaganda may have been heavy-handed and politically motivated. But that doesn't change the fact that the Soviet system was at its core inhuman and plainly psychopathic.