Being a former man of the Left, I have mixed with a lot of socialists over the years including those who could be described as ‘old Labour’ from a working class Trade Union background right through to avid supporters of Fidel Castro and the occasional off the wall Stalinist. Although all these individuals differed in their approach to Socialism, they nearly all promoted some sort of collectivism . Sometimes it was what I would call ‘soft collectivism’ based around the idea of everyone supporting everyone else such as via Trades Unions or the support of big ‘common good’ institutions such as the National Health Service. Other Socialists I encountered took a much more hard line view of collectivism and were the sort of people who probably would have ended up manning a concentration camp guard tower, if the Revolution came.

Over the course of a number of years I came to see that the vast majority of political collectivist ideologies, including many that have their roots in the Left can, unless restrained by an outside force and without the ability to dictate policy nationally, turn from the often understandable soft collectivisms to those which are both uncompromising and deadly. Collectivism, when used as the basis for a national or international ideology goes way beyond workers engaging in mutual support and too oft en swiftly ends up in Gulags and killing fields.

I recently watched a fabulous BBC documentary on the life of the Cambodian communist dictator Pol Pot which was made in 2005 and showed just how deadly class based collectivisms can be. This documentary contained first hand accounts from both the victims of Pol Pots attempt to create the ‘perfect’ Communist state and chillingly from Pol Pot himself along with those Communists who were implicated in the mass murders that gave the world the term ‘The Killing Fields’.

I am old enough, and was politically aware enough at the time, to recall the Vietnamese invading Cambodia, then called Kampuchea in 1979. I watched and read the news reports that came out about the atrocities committed by Pol Pot’s Communists. It was plain to see that Pol Pot had turned his long suffering country into a charnel house where torture and mass murder became everyday occurrences. The images of the piled up human bones and the tales of brainwashed Communists trying to turn Cambodia into an agrarian peasant society at the point of guns, knives and clubs are some that will stay with me.

I would strongly advise people to watch this excellent BBC documentary on the Pol Pot and the road to the killing fields as it is a valuable lesson in how collectivist thinking goes bad and what happens when the truly terrible ideas of Karl Marx are put into practice.