January 30, 2019
Dear Friends and Family,
This is Segment 13 of the series on Socialism. It is focused on the rise and results of Socialism/Communism in four different countries: Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela. It is entitled “Understanding Communism.”
My Takeaways:
Between the uprising in Venezuela and the policy platforms of the Democratic presidential candidates, Socialism is certainly in the news currently. I hope this series is helpful to you in separating the “wheat from the chaff.”
There is an excerpt in this segment that I would particularly like to call you attention to – the “Negative Approach to Problem Solving” socialist often take. It can be found at the start of the excerpts. The fundamental premise is that of Karl Marx: If you find a problem with which you disagree, simply eliminate it, e.g. if problems are growing out of religion, solve the problem by doing away with religion. We are starting to see some of these pop-up as we enter the next presidential cycle like eliminating the electoral college, eliminating ICE, or major reforms (modernization) of the Constitution or the Supreme Court. BEWARE!!
Analyzing this segments excerpts, there are some striking parallels among the steps taken in each of the four countries as they instituted Communism/Socialism:
• Wiping Away the Old Society: This was accomplished by revolution in Russia, Cuba, and North Korea. The first two had mass executions to wipe away any resistance to the establishment of a permanent dictatorship.
• Setting Up a Dictatorship and Confiscating all Private Property for the Government: This occurred in all four countries (twice in Russia). Collective agriculture was established in Russia and Cuba.
• Centralized Planning Coupled with Censorship of Information: This occurred in all four countries. Additionally, there were equally striking parallels in the results of the Communist/Socialist systems.
• Economic Collapse: This occurred relatively fast in all four counties (twice in Russia).
• Starvation and Famine: Lack of food was prevalent in all four countries. Starvation and famine occurred in Russia and North Korea.
The most sobering statistic of the Communist/Socialist system was this quote from The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism: “Over the course of the 20th century, political movements understanding themselves to be socialist were responsible for the deaths of some 100 million people. In China, in Cambodia, in the USSR, and in North Korea.” (Note: This was primarily the result of famine). Indeed, all four were atrocities.
Relative to the confiscation of property (nationalization), I thought you might be interested in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposed “Accountability Capitalism Act” as reported on August 16, 2018, in the National Review and collaborated in The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal.
Dear Friends and Family,
This is Segment 13 of the series on Socialism. It is focused on the rise and results of Socialism/Communism in four different countries: Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela. It is entitled “Understanding Communism.”
My Takeaways:
Between the uprising in Venezuela and the policy platforms of the Democratic presidential candidates, Socialism is certainly in the news currently. I hope this series is helpful to you in separating the “wheat from the chaff.”
There is an excerpt in this segment that I would particularly like to call you attention to – the “Negative Approach to Problem Solving” socialist often take. It can be found at the start of the excerpts. The fundamental premise is that of Karl Marx: If you find a problem with which you disagree, simply eliminate it, e.g. if problems are growing out of religion, solve the problem by doing away with religion. We are starting to see some of these pop-up as we enter the next presidential cycle like eliminating the electoral college, eliminating ICE, or major reforms (modernization) of the Constitution or the Supreme Court. BEWARE!!
Analyzing this segments excerpts, there are some striking parallels among the steps taken in each of the four countries as they instituted Communism/Socialism:
• Wiping Away the Old Society: This was accomplished by revolution in Russia, Cuba, and North Korea. The first two had mass executions to wipe away any resistance to the establishment of a permanent dictatorship.
• Setting Up a Dictatorship and Confiscating all Private Property for the Government: This occurred in all four countries (twice in Russia). Collective agriculture was established in Russia and Cuba.
• Centralized Planning Coupled with Censorship of Information: This occurred in all four countries. Additionally, there were equally striking parallels in the results of the Communist/Socialist systems.
• Economic Collapse: This occurred relatively fast in all four counties (twice in Russia).
• Starvation and Famine: Lack of food was prevalent in all four countries. Starvation and famine occurred in Russia and North Korea.
The most sobering statistic of the Communist/Socialist system was this quote from The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism: “Over the course of the 20th century, political movements understanding themselves to be socialist were responsible for the deaths of some 100 million people. In China, in Cambodia, in the USSR, and in North Korea.” (Note: This was primarily the result of famine). Indeed, all four were atrocities.
Relative to the confiscation of property (nationalization), I thought you might be interested in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposed “Accountability Capitalism Act” as reported on August 16, 2018, in the National Review and collaborated in The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has one-upped socialist Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes: She proposes to nationalize every major business in the United States of America. If successful, it would constitute the largest seizure of private property in human history.
Warren’s proposal is dishonestly called the “Accountable Capitalism Act.” Accountable to whom? you might ask. The answer is – as it always is – accountable to politicians, who desire to put the assets and productivity of private businesses under political discipline for their own selfish ends. Under Senator Warren’s proposal, no business with more than $1 billion in revenue would be permitted to legally operate without permission from the federal government. The federal government would then dictate to these businesses the composition of their boards, the details of internal corporate governance, compensation practices, personnel policies, and much more. Naturally, their political activities would be restricted, too. Senator Warren’s proposal entails the wholesale expropriation of private enterprise in the United States, and nothing less. It is unconstitutional, unethical, immoral, irresponsible, and – not to put too fine a point on it – utterly bonkers.
One wonders why American businesses put up with it. They do not have to. Not really. It is a fairly easy thing for an established American business to move its corporate domicile to some other country, as with all those corporate inversions in the pharmaceutical industry that gave the Obama administration the willies a few years ago. It is a fairly easy thing for a new business being founded by Americans to incorporate in some other country from the beginning. There is no insurmountable reason for, say, Microsoft or Altria (formerly Philip Morris) to be domiciled in the United States. Silicon Valley’s competitive edge comes from people, and people are mobile. If American law or American lawmakers are going to treat profit-seeking enterprises as an Enemy of the People – Zurich is pretty nice. Lots of places are.
Source: August 18, 2018 article in National Review, collaborated in The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal.
Next:
Segment 14 will provide some insight into what life is like for an ordinary citizen in a Communist/Socialist country – Cuba. The excerpts will provide such insights into the following areas: Food, living conditions, services, birth control, use of time, schools, hospitals, state control, appeals to the state, fear, hope, news and censorship.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Segment 14 will provide some insight into what life is like for an ordinary citizen in a Communist/Socialist country – Cuba. The excerpts will provide such insights into the following areas: Food, living conditions, services, birth control, use of time, schools, hospitals, state control, appeals to the state, fear, hope, news and censorship.
Happy Learning,
Harley
SOCIALISM – SEGMENT 13
UNDERSTANDING COMMUNISM – EXCERPTS
INCENTIVES: Communism deliberately destroys the most ordinary work incentives:
THE NEGATIVE APPROACH TO PROBLEM SOLVING: The most significant fallacy in Communism is that problems can be solved by eliminating the institution from which the problems emanate. Problems with morals would be solved by doing away with morals. Problems with marriage, home and family would be eliminated by doing away with marriage, home and family. Problems arising out of property rights would be resolved by not allowing anyone to have any property rights. The problem of equalizing wages would be solved by doing away with money, markets and prices. Problems of competition would be solved by forcibly prohibiting competition. Finally, they would solve all the problems of modern society by using revolution to destroy this society. Only after the great destruction did the Communist leaders dare to hope that they might offer to their disciples the possibility of freedom, equality and justice. Until such a day comes, the Communist leaders ask humanity to endure the conflagration of revolutionary violence, the suppression and liquidation of resistance groups, the expropriation of property, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which they themselves describe as “based on force and unrestricted by any laws,” the constant observations of all citizens by secret police.
RUSSIA: In 1918, the Communists had overthrown the nearest thing to representative government the Russian’s had ever known. Now the people would learn something about the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. One of Lenin’s first ambitions was to wipe out the Eastern Front of WWI and take Russia out of the war. With Russia out of the war, Lenin felt sufficient confidence to subordinate the whole Russian economy to the theories of Communism. He confiscated all industry from private owners and set it up under government operation. He seized all land which belonged to the aristocracy, the Tsar and the church. He also seized all the livestock and implements which ordinarily served this land. He then abolished wages and replaced them with direct payment “in kind.” This saddled Russia with a sluggish and primitive barter system. He ordered all domestic goods to be rationed among the people according to their class. For example, a worker or soldier was allocated 35 pounds of bread, while a non-worker, such as a manager, received only twelve. Lenin also made all labor subject to mobilization. People with technical skills could be compelled to accept any work assigned to them. The selling of retail goods was taken over by the government. As for the peasants, Lenin distributed the confiscated land to them, but required them to work the land without hiring any help and without selling any of the produce. It was all to go to the government.
From the very beginning the Russian people did not take well to the new order. Without any personal incentive among the workers, production on the farm and in the factory dwindled to a trickle. The factories were soon down to 13% of what they had been producing before the war started, and the farmers cut their production in half. Black markets began to flourish. Workers often stole goods from the factories to exchange for food which the peasants secretly withheld from the government. Before long, the peasants were holding back more than one-third of their crops. As might have been expected, this decomposition of the Russian economy brought down upon the heads of the people all the wrath and frustration of the Bolshevik leaders. Every terror method known was used to force the people to produce. This led to retaliation.
During the summer of 1918, violent civil war broke out. Authorities state that during the civil war, literally tens of thousands went down before its firing squads. In spite of all these coercive methods, Lenin eventually discovered he was fighting a losing battle. The breaking point came in 1921-22 when the economic inefficiency of the Bolshevik regime was compounded by a disastrous famine. No one who was ever in that famine area, no one who saw those starving and brutalized people, will ever forget the spectacle. Cannibalism was common. The despairing people crept about emaciated, like brown mummies. When those hordes fell upon an unprepared village, they were apt to massacre every living person. Packs of orphaned children roamed like hungry wolves through the cities and country sides. It is estimated that during the year 1922, over 33 million Russians were starving and 5 million died.
The principles of socialism which Lenin had forced upon the people had not brought increased production as Marx had promised but had reduced production to a point where even in normal times it would not adequately clothe or feed half the people. This forced a humiliating reversal of policy to keep the Communists from being dethroned – the New Economic Progress (NEP). In merely a matter of months, the pauperism and starvation of the old Communist economy began to disappear. The law of supply and demand began to have its effect so that private initiative commenced to provide what the people needed. Lenin died January 20, 1924.
In 1927 Stalin had achieved precisely what Lenin feared he might – the outright control of the Russian empire. He determined to make a second attempt to communize Russia. The first Five-Year Plan began in 1928. It was aimed at wiping out the prosperous independence of businessmen and peasant farmers who had been thriving during the NEP. Within weeks, the Five-Year-Plan had wiped out the warm glow of prosperity and comparative abundance which Russia had know under the NEP. Rationing was necessary and the hated revolutionary “starvation bread” made of birch bark had to be reintroduced. The basic theme of the Five-Year-Plan was collectivized industry and collectivized agriculture. Stalin knew he would get resistance from the prosperous peasants (called Kulaks) and he therefore ordered a complete genocidal liquidation of the Kulaks as a class. Official reports tell how rebellious villages were leveled to the ground by artillery fire. In in one area of the Don region, 50,000 men, women and children were destroyed, leaving a vestige of only 2,000 people.
Stalin also, included in the Five-Year-Plan an acceleration of the Communist fight against religion. Churches and cathedrals were turned into secular buildings. Sunday was eliminated as a day of worship, and workers were required to rotate their days off so that industry would continue day and night, seven days a week. Stalin also attempted to follow Engel’s suggestion to break up the family. All the theories of Marx and Engels were coming to life. By 1932 the situation reached a crisis. The Russian people suffered starvation, mass executions, ruthless liquidation of the Kulak class, suppression of all private enterprise, deportations to Siberia and long sentences to forced labor camps. The crimes against humanity were on a scale comparable to the Nazi atrocities. Tens of thousands went down before firing squads in secret executions while the more prominent officials were exhibited before the world at Stalin’s famous purge trials. In these trials Stalin’s former comrades of the revolution sought to win mercy for their families by confessing in the most self-degrading language to all the crimes of which they were accused. But in gained them nothing.
Once Stalin had skirted the brink of political disaster, he immediately determined to consolidate his power by innovation of a Communist spoils system. He decided to give recognition to a new class – the Communist bureaucracy or official class. He bestowed special favors on them by allowing them to shop in “closed” distribution centers. These centers had great quantities of items which were never distributed to the workers. And Stalin arranged it so that his party appointees received other favors – dwellings, luxuries, special holidays, and special educational opportunities for their children. This was Stalin’s way of building a new Communist Party with members who owed absolute allegiance to him.
CUBA: By 1957 the International Monetary Fund ranked Cuba fourth among the 20 Latin American Republics in per capita income. Although it was only one sixth as high as the U.S., it was 90% as high as Italy, far higher than Japan, and six times higher than India. The U.S. Department of Commerce reported: “The Cuban national income has reached levels which give the Cuban people one of the highest standards of living in Latin America.” It soon became apparent that Batista’s policies were making a highly profitable tourist mecca out of Cuba and attracting vast quantities of American capital for industrial development. Wages went up from 10 to 30% and many Cuban workers were covered with health and medical insurance for the first time. Between 1950 and 1958 the overall national income jumped 22%. This then was the promising development of Cuba which was taking place at the time Batista was overthrown.
Two major factors led to the final success of Castro’s revolution. One was centered in the Soviet Union and the other was centered in the United States. During the last months of the revolution, observers were amazed at the quantities of Czech and Russian equipment being used by the Castro forces. They were equally surprised at the vast supplies of money which Castro had available – money for wages, food, equipment, liquor, bribery, and favors. Batista, on the other hand, suddenly found himself at the other end of the horn. Because of his pro-U.S. policies, he had assumed that when the struggle for Cuba became critical, he would be able to rely on the U.S. to sell him arms and supplies. To his amazement, he discovered that his request for permission to buy arms in the U.S. fell on deaf ears. In the closing months of the conflict American policies followed blind alleys which authorities have since attributed to either “stupidity, incompetence, or worse.” It was January 1, 1959, that Fidel Castro became the political steward of a dazed, war-weary Cuba. As soon as Castro took over, he used his revolutionary courts of mob justice to send over 600 persons to the firing squads. Then he reached out and began a “reform” movement of Communist dimensions.
NORTH KOREA: Kim II Sung, dictator of North Korea, embarked on a wide-ranging campaign to achieve massive and rapid industrialization, redistribution of land and agricultural resources, and similar large-scale projects of economic reorganization. Within a few years, Kim’s subjects were starving. Housing was in short supply, electricity nonexistent in much of the country and unreliable in the rest, water and sewer services were falling apart, and the country’s infrastructure was quickly decaying into ruin, where it remains today. Soon enough, famine struck, and millions died. Lerner relates a cheery state-run radio broadcast from the 1990s: “Today I will introduce you to tasty and healthy ways to eat wild grass.” At the famine’s worst, North Koreans were reduced to worse that that – reports of cannibalism made the rounds in intelligence circles and in the international press.
When The Plan fails – and The Plan always fails – then it is time to find somebody to blame. Over the course on the 20th century, political movements understanding themselves to be socialist were responsible for the deaths of some 100 million people. In China, in Cambodia, in the USSR. The belief in the perfectibility of society led not to heaven on Earth but hell on Earth, especially for those poor unfortunates who found themselves labeled “outdated and reactionary” by socialist regimes applying the best “scientific” thinking they could muster to the management of human affairs. North Korea is not the personality of Kim Jong II spread thin across the land, but socialism spread thick upon it. North Korea rejects foreign values for precisely the same reasons that it rejects (in theory) foreign goods: because they are incompatible with socialism. If this is madness, it is madness of a catchy kind: Stalin suffered from the same disease. So, did Lenin and Mao. So, does Hugo Chavez today. The “madman theory” of world history sheds very little light on the behavior of such regimes; and understanding of socialist ideology, and its application to the messy realities of economic life as it actually is lived, is more illuminating. North Korea is not the only state that has used hunger as a weapon of mass terrorism. Stalin’s “Holodomor” starved to death as many as 10 million Ukrainians and untold millions died under Mao’s politically induced famines. It is worth considering that the cause of all this suffering was not the presence of evil men, but the presence of mistaken ideas.
VENEZUELA: Venezuela shows what happens when socialism is appended to a large country with a complex economy and society. Its socialist regime came to power through democratic means. The regime’s centralization of power is of the sort that is essential under socialism; the state has tightened its control of petroleum and other vital industries as necessary for implementing the political discipline required to carry out President Chavez’s central-planning agenda. The Chavez regime took over a relatively prosperous, stable and civil country that had relatively strong institutions. In the early 20th century, Venezuela had the largest economy in Latin America, one that was turbocharged by the discovery of massive oil reserves. The government spent and borrowed lavishly, operating on the theory that oil prices would continue to rise forever. But in the 1980s, oil prices collapsed – and the Venezuelan economy collapsed along with them. What followed was the familiar pattern of a national fiscal crisis. Given a choice between formally defaulting on its debts or informally defaulting on them by devaluing its currency and paying off its creditors with debased money, Venezuela chose the latter. Inflation predictably skyrocketed, and real standards of living for Venezuelans fell dramatically. A relatively affluent country became a relatively poor one almost overnight, thank to failed government economic planning.
The Plan called for 5 million barrels of oil per day in 2010. Venezuelan actual production in 2010 was less than that figure. With basically no new investment coming from foreign sources – which are afraid to do business with the capricious and nationalization happy Chavez – or from domestic sources – which are completely under the thumb of Chavez – the oil industry in foundering. As did the wider Venezuelan economy. The problem apologists for socialism invariably argue, is that these state-run enterprises are not run like proper businesses; either they are corrupt, too highly politicized, or incompetently managed. Of course, all that is true. Never mind that the best way to ensure that these enterprises act like businesses is to forgo converting them from private enterprises into public ones; one must keep in mind that solid business practices alone cannot impart to a socialist enterprise the discipline and market-generated knowledge enjoyed by capitalist businesses. Aside from the oil industry, the Chavez regime seized control of most of the rest of the economy as well: the electric, telecom, steel, paper, and food-processing industries.
When the Venezuelan National Statistics Institute released figures showing that poverty was on the rise under Chavez’s government, climbing as high as 53% in 2004 in spite of surging oil revenues, the president simply called for a different measurement of poverty, one that conveniently showed a much lower rate. When the data have suggested that unemployment is rising, the Chavez regime has finessed the way it calculates unemployment. In this, Chavez is replicating an old practice perfected by his mentor, Fidel Castro, whose impressive – and utterly fictitious – statistics documenting Cuba’s literacy and childhood-health achievements have been endlessly trumpeted by those seeking to socialize American healthcare.
When the Chavez regimes failed central-planning efforts produced massive shortages of food and household goods, it tried to exert direct management of the grocery stores. The supermarket chain Exito was seized by the government and another chain, Cada was made a takeover target. But such nationalization failed to make The Plan work, so the government’s next step was to try to control the import and, especially, the export of food and consumer goods. It is a well-established law of economics that price-fixing leads inevitably to shortages, which is precisely what Chavez’s program of price controls did. Naturally, this economic, social and political displacement has been accompanied by the decay of public institutions – particularly law and order. Caracas is, as of this writing, the most dangerous capital city in the Americas, a place where ransom kidnaping is out of control. Thus, Venezuela endures the worst of both worlds; a police state that cannot control crime.
In spite of being one of the world’s energy powerhouses, Venezuela cannot produce enough power to meet its own citizens’ needs. The Chavez government, unable to ignore the rolling blackouts that, along with food shortages, have set so many Venezuelans against him, did what socialists do – he unveiled a five-year plan. In 2010, the first year of the plan Venezuela was to add 5,900 megawatts of power. It managed just over 20% of that goal.
Source: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism by Kevin D. Williamson
SUMMARY: A major premise of Communism is this: “There is no such thing as innate right or wrong.” As one of their leaders pointedly declared, “To lie, is that wrong? Not for a good cause. To steal, is that wrong? Not for a good cause. To kill, is that wrong? Not for a good cause.” We call that pragmatism – the end justifies the means. Lenin declared: “Morality is that which serves to destroy the old exploiting society. Communist morality is the morality which serves this struggle. It is highly important to Communist discipline to have every person obey blindly. To obey blindly is considered good and therefore morally right. But a system of morals which controls conduct in terms of right and wrong makes each individual a moral free agent. This Communism cannot stand.
Source: The Naked Socialist by Paul B. Skousen
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
UNDERSTANDING COMMUNISM – EXCERPTS
INCENTIVES: Communism deliberately destroys the most ordinary work incentives:
- Increased reward for increased production.
- Increased reward for working harder to develop improved products.
- Increased reward for working harder to provide improved services.
- The right of the worker to buy and develop property with the accumulation of past rewards (profits) over and beyond the needs of consumption and thereby improve the circumstances for himself and his family.
THE NEGATIVE APPROACH TO PROBLEM SOLVING: The most significant fallacy in Communism is that problems can be solved by eliminating the institution from which the problems emanate. Problems with morals would be solved by doing away with morals. Problems with marriage, home and family would be eliminated by doing away with marriage, home and family. Problems arising out of property rights would be resolved by not allowing anyone to have any property rights. The problem of equalizing wages would be solved by doing away with money, markets and prices. Problems of competition would be solved by forcibly prohibiting competition. Finally, they would solve all the problems of modern society by using revolution to destroy this society. Only after the great destruction did the Communist leaders dare to hope that they might offer to their disciples the possibility of freedom, equality and justice. Until such a day comes, the Communist leaders ask humanity to endure the conflagration of revolutionary violence, the suppression and liquidation of resistance groups, the expropriation of property, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which they themselves describe as “based on force and unrestricted by any laws,” the constant observations of all citizens by secret police.
RUSSIA: In 1918, the Communists had overthrown the nearest thing to representative government the Russian’s had ever known. Now the people would learn something about the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. One of Lenin’s first ambitions was to wipe out the Eastern Front of WWI and take Russia out of the war. With Russia out of the war, Lenin felt sufficient confidence to subordinate the whole Russian economy to the theories of Communism. He confiscated all industry from private owners and set it up under government operation. He seized all land which belonged to the aristocracy, the Tsar and the church. He also seized all the livestock and implements which ordinarily served this land. He then abolished wages and replaced them with direct payment “in kind.” This saddled Russia with a sluggish and primitive barter system. He ordered all domestic goods to be rationed among the people according to their class. For example, a worker or soldier was allocated 35 pounds of bread, while a non-worker, such as a manager, received only twelve. Lenin also made all labor subject to mobilization. People with technical skills could be compelled to accept any work assigned to them. The selling of retail goods was taken over by the government. As for the peasants, Lenin distributed the confiscated land to them, but required them to work the land without hiring any help and without selling any of the produce. It was all to go to the government.
From the very beginning the Russian people did not take well to the new order. Without any personal incentive among the workers, production on the farm and in the factory dwindled to a trickle. The factories were soon down to 13% of what they had been producing before the war started, and the farmers cut their production in half. Black markets began to flourish. Workers often stole goods from the factories to exchange for food which the peasants secretly withheld from the government. Before long, the peasants were holding back more than one-third of their crops. As might have been expected, this decomposition of the Russian economy brought down upon the heads of the people all the wrath and frustration of the Bolshevik leaders. Every terror method known was used to force the people to produce. This led to retaliation.
During the summer of 1918, violent civil war broke out. Authorities state that during the civil war, literally tens of thousands went down before its firing squads. In spite of all these coercive methods, Lenin eventually discovered he was fighting a losing battle. The breaking point came in 1921-22 when the economic inefficiency of the Bolshevik regime was compounded by a disastrous famine. No one who was ever in that famine area, no one who saw those starving and brutalized people, will ever forget the spectacle. Cannibalism was common. The despairing people crept about emaciated, like brown mummies. When those hordes fell upon an unprepared village, they were apt to massacre every living person. Packs of orphaned children roamed like hungry wolves through the cities and country sides. It is estimated that during the year 1922, over 33 million Russians were starving and 5 million died.
The principles of socialism which Lenin had forced upon the people had not brought increased production as Marx had promised but had reduced production to a point where even in normal times it would not adequately clothe or feed half the people. This forced a humiliating reversal of policy to keep the Communists from being dethroned – the New Economic Progress (NEP). In merely a matter of months, the pauperism and starvation of the old Communist economy began to disappear. The law of supply and demand began to have its effect so that private initiative commenced to provide what the people needed. Lenin died January 20, 1924.
In 1927 Stalin had achieved precisely what Lenin feared he might – the outright control of the Russian empire. He determined to make a second attempt to communize Russia. The first Five-Year Plan began in 1928. It was aimed at wiping out the prosperous independence of businessmen and peasant farmers who had been thriving during the NEP. Within weeks, the Five-Year-Plan had wiped out the warm glow of prosperity and comparative abundance which Russia had know under the NEP. Rationing was necessary and the hated revolutionary “starvation bread” made of birch bark had to be reintroduced. The basic theme of the Five-Year-Plan was collectivized industry and collectivized agriculture. Stalin knew he would get resistance from the prosperous peasants (called Kulaks) and he therefore ordered a complete genocidal liquidation of the Kulaks as a class. Official reports tell how rebellious villages were leveled to the ground by artillery fire. In in one area of the Don region, 50,000 men, women and children were destroyed, leaving a vestige of only 2,000 people.
Stalin also, included in the Five-Year-Plan an acceleration of the Communist fight against religion. Churches and cathedrals were turned into secular buildings. Sunday was eliminated as a day of worship, and workers were required to rotate their days off so that industry would continue day and night, seven days a week. Stalin also attempted to follow Engel’s suggestion to break up the family. All the theories of Marx and Engels were coming to life. By 1932 the situation reached a crisis. The Russian people suffered starvation, mass executions, ruthless liquidation of the Kulak class, suppression of all private enterprise, deportations to Siberia and long sentences to forced labor camps. The crimes against humanity were on a scale comparable to the Nazi atrocities. Tens of thousands went down before firing squads in secret executions while the more prominent officials were exhibited before the world at Stalin’s famous purge trials. In these trials Stalin’s former comrades of the revolution sought to win mercy for their families by confessing in the most self-degrading language to all the crimes of which they were accused. But in gained them nothing.
Once Stalin had skirted the brink of political disaster, he immediately determined to consolidate his power by innovation of a Communist spoils system. He decided to give recognition to a new class – the Communist bureaucracy or official class. He bestowed special favors on them by allowing them to shop in “closed” distribution centers. These centers had great quantities of items which were never distributed to the workers. And Stalin arranged it so that his party appointees received other favors – dwellings, luxuries, special holidays, and special educational opportunities for their children. This was Stalin’s way of building a new Communist Party with members who owed absolute allegiance to him.
CUBA: By 1957 the International Monetary Fund ranked Cuba fourth among the 20 Latin American Republics in per capita income. Although it was only one sixth as high as the U.S., it was 90% as high as Italy, far higher than Japan, and six times higher than India. The U.S. Department of Commerce reported: “The Cuban national income has reached levels which give the Cuban people one of the highest standards of living in Latin America.” It soon became apparent that Batista’s policies were making a highly profitable tourist mecca out of Cuba and attracting vast quantities of American capital for industrial development. Wages went up from 10 to 30% and many Cuban workers were covered with health and medical insurance for the first time. Between 1950 and 1958 the overall national income jumped 22%. This then was the promising development of Cuba which was taking place at the time Batista was overthrown.
Two major factors led to the final success of Castro’s revolution. One was centered in the Soviet Union and the other was centered in the United States. During the last months of the revolution, observers were amazed at the quantities of Czech and Russian equipment being used by the Castro forces. They were equally surprised at the vast supplies of money which Castro had available – money for wages, food, equipment, liquor, bribery, and favors. Batista, on the other hand, suddenly found himself at the other end of the horn. Because of his pro-U.S. policies, he had assumed that when the struggle for Cuba became critical, he would be able to rely on the U.S. to sell him arms and supplies. To his amazement, he discovered that his request for permission to buy arms in the U.S. fell on deaf ears. In the closing months of the conflict American policies followed blind alleys which authorities have since attributed to either “stupidity, incompetence, or worse.” It was January 1, 1959, that Fidel Castro became the political steward of a dazed, war-weary Cuba. As soon as Castro took over, he used his revolutionary courts of mob justice to send over 600 persons to the firing squads. Then he reached out and began a “reform” movement of Communist dimensions.
- Confiscation of land and settling Cuban workers on what turned out to be large, Soviet-type collectivized farms.
- Confiscation of more than a billion-dollars-worth of American industry which Castro had neither the technicians nor finances to operate.
- Breaking up of Cuban family life and placing medium-aged children in farm communes so “the children will be under the influence of teachers and not their families.”
- Reorganizing of the schools to serve as propaganda transmission belts to dispense Communist doctrine and the “Hate Yankee” line.
- Suspension of civil liberties and other constitutional guarantees.
- Elimination of free elections.
- Capture of all press, TV and radio for government propaganda purposes.
- Termination of all cultural, political and economic ties with the United States.
- Alliances with Russia.
- Recognition of Red China.
- Trade with the Communist bloc.
NORTH KOREA: Kim II Sung, dictator of North Korea, embarked on a wide-ranging campaign to achieve massive and rapid industrialization, redistribution of land and agricultural resources, and similar large-scale projects of economic reorganization. Within a few years, Kim’s subjects were starving. Housing was in short supply, electricity nonexistent in much of the country and unreliable in the rest, water and sewer services were falling apart, and the country’s infrastructure was quickly decaying into ruin, where it remains today. Soon enough, famine struck, and millions died. Lerner relates a cheery state-run radio broadcast from the 1990s: “Today I will introduce you to tasty and healthy ways to eat wild grass.” At the famine’s worst, North Koreans were reduced to worse that that – reports of cannibalism made the rounds in intelligence circles and in the international press.
When The Plan fails – and The Plan always fails – then it is time to find somebody to blame. Over the course on the 20th century, political movements understanding themselves to be socialist were responsible for the deaths of some 100 million people. In China, in Cambodia, in the USSR. The belief in the perfectibility of society led not to heaven on Earth but hell on Earth, especially for those poor unfortunates who found themselves labeled “outdated and reactionary” by socialist regimes applying the best “scientific” thinking they could muster to the management of human affairs. North Korea is not the personality of Kim Jong II spread thin across the land, but socialism spread thick upon it. North Korea rejects foreign values for precisely the same reasons that it rejects (in theory) foreign goods: because they are incompatible with socialism. If this is madness, it is madness of a catchy kind: Stalin suffered from the same disease. So, did Lenin and Mao. So, does Hugo Chavez today. The “madman theory” of world history sheds very little light on the behavior of such regimes; and understanding of socialist ideology, and its application to the messy realities of economic life as it actually is lived, is more illuminating. North Korea is not the only state that has used hunger as a weapon of mass terrorism. Stalin’s “Holodomor” starved to death as many as 10 million Ukrainians and untold millions died under Mao’s politically induced famines. It is worth considering that the cause of all this suffering was not the presence of evil men, but the presence of mistaken ideas.
VENEZUELA: Venezuela shows what happens when socialism is appended to a large country with a complex economy and society. Its socialist regime came to power through democratic means. The regime’s centralization of power is of the sort that is essential under socialism; the state has tightened its control of petroleum and other vital industries as necessary for implementing the political discipline required to carry out President Chavez’s central-planning agenda. The Chavez regime took over a relatively prosperous, stable and civil country that had relatively strong institutions. In the early 20th century, Venezuela had the largest economy in Latin America, one that was turbocharged by the discovery of massive oil reserves. The government spent and borrowed lavishly, operating on the theory that oil prices would continue to rise forever. But in the 1980s, oil prices collapsed – and the Venezuelan economy collapsed along with them. What followed was the familiar pattern of a national fiscal crisis. Given a choice between formally defaulting on its debts or informally defaulting on them by devaluing its currency and paying off its creditors with debased money, Venezuela chose the latter. Inflation predictably skyrocketed, and real standards of living for Venezuelans fell dramatically. A relatively affluent country became a relatively poor one almost overnight, thank to failed government economic planning.
The Plan called for 5 million barrels of oil per day in 2010. Venezuelan actual production in 2010 was less than that figure. With basically no new investment coming from foreign sources – which are afraid to do business with the capricious and nationalization happy Chavez – or from domestic sources – which are completely under the thumb of Chavez – the oil industry in foundering. As did the wider Venezuelan economy. The problem apologists for socialism invariably argue, is that these state-run enterprises are not run like proper businesses; either they are corrupt, too highly politicized, or incompetently managed. Of course, all that is true. Never mind that the best way to ensure that these enterprises act like businesses is to forgo converting them from private enterprises into public ones; one must keep in mind that solid business practices alone cannot impart to a socialist enterprise the discipline and market-generated knowledge enjoyed by capitalist businesses. Aside from the oil industry, the Chavez regime seized control of most of the rest of the economy as well: the electric, telecom, steel, paper, and food-processing industries.
When the Venezuelan National Statistics Institute released figures showing that poverty was on the rise under Chavez’s government, climbing as high as 53% in 2004 in spite of surging oil revenues, the president simply called for a different measurement of poverty, one that conveniently showed a much lower rate. When the data have suggested that unemployment is rising, the Chavez regime has finessed the way it calculates unemployment. In this, Chavez is replicating an old practice perfected by his mentor, Fidel Castro, whose impressive – and utterly fictitious – statistics documenting Cuba’s literacy and childhood-health achievements have been endlessly trumpeted by those seeking to socialize American healthcare.
When the Chavez regimes failed central-planning efforts produced massive shortages of food and household goods, it tried to exert direct management of the grocery stores. The supermarket chain Exito was seized by the government and another chain, Cada was made a takeover target. But such nationalization failed to make The Plan work, so the government’s next step was to try to control the import and, especially, the export of food and consumer goods. It is a well-established law of economics that price-fixing leads inevitably to shortages, which is precisely what Chavez’s program of price controls did. Naturally, this economic, social and political displacement has been accompanied by the decay of public institutions – particularly law and order. Caracas is, as of this writing, the most dangerous capital city in the Americas, a place where ransom kidnaping is out of control. Thus, Venezuela endures the worst of both worlds; a police state that cannot control crime.
In spite of being one of the world’s energy powerhouses, Venezuela cannot produce enough power to meet its own citizens’ needs. The Chavez government, unable to ignore the rolling blackouts that, along with food shortages, have set so many Venezuelans against him, did what socialists do – he unveiled a five-year plan. In 2010, the first year of the plan Venezuela was to add 5,900 megawatts of power. It managed just over 20% of that goal.
Source: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism by Kevin D. Williamson
SUMMARY: A major premise of Communism is this: “There is no such thing as innate right or wrong.” As one of their leaders pointedly declared, “To lie, is that wrong? Not for a good cause. To steal, is that wrong? Not for a good cause. To kill, is that wrong? Not for a good cause.” We call that pragmatism – the end justifies the means. Lenin declared: “Morality is that which serves to destroy the old exploiting society. Communist morality is the morality which serves this struggle. It is highly important to Communist discipline to have every person obey blindly. To obey blindly is considered good and therefore morally right. But a system of morals which controls conduct in terms of right and wrong makes each individual a moral free agent. This Communism cannot stand.
Source: The Naked Socialist by Paul B. Skousen
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| 13_soc_communism_understanding.pdf |