The Triumph of Socialism, the Misunderstanding of Capitalism
Do you think ideas don’t matter, that what people believe about themselves and their world has no real consequence? If so, the following will not bug you in the slightest.
A new BBC poll finds that only 11 percent of people questioned around the world – and 29,000 people were asked their opinions – think that free-market capitalism is a good thing. The rest believe in more government regulation. Only a small percentage of the world’s population believes that capitalism works well and that more regulation will reduce efficiency.
One-quarter of those asked said that capitalism is “fatally flawed.” In France, 43 percent believe this. In Mexico, it is 38 percent. A majority believes that government should rob the rich to give money to poor countries. In only one country, Turkey, did a majority say that less government is better.
It gets even worse. While most Europeans and Americans think it was a good thing for the Soviet Union to disintegrate, people in India, Indonesia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Russia, and Egypt mostly think it was a bad thing. Yes, you read that right: millions freed from socialist slavery: bad thing.
That news must lift the heart of every would-be despot the world over. And it comes as something of a shock twenty years after the collapse of socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe revealed what this system had created: backward societies with citizens who lived short and miserable lives. Then there is the China case, a country rescued from bloody barbarism under communism and transformed into a modern and prosperous country by capitalism.
What can we learn? Far from not having learned anything, people have largely forgotten the experience and have developed a love for the ancient fairytale that all things can be fixed through collectivism and central planning.
As to those who would despair at this poll, consider that it might have been much worse were it not for the efforts of a relative handful of intellectuals who have fought against socialist theory for more than a century. It might have been 99% in support of socialist tyranny. So there is no sense in saying that these intellectual efforts are wasted.
Ideas also have a life of their own. They can lie in waiting for decades or centuries and then one day, the whole of history turns on a dime. Especially these days, no effort goes to waste. Publications and essays, or any form of education, is immortalized, ready for the taking by a desperate world.
As for the opinion poll, we have no idea just how intensely these views are held or even what they mean. What, for example, is capitalism? Do people even know? Michael Moore doesn’t know, else he wouldn’t be calling bailouts for elite, Fed-connected financial firms a form of capitalism. Many other people reduce the term capitalism to: “the system of economics in the U.S.” It is no more complicated than that. This is despite the reality that the U.S. has a comprehensive planning apparatus in place that is directly responsible for all our current economic troubles.
Now, let’s take this further. Among the people around the world who do not like the U.S. empire, many believe they don’t like capitalism either. If the U.S. economy drags the world down into recession, that is a prime example of capitalism’s failure. Even more preposterous, if you didn’t like George W. Bush, his ways and his cronies, and Obama is something of a relief, then you don’t like capitalism and you do like socialism.
Another point of view misunderstands the idea of capitalism itself. It is not about creating economic structures that benefit capital at the expense of labor or culture or religion. It is about a system that protects the rights of everyone and serves the common good. Capitalism is just the name that happened to be identified with this system. If you want to call freedom a banana, fine. What matters is not words but ideas.
I do know that none of these messed-up definitions of capitalism follow. You know this too. But for the world at large, serious ideological analytics are not the animating force of daily life. Many people attach themselves to vague slogans.
Further, as Rothbard has forcefully argued, free-market capitalism serves no more than a symbolic purpose for the Republican Party and for conservatives. Economic liberty is the utopia that they keep promising to bring us, pending the higher priority of blowing up foreign peoples, jailing political dissidents, crushing the left wing on campus, and routing the Democrats.
Once all of this is done, they say, then they will get to the instituting of a free-market economic system. Of course, that day never arrives, and it is not supposed to. Capitalism serves the Republicans the way Communism served Stalin: a symbolic distraction to keep you hoping, voting, and coughing up money.
All of which leaves true capitalism – a product of the voluntary society and the sum total of all the exchanges and cooperative acts of people all over the world – with few actual intellectual defenders. They are growing, but the educational work we need to do is daunting, and we are facing the most powerful forces in the world.
There is nothing new in this. In the history of the world, freedom is the exception, not the rule. It must be fought for anew in every generation. Its enemies are everywhere, but the leading enemy is ignorance. For this reason, the main weapon we have at our disposal is education.
Education includes explaining that socialism is an unworkable idea. There is nothing better than Ludwig von Mises’s 1922 book Socialism, a comprehensive presentation of the fallacy of the socialist idea. Another essential work is The Black Book of Communism. Here we have a wake-up call that shows that the dream of socialism is actually a bloody nightmare.
Then there is the issue of the positive case for capitalism. One can do no better than Mises’s own Human Action, which is not likely to ever be surpassed as a treatise on the free economy. True, it is not for everyone. And that’s fine. There are many primers out there too.
The fashion for socialism and the opposition to capitalism should alarm every lover of freedom the world over. We have our jobs cut out for us, but with numbers this bad, it is not difficult to make a difference. Every blow you can land for free markets helps protect freedom from its enemies.
Regards,
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
November 13, 2009
Editor’s Note: This article orginally appeared as “The Triumph of Socialism” on LewRockwell.com. To view the original article, please click here.
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Hello,happy to find actual people who understand capitalism.Your understanding of reality is very good..
I hope you know Richard Mayberry and his book Whatever Happened to Justice and his other books.
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Socialism is capitalism. Both have profit at their core. It’s how the profits are distributed that’s different. “Free” markets have nothing to do with it. A Socialist economy distributes it’s profits more equally to the workers who produce the profits than a “true” capital economy. At least that’s the theory. The US capitalists have transferred the production to China and taken the profit for themselves and gave the US worker a pink slip. The Chinese socialist system is the one that benefits from “capitalism” in this case. The US worker needs socialism to survive in the US because the US “capitalists” have abandoned them.
Dear Mr. Rockwell:
I DO think that what the masses hold is generally wrong or irrelevant, and, in any case, not worthy of our precious time unless we start seeing gatherings outside our gates with the modern equivalent of pitchforks. The people have spoken and are about to reap the results of their delusions and tendency to think their opinions are as good as anyone else’s while being lead astray by charlatans. Sorry…two boats and a large tree are being delivered! “Pragmatism” is a philosophy, too, and when people are kind enough to give me such things I must go coo “Oooh, aaah, thank you!” Isn’t that kind of them? Back later. LBT
“Vox popoli, vox Dei” (Latin for, The People’s voice is God’s voice)
To the genious author of this comment I have just one question: What system does the world live in and what system brought us to this global mess of umprecedented unjustice, crisis, joblessness, dispair…?
Apparently we are all under communist rule…
The only thing preventing capitalism from self-destruction was the Soviet Union. Capitalism didn’t rest until she went down. Now it’s time to face the inevitable.
P.S. China is a Communist Country under rule of the Communist Party. They’ve outsmarted the short sighted capitalists using their greed. Now they OWN the U.S.
One reaps what one sows…
I feel very sorry for the American people, numbified and dumbified by years of viscious propaganda. It’s being robbed of all it’s wealth by Wall Street Inc. But even that won’t last for long. The impending collapse of the U.S. will make the collapse of the Soviet Union look like a fairy-tale.
It’s well deserve.
It will be a dirty end of a filthy system.
I will watch it in delight from this side of the pond.
Hope the american people is smart enough not to go down with it.
Yeesh!
John November…were you abandoned as a baby? Capitalism and free markets operate on the idea that INDIVIDUALS have the best chance for personal happiness and FREEDOM (a basic human desire) when allowed to effect their destiny. Your attitude and demeanor not doubt have some origin in your lack of these two. America has been “drunk” on materialism and consumption. The beauty of our system is we can do these things freely, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We have allowed the deterioration of education, the degradation of society and families, and the abandonment of solid workable principles trying to “fix” the “unfixable” human traits that drag on all societies: Misemotion, laziness, fear, jealousy, deception, drug abuse, irresponsibility, short sightedness etc. These are the root causes of the US decline. (If education were up to par, the CRAP passing for a government the last 16 years couldn’t stand.) “Filthy System”? I know my ability to be free is tied to your ability to be free even thought you are “across the pond”. That is why Americans fight around the world. Yes, there are bad actors, merchants of chaos, greed worshipers etc., I will NOT allow them to change my mind and turn the lights out on FREEDOM, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Earth is a work in progress and socialism/communism is a step to the DARK AGES!! Only people who want that are those who feel gypped or guilty. I am NEITHER. What’s more is I don’t see anything any better or workable! Find something local you believe in and put your energy to that. Delighting in the destruction of America is just sad… As America goes, so goes the world. Be vested in success not destruction. C~
American style Capitalism and Russian Communism under Brezhnev both were victims of winner take all greed. European style socialism has successfully tempered some of that. Think of where France and Germany were in 1950 relative to the U.S.A. (nowhere) and in 2009 we have rapidly growing unemployment in the U.S. and warnings that the middle class is collapsing, people losing their homes and any kind of security. Socialism at least promises that we will take care of one another. Perhaps socialism is Christianity at its best, stripped of mystical nonsense.
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For myself, the debate over the relative worth of either Capitalism or Socialism lies in what the end and effect of wealth is. Are the manifestations of either we see today suggestive of a system that truly “protects the rights of everyone and serves the common good”? Hardly, when growing millions go hungry and without health care or an adequate education, and prison censuses relative to population are highest in the world.
History provides examples (most recognizably associated with Stalin and Mao) of “socialist” systems that that were merely fronts for bloody dictatorships. Capitalism in the US today (not pure) IS a system that creates an economic structure that “benefits capital at the expense of labor or culture or religion”. Universal liberties and the common good just aren’t in the equations or strategies of Wall Street and the corporatist state our government has become. Indeed, “capitalism” is merely a label attached to a predatory system by those who use the name to fog it’s real nature. Instead of a democracy, we have in its stead a growing and increasingly powerful corporatocracy.
Melding of corporate and state interests, which is really what we have here—to the benefit of a very few extremely wealthy elite—is more properly called Fascism. Individual rights and the common good be damned!
Rothbard’s observations are right on the money (no pun intended), as are yours, Mr. Rockwell. Thanks very much for this interesting piece!
Dear friends,
As a Western European, I will take joy on the anihilation of the current american system (a.k.a. savage capitalism). I feel deep sorrow and compassion for those everywhere who are suffering already from the U.S. Empire (and Global capitalism) debacle, translated into unemploiment, unger, exploitation, blackmail and all sorts of abuse from those in power to those bellow. Even if they were the one’s who elected their facade goverment.
Let’s be honest: Obama or McCain?, Bush or Gore?, Bill or Bush…? Can you really tell any SIGNIFFICANT difference?
The american people is “freee” to choose from candidates of what’s really the same party (it started that way, go and research please).
I’m for freedom and democracy as much as the next man, but in the last 20 years or so (since the fall of the Berlin Wall…) our democracies are becoming more of a sham (no more need of keping appearences now that we beat the “commies” are there…?).
Was Blair a socialist? Brown?
Barroso? Zapatero? Berlusconi?
Nightmare!!!
No. None of our current politicians, regardless of party, actually represent the intersts of its electors. They represent hidden economical/financial interests, betting on destroing our hard-fought democracy and the once thriving middle-class to their own profit.
Wealth concentration and debt-serfdom is their goal, slowly pursued, over time, as not to raise (too many) suspitions.
Communism as an ideal is great!
I happen to believe in God. Jesus for sure didn’t want us to exploit our fellow-men. He taught us to live as brothers!
Communism is about working togheter to create a better, fairer, society, where everybody can live with dignity, can study and become what he wants to be, and isn’t measured solely by where he lives or what he drives regardless of how he got it! (In most cases trough speculation or exploitation of others)
Capitalism promotes only one sort of “freedom”: That it’s right to get rich no matter how.
That’s what got us into this mess.
A middle-class Joe is only “free” to watch superbowl, guzzle a six-pack until oblivion and pay his bills at month’s end. IF he’s lucky!
His retirement is getting very hazy, so is the future of his progeny.
Is this what FREEDOM really stands for? Not for me!
One final word. Stalin was no saint. But comparing him to Hitler is of the most preposterous and absolute slandering the system has done in the last few years.
The system fears Communism because it knows it’s the only force able to see trough ist’s smoke and mirrors and deal with it the way it must be dealt with. With unrelentless determination.
The very same way the system employs wherever is necessary to maitain it’s grasp. Go see Chile, Bolivia, Guatemala, Greece after WW2, and the long blocaded “threat” of Cuba. Just to name some.
Long live REAL FREEDOM!
Freedom to ALL the peoples of the world!
Thank you for your time
John
France
Dear Cheri: I loved your response.. Hit him again! Linda
Dear Mr. Elcox:
Promises, promises…man cannot live on promises.
Men have caused a great deal of woe attempting to demonstrate that “socialism is Christianity at its best, stripped of its mystical nonsense.”
Hmm…in the last 1500 years can you name a place that did not have Christianity but did have both freedom and prosperity?
LBT
The phrases “the common good” and “the general welfare” have no place in the debate because they are never anything more than a way to pick the pockets of producers. This isn’t utopia, and it is supposed to be a constitutional republic.
The only two admissible purposes of government are to protect a nation’s borders and to prevent some citizens from killing others. Last year the Supreme Court pontificated that the police have no responsibility for protecting citizens. Our state guards have been stripped for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are only two things that government does better than private enterprise: extort money and waste it.
LBT
Back to John: I have read all three of your posts carefully, John. In general “this side of the pond” has referred to those who live in England. Do you hold that your more advanced brand of socialism is superior to that which is being foisted upon us rapidly? Has it improved YOUR life in any way? Why will our fall please you so? Will anyone be the better for it? Will your children spell better than you do in schools which cater to the growing muslim population and debase the ideals of western civilization? When our economy crashes completely will the EU be better off? As President Reagan said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” The tide of socialism is grounding us in smelly mud flats. I only wish I thought it were receding to be replaced by true free market entrepreneurialism. Until you are totally self-sufficient and secure in your right to private property, do not be too eager to wish ill upon others. LBT
John…
How does communism eliminate greed? With force, imprisionment or “programing”? Communism is no “Ideal”. Forced sacrafice and dampened achievement aren’t very inspiring. Maybe for a guy who isn’t very motivated and would perfer to sit around and goof off but not do without? Do you feel bad about yourself when people talk or worse yet, brag about what they have or want to have? I refer to my earlier post about the “ills of humanity”, cheaters, gamblers and subversives exist no matter which economic political system they’re under. Just makes sense to pick the one which offers the “common” man the most oppurtunity to live his life they way he reasons it relative to his own goals and abilities.
At least that is what makes sense to a small town girl from a family with six children and hearing impaired but HARDWORKING parents who never want more than their fair share of OPPURTUNITY.
However, I can’t afford a dictionary……Spell check makes me lazy!
Go ahead I deserve the rip for mispelling.
OPPORTUNITY twice! I will be slower to
I can hardly wait for my green card to the USA, where I can wake up each day getting screwed into the ground by corporate America with low wages, no vacations and knowing I am just one illness or two paychecks from total poverty. The only nation with a protestant work ethic and a dream of working til you drop.
” The salesman thanks the customer for patronizing his shop and asks him to come again. But the socialists say: Be grateful to Hitler, render thanks to Stalin; be nice and submissive, then the great man will be kind to you later too. ” – Ludwig von Mises