Saturday, September 10, 2005

Remaking Man in Marx's Image.

TV programs with a conservative bent on PBS are almost always consigned to Sunday afternoon. There they are likely neither to be seen by public television's predominantly leftish demographic, who would be enraged (and may withhold their $35 annual membership), nor viewed by rightish folk, who may want more. So it was with Heaven on Earth, a three-hour documentary on the history of socialism and communism. One the film's themes, and what certainly has been forgotten in the analysis of socialism's failings, is its inherent need to remake human behavior, expunging people of the intolerable condition of self-interest. In the case of British socialism, (of the Labour Party) this was accomplished by legislation to abolish capitalism and to create the welfare state; in the case of the Bolsheviks, mass murder was the vanguard's prescription for ridding humanity of such misfits. Four star television, available for purchase at the PBS store.

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