News Flash: Berkshire Communists

I’m glad that the Berkshire Communists are gone from Alford. The description of Communism on the website by Fergie Chambers was risable and did not mesh with his nefarious activities.

I reacted with mixed feelings to the news of his arrest in Spain. On one hand, if he has been giving money to Hamas, I condemn that. On the other hand, he has warts (sorry, tired old joke!) — if he is truly providing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, I applaud that.

Given my distrust in the maladministration in Washington, I’m inclined to give Fergie the benefit of the doubt until the facts in the case come out.

In February 2025, I conducted a Berkshire OLLI course on “Reframing the Questions: Moving Beyond Identity Politics“

In that course, we discussed many different issues. My refrain was that in describing people and their position on issues, we should not use binary labels such as “left” and “right” or “liberal” and “conservative”. Rather, we should think of a multitude of spectra. I advocated for my own view, in which I locate opinions on a spectrum that ranges from having the individual as paramount, on one extreme, to having the community as more important, on the other extreme.

Capitalism, for example, lauds individual achievement, with impacts on the community being secondary. Adam Smith’s description of the Invisible Hand is often referenced, out of context, to support this view. One of capitalism’s fiercest critics, John Maynard Keynes, viewed capitalism as inherently unstable and prone to deep crises of unemployment and inequality. He famously favored active state (i.e. community) intervention to correct the excesses of capitalism.

The relevance of all of this derives from the MAGA labeling of “Communists” as being on the “left” and falsely conflating communism with democratic socialism.

Here is a summary of a Reddit discussion:

Both communism and socialism advocate for public rather than private ownership of the economy's resources. In socialism, workers control production, and people are paid based on their individual contribution. Communism goes a step further as the final theoretical phase, eliminating private property entirely so goods are distributed strictly based on need in a classless, stateless society.

Engels pointed to the Haudenosaunee culture as evidence of the withering away of the state. as prophesized by him and Marx. That culture had been labeled as “communism in living” by Henry Lewis Morgan, who was writing at about the same time (the 1850s). What Engels missed was that Haudenosaunee (and Algonkian) culture had not evolved from a top-down “state” but had always been one that prioritized the common good.

In practice, the two most prominent examples of self-styled Communism (USSR, the Russian Empire; and the PRC, China) have been autocratic top-down governments. “Communism” thus became equated, in the popular mind, with dictatorship, quite the opposite of what was meant by Marx and Engels.

Democratic socialism retains the philosophical underpinnings of socialism, and reverses the emphasis of capitalism on the individual, advocating for collective control of the economy.

Here is a summary of the Wikipedia description of democratic socialism:

Democratic socialism is a political and economic ideology that advocates for a collectively or publicly owned economy, such as cooperative or state-managed enterprises, operating alongside a democratically run political system. Unlike authoritarian forms of socialism, it requires free speech, competitive elections, and civil liberties.

Circling back to the case at hand, the subtitle of the Guardian article (cited above)

Extradition request for James ‘Fergie’ Chambers sparks concerns that US government is conflating humanitarian aid with terrorism

points out the possible MAGA-style confusion around not-very-useful labels.

POTUS loves to insult and harass people who don’t please him. It’s doubtful (in my mind) that he understands the subtleties I’ve pointed out here. Even if he did, that would not stop him from calling democratic socialists “Communists” and humanitarians “terrorists” — it’s the MAGA way. Rather than have a reasoned discussion about the issue at hand, insult the opponents and change the subject.