The twentieth century has witnessed the beginning, development, and end
of the most tragic experiment in human history: socialism. The experiment
resulted in tremendous human losses, destruction of potentially rich economies,
and colossal ecological disasters. The experiment has ended, but the
devastation will affect the lives and health of generations to come.
The real tragedy of this
experiment is that Ludwig von Mises and his followers -- among the best
economic minds of this century -- had exposed the truth about socialism in
1920, yet their warnings went unheeded. -- Yuri Maltsev (1990).
Socialism is dead as an
ideology and also as a political movement. It is an example of a god that
failed.
Socialism is a very
specific form of economic opinion. A socialist believes that the civil
government should own the means of production. This is what socialism has
always meant.
When Ludwig von Mises refuted socialism in
1920, he had in mind exactly this outlook regarding the economy.
Here was his argument. If the government owns a nation's capital, meaning the
tools of production, the planners cannot establish the value of these tools.
There is no free market for pricing these tools. Without free-market pricing,
there is no way for any central planning agency to determine what the most
desired consumer goods are in society. There has to be a free market in order
to price consumer goods and capital goods. There is neither in a socialist
economy. Therefore, said Mises, socialist economic planning is inherently
irrational.
That argument was ignored
by the vast majority of socialists, and it was never taken seriously by
Keynesians. But then, when the Soviet Union's economy collapsed in the late
1980's, it became clear to at least Robert Heilbroner, a multimillionaire
leftist economics professor, that Mises had been right. He said so in print in
an article in The New Yorker: "After Communism." (Sept.
10, 1990). He then called for the substitution of ecology for socialism. He
said that socialism was simply a dead ideology.
Today, there are virtually
no people outside of North Korea, Latin America, and Zimbabwe who
straightforwardly argue in favor of socialism. North Korea and Cuba officially
are Communist. They are poverty-stricken. They have no influence anywhere.
Nobody is using them as a model. Zimbabwe is run by a tribal Marxist, and
nobody is imitating it, either…………
Any time you see a statement
that international socialists are doing this or that, immediately discount it.
Pay zero attention to it. International socialists are a figment of the
imagination of domestic conservatives. They have not been around in a quarter
of a century.
Obama is not a socialist. The
Democrats are not socialists. I have not heard Bernie Sanders call for the
nationalization of America's corporations. They are defenders of the welfare
state. They want more taxes on the rich. They want more regulation of the
economy. They want to direct the capitalist system, in exactly the same way as
the fascists did in the 1930's. They want to retain the private ownership of
the means of production, but they want to tell the private owners what they can
or cannot do with their capital. They want to direct the productivity of
capitalism. They do not want state ownership of the means of production. They
want to use the famous carrot and stick to direct production along certain
lines, but they don't want any responsibility for having done so.
They are content to have
sufficient productivity from the corporate system so that the government can
benefit from a high percentage of the golden eggs that it hatches. Parasites
don't want to kill their hosts. Socialism is an economic philosophy of killing
the host. The Left today is made up parasites, do-gooders, and virtually no
Communists or socialists.
CONCLUSION
Mises in 1920 diagnosed the
terminal condition of socialism. The Communist nations proved his point over
the next seven decades. North Korea, Cuba, and Zimbabwe are the last socialist
regimes. They prove Mises' point. They are bankrupt in every sense. They are
not the wave of the future.
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