The things I learned from my father about politics.

My father grew up in a small village in Eastern Europe. Like many of the people at the time, he had a grade 6 education which was above the village average. He lived through several political systems, including clerical feudalism, Nazi occupation/fascism, socialism, and communism. I also lived under these political systems under his guidance and after leaving the family nest, I had the opportunity of experiencing life under colonialism, capitalism and democracy. I was strongly influenced by father’s in depth knowledge of politics.
My father developed rather unbiased and realistic understanding of the various political systems which were controlling life in central Europe during his lifetime.
Under clerical feudalism, the Roman Catholic Church owned a lot of land in Hungary. Our parish priest lived in a mansion, the land under his control produced enough to maintain his rather lavish lifestyle, yet he still demanded donations from villagers, many of whom barely had enough to maintain their modest existence. While father was a supporter of his church and recognized that many were in the priesthood to help the spiritual development of the faithful and the poor, he often warned about the segment of clergy who controlled the land that “they preach water but drink wine”.
Father was strong critic of Nazi occupation and fascism. He predicted in the early 1940’s that Hitler’s Dictatorship will be destroyed and that we may end up living under the war zone. He strongly opposed the Hungarian government’s alliance with Germany, even though he was highly critical of the Treaty of Trianon after World War I. which was used as the justification for the Horthy regime to join the Axis powers. He was right in predicting the advancement of the front to our village. Fortunately, he prepared our family for the inevitable. He and grandfather dug a large underground bunker in the barn to store barrels of wines and food supply just in case the soldiers would start looting. He also prepared an underground bunker in the back yard, which came in handy when German and Russian soldiers were fighting door to door in our village. Our family was well protected during the final weeks of war in terms of both safety and food supplies.
Father favoured socialism as a just political system. Unfortunately, it only lasted in Hungary for a few years. He considered communism as a theoretically appealing system which can never work in practice because human beings are competitive in nature. He often said, to the great annoyance of the village priest, that in his opinion, the only person who ever managed to live by the “communist” type of teachings was Jesus Christ. The Church went to acquire wealth, while the communist under Stalin focused on power over people.
I lived under colonialism for three year in British Guiana and was able to observe the end of an era for the same reason that father believed in, i.e., any political system which involves a certain level of exploitation of the less fortunate or of those who oppose it, will ultimately self destruct.
I found capitalism on its own to be a fragile system, but when it is practiced within a democratic framework, it is sustainable.
Unfortunately, father died before the fall of communism in Hungary, so he never been able to live under democracy in his beloved country. But, he came to visit us in Canada five times between 1969 and 1985 and he was happy to witness true democracy in practice