Socialism
J.McLaughlin Homepage
At first glance, Socialism sounds like an excellent idea. A superficial look provides high validity to the slogans like equality and justice. But it is not 1917. We have over a hundred years of Socialism and Socialist policies. So, we look back and see how well this great idea works in the real world. To the surprise of many, a retrospective view disappoints you. You look at the USSR, Communist China, and Pre-market reforms in India, DPRK, Cuba, and Venezuela, and you find abject failures in every single case.
Of course, after undeniable and obvious failures, many strong believers did not give up and started making all kinds of excuses. People who are old enough remember all of those: not the right place, not the right time, not the right people, not the right resources, American animosity, and Capitalist conspiracies.
But even all the excuses could not fix the stupidity. It kept failing every single time, at every place, with all kinds of different people and all kinds of other resources, with or without American animosity and Capitalist conspiracies. So, the so-called intelligentsia, academia, economists, financial gurus, social reformers, and behavioralists started coming up with modified forms of the failed idea, drastically changing the strategy.
However, according to Marx, Socialism did not even need a strategy. It was supposed to be the result of the natural course that dialectics take, and, like it or not, the world was destined to get to this natural evolution of history. The whole idea went South right from the beginning. As per Das Capital, Capitalism was the result of the Dialectic paradigm in feudal economies, and the same dialectics were going to result in the uprising of the oppressed labor class against the oppressor capitalist class and should have resulted in the dictatorship of the proletariat, aka Socialism, ultimately evolving into the withering of state, giving rise to the paradise of the proletariat, made up of self-governing Anarchist communes run by direct democracy.
Contrary to his analysis, zero capitalist economies evolved into Socialism. All Socialist revolutions came in Feudal societies, where the result should have been Capitalism. So, in all socialist revolutions, the dialectics skipped the stage of Capitalism. Marx accepted, though, that the capitalist stage is necessary for building wealth for socialist economies. Another point that staunch proponents of Socialism never acknowledge is the acceptance from Marx that Socialism cannot create the wealth needed for its functioning and that the Capitalism stage is essential for its success. Socialism embarked in feudal societies with little pre-existing wealth, but in countries like the USSR, which had abundant natural resources, and China and India, which had substantial human capital.
Capitalism is a natural order economic system. Markets evolve naturally due to the peaceful, voluntary exchange of value. On the other hand, Socialism is a dictatorship, as Marx mentions. It depends 100% on coercively ending all private property and extremely tyrannical central planning. This right away caused incredible disasters right from its inception. Extremely coercive and brutal force, which was used in the Chinese so-called Cultural Revolution, resulted in tens of millions of deaths. “In the Great Leap Forward from 1959 to 1961 alone, figures range between 20 million to 75 million.” Mises.org.
Similar was the case in the Bolshevik revolution in the USSR. “Even if we take into account a group of recent historians who minimize standard historical estimates of total non-combat, democidal totals of deaths (based in part on recently found archival materials, but in part on soft hearts still loyal to the Great Experiment), the median calculation of Communist mortality by historians and demographers credits the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin with somewhere between eighteen and sixty-two million deaths beyond technically military losses.” Mises.org.
Cambodia was supposed to be another Socialist heaven. But, “In few short years, the Pol Pot group managed to exterminate one-third of the Cambodian population, perhaps a record in genocide.” Mises.org.
Another shining light example of Socialism is DPRK. Between 1990 and 1998, there was a devastating period of rapid decline in GDP, “The rapid decline in economic output, coupled with a three-year famine that claimed the lives of an estimated two million people, provides an essential backdrop for the events transpiring in the Korean Peninsula today.” Mises.org.
Thanks to market reforms, “Meanwhile in Asia, the picture is much more varied. Although China, India, and Southeast Asia have all moved increasingly toward more open economies, the larger countries (except Bangladesh) have more than halved their extreme poverty rates over the past twenty years.”Mises.org.
Frustrated by these continuous and unending failures of their ideal, proponents of Socialism came up with another alternative: Democratic Socialism. The flag bearer, Venezuela, was supposed to be the bastion of success, finally. Oops, “We “have people eating garbage, schools that do not teach, hospitals that do not heal, and long and humiliating lines to buy flour, bread, and basic medicines. We endure the militarization of practically every aspect of life.” Mi”es.org.
Another rhetoric that we commonly hear from American socialists is about welfare reforms and the so-called safety network. An example frequently cited is Sweden. “Sweden experienced a century of high economic growth from approximately 1870 to 1970, making this European country one of the world’s most prosperous. The first half of this period of growth was marked by extensive free-market reform, and the latter is notable for Sweden staying out of both world wars and thus benefiting from intact industrial infrastructure when the rest of Europe lay in ruins.” Mi”es.org. “But” the political situation changed. The 1970s and 1980s saw a welfare state run amok with a greatly expanded scope with new government benefits, the introduction of very rigid labor market regulations, active propping up of stagnating sectors of the economy, and drastic increases in tax rates with some marginal rates over 100 percent”. M”ses.org. During this period, “Sweden also saw high price inflation, a situation aggravated by repeated devaluations of the currency change rate to boost exports: in 1976 by 3 percent; in 1977 by 6 percent at first, and then an additional 10 percent; in 1981 by 10 percent; and in 1982 by 16 percent.” Mi”es.org.
