How many refugees from “workers’ paradises” who are in America will be voting for Uncle Bernie?
Guest post by Robert Gore, at Straight Line Logic
Every socialist is a disguised dictator
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
Human progress has been three steps forward, two steps back. That a non-fringe candidate of a major political party in the United States can call himself a socialist constitutes a leap backward. That it can happen after a century of socialistic horrors: impoverishment, ruination, tyranny, war, and tens of millions dead, bespeaks not just deadly ignorance and delusion, but depravity.
Socialism is a political system whereby the state owns or controls the means of production for goods and services. It can be partial—government control of some industries, or total—government control of all industries. According to Marx, who advocated the total version, the goods and services would be produced by each according to his or her ability, and distributed according to each individual’s need: production severed from distribution. No particular acuity is necessary to see the fatal flaw. The “needy”—and those who garner political power by distributing goods and services to them—are all for this system, but what’s in it for the able? They have to be coerced to produce, and something has to be done with those who object or refuse to submit.
Coercion sounds like slavery and that something has to be done sounds like repression. That is what socialism has produced—slavery, concentration camps, and slaughter—on a scale unimaginable prior to the twentieth century. Once you reach 10 million killed you’ve plumbed the depths of evil. Additional deca-millions are redundant blood on your hands, but the Titans in the Socialist pantheon—Lenin, Stalin, and Mao—killed around 100 million between them, while lesser lights like Pol Pot and the Kim dynasty in North Korea killed single digit millions. The numbers are exclusive of war dead.
What about Adolf Hitler? The full name of his political party was Nationalsocialistiche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party, which sounds like a group of socialists. However, modern socialists try to distance themselves from Hitler by arguing that the Nazis allowed private ownership of the means of production, were supported by wealthy German industrialists and bankers (wealthy Brits and Americans, too), persecuted Communists, and fought the Soviet Union. Once the Nazis assumed full control, especially after Germany began waging war, the owners of businesses had to comply with their directives or else. Under the circumstances, full government ownership of the means of production versus full government control that allowed nominal private ownership was a distinction without a difference. However, to give today’s socialists their best case, exclude Hitler’s deca-millions from the tally.
The case the socialists aren’t allowed is the one they always make: comparing purely hypothetical, daydream, visionary socialism with real life socio-economic-political systems. Either fantasy socialism gets measured against fantasy capitalism or fantasy welfare-statism or some other fantasy, an obvious waste of time, or the real life socialism gets measured against other real life systems. SLL is partial to capitalism, so let’s take as real life capitalism the closest the world has ever come to laissez-faire: Industrial Revolution America from 1865 to 1913.It is indisputable that the Industrial Revolution produced the greatest economic growth and rise in living standards, as measured by per capita income (which was not subject to an income tax—Happy Tax Day!), in America’s history. It also produced the biggest scientific and technological explosion in human history. It is true that millions worked for very low wages while others made vast fortunes—income inequality. However, jobs were plentiful and upward mobility the norm.
Whatever its flaws, there was no deca-million body count in Industrial Revolution America. A telling detail: millions of immigrants came to America to be “exploited” (they didn’t come for the government benefits; there were none), and laws were passed to restrict immigration, while real life socialist countries built walls and otherwise made it difficult and dangerous to try to leave their workers’ paradises. Many have died trying.
The coercive foundation of socialism leads to slavery and slaughter. Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production of good and services are privately owned, characterized by voluntary exchange and the state’s protection of contract and property rights. It is the economics of freedom. That conceptual foundation leads to progress and prosperity.
In a political order where individuals and groups cannot forcibly or fraudulently take what others have produced, capitalism will be the natural evolution. If you can’t take, you must produce and exchange. You own the ultimate means of production—your talents, aptitudes, training, experience, ingenuity, capacity for work, and intelligence—and if you want something you haven’t produced, you must exchange for it with someone else on mutually advantageous and agreeable terms. Capitalism’s extraordinary results when it has been given anything approaching full reign are unsurprising. Humans accomplish extraordinary deeds…when they are free to do so.
Modern education has for the most part abandoned teaching history, facts, or concepts, replacing them with toxic goo. The zombie minds at colleges and universities (both students and professors) fail or refuse to grasp the conceptual and ethical distinctions between capitalism and socialism. They are unaware of, indifferent to, or deny the yawning chasm between Industrial Revolution America and the twentieth century’s socialist horror shows.
What they do know is that avuncular Bernie Sanders is promising free university education and lots of other free stuff, paid for by someone else, just like in those European welfare states, which by the way, is what they really mean by socialism, or to use the popular euphemistic moniker, “democratic socialism.” And they intend to be either the “needy,” or better yet, running the government that “cares” for the needy. Only fools raise their hands when the call goes out for the able to pull the load, although someone has to.
Welfare states are on a fiscally and demographically unsustainable course, de facto bankrupt. You do run out of other people’s money to spend, especially when the load-pullers get tired of working for you. Welfare states are unstable ideological halfway houses between capitalism and socialism, inexorably sliding towards the latter.
Banking offers an example. Banks have been both captured and have captured governments, and when they run into trouble they become wards of the state and its taxpayers. Modern banking is more socialist than not, yet Sanders’ critique condemns it as capitalism. The problems of banking—regulatory capture, cronyism, excessive leverage and concentration, borrowing at preferential, below market rates, too big to fail, and taxpayer-backed speculation—flow directly from banks’ involvement with the government. Yet Sanders’ reforms entails more government. Real reform would go the opposite direction: elimination of the Federal Reserve, too big to fail, and deposit insurance.
It’s easy to be the great guy in the bar when you’re buying rounds on someone else’s dime. Uncle Bernie is peddling poison and calling it craft brew. If you encounter someone who’s feeling the Bern, listen patiently as they wax enthusiastic about the coming socialist utopia…if only we’ll all wise up and elect him. When they’re done, offer to buy them a one-way plane ticket to North Korea, Cuba, or Venezuela, but only if they’ll stay there for a year. That, of course, is not what they have in mind, and those nations are not, of course, the intended models for the United States. Intentions, of course, don’t mean squat. You shall know socialism by its dark deeds. Nothing would be more gratifying than seeing its proponents discover darkness the hard way. Unless, of course, they take the rest of us with them.
Not to beat this dead horse again, but since its in front of me…. Bernie is more of a facist than a socialist. Just like Obama. You mentioned in the post about how the means of production are owned by the state in socialist countries, but Bernie isnt talking about nationalizing the means of production. He will allow the current owners to keep their businesses, but dictate what they are allowed to produce and how they must produce it. They will also pay high taxes. However, the people will also be forced to buy a lot of products from these large corporations. Like Obamacare, in which the government forces the people, at gunpoint, to buy a product from a privately owned corporation. The govt/corporate partnership in crime is text book facism.
I’m not defending any of this, and I must say even as I type this, I still think its just semantics. I don’t believe in anything other than its authoritarian vs libertarian. Which specific belief system people want to spout typically falls into the former category, and I oppose them all equally.
Thanks for the excellent analysis. If we had a decent (non-leftist) education system in this country, the irrefutable facts in this column would be common knowledge. In both history and economics, the failures of socialism are easy to see, and would be easy to teach… if teaching the truth was the goal.
It isn’t the goal, so we have masses of young people who want to try this socialism thing one more time. Yes, this time, with the right people in power, everything they need will be free and life will be easy.
These foolish sheep are destroying their own future.
===
“Socialism is a conspiracy of losers against achievers” – Tatiana Menaker
===
Gator, sorry about calling you Gaton. Typos are a bitch.
From a LinkedIn post by Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, April 13:
I read with interest Jeff Immelt’s spirited response to Sen. Bernie Sanders putting GE on his hitlist of big corporations that are “destroying the moral fabric” of America.
In fact, I feel his pain. Verizon is in Sanders’s bull’s-eye, as well. The senator’s uninformed views are, in a word, outrageous. Here’s why.
His first accusation—that Verizon doesn’t pay its fair share of taxes—is just plain wrong. As our financial statements clearly show, we’ve paid more than $15.6 billion in taxes over the last two years—that’s a 35% tax rate in 2015, for anyone who’s counting. . . . The senator has started to fudge his language—talking of taxes not paid in some unspecified “given year”—but that doesn’t make his contention any less false.
Sen. Sanders also claims that Verizon doesn’t use its profits to benefit America. Again, a look at the facts says otherwise. In the last two years, Verizon has invested some $35 billion in infrastructure—virtually all of it in the U.S.—and paid out more than $16 billion in dividends to the millions of average Americans who invest in our stock.
@Gator: You’re an idiot to call Bernie Sanders a fascist. If you said that about Hitlery I’d agree with you.
And Robert Gore, perhaps you might want to look into the countries of Denmark, Sweden & Norway to see how their citizens rate their governments. There must be a reason why they rate so high on the happiness scale. Certainly their governments beat the crap out of the “crony capitalism” or “oligarchy” we presently suffer under.
From the title I thought this was going to be about Westie.
@Admin: You are obviously NOT a Verizon customer or you would know that half their equipment doesn’t work, purposefully so they can force you to upgrade and pay more.
Every student in the US should have to read 1984 and The Road to Serfdom. So many of the young dimwits don’t know shitte about the bloody and failed history of communism and socialism. Obama and Hitlery are both avowed communists.
ANON @ 155, perhaps you would explain to me how I am wrong, instead of “you’re an idiot”
And as far as your statements about those other countries, perhaps you can mention how high their tax rates are? If bernie and his supporters want to turn the US into those kinds of countries, they should mention that. If he was campaigning on everyone paying 50% in taxes, he probably wouldn’t get as warm of a reception. Point of fact, it is IMPOSSIBLE to fund everything he is promising by just raising the taxes on “millionaires and billionaires”. If you have a full time job and make north of 50k, under his policies you will be taxed out the ass too.
Another issue with those countries, as Ive pointed out numerous times, is they don’t have 50 million largely indignant black people to take care of, nor do they have 15 million plus illegals who consume massive amounts of resources. They are currently importing their own versions from the MENA region, and these people will destroy those welfare states from the inside out in a generation. Just watch.
Whatever happened to “The End of History”, anyway?
I have three comments.
Claiming the National Socialists were actually socialists is massively twisting the truth, just as Hitler was doing by naming his party the National Socialists. They aped some socialist ideals to show they cared about the people, while helping the large corporations.
Another thing that always bugs me is when people say socialism, when they mean communism. Nobody who has ever done real work would ever support communism. People are selfish. Some have just a touch of it, while others will hog anything they can. Communism requires people to work hard, and ask for little. How many people are willing to do this? I can’t think of a single country to make communism work. China and the Soviet Union are not real examples of communist countries. They are examples of countries controlled by communist parties, but neither ever did away with some level of private enterprise. The party wouldn’t have lasted long if they had. Socialism, on the other hand, never claims to wipe out inequality. As it was practiced in the Nordic countries, until the current flood of immigrants, everyone was assured of a minimum level of basic needs. The current situation there will lead either to the end of socialism, or open warfare between the natives and the immigrants. The natives are being ground into the ground to support the immigrants. Socialism will work as long as there is a strong sense of belonging to the group, and environmental conditions which make living off the land difficult. So, I can’t really support socialism for the US.
My third point is actually about libertarian ideals. I often hear communism is the government taking your cow away, while libertarians believe in everyone leaving everyone else alone to care for their own cows. Give me an example if this ever happening in the real world, and worked well? Somebody is going to gain an advantage in power, and then they will start taking other people’s cows. It’s no different from any other economic system.
Fascism, socialism, communism …………… it really doesn’t make much difference if you’re on the receiving end of them.
Which is why they need walls to keep their people in and we need a wall to keep their people out.
ladies your tin hat underwear is showing. Try and calm down a little.
“Somebody is going to gain an advantage in power, and then they will start taking other people’s cows. It’s no different from any other economic system.”
That’s what shrinks call projection. You know that if you gained an advantage in power, you’d take other people’s property. You assume that everyone else would do the same.
Robert,
Thanks for posting. This would be a great piece for a high school civics class (do they do they ave these anymore down south??) or a first year university course in political – ech – ‘science’. You have a knack for not writing ‘above people’s heads yet you still come off very polished. That is a rare talent these days. You are definitely an asset to this blog.
Anon writes:
“you might want to look into the countries of Denmark, Sweden & Norway”
Yep – been looking a lot lately. The women especially are super excited and happy about the explosion of sexual assaults brought on by the uncontrolled immigration of third world muslims and criminals. Isn’t marxism grand?
Francis Marion,
Thank you. I would love to get my stuff in front of high-schoolers, or even give talks or speeches. That’s really when you can have an effect on what they’re thinking. Unfortunately, so far, the only high-schooler whose thinking I’ve had an effect on has been my son (now in first year of college). Having been so affected, he’s battling it out in college. It’s much worse than when I went back in the 70s. Needless to say, I’m proud as punch of the chip off the old block.
Well done, thank you.
Thanks, Ottomatik.
Robert,
I fear for my son – he’s an honours student and is focused on math and technology. He has a bright future ahead of him – probably in engineering if things go where he wants them to but I don’t know how he’s going to survive university when he gets there (he hits grade 10 next year) – he’s a skeptic and questions things and it seems there is little room for his types in any post secondary these days.
In the broader picture at this stage my wife and I are convinced that the way to secure his future is an arranged marriage 🙂 …. the potential spousal pool these days for people in his generation is looking a little scary.
Robert, I do think you are an asset to this blog, and I read your posts with interest. I do think your viewpoints are a bit dated in some respects, and don’t adequately address the actual problems we have at the moment. This essay goes in too many directions for me to make any points, but that day will come. Keep up the good work.
Mr. Gore,
I almost skipped the essay but then I saw you wrote it.
Thank you very much for your timely explanations.
@Hayseed
I think you are wrong there. I am looking at the NAZI party platform and it looks rather socialist to me.
The End of Child Labor
Generous Old Age Benefits
Guaranteed work and decent living conditions
Forced Profit Sharing by all large corporations
Banning of property speculation
Free Education
The Abolition of Unearned Income
Confiscation of all War Profits
Children Have a Legal Obligation to Participate in Sports
Listen up, those crowds were not cheering their heads off when Hitler drove by because he told them to tighten their belts. No way, they were cheering him because they were getting all the freebies. Of course, in order to give all that stuff away, they had to take it from Someone.
And take they did! They took the wealth of the Jews & Bolsheviks first in order to get ready for the big wealth grab – Lebensraum. Living space. They were going to seize as much land as they possibly could and give it away to the German “settlers” that were gonna go settle on their brand new FREE land.
Hitler was the ultimate Santa Claus & Grandmaster Faery Godmother all rolled up into one. C’mon, how often do workers get interest free money to buy their goodies? The German workers most certainly did (well, as long as they made the party happy by having babies or whatever).
If you could somehow reanimate Hitler and disguise him, you could easily run him for president in this country and the regressive left would stumble over themselves to go vote for him.
The last two sentences say it all!
NickelthroweR, do you believe what our parties say about themselves? Nobody who comes to TBP believes party platforms. The US, along with the whole Western world, seems to have gone off the deep end. I wouldn’t trust what any party claims to represent. Nor would I claim Germans during the 30’s and early 40’s got much for free from the government. Even today, in Socialist Europe, the Germans work hard, and live with far less than Americans.
Ed, I can only laugh in reply. My wife is always telling me I give too much away. I’m nearly 50, so why do I need to take from others? I want my kids to be smart, think for themselves, and maybe throw me a hand when I can’t do it all for myself. I sure don’t expect Social Security to be around in another fifteen years. I question the existence of the US in another 15 years. Politics is splitting us into regional groups, with very little in common.
I don’t really want to deny the ideal of Libertarianism. It appeals to me. But I don’t see how you can actually make it work on a large scale. On an island, with plenty of room and resources, sure. Or in the old West, which wasn’t really that far West. People could pick up, and move further West when too many people showed up. There is no more West to exploit. So, how do you make the system work? Don’t even bring up Social Darwinism. That just leads to warlords, and another Dark Age.
@Hayseed
I do not have to believe it as the Germans worked tooth and nail to pull it off. It wasn’t just talk.
My grandmother was a hardcore fascist as they were the only ones to come to the aid of her mother and her 10 children left fatherless because of the Great War. The only reason my grandmother was able to go to school was that the fascists paid for it all.
As a child, my grandmother and her classmates were able to spend parts of their summers at the beach because the fascists built entire resort communities so that the children of the workers could vacation and do so for free. Those resorts still stand and though private now, my parents and I still stay at them when we can.
My grandmother was a hardcore fascist right up ’til the day she died.
Excellent article, Mr. Gore. I think The Bernt out there would object to your offer of a ticket to Venezuela (etc) as a false dichotomy and insist on a ticket to Denmark, the Cote d’Azur, Stockholm or perhaps the fjords.
And that’s one of the problems with dealing with so-called democratic socialism… the short term, and that which is seen and that which is unseen. It takes time for socialism to exhaust the wealth generated by the more free market aspects of the economy. It takes time for socialism to misallocate the savings pool of an economy and destroy it. It takes time for the profligacy of a government to reveal its bankrupt nature under a regime of fraudulent accounting rules and boundless fiat currency.
In the meantime, recipients of the government’s largesse are singing the praises of their benefactors… why wouldn’t they, when the bill has yet to be tabulated and paid?
And this too would be my response to Hayseed above. Scandinavian socialism was in trouble long before the migrants arrived, if you know where and how to look.
Thank you again, fine Sir.
Solon,
I said what I wanted to say about welfare states sliding into socialism and bankruptcy, but the second paragraph of your comment was trenchant and correct, a good addition to what I said. Thanks.
I found this junk on Zerohedge, and I couldn’t help but laugh and then make a few comments.
This is just another example of dumb Americans, drinking their unsophisticated Kool-Aid.
Dumb Americans .1
Americans can never truly understand Socialism, seeing as though their thoughts are shaped by extreme right-wing media and culture, coupled with the fact that Americans are the most insular and parochial bunch of ignoramuses currently occupying this earth.
Americans, completely ignore the socio economic advantages that Socialism has brought to, for example, Scandinavian countries. And if the issue of Scandinavian countries is raised, they use highly cherry picked examples, and basically misinformation on the subject.
And quoting Von Mises, encapsulates the black-and-white and intellectually bereft thread that runs through this article. Joseph Stalin, who was a dictator, just happened to be presiding over a Communist country at the time.
Robert Mugabe is a dictator, but he doesn’t lead a socialist country. I hope you Americans know who Robert Mugabe is, then again maybe not.
And another dumb point about that quote is, I wouldn’t describe, for example, Noam Chomsky as a dictator
Dumb Americans .2
The deep-seated cultural reason many Americans do not like Socialism, is because they perceive it as austere and colourless. No surprise, that in a culture that thrives on immediatism and instant gratification, for example the over use of pharmaceutical drugs, could never tolerate a socialist society where you don’t get your “15 minutes of fame,” and you’re treated as equally in importance as your fellow man and woman. In socialist countries there is no glamour in being the best person who stands out from the crowd, so much of which is characterised in American culture. It’s intolerable to be a nobody in American culture.
And really dumb Americans .3
Americans have thrived, not because of ingenuity, or a desire to be innovative or ahead of the curve, no, the USA has thrived, because simply the greatest hegemony in human history, has stolen the world’s resources, and intellectual property, over the past 100 years or so.
It will be fascinating to watch in the next few years, all you emotionally driven ignorant Americans turn on yourselves with all your guns, because the time will come soon, when American hatred and frustration, contempt and ignorance for the rest of the world has run out, and in fact that frustration and contempt will be internalised, through the realisation that America itself is a dystopia, socially and economically, and that America too, cannot amuse its “monkey minded” citizenry.
Robert, your survey of socialism was dead on, it was a joy to read.
As I try to buy a semi-colon on a market unwilling to offer one, lol…
Solon, thanks.
Peter Harris, thanks. By not addressing a single point I made in my article, by casting aspersions on everyone who does not think as you do, and by your endorsement of socialism, you proved my points. Presumably in your better world you and people of your ilk will be running things. Your arrogance is enough to let the rest of us know that we want no part of your better world. Please leave benighted idiots like me and my ilk a chance to opt out.
Robert, your little diatribe, in response to my rebuttal to your article, is so comical and nonsensical, it’s difficult to know where to start in reply.
You put one and a half and 2 together, and come up with 4 and 3/4s.
Let me start with your 1st nonsensical response.
I did reply to one of your points, the major point of the article, and that was everything you stated, which was predicated on the quote from Von Mises.
Did you not read everything I wrote?? And if so, you didn’t see that???
And you’re accusing me of “casting aspersions?”
Were you not doing the same, by casting aspersions on those who believe there are some merits to socialism??
And then based on those two poorly formulated assumptions, you state: “you’ve proved my points.” Huh??? What are your points in relation to my comments, or for that matter, your article??
However, back to your 1st point. It’s highly hypocritical of you to accuse me of not addressing any of your points, when you did the same in your response to my rebuttal.
You wouldn’t care to comment about socialism in Scandinavian countries??
And how it’s been highly beneficial to the social/economic advancement of those countries?
Okay, let me pick apart a few points you made in your article.
So easy to do, when you Robert make your argument using such nonsensical rubbish.
You claim, as many others do, that the 3 prominent Socialist leaders of the 20th-century, were responsible for 100,000,000 dead. How so?? You did not provide a citation, or reference to that rather important quote. Instead, like most on the right-wing, you just echo what other right-wing troglodytes spew out.
Sure, I’m not denying they killed many innocent people, but my point is, many maniacal leaders down through the ages have killed innocent citizens, as part of their political objectives, or in some cases, just because they are simply mad.
How many people did Caligula kill? And for that matter, how many died at the hands of the Roman Empire?? And of course the Roman Empire was not a socialist organisation.
If anyone who had read your article, and knew nothing about politics and economics, would come to the conclusion that only socialist governments and leaders kill people, while other political/ economic systems do not.
And what about the USA?
How many tens of millions have they killed, during their hegemonic reign?
I bet you’re totally clueless about your countries atrocities, and how that resulted in countless dead.
Have you heard of Indonesia?
Have you heard of Allan Dulles??
When he overthrew a democratic elected leader (Sukarno), he installed an American puppet (Suharto), to maintain support and power for American corporations that stole, raped and pillaged Indonesia’s natural resources.
And according to many reliable sources, that resulted in 3,000,000 Indonesian dead.
That was a direct result of US meddling and interference, and needless to say a monstrous war crime. Any comment on that Robert???
Or to pluck out another example from history.
When the US (Clinton) administration bombed the Al-shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, on the flimsiest of evidence, that the plant was somehow connected with Osama bin laden, and which subsequently proved to be false.
So how many poor Sudanese died as a result of not getting appropriate pharmaceutical drugs?
You want a more recent example??
How about the recent bombing of the Kunduz hospital, operated by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The American air force claimed it was an accident.
Perhaps, but many are claiming it as a war crime.
Nonetheless, it killed 45, and as many are still missing.
Dare i mention Iraq?
How many millions died from the US war in that country??
As for the rest your claims against socialism, they’re so ludicrous it doesn’t warrant a response.
Just one example of what I’m referring to, is how you link Adolf Hitler to socialism.
You take the quantum leap about the Nazi party at the beginning of the Second World War.
To quote you; “Once the Nazis assumed full control, especially after Germany began waging war, the owners of businesses had to comply with their directives or else. Under the circumstances, full government ownership of the means of production versus full government control that allowed nominal private ownership was a distinction without a difference.”
Yes Robert, it’s called commandeering.
All governments do it in times of war.
If you took the time to notice, even the US government did it at the beginning of World War II. The U.S. Navy for example, commandeered private yachts, so as to patrol US coastlines, and keep lookout for German U-boats.
I suspect you are like most Americans, and that is you have not traveled to other countries to experience other cultures and political/economic systems first-hand.
You’re probably like many Americans who have barely traveled, further than a few neighbouring states.
And for many reasons, you are like many Americans who have never read widely on topics and subjects which are anathema to US culture and politics.
So Robert, are you to put some balance in your article??
Are you to have a look at the many benefits socialism has brought in some countries??
I guess not. You don’t want to disappoint your obsequious, and sycophantic flunkies that have posted their response to your mindless article.
After all, the USA is just one big mono-cultural echo chamber for the ignorant.
Peter Harris,
Okay, let me respond to your points. The point of the Ludwig von Mises quote was that socialism, like all isms other than capitalism, rests on coercion. I did not imply that it is the only system that relies on or has relied on coercion, it is not. I did not endorse any other system than capitalism, including the US’s present welfare state system. If you think I endorse the US interventionism and the examples (Iraq, Sudan, etc.) you cite you have not seen my site, Straight Line Logic. In fact, I have been a consistent critic of such interventionism for decades. Go to SLL, put Robert Gore in the search function, and everything I’ve written will pop up. From there you can read to your heart’s content, and you’ll probably find a lot with which you agree.
The 100,000,000 deaths I cite is a fairly well accepted number, but if you want statistica; support, check out Death by Government, by R.J. Rummel. His website is https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM. His estimate for Communist China and the USSR is a total of 97 plus million, and I said “around 100 million.” I don’t think we need to quibble about that point. By the way, Rummel’s site has figures for homicidal regimes of all stripes, both for the twentieth century and before it. i do give you credit for saying “3 prominent Socialist leaders of the 20th-century.” Some of the responses to my article excoriated me for not understanding the difference between Socialism and Communism (I see none), never explaining why they see a difference.
As for Adolf Hitler, I conceded in my article that he was arguably a Socialist, but to avoid that distraction, I gave the Socialists their best case and excluded him and the numbers he would add to the death toll. I didn’t understand your point that because the US government commandeered resources during World War II that somehow did not make Hitler a socialist. I think you should have quit while you were ahead, with my concession in the article that for argument’s sake I would not consider Hitler a socialist.
As for Scandanavia, by my definition those countries are partially socialistic, since the state owns some, but not all, of the means of production. I lump them in as variants of the welfare state, about which I said:
Welfare states are on a fiscally and demographically unsustainable course, de facto bankrupt. You do run out of other people’s money to spend, especially when the load-pullers get tired of working for you. Welfare states are unstable ideological halfway houses between capitalism and socialism, inexorably sliding towards the latter.
At a conceptual level, any type of government that allows some freedom of production, but allows itself to take whatever it deems appropriate to address whatever “needs” it judges should be met, is inherently unstable. Perhaps I should have cited some of the people who have made quite elegantly, and convincingly, that point, but I’d start with Ayn Rand, Ludwig Von Mises, and Freidrich Hayek. The only system that allows producers to keep what they produce is capitalism.
Now somehow you argue that my support of capitalism amounts to unthinking support of the US and its foreign policy. Again, I refer you to SLL to see how wrong you are, and my next article will be another in a long series highly critical of the US and its government. The US is a welfare state, and only once during its history, the Industrial Revolution, did it even come close to the laissez faire capitalism I endorse as a matter of morality and philosophy. By the way, you said nothing at all about either my conceptual arguments for capitalism or my use of the Industrial Revolution as an example of what it can accomplish.
As for the “benefits” and “merits” of socialism, my question is: who benefits and at whose expense? Sure you can point a gun at some people, take what they have produced, and give it to other people, and its inarguable that the recipients benefit. However, the point of my article is that the heart of such a system is coercion, and is doomed to failure. Needs expand, the able curtail their efforts, quit, or flee. We cannot all have a right for somebody else to support us; it’s logically impossible. If saying that I see no benefits or merits of a system that rests of coercion casts aspersions on those who do, guilty as charged. At a conceptual level, if people are free and the government protects their rights, including their property right to what they produce, they will of necessity produce, for their own benefit, and voluntarily exchange, for their own benefit.
As far as aspersions go, your first comment called my article “junk…just another example of dumb Americans, drinking their unsophisticated Kool-Aid.” By implication, since I’m an American, I’m guilty of a long list of intellectual deficiencies you ascribe, without qualification, to 330 million people. In your second comment, you “suspect” without knowing that I am not widely read on “topics and subjects” which are anathema to US culture and politics, and “have not traveled to other countries ot experience and political/economic systems first-hand.” More jabs at the USA, which you close with as “just one big mono-cultural echo chamber for the ignorant.
I have not traveled that widely, but I have been to Europe several times, and I have friends in Denmark. My critique of socialism in part rests on their complaints about Denmark’s sky-high taxes. I have also met and talked with people in the US who have fled China, Cuba, and Venezuela. However, most of my critique is informed by my reading, which in fact has been quite extensive. If you care to see my background, I refer you to the “About Robert Gore” tab on my website. I value my readers, and it has been my experience that they an intellectual diverse, curious, and bright, not, as you say, “obsequious (SIC), and sycophantic flunkies.”
And yes, I do believe your self-evident arrogance helps me make my points about socialism. Those who hold the guns under Socialism do so, in part, because they believe they are superior to their victims. I don’t think, were you to be put in power, that you’d have any trouble at all with that assumption. As I said in my last post, just allow me and my “flunkies” a way to opt before you build your necessary walls.
Is that enough of a response for you? I hope so, because I’m done with this.
Seeing as though this is quoting contest, I’ll reciprocate.
But 1st of all, you claimed that I never highlighted one single point from your original discussion on socialism.
I see you’re discussing Von mises in your reply.
So is that acknowledgement from you that I did, at least, raise 1 point, that being of Von mises?? But really, that’s why I took offence to you quoting Von mises.
I certainly don’t have any ambitions to be a dictator.
The quote is so dumb, it doesn’t deserve any further discussion.
“The 100,000,000 deaths I cite is a fairly well accepted number, but if you want statistica; support, check out Death by Government, by R.J. Rummel.”
What was I saying about dumb Americans, and their echo chamber??
An American, quoting another clueless American.
Rummel has been largely discredited, in regards to how he compiled and disseminated he’s numbers of dead.
Particularly my part of the world, Cambodia, he shot himself in the foot regarding the numbers of dead in that country.
And didn’t he have to revise his numbers dramatically, when quoting the dead in another country?
“Some of the responses to my article excoriated me for not understanding the difference between Socialism and Communism (I see none).never explaining why they see a difference.”
HUH??!!
Maybe they never explained, because it’s self evident!
Communism is a government system. Socialism is an economic model.
So dumbfounded by that clueless admission from you Robert, I didn’t really bother reading the rest of your reply.
I’m sure it lacks intelligent consideration, and a broader based view of this discussion regarding socialism.
Basically, it’s probably a collage of cherry picked, Chinese (American) whispers, held up as fact.
Did i read somewhere, where you accuse me of arrogance?
That’s hilarious. You challenge and American on he’s ignorance, and typical of American culture, you get the gum-chewing, all-American Jar-head, type of response.
Because I put a little light and shade into your ignorance on socialism, I’m arrogant??
“Is that enough of a response for you? I hope so, because I’m done with this.”
I guess it’s easier to capitulate, than to subject oneself to more embarrassment, specifically not knowing the difference between communism (Chalk), and socialism (cheese).
The irony is that capitalism itself is based on coercion, i.e., private property built on enclosures and legitimized by government.